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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA Adeniyi’s Thriller About the Villa As we all know, the Aso Rock Villa is to Nigeria what the White House is to the US or No. 10 Downing Street is to the UK; each is the residence of their respective No 1 Citizen. As we also know the penultimate occupant of our own Villa was Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua. He lived there from May 29, 2007, after his contentious election as president, till May 5, 2010, when he died amidst avoidable controversy that dodged his ill-health from even before his first day in office. As president he was served by Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, author, journalist and editor at Thisday, as his spokesman. A more thrilling and authoritative account of what transpired inside the Villa during the period under consideration and about their impact on the country and beyond than the one told by Adeniyi in his 294-page book would, in my view, be a tough call indeed. At least two things are responsible for the book being a thriller and authoritative. First, Adeniyi came to the job highly recommended as an accomplished reporter, editor and well-connected columnist. Second, in the history of speaking for the country’s various No. I Citizens since Independence over 50 years ago, Adeniyi, with his formal title as Special Adviser to the President on Communications, is the first to enjoy the status of a minister. This meant unprecedented access to his principal and routine attendance of all cabinet meetings, among other privileges. This has prompted some critics to ask if the book is not an exploitation of, or even an abuse of, privilege. I do not think it is, for the simple reason that the public is entitled to know how they are governed, subject, of course, to respect for our laws on the security of the State. And what Adeniyi has had to say in his book has not, as far as I can see as a layman, breached any of such laws. In any case even if the book is an abuse of privilege – which I insist it is not – Adeniyi would be in the good company of many public officers at home and abroad, elected or otherwise, who have told their own stories about how they have discharged their briefs. The difference is that Adeniyi has told his much more quickly than most. For me it is only proper, even commendable, that he did so when the events are still fairly fresh in our memories and many of the actors in his story are alive and well to challenge his version of the events. POWER, POLITICS & DEATH is divided into two parts, actually three, if you consider his Dedication, Preface, Acknowledgements and Introduction, and the Forward by Mr. Dele Olojede - the first and so far the only African winner of Pulitzer Prize, American Journalism’s answer to the Nobel Prize - and Abbreviations, as one section. I did and I found it somewhat confusing that the book had both a Preface and an Introduction by the author because the two mean the same, except, of course, if the author decided to write two introductions. In which case I think he did wrong because the Introduction to me reads more like an epilogue. The two sections of the book proper are entitled “The Defining Issues” for Part I and “Illness and Death,” for Part II. Part I has nine chapters while Part II has eight making a total of 17. In my view the title of Part I was a misnomer because none of its nine chapters really defined the presidency of Yar’adua. What defined it from start to finish were his illness and his eventual death. In each of these chapters the author listed several achievements of Yar’adua. He also mentioned some of his principal’s personal failings. Even then, he always did so with sympathy and clearly without malice. Yet in spite of all his bravest attempts at putting the best face to the president’s failings it was obvious that when the chips were down the president lacked the courage of his own convictions. Nothing exposed this ultimate lack of courage by the president in his own convictions than his unwillingness to sack Aondoakaa in spite of his awareness of the dubious role his minister of justice had played in trying to shield Chief James Ibori, the two-term former governor of Delta State, from prosecution for sundry acts of corruption. Ibori, said Adeniyi, regarded the EFCC chairman, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, as his greatest enemy and he (Ibori) projected this enmity to then Chief of Staff of the president, Major-General Abdullahi Mohammed, on grounds that the general was Ribadu’s godfather and therefore someone who had to be pushed out of the Villa if he (Ibori) was to win his war against Ribadu. “Look Segun,” Adeniyi quoted Ibori as warning him on one occasion, “you know you were not supposed to get this job but the president insisted it was you he wanted but now that you are here, you think you can play politics. Let me warn you, I have been playing the villa game since the Abacha days so don’t mess with me. Be careful.” In the end Ibori proved true to his boast; Mohammed was eventually pushed out of the Villa and Ribadu out of the EFCC. And arguably his biggest ally in his success was Aondoakaa to whom EFCC ultimately reported as the attorney general of the Federation. It was inconceivable that Ibori and his ally could have succeeded in their war against the EFCC without at least the tacit support of the president. This created serious doubts in the public mind at home, and perhaps even more so, abroad, about the president’s commitment to fighting corruption as a cardinal principle and program of his presidency. Throughout the civil war – for that was what it was – in the Villa, it leaked as a sieve. “We would finish a meeting,” Adeniyi said, “and the details discussed would be on the internet in less than 30 minutes.” One particularly telling case that involved the author was a meeting the president convened to discuss the controversial sale of NICON Insurance to Mr Jimoh Ibrahim, a shipping magnate. “Not more than ten minutes after the meeting ended,” Adeniyi said, “Jimoh Ibrahim called to express his displeasure at the position I took which he said did not reflect the fact that we were friends.” On another occasion, the author said, a staff in the office of the president was caught selling documents to a bank executive. This sorry state of the presidency’s official secrecy must have led to its decision to have all staff in the Villa swear to oaths of secrecy for the first time in the country’s history. Predictably, the swearing attracted heavy media criticisms and, at any rate, proved futile; the Villa continued to leak like a sieve until the president died. The civil war in the Villa was, however, not without its occasional comic relief. For example, speaking during a Federal Executive Council session in which the issue of declaring the president incapacitated came up, Dr. Sam Egwu, former two-term governor of Ebonyi State and minister of Education and one of those who urged caution over the issue, provoked laughter when he told the session what happened when, as governor, he once had to travel out for medicals at a time his deputy was also outside the state. Consequently, he said, he wrote to the speaker of the state’s House of Assembly to act as governor. “Hardly,” he said, “did the guy even allow me to leave the state capital before he moved into my office, sat on my chair and started barking orders. The only thing the fellow did not take over was my wife!” Apparently Egwu’s humour was lost on then acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, who presided over the session; in his first cabinet reshuffle after dissolving the cabinet he had inherited from his erstwhile boss, the minister was among the casualties. Were the then acting president’s wife, Dame Patience, whose ambition to be First Lady was the worst kept secret in the country, to have been present at the cabinet session, the minister’s humour would have been lost even more so on her. “As early in the administration as December 2007,” said Adeniyi towards the end of the book, “a group of women had paid her a visit and in the course of the discussion, one had asked: ‘how is oga?’ To this Mrs. Jonathan replied: ‘My husband is in the office reading newspapers. Then she added rather sarcastically in pidgin English: ‘Abi no be newspaper Turai (Mrs. Yar’adua) say make im dey read?’” POWER, POLITICS & DEATH is truly a gripping and highly readable account of what transpired during the uncompleted and tragic presidency of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua. Note This is an abridged version of my review of the book at its formal presentation by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Executive Governor of Edo State, in Abuja yesterday.
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