THE Presidency, yesterday, denied Vice President Atiku Abubakar the use of a presidential plane to the United States of America (USA) for his vacation. This was 24 hours after he was adopted by the Action Congress (AC) and 10 other political parties as their presidential candidate in next year�s election.
The leadership of the PDP is scheduled to meet today in Abuja to decide whether the VP can continue to be a member of the party.
Simultaneously, the VP�s Personal Assistant (PA), Mr. Umar Pariya, reportedly escaped assassination in Abuja. Pariya is a key figure in the report of the Administration Panel of Enquiry on the PTDF affairs.
The Vice President, who is on a three-week vacation as part of his leave for 2006, according to sources, had arrived the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, to board the plane when he was told it had been grounded by the president.
Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mr Frank Nweke (Jnr), feigned ignorance of the matter when State House correspondents asked him about it yesterday after the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting.
�I am hearing it from you now and I will find out�, he said as he rushed out to attend the conferment of national honours on Nigerians.
Vanguard gathered that the Vice President�s team had already boarded the aircraft when the one that took President Olusegun Obasanjo to the USA landed and the President disembarked. He was said to have ordered that the other aircraft should not take the Vice President anywhere.
The Vice President and his team later joined a British Airways plane to London en route United States. The Vice President had, Tuesday, travelled to Lagos where he emerged the presidential candidate of the Action Alliance on a chartered flight.
Atiku’s group reacts
The VP�s Campaign Organisation in a swift reaction to the development said: “Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday (Wednesday) left for the United States of America aboard a British Airways flight, seat number 1K (one K), following President Obasanjo�s withdrawal of his official presidential jet.
�Atiku who was scheduled to begin a two-week holiday in the United States on Wednesday had to shift the trip to Thursday when he activated stand-by arrangements to go by public flight. In anticipation of the action of President Obasanjo, the Vice President had earlier ordered for alternative reservation on a commercial flight.
�President Obasanjo had earlier approved the trip and the use of the official presidential jet. No explanation was given for the withdrawal and the Vice President only knew of the withdrawal of the jet on arrival at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja at midnight of Wednesday. No official communication was made to him about the presidential order, except for the verbal information passed by the airport commandant to the effect that the President had on landing from a trip personally ordered him to ground the VP�s aircraft.�
VP�s aide escapes assassination
The campaign has also alleged an assassination attempt on Mr. Umar Pariya, a central figure in the report of the Administrative Panel of Enquiry report on the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF). He was named as a conveyor and collaborator in the alleged efforts by the Vice President to enrich himself and his friends with the funds of the agency.
The statement from the campaign organisation said the assassins came with a service gun belonging to one of the services of the Nigeria Armed Forces.
The statement from the campaign stated: �Pariya was not at home when the suspected assassins called because he stayed in Abuja after returning from the airport at 2a.m., following the Presidential order that denied the Vice President access to his official plane for a scheduled trip at about mid-night. It is the second attempt at �armed robbery� within the last 12 months.�
Meanwhile, the Presidency may have begun moves to declare the seat of Vice President Abubakar vacant, after he picked the Action Congress (AC) presidential ticket on Wednesday in Lagos.
Sources told Vanguard that the PDP was to formally expel him yesterday, and thereafter write to the Presidency to nominate a representative on the strength of section 142 of the 1999 constitution which says the President and the VP must come from the same party.
The Vice President has been on suspension from the PDP since September 2006. Though he went to seek redress in court, he formally joined the AC, Wednesday, and picked its presidential ticket for the 2007 election.
But the Vice President�s camp said Abubakar could only be removed from office through the National Assembly, arguing that he has a right to contest on the platform of another party since the PDP denied him a chance.
�Well, Atiku is finished. He has finally fallen into the trap. The PDP is going to expel him and ask the president to immediately nominate another VP, because he was sponsored to that position by the PDP and now he has abandoned it,� the source said, adding: �The presidency is to argue that he has contravened section 142 of the constitution. And the only thing Atiku can do is to go to court, which may take time before the issue is addressed,� said the source.
Section 142 (1) says: �In any election to which the forgoing provisions of this part of this chapter relate, a candidate for an election to the office of president shall not be deemed to be validly nominated unless he nominates another candidate as his associate from the same political party for his running for the office of president, who is to occupy the office of Vice President and that candidate shall be deemed to have been dully elected to the office of vice president if the candidate for an election to the office of president who nominated him as such associate is duly elected as president in accordance with the provisions aforesaid.�
But former Political Adviser to Abubakar, Dr Usman Bugaje said: �As far as we are concerned, the only way the VP can lose his position is when he is removed by the two-third of the members of the National Assembly.
�We are aware that the Presidency may attempt to use any means to deal with Atiku, for looking at it straight in the face, but we have no doubt that nothing of this nature can work,� he said.