PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Persecution of Atiku Abubakar

kudugana@yahoo.com

For a long time they denied any split, but long before President Obasanjo was through his first term, even the most casual observer of the Aso Rock Villa could see that the relationship between him and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, was far from harmonious. Stories of breakdowns in their relationships may have been exaggerated but the smokes coming out of the Villa suggested that there was fire, and not a smokes machine, somewhere in the Villa.

One of the early signs of the split was the president’s handling of the privatization of the New Nigerian, owned 100% by the Federal Government following the government’s appropriation of the paper from the Northern States in 1975. The paper, along with the Daily Times owned 60% by the government, had been scheduled for early privatization by Obasanjo. However, while that of the Daily Times proceeded apace, the president, sometimes in 2001, quietly removed the New Nigerian from the privatization schedule without the knowledge of his deputy who was the head of the privatization council.

It is not clear why the president changed his mind about the New Nigerian. One theory was that he was merely responding positively to the objections raised by the governors of the Northern states about privatizing the paper without taking into account their status as the former owners that were never compensated by the Federal Government in its 1975 appropriation of the paper. Another theory was that the president had cause to suspect that his deputy was interested in buying the paper, even if by proxy, so that he could have a handy instrument for promoting his own presidential ambitions after the president would have left office, hopefully at the end of his first term.

Of the two theories, the second, I believe, was the more plausible if only because the president has never been famous for being tolerant of dissent. Certainly since his return as an elected president in 1999, almost everything he has done, never mind what he has said to the contrary, is to enhance his grip on power. Whether it is the use of religion, tribe and greed to divide and rule Nigerians, or the selective use of state power, both soft and hard, to reward loyalists and punish dissenters, or acting as the local champion of Western globalizers so as to cut an ice with them, the president has shown himself to be a grand master of the power game.

Long before he was half-way through his first term, it was clear that the man had no intention of honouring any deal he may have signed with  anyone  that he would do a Mandela. First, he himself had denied any such deal, despite all evidence to the contrary. Second, as early as 2000, his fixer-in-chief, Tony Anenih, has put everyone on notice that there was no vacancy in the Villa for the 2004 general elections. Third, other senior aides of the president had dismissed the notion of Obasanjo doing a Mandela on the ground that there was, in any case, no one around the president fit to be an Mbeki.

However, just in case Atiku Abubakar entertained any illusions that he was an Mbeki, his boss decided apparently to take no chances. The New Nigerian may have lost its glory of the sixties and seventies, but it was still portent enough to be turned around by any well-endowed owner to serve as an effective propaganda tool. The vice-president could, of course, revive The Reporter which was published by his political mentor, the late General Shehu Yar’adua, or he could start a new title from scratch. None of these options, however, had the appeal of owning an existing newspaper which still had a lot of goodwill.

Whether Obasanjo changed his mind about privatizing the New Nigerian because he so much loved the governors and the people of the Northern states or because he decided not to take any chances with an ambitious deputy, it was obvious by the time he formally declared his intention to run for a second term that there was little love lost between himself and Abubakar: when he made his declaration he conspicuously left out his deputy’s name as his running mate. In his first media chat after the declaration, he said he did so because it would be unwise to name a running mate when he was yet to secure his party’s presidential ticket.

That his explanation did not wash soon became crystal clear: the very next day after the media chat he reversed himself and declared Abubakar as his running mate. Sources close to the Villa said this was because the president was given a choice by Abubakar’s men, of either retaining his deputy or facing a challenge from him for the party’s presidential ticket. At that time most PDP governors were in Abubakar’s camp and so the president was not left with much choice.

From that time it appears the president could hardly wait to chastise his deputy for daring to make him eat humble pie. Since settling down to his second term, the president has, among other chastisements, removed some of the vice-presidents personal aides from office without the courtesy of first clearing with the vice-president. The president has also secured a bill from a very pliant National Assembly amending the privatization law so as to remove the vice-president as the chairman of the privatization council. The vice-president was the boss of the council presumably because privatization is a pillar of Obasanjo’s economic reform and Part 1 of the Third Schedule of the Constitution makes the vice-president the Chairman of the National Economic Council which has the power to advice the president on the economic direction of the country and on how to coordinate the economic programmes of the various governments of the Federation.

