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APRIL 23, 2007 VOL. 21. NO 2 |
Atiku: From Vice to Void
From being the most busy Vice President in the world four years ago, Vice President Atiku Abubakar has suffered several indignations, including being in and out of courtrooms in his bid to succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo By Tony Egbulefu and Chidiebere Onyemaizu Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s second executive vice president, unarguably is a record breaker–one who has set uncanny precedents in the country’s power calculus. For one, Atiku has, albeit unwittingly, written a descriptive essay on “How to be a belligerent Vice-President.” Perhaps, at the end of his nearly eight- year sojourn in the nation’s seat of power, Aso Rock as President Olusegun Obasanjo’s spare tyre, he will go down in history as the first, and probably the only second-in-command at the epicenter of federal power that has openly disagreed with his boss, the president, became a trenchant critic of policies of the government in which he is the number two man, turned-coat, and dumped the party on which crest he rode to office and became the arrowhead of an opposition party which engaged his boss in the fiercest political duel – one never witnessed in the country’s political history and one in which all manners of dirty arsenals: blackmail, mudslinging, name calling et cetera, were used, while still enjoying the pecks, glamour, splendour and protection which the office of Vice President provided. Instructively, the raging feud between Atiku and his boss, Obasanjo and the seeming unrelenting determination on the part of the two men to continue to adorn war garbs, have evidently bruised the nation’s number two citizen and somewhat left him completely waned of political potency. And should any keen observer of the Vice President’s battles at all fronts to still remain relevant in the political turf, decides to capture the dwarfing of his political ascendancy in a book, such a book will probably be entitled “The Decimation of vice-president,” A King Without a Kingdom” or The Deflation of An Over Blown Spare Tyre,” whichever title that is decided, the storyline will be the same: “The rise and fall of Vice President Atiku Abubakar.” Perhaps, in his moments of quietude, Atiku juxtaposes his present travails with the years between 1999 when he and president Obasanjo mounted the saddle and about 2002 when like a rubber band the hitherto tight and chummy relationship between them started loosing its elasticity. Notably, between the years in question, Atiku was in all ramifications something akin to “God the son” in the epicentre of federal power while his principal, President Obasanjo held forte as “God the father”. At the time in question, Atiku virtually saw himself as the anointed, a heir apparent to the throne who was only waiting in the wings to step into his father’s shoes. “God the son,” at that time wielded enormous powers, so much so that he was virtually regarded as the power behind the throne. Infact at the height of his glory, he had described himself–in his own words–“as the most engaged Vice President in Nigeria’s political history.” Remarkably, the times are now different. Eight years down the line, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. The all-powerful Atiku of 1999-2002 is today virtually like a king without a kingdom. This is April 2007, only a few fleeting weeks to the end of his tenure as vice President, Atiku now obviously has only the fond and nostalgic memories of those glorious days when he was a favoured heir in his “father’s kingdom” to nourish his evidently bruised ego, for the nation’s number two man has clearly fallen from his hitherto Olympian height of glory and power. Notably, barely one month to the end of his tenancy in Aso Rock as Vice President, Atiku has metamorphosed from “the most engaged vice President in Nigeria’s political history to the most idle vice president in Nigeria’s recent political history" – no thanks to the highwire feud between him and his principal, President Obasanjo. In effect, the Vice president aptly captured his new but unsettling status in the nation’s power equation when last year, in an answer to a reporter’s question, he disclosed that his daily routine included waking up in the morning, eating and sleeping. Though like a new pregnancy, vice President Atiku’s troubled relationship with his boss started manifesting just few months into their second tenure in office, the Vice President’s declining political fortunes and his relationship with the President took turn for the worse and plummeted badly following his indictment by the administrative panel of inquiry set up by the President to investigate how he managed funds that accrued to the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PDTF). As it were, the PDTF saga and the vice-president’s subsequent indictment brought to a head, the frosty relationship between him and the president. Though the PDTF saga somewhat finally brought to the fore Atiku’s wanning influence in the corridors of power, The Source, however, gathered that Atiku’s influence in the nation’s epicentre of power started eroding seriously shortly after their re-election in 2003. As it is now, the office of the vice president is more or less existing