Jonathan Used Boko Haram Insurgency To Turn Nigeria To His ATM - Obasanjo
Former president Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed
why he opposed the re-election of immediate past president, Mr. Goodluck
Jonathan in the 2015 presidential election. Mr. Obasanjo’s reasons are
contained in a book, Against the Run of Play, written by Mr. Segun
Adeniyi, Chairman of the Editorial Board of ThisDay Newspapers. The
book, an account of what happened in the 2015 presidential election, is due for
public presentation in Lagos on Friday.
ormer president Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed why he opposed the
re-election of immediate past president, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015
presidential election.
Mr. Obasanjo’s reasons are contained in a book, Against the Run of
Play, written by Mr. Segun Adeniyi, Chairman of the Editorial Board
of ThisDay Newspapers.
The book, an account of what happened in the 2015 presidential election,
is due for public presentation in Lagos on Friday.
The relationship between the former presidents, noted the author, had
soured long before the election. Mr. Jonathan, whose political rise is widely
credited to Mr. Obasanjo’s influence, had sought to make up with his presumed
benefactor and keep him on his side for re-election. He arranged for a
meeting with Mr. Obasanjo in his Abeokuta home.
Before leaving for the Ogun State leg of his campaign in January 2015
wrote the author, Mr. Jonathan had concluded plans to visit Mr.
Obasanjo, who had agreed to meet him.
Mr. Obasanjo, however, gave a condition: Jonathan must come along with
someone of sufficient credibility to act as a witness at the meeting. Mr.
Jonathan agreed to bring one along.
He approached the hugely influential General Overseer (GO) of the
Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor EA Adeboye, who accepted to play the
role of a witness.
But on the evening of 12 January 2015, the agreed date of the meeting
scheduled for Mr. Obasanjo’s Hilltop residence in Abeokuta, Pastor Adeboye
arrived in the company of Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners Chapel.
“It was only Pastor Adeboye that Jonathan told me was coming with
him, but Bishop Oyedepo is a man I also know very well, so I had no problem
with his presence at the meeting,” Mr. Obasanjo was quoted as saying.
The meeting, stated the author, was an unpleasant one for Mr. Jonathan,
a man Mr. Obasanjo had assisted to become Vice President and then President.
Mr. Obasanjo frontally told Mr. Jonathan that he was not going to support his
re-election bid, saying he considered his performance as president sub-par and
that he had acted less than honorably for reneging on the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) zoning arrangement, which prescribed that it was the turn of the
North to produce the president.
“I told him in the presence of his witness that I was not going to
support him for a second-term and I gave my reasons. Aside the issue of zoning
on which he was reneging, his stewardship up to that point had also shown very
clearly that he was not up to the job,” Obasanjo reportedly said to the author
in December 2016.
Mr. Obasanjo, according to the author, claimed to have nothing personal
against Mr. Jonathan, explaining that his disagreement with him was based on
certain principles on which he was not prepared to compromise.
“My decision was based on what would be for the good of Nigeria and
since I didn’t consider Jonathan god enough, I told him to his face. What would
I be afraid of?” asked Obasanjo.
The outcome of the meeting was a huge blow to Mr. Jonathan, who
was initially billed to be on the ballot in February 2015 before the eventual
postponement of the election. Mr. Jonathan, expectedly, left Abeokuta dejected.
The outcome of the meeting was the culmination of years of disdain,
initially muted, with which Mr. Obasanjo held the Jonathan presidency. Signs of
his irritation first manifested on 3 April 2012, when he resigned his position
as chairman of PDP Board of Trustees.
Two months later, he delivered a wounding assessment of the Jonathan’s
administration’s capacity to confront corruption.
On 15 June 2012, at a debate organized by the club De Madrid (an
independent, non-profit organization comprising 80 former democratic presidents
and prime ministers from fifty-six countries) in Geneva, Switzerland, Mr.
Obasanjo laid into the Jonathan administration with full force.
“I haven’t seen that will of persistency and consistency in Nigeria
because the people that are involved in corruption, they are strongly
entrenched and unless you are ready to confront them at the point of even
giving your life for it, then you will give in, that is the end of it,” he told
BBC
Ritula Shah, moderator of the debate. Clever sniping by an
accomplished verbal sniper. From then on, Mr. Jonathan was a sitting duck.
A year later, Mr. Obasanjo abandoned sniping for an all-out shootout.
His first major target was the oil pipelines protection initiative of the
Jonathan administration.
