Atiku

Atiku/Obasanjo Feud: As Dan Etete Seals new JV Campaign Deal

Senior Fyneface

When Chief Dan Etete in 1996 introduced what he described as the ‘new deal’, he meant to put a stop to foreign monopoly in the management of joint venture partnership between the federal government and the foreign oil companies. That deal was also meant to stop the malpractices in the oil industry and open the door for Nigerians to come in an participate in moulding the future of the industry.

Interesting, the Abacha Petroleum Minister was always embroiled in quarrels with his fellow ministers at the federal executive council. At the peak of the fuel crisis of 1997, Chief Anthony Ani, the then finance minister publicly blasted Etete when he said that ‘despite the huge amount allocated for the repairs of the refineries, we have found that these have not been repaired’. Etete’s reply was that ‘Ani has embarked on deliberate falsehood against me. Sensible neighbours do not adopt the antics of a mad man who choose to dance naked at the village square’.

Also during the crushing fuel crisis of 1997, when Gen Buba Marwa (then governor of Lagos state) urged Etete to tell the Nigerian people the cause of the crisis, Chief Etete replied that “Marwa (a governor) was being very childish in making those remarks”.

So to say that Chief Dan Etete’s former ‘new deal’ flopped completely because the man lacked respect for constituted authourities is an understatement. He actually abused virtually everybody including his fellow ministers, the NNPC GMDs that worked with him including the sacking Dr Edet Akhimien, the man that actualized the construction of Eleme Petrochemicals Company, because the vastly-experienced technocrat opposed Etete’s demand for a $20 million Dollars bribe to him as the then minister. How many can someone present in one single write-up like this; is it the irrational sacking of several managing directors of NNPC subsidiaries during his tenure including Haruna Abubakar of PPMC the action that sparked off nation-wide protest for Etete’s resignation or his importation of toxic foul- smelling fuel in 1997 that killed over 4, 000 Nigerians as his only answer to the disgraceful fuel crisis of that year?

This same Abacha petroleum minister ordered NNPC to ignore the 1996 ruling of a Lagos High Court Judge, a competent court of law, that ordered the NNPC to insure its assets with the National Insurance Corporation of Nigeria (NICON) for the year 1997.

Anyway, all the above cases which represent a speck of his recklessness, were in Dan Etete’s former ‘new deal’. Now the Yenagoa-born fugitive (on self-exile) has recently struck a fresh ‘new deal’ in the ongoing feud between the two topmost citizens of this country.

In what looks like a condition for his asylum back to Nigeria, Etete accepted to be used as a willing tool in the ongoing smear campaign against Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Whosoever advised the Presidency to employ Etete, should be sacked immediately from the smear campaign team because that strategy has messed up more things in the president’s campaign than it set out to achieve.

The use of Etete and his unmannered delivery of abuses and threats rather than explanation or disclosure of fresh issues as cooked by his employer does not compensate for the huge amount of money spent on him in the last few months that he was camped at the Aguda House, where he lived with all the goodies of a serving federal government executive.

Obviously, the President must have changed his mind as usual, from an earlier promise to the Yenagoa-born fugitive that he (Etete) will be the next governor of Bayelsa state come 2007. In this particular case of use and dump tactics, nobody can blame Obasanjo for not living up to the terms of the deal because Etete actually did a very bad job in his outing against the vice president, including his recent attempts (in cooperation) with the presidency to cage the NDDC strongman Timi Alaibe and stop him from running for the governorship race.

Chief Dan Etete admitted publicly in his AIT smear campaign that, as Minister of Petroleum Resources, he allocated the said oil blocs to himself and his company.

It is on record also that he was certified as a conduit to siphon over $5billion out of the Nigerian treasury during the Abacha era. As Petroleum Minister, he supervised the collapse of Nigerian refineries and the importation of foul - smelling toxic fuel into the country. He has been a refugee in France for seven years running away from the long hands of the law.

Nigerians are not fools, for the President to conscript a man with criminal records, a man that lacks integrity and credibility to make poorly-packaged completely false allegations against a duly elected official just because he has been promised to be installed as the next governor of Bayelsa state is an obvious indication that the entire feud between Obasanjo and Atiku has always been based on concoctions rather than facts.

It is even stranger that Mr. Etete was using the same facts he had used to attack both the President and the Vice President in an earlier interview published by the Insider Magazine edition of March 10^th 2003.

What has happened from then to now, for Etete to slant the facts against Atiku only? Maybe the anti-Atiku team failed to realize that Nigeria has gone past the age when the citizens hear or read about issues and just throw it away. As was revealed by the Atiku campaign camp, Chief Etete and his sponsors should go and read the Insider Magazine of March 10 2003 and UAS Africa advertorial by Etete himself and then compare the changed tune in the orchestra.

Nothing here changes the fact that the Petroleum Ministry has, and continues to be in the firm grip of the President, all by himself, these last seven and half years. Every Nigerian is literate to the fact that all enquiries on oil and related maters go to the President’s desk.

Etete’s outburst against Vice President Abubakar is the latest in a regime’s show of shame of smear campaign against the Vice President by forces bent on stopping him from the legitimate quest for the Presidency.

As was aptly captured by the Vice President’s camp, “When the big masquerade behind Etete is courageous enough to come out, the Vice President will respond”.

Whosoever is promising Etete that he will be installed as the next governor of Bayelsa State must be making a great mistake because I know my Bayelsa people very well. The average Bayelsa politician is not a coward and cannot be manipulated from Abuja. If Dan Etete wants to be the next governor of Bayelsa State, which in my view is a genuine aspiration as an Ijawman of the Yenagoa stock, he should go back and appeal for votes from his community, local government before the state level. He can win elections if he convinces his people that he now has all it takes to take Bayelsa state out of the current poverty and penury rather than being housed in Aguda House by the Presidency.