There are many other stories of Obasanjo making uncharitable remarks in private about his deputy and of also doing everything to make his deputy redundant. Whether these stories are true or not, the vice-president seemed to have reacted to the president’s attempt at humiliating him with equanimity. That is until last week’s annulment of the governorship election in Adamawa, the vice-president’s home state. With the nullification of the election, the vice-president seems to have finally lost his cool.

“I have seen various judgements in the political history of Nigeria,” Thisday of March 27, quoted him as saying in Yola, “but I have never seen any judgement so designed to disgrace one, exhibit lack of respect and aimed at snatching a mandate in order to award it to another person.”

The vice-president actually said worse things. “I am happy,” he reportedly said, “that the judgement is over, and even if it amounts to insulting, beating or slapping anyone, we are equal to it and we shall say it loud.”

After the Adamawa Election Tribunal’s verdict, it is clear that the vice-president is no longer prepared to continue to turn the other cheek. Instead he seems now determined to extract an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

I am not sure it was a wise thing for the vice-president to have lost his composure and to have in effect declared war on his boss who, presumably, the vice-president thinks is behind his latest political humiliation.

It was unwise for the vice-president to threaten war openly because, in the first place, it would be an uneven contest seeing that his boss, by definition, is far better armed to fight a war: the president seems to have since secured the personal loyalties of the leadership of the police, the armed forces and the security services, and above all, the National Assembly. He can also rely on the media for support because even though they have become highly critical of the president,  the  way   the media, the Trust newspapers exempted, have totally blacked out the main opposition’s judicial challenge of the president’s dubious victory at the last polls, suggests that they still think they are better off with him as the devil they know, or more accurately, as the devil who is their own.

Second, if I am correct about the vice-president’s presumptions about his boss being behind the Adamawa annulment, then it is obvious that the vice-president has a tricky case on his hands. Tricky because the vice-president’s anger suggests that the    public is right all along to have suspected presidential interference with the election tribunals. His anger suggests that the Adamawa  tribunal  was  persuaded to enter a  verdict against the ruling PDP, even though Adamawa was hardly the worst case of suspected rigging, simply because the president was determined to humiliate him.

The case is still tricky even if I am wrong about the vice-president’s presumptions. This is simply because a vice-president should never be seen to be speaking ill of, and therefore undermining, the judiciary.

It is a pity that the vice-president allowed his anger to get the better of him. But then he is only human. However, having exposed his anger he should not persist in it. He should take refuge in the fact that vengeance as a policy, especially as vigorously pursued by his boss against foes and “disloyal” friends alike, has a way of boomeranging in the long run, sometimes even in the short.

The vice-president is of course not the only victim of the president’s policy of vengeance. It seems you either accept the notion that, in Gbolabo Ogunsanwo’s words, the president is the Apesin of Nigeria or you are an enemy. The Apesin, as Ogunsanwo explained in The Comet of January 12, 2002, is someone “destined to have people perpetually serve him”. The president apparently believes that he is destined to be perpetually served by other Nigerians. “The good Lord who has given me the assignment to lead Nigeria,” he told the Villascope, the newsletter of the Villa, nearly two years ago, “also by Himself provides the where withal to be accomplished.” For daring to question the messiahood of the president, especially at the crucial time of the party primaries, the vice-president obviously earned himself the president’s eternal enmity.

The vice-president may not be the only victim of the president’s vengeance, but he is in the most awkward position of the lot, as long as he remains the vice-president. This is because it is difficult to see how he can counter-attack the president without himself going down. The most sensible option for him therefore is to continue to bear his burden with equanimity. Sooner or later anyone whose policy is vengeance, even  for  the most seemingly unforgivable wrong, will get his comeuppance.

It is, after-all, not for nothing that the good Lord said vengeance is His.