“This morning, on my way from Abeokuta by road, I was listening to the
radio. I heard that the Jonathan administration said that they are going to set
up an agency for pipeline protection. Now, what are the police there for? What
are all the security agencies doing? This is another chop-chop,” Mr.
Obasanjo said in Abuja during a thanksgiving ceremony to mark the
50th birthday of Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, a former Minister of
Education.
He sustained his attack with details of how he thought the Jonathan
administration was not interested in accountability, noting that its handling
of the Boko Haram insurgency indicated that if allowed to continue in power,
Mr. Jonathan could fatally damage the country. “Jonathan and his people turned
Boko Haram into an industry for making money. Rather than seek for solution,
Boko Haram became an ATM machine for taking money out of the treasury. Take the
issue of the Chibok tragedy. If he had acted within the first 48 hours, they would
have found most of the girls. The CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria)
Chairman of the local chapter in Chibok was here to see me and he explained how
they were helpless with no reaction from the authorities for several days,” the
book quoted Mr. Obasanjo as saying.
The author noted that Mr. Obasanjo had advised early in the life of the
Jonathan administration that Jonathan, as president, needed to pay more
attention to the Boko Haram insurgency, a counsel that was ignored.
In November 2012, the author stated, at a ceremony marking the
40th anniversary on the pulpit of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the then CAN
President, Obasanjo suggested that the Jonathan administration was mishandling
the challenge posed by the insurgency.
“My fear is that when you have a sore and you don’t attend to it early
enough, it festers and becomes very bad. Don’t leave a problem that can be bad
unattended…if you say you don’t want a strong leader who can have all the
characteristic of a leader, including the fear of God, then you have a weak
leader and the rest of the problems is yours,” he said at the occasion.
Mr. Obasanjo also accused Mr. Jonathan of clannishness and promotion of
a form of Ijaw triumphalism, which he described as “sickening”.
“I once asked him: ‘What is this Ijaw thing all about? Can the Ijaw
people make you president?’ I remember when he granted pardon to Alamieyeseigha
(Diepriye, the former governor of Bayelsa State convicted for corruption) and
it became an international embarrassment. I also asked him: ‘Why did you do
it?’ He started by offering a lame excuse that it was a Council of State
decision before I reminded him that Council of State was merely advisory and
that the decision was his. After a while, he said if I was at the meeting, he
probably would have acted differently because nobody opposed him on what he
could do to address the problem. But it was either because he didn’t have the
courage to broach the issue with Alamieyeseigha or he didn’t think it was
important. he did nothing afterward,” Adeniyi reported Obasanjo as saying.
The author also noted that the public conduct of some Ijaw men such as
ex-militant, Mujahid Dakubo-Asari, and a former Federal Commissioner for
Information, Chief Edwin Clark damaged the image of Jonathan and that of his
administration.
Mr. Adeniyi observed that the fact that Mr. Jonathan did not restrain
them created the impression that he supported what they were saying and doing.
For instance, in May 2013, recalls Adeniyi, Dakubo-Asari said Niger Delta
militants would throw the country into chaos if Mr. Jonathan was not re-elected
in 2015. Again, on September 9th, 2013, he declared that Jonathan’s
presidential ambition in 2015 was already settled.
“The way things are going, there is no sitting on the fence in the
battle before us… All of us will have to be in the ring and fight. 2015 is
already a settled matter. Goodluck Jonathan would be president in 2015,”
Dakubo-Asari declared.
A few days later, Chief Clark did the same, saying Jonathan would remain
President in 2015 because it was not yet the turn of the North.
“In the Constitution of Nigeria, every president has two elections to be
contested. (Alhaji Shehu) Shagari did it in1979 and 1983. In 1999, (Chief
Olusegun) Obasanjo did it and 2003. In 2007, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of blessed
memory did it and if he had remained alive, he would have done it again in
2011. So, Jonathan has the right to contest again. This is an incumbent that
has not done a second-term. It is not yet the turn of northerners. They have
the right to contest as Nigerians. Yes, but in other parties,” said Chief
Clark.
At the same occasion, the late Alamieyeseigha bragged: “Aso Rock is not
vacant. The northern agitators will all, at the appropriate time, join the
moving train. They may have their opinion, but I can assure you that President
|Jonathan will remain as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria come
2015.”