just in name. For one, beginning from 2003, the President openly embarked on a mission to decimate whatever influence and power the Vice president wields. For a start, the bureaucratic office of the Vice President was abolished and subsumed under the office of the president on the argument that there is just one presidency, consequently, several aides of the vice president were sacked. Aides of the Vice president still on the pay roll of the presidency, The Source learnt, are at the moment not more than four. The woes of the Vice president did not stop at that. The Source gathered that at a time his security vote stood at mere N100 million. Even at that sometime, The Source gathered, the entire money was not always fully released, prompting the nation’s number two man to run his office with his personal money. The seeming determined effort to clip Atiku political wings was in the dying days of 2005 extended to his membership of the people’s Democratic party (PDP), a party which he was a founding member. In a carefully crafted master stroke, the Vice president’s loyalists within the party were quietly eased out of the party’s commanding height and replaced with hawks who analysts had described as rabid anti-Atiku elements and fanatical pro-Obasanjo apologists. Among the notable casualties of the typhoon in the party at that time were the party’s chairman, Audu Ogbe and secretary, Vincent Ogbulafor. Less than a year later, the Vice president himself received PDP’s acidic treatment when he and his supporters were willfully disenfranchised during the party's ward congress. This was later capped with his expulsion from the party. And before his exit from the party, the Vice president’s eroded influence in Aso Rock once again came to the fore in November 2005, when without being consulted, his Aide-de camp (ADC) was withdrawn. In April last year, the Vice president narrowly escaped a mob action when a mob of PDP supporters invaded the Murtala Mohammed Airport Ikeja, Lagos to lay-in-wait for him. Further humiliations laid in wait for Atiku on October 5, 2006 when the president removed him as the head of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP). Within that period also, he was to received raw deal in the hands of some ministers during a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting The ministers led by chief Femi Fani-Kayode, had demanded Atiku’s expulsion from the FEC on the ground that he no longer had any moral fibre to continue to participate in the meeting on the account of his being an indicte. Before he was challenged by the ministers, the president had earlier, during a FEC meeting where the panel’s report was submitted, allegedly walked the vice president out of the meeting. It is instructive to note that the FEC meeting incidences somewhat marked the end of Atiku’s participation in FEC meetings. Remarkably, few days to the presidential election, it is perhaps, fast dawning on the Vice president that he may watch the presidential contest from the sidelines, for the powers- that-be-seem primed on truncating the ambition of the Action Congress (AC) presidential candidate from succeeding his boss. To achieve this, every trick is being put into play. For example, just a day to the Supreme Court’s judgment on the disqualification of the Vice president from contesting the election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Federal Government suddenly declared a two day public holiday which it claimed was to enable Nigerians prepare for the election. The import of this, off course was that the Supreme Court could not sit. Beside this, the plethora of legal victories won by Atiku in his effort to contest the election remain unobeyed. Rather than bring him succour, the legal victories have, instead, so far landed the vice president further into legal web as the Federal Government and INEC remain resolute in appealing and cross appealing any legal victory secured by Atiku. The implication is that while Atiku is still battling to salvage his battered political career in the courts, the election would have been lost and won, of course without him as a participant. Notedly, Atiku’s woes, analysts insist, is traceable to 2003 when he reportedly made moves to contest against his boss in that year’s presidential primaries of the PDP. This move was said to have greatly rattled the President and brought him to the brink of a coronary failure. This was because at that time, Atiku virtually had the party structure in his kitty. Thus, the President allegedly pulled all stops to beg Atiku, allegedly breaking down in tears and prostrating for him to save him, the President from a glaring disgrace. With the primaries over and Obasanjo emerging as the party’s presidential flagbearer for the 2003 polls, Atiku, apparently eager to let the whole world know that he literarily handed his boss the PDP ticket, granted the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) an interview where he narrated how he saw to it that the President secured the party’s ticket. This was after he had, few hours to the primaries, also told the BBC that he was yet to decide between the President and former Vice president Alex Ekwueme, the President’s main challenger who to support. He also allegedly told the BBC that he also had the alternative of running with