The author equally observed that Mr. Obasanjo, was, on many occasions,
the target of attacks by prominent Ijaw leaders and groups. This, states the
author, was one of the reasons for his famous open letter to President Jonathan
in December 2013. Titled, “Before it is too late,” Mr. Obasanjo’s letter
accused Mr. Jonathan of pursuing selfish interest by destroying his own party,
polarizing the country along regional and religious lines and ridiculing
Nigerians globally. “For you to allow yourself to be ‘possessed’, so to say, to
the exclusion of most of the rest of Nigerians as an Ijaw man is a mistake that
should never have been allowed to happen. To allow or tacitly encourage people
of Ijaw to throw insults on other Nigerians from other parts of the country and
threaten fire and brimstone to protect your interest as an Ijaw man is myopic
and that you are not openly quieting them is even more unfortunate,” wrote Mr.
Obasanjo.
Obasanjo’s criticisms of Mr. Jonathan were a boon to the opposition,
whose disparate bits were in the process of coalescing into the All
Progressives Congress (APC) to be reinforced by the defection of some PDP
governors.
Cleverly painting Mr. Jonathan as dishonorable, Mr. Obasanjo said Mr.
Jonathan told him before the 2011 election that he would serve for a single
term and made the same promise to governors, party stakeholders, and Nigerians.
“As a leader, two things you must cherish and hold dear, among others,
are trust and honor, both of which are important ingredients of character. I will
want to see anyone in the office of the presidency of Nigeria as a man and
woman who can be trusted, a person of honor in worth and character,” Mr.
Obasanjo stated.
He referred to the “gentleman agreement” of a single term brokered in
2011. “Up till two months ago, Mr. President, you told me that you have not
told anybody that you would contest in 2015. I quickly pointed out to you that
the signs and measures on the ground do not tally with your statement. You said
the same to one other person, who shared his observations with me. And only a
fool will believe that statement you made to me judging by what is going on. I
must say it is not ingenious. You may wish to pursue more credible and
honorable path,” Mr. Obasanjo added.
Mr. Jonathan responded in kind and his battle axes in the media went for
Mr. Obasanjo, an indication that a full-blown war had been declared. An expert
at milking situations, Mr. Obasanjo did not allow his former protégé any
respite. Speaking at the Ake Arts and Books Festival in Abeokuta, he delivered
a dim verdict on Mr. Jonathan when asked to rate his administration.
“I rate this current administration below average. When the head
is rotten, the whole body is useless,” he said woundingly.
In what seemed an attempt to deflect the accusation that he yoked
the country with the Jonathan presidency, the author quotes Mr. Obasanjo as
saying Mr. Jonathan was not his first choice as running mate to the late
Yar’Adua.
“It was Dr. Peter Odili. But whether by fate or by some conspiracy,
Odili had hurdles that made it impossible for him to take the position. That
was how I settled for Jonathan,” the former president is quoted as saying.
While admitting not knowing Yar’Adua and Jonathan well enough, he stated
that you can only accurately gauge people’s capacities when they are given
power and responsibility.
Obasanjo also rejected the notion that he knew that Yar’Adua was
terminally ill before anointing him his successor.
“One, the lingering doubts about his health, while the other was a very
pervasive allegation that he had a manipulative wife, who had too much
influence on him,” the book quoted him as saying.
Mr. Obasanjo, however, said the accusation against Yar’Adua’s wife was
out of jealousy, as she was close to the husband. On Yar’Adua’s health,
Obasanjo told the author: “Not being a medical practitioner, I gave the report
to a friend and a renowned professional in the medical field, who reviewed it,
and told me the person in the report that he was not on dialysis, by which he
meant either he didn’t have kidney problem or that he has successfully
undergone a kidney transplant. That was the report I had about his health.”
Explaining why he endorsed Jonathan for the 2011 presidential ticket,
following Yar’Adua’s demise, Mr. Obasanjo said: “I saw the emergence of
Jonathan an opportunity to solve the problem of minority agitation. The three
majority ethnic groups in Nigeria can always sort themselves out but not so for
the minority. A good example is my state here in Ogun. Despite the best intentions,
nobody from Ogun west has been able to become governor because of this minority
issue and it will take a conscious effort to make it happen. So, it was in that
context that I had to plead with prominent people in the north to allow
Jonathan run for a term.”
Signs that Mr. Jonathan was not going to be a successful president,
according to Mr. Obasanjo, manifested in certain actions the man took early in
the life of his administration. One of such, he said, was the appointment of
Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke as Minister of Petroleum Resources, an action he
said he warned against and for which he received assurances was not going to be
taken.
“He (Jonathan) gave me the impression that he was not going to
give her the portfolio. At the end, he did and then we can see the
consequences. He, of course, knew what he was doing,” he told the author.
Mr. Obasanjo’s rift with his protégé oiled the opposition machine
operated by Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, behind whom many disaffected politicians,
including from the PDP, were queuing. He, however, denied supporting Mr.