Ekwueme. However, with the election over and Obasanjo comfortably sitting in Aso Rock as President having secured the villa’s tenancy for another four years, it did not occur to the Vice president that his pre and post primaries posturings had in fact, prepared the ground for the decimation of his political career. Thus, no sooner were the elections over than the president set out to extract his pound of flesh. Atiku, The Source gathered, had gone to greet the President after the election and the President, livid with rage had allegedly tongue-lashed him. Atiku was said to have laid flat in prostration to beg him but the President reportedly did not ask him to get up. He allegedly left him to squirm on the floor and in a fit of rage was said to have bawled at the vice president thus: “look at you, very ungrateful man. How would you feel if as the Governor of Adamawa State, your deputy had organised local government chairman against you? I took you from nowhere and now you wanted my job.” Instructively, Atiku’s current travails is the fallout of that encounter. And as it were, Tuesday, April 3, was a loaded day for Vice President Atiku Abubakar. He had at least two presidential campaign rallies to attend- one in Abuja and the other in Suleja, Niger State. He was also billed to attend a political event, tagged “Women’s Forum,” organised by his campaign organization at Women’s Development Centre, Abuja. There, he would unveil his “manifesto and commitment to Nigerian women and children”. Above all was his attention at the Court of Appeal, and the Federal High Court, Abuja, presided by Justices Umaru Abdullahi and Tijani Abubakar, where his fate as an eligible candidate or otherwise for the April 21 presidential election had laid. Obviously, the “Women’s Forum,” which drew diverse women political tendencies in the Vice President’s Action Congress (AC) from the various states of the federation, was deliberately scheduled by the organizers to coincide with the judgment day of the two courts in which the Vice President, the AC, the Atiku campaign Organisation and all other supporters of the embattled Vice President, had expected a double victory. And which folk would do a better and elaborate victory laps in the court premises than women. As early as 9am , the women dressed in campaign attires for the Vice President, have swarmed the perimeters of the Appeal Court premises, the venue of the first court verdict of the day. Inside, the court room choked with newsmen and some anxious observers, who desired to get every piece of the judge’s pronouncements. As the four justices of the appellate court took their seats in the court chambers, except Justice Abdullahi, Appeal Court president, who wrote the lead judgment , pin drop silence fell on the courtroom. Present were Justices Olufumilayo Adekeye, O.F. Omoloye, Abdul Aboki and Rabiu Danladi. Greater silence fell, when Justice Danladi began to read the judgement of the court and upon the Justices’ unanimous decision that the national electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has the power and authority to screen and disqualify candidates, who fell short of the constitutional requirements to seek elective positions. By so doing, the Court of Appeal set aside the ruling of Justice Babs Kuewunmi of the Federal High Court last month, which said that the power to disqualify any candidate from contesting an election solely rests with the court. He said though that section 137(1) of the 1999 constitution has spelt out conditions for disqualifying candidates, the power and prerogative to give effect and interpretation to the conditions are solely that of the court. But in the judgment of the superior appellate court, the five justices affirmed that the national electoral body is vested with the authority to disqualify candidates on the basis of those conditions, without resorting to judicial intervention. Following the justice Kuewunmi verdict, INEC had then appealled to the Court of Appeal, seeking a judicial review of the Kuewunmi pronouncement especially as it relates to the fact that it can screen candidates but cannot stop any candidate whose claims, credentials and standing before the law, run foul of the constitution. With reference to the Vice President, INEC had excluded his name on the list of candidates standing for the April 21 presidential election on the basis of his indictment by the Attorney-general and Minister of Justice, Bayo Ojo – led administrative panel of inquiry last year, which acted on the report of the criminal investigation of the Vice President by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) scam. With the Appeal court ruling, a blanket of gloom descended not only on the pro-Atiku crowd that had amassed in the court room and in the premises but on the AC and the Atiku Campaign Oganisation. Some wept openly in the court, some sheded tears. The gloom almost forced the Atiku interactive session with the women to be cancelled. And though it finally took place, the venue was moved to an obscure place in Maitama District. At the venue, it was an obviously distraught Vice President that laboured to read his action plan for the women and children. And though cheers were poured on him in torrents, he was obviously in no mood to acknowledge them. It was around 1pm. Time was ticking away to 