Buhari.
“I didn’t join them in supporting Buhari, I joined in opposing
Jonathan, so Buhari was just a beneficiary of my opposition to Jonathan since
my position was AOBJ: Any Option But Jonathan,” he told the author.
He explained that Mr. Jonathan and his supporters thought they
could buy the country. “They were so arrogant about it that the PDP will print
only one nomination form for him and him alone. If he was wise, he would have
yielded the ticket to somebody else in the PDP,” he stated.
The former president also depicted Mr. Jonathan as corrupt and lacking
the capacity to deal with Boko Haram in his three-part book, My Watch.
This, observed the author, was hugely damaging to Mr. Jonathan’s profile
and persuaded the US and Britain to lean towards Mr. Buhari, whom they believed
was strong on those key issues. Ever the man to time his attacks well, Mr.
Obasanjo, in January 2015, just a few weeks to the initial date of the
election, accused Mr. Jonathan of squandering $25 billion crude oil savings
left behind by his administration.
The crippling allegation was made when he hosted southwest women leaders
at his residence in Abeokuta. “Our reserve after we had paid off the debt was
about $45 billion. As I said, it continued till the end of 2007, I heard that
the reserve increased to almost $67 billion before the end of the year. Our
reserve now, I learned, is left with around $30 billion. That is why the naira
has been falling against the dollar,” he said.
While he mentioned no name, he left his audience in no doubt the target
of his barbs.
“In the profession, I know very well, the military, what we normally say
is that there are no bad soldiers, but bad officers. If you see a situation
where the soldiers are not doing very well, you need to examine the officers in
charge. So, it is in the family, the community, the town and the country,”
Obasanjo stated.
He followed it up with an advice to Nigerians to use their votes
judiciously during the general elections. Mr. Jonathan created some breathing
space for himself when, two days after the scalding from Mr. Obasanjo, his
government rescheduled the elections by six weeks.
But again, Mr. Obasanjo stepped up his attack, accusing Mr. Jonathan of
copying former Cote d’Ivoire president, Laurent Gbagbo, who kept postponing
election so he could manipulate the process.
“It looks to me that the President is trying to play ‘Gbagbo’. I
believe this is the sort of thing Nigeria may fall into if I am right in what I
observed as the grand plan. We all remember that in the run-off Gbagbo lost
with 8 percent behind Ouattara and then refused to handover. All reasonable
persuasion and pleading was rebuffed by him and unleashed horror in that
country until nemesis caught up with him,” Obasanjo said in London.
He equally expressed a dim view of the role of the military and security
chiefs in rescheduling the elections.
“I believe the President’s concern or fear is not about life out
of office per se, but he and I have had occasions to talk about this, both
seriously and jovially. I believe the President’s fear is particularly
motivated by the person he sees as his likely successor, that is General
Buhari. I believe people must have been telling him that Buhari is a hard man
and he will fight corruption and he (Jonathan) will end up in jail if not in
the grave,” added Mr. Obasanjo.
The attack, unsurprisingly, got the Jonathan camp red-eyed. Spokesperson
of the Jonathan Campaign Organisation, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, accused Mr.
Obasanjo of desperately wanting to see Mr. Jonathan defeated.
“He has raised issues and made assertions that are capable of
derailing our democracy and creating chaos in the land. It is vital that we
consider his motives for this latest outburst and his credentials as a leader
and an elder statesman. The truth is that he knows that President
Jonathan will win the next month’s presidential election and that it why he
wants to destroy the credibility of the whole process right from the
beginning,” said Fani-Kayode.
Ultimately, observed the author, Mr. Obasanjo’s opposition to Jonathan’s
re-election emboldened the opposition and suggested to many others that an
incumbent could be defeated. He equally argued that Obasanjo helped to weaken
Mr. Jonathan both within the PDP and in the general population of the country
and convinced the US and Britain that the second term for Mr. Jonathan would be
disastrous for Nigeria.
Also, Mr. Adeniyi reckoned that with Mr. Obasanjo’s weighty voice not
being lent to Mr. Jonathan’s candidacy, big businesses, which are always
backing the incumbent with billions of naira to the exclusion of the
opposition, felt confident to support his opponent, Mr. Buhari.
“What this ensured was that for the first time in four attempts at the
presidency, Buhari had enormous resources to campaign across the country in
leased aircraft to an image makeover, hire entertainers for rallies, embarked on
an expensive blitz and give a Jonathan a good run for his money. In the end,
that went a long way in helping to tilt the scale in his favor,” wrote Adeniyi.
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