2pm, the time scheduled for the High Court judgement. The meeting had to skip the vote of thanks by the AC national women leader, Hajiya Ramatu Saleh and closing prayer as listed in the programme of events and as announced by the master of ceremony and leap-frogged to the last item-the National Anthem. The Vice President however, did not leave his supporters without a hope . He assured them that the High Court ruling was bound to be different and that he was going to appeal against the Court of Appeal’s ruling. “ I am sure that you must have heard that the Court of Apeal today ruled that the INEC has the power to disqualify a candidate as long as it complies with the provisions of the 1999 constitution. Although I have a lot of respect for the judiciary, we have reservations about the judgement and shall appeal to the Supreme Court immediately”, Atiku said in his remarks. Just like Atiku assured, the Federal High Court handed him a comprehensive victory. All the three issues he sought to be determined, were resolved in his favour. And he was granted all the six reliefs he sought. The highpoints being that Justice Abubakar, quashed his indictment by the Ojo adminstratrive panel which formed the basis of INEC’s exclusion of Atiku from the Presidential Contest. He set the indictment aside, saying the administrative panel lacked the competence to indict the Vice President and that its recommendation of indictment was not tenable to deny Atiku his constitutional right to seek election. While many legal practitioners have been concerned about the propriety or otherwise of the two court rulings, Desmond Yamah Esq, an Abuja based lawyer of U.M. Yamaha & Co, told TheSource last week that the Appeal Court ruling had nothing to do with the substantive matter about the appropriateness or otherwise of Atiku’s disqualification. He said the primary issue about Atiku’s candidacy was what was dealt with by the Federal High Court, while the Appeal Court ruled on a general ground of determining the powers of INEC. In effect, Atiku, he said, should ordinarily not bother about the appellate court’s ruling but for what he termed INEC’s “narrow and myopic” interpretation of the rulling. Yamaha: “The decision of the court of Appeal does not go to say oh INEC, you disqualified Atiku properly or improperly." Though the Federal High Court nullified the indictment, Justice Abubakar did not bother with the Vice President's acceptance on oath that he was indicted as did the justices of the Appeal Court. Atiku headed to the Supreme Court same day the Appeal Court made its pronouncement seeking a nullification of the ruling by the apex court. He listed seven grounds of appeal against the judgment. As it is, winning even all the grounds of appeal at the Supreme court may not afterall bring the needed succour and respite for the Vice President. This derives from the fact that INEC as its lawyer, Gadzama stated at the Federal High Court, was going to appeal the nullification of Atiku’s indictment and the other rulings of the Federal High Court in the Court of Appeal. Thus, in an event of the nullification of the power of INEC to exclude Atiku from the presidential race by the Supreme Court, the Vice President would again probably come back to the Appeal Court as cross-appellant to reaffirm the grounds for the vacation of his indictment by the Ojo administrative panel. From here, either party may also go for the Supreme Court on the matter. On its path, INEC has made it clear that it would contest any court decision that did not suit it up to the Supreme Court. The cross for the Vice President here is that while the court room battles drag, INEC would almost certainly not defer the presidential election, even a day longer than April 21. Perhaps, having seen the legal landmines on the path of his ambition, Atiku despite the partial relief he got from the Federal High Court, and his over-crowded schedule, had to squeeze time on Tuesday, April 3 for a night press conference, which turned out to be more of a lamentation by the Vice President over his endangered political ambition. He tried to douse fears that his political ambition was tending to go on over-drive. He rued the circumstances that led to his ouster from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a party he said he was a founding member and principal financier. He touched on the PTDF scam and administrative panel snare that has turned to be his chief nightmare. “I believe it is my inalienable right as a free citizen of this country to offer myself for service. But president Olusegun Obasanjo and a clique within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party have sworn to stop me from doing that." For Atiku, Professor Maurice Iwu, INEC’s Chairman is no more than an agent of the President, in the execution of a harmful political agenda. “The current INEC leadership does not have the integrity and courage to resist its manipulation by the President to serve his selfish purpose. The actions and utterances of INEC chairman, Maurice Iwu, have confirmed fears that he was brought to the commission to execute a hidden agenda. Iwu’s INEC seems to have been programmed by the President and the PDP to fail the Nigerian people”. Atiku said “our democracy is in serious trouble”. |
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