| Former President Olusegun Obasanjo sent a clear message to his successor, President Umaru Yar’Adua, yesterday in Abuja: throw in the towel. It was on the same day that the Save Nigeria Group marched across Lagos streets asking that our constitution be upheld and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan assume office as acting president.At the National Assembly, the two chambers of the legislature, were also upbeat on the Yar’Adua saga. While the Senate resolved to take its final decision on the controversy trailing the continued absence of the President on Tuesday after it was briefed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Alhaji Yayale Ahmed on the leader’s health conditions, the Lower House raised a six-man panel to travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Yar’Adua.
In Lagos, human rights activists under the umbrella of Save Nigeria Group, stormed Alausa, Ikeja, the seat of power to protest the continued absence of Yar’Adua from the country. The President has been away abroad since November 23 to treat his dignosed acute pericarditis – and inflamation of the heart lining
The rally started from the Government Reserved Area (GRA), Ikeja to the State Secretariat in Alausa. The courts were almost deserted as most lawyers abandoned the courtrooms to participate in the rally.
And falling short of joining in the clamour for Yar’Adua’s resignation, Obasanjo said: “If you take up an appointment, or a job, elected, appointed or whatever and then your health starts failing you, and you will not be able to satisfy yourself and the people you are supposed to serve, then, there is a part of honour and a part of morality and if you don’t do that…. I do not need to say more than that.”
Obasanjo’s comments came during the question and answer session of the seventh yearly Trust Dialogue organised by the Abuja-based Media Trust Limited, which he chaired. The response was triggered by a question asked by one Buhari Bello Jese, who accused the former President of being the architect of the current constitutional crisis in the nation.
According to Obasanjo, “nobody picked Umaru Yar’Adua so that he will not perform. If I did, God will punish me because I love this country so much so that there is no reason for me to do that.”
He thereafter delved into the history of how Yar’Adua emerged from several Nigerians, who aspired to lead the country at that time. “When in year 2006, the idea came as to succession, I was convinced in my mind that a southerner succeeding me will not augur well for this country.
“So, what I did was to look for a Nigerian with three qualities: First, somebody with enough intellectual capacity to run the affairs of this country; second, somebody with enough personal integrity and somebody that is broad-minded both politically and religiously to run the affairs of this country.
“I knew that Yar’Adua has kidney problem and was under dialysis and that he went abroad for the treatment when he was the governor of Katsina State. Before I picked him, I asked him questions and he gave me the medical report that states that he is no longer under dialysis. I asked medical experts to interpret the report and they told me that once you had completed your dialysis, you have had a successful kidney transplant and can live as long as God wants you to live. If medical experts had said that, who am I to begin to think that the dialysis will fail?”
Obasanjo said it would amount to insult for anybody to think that he deliberately chose an invalid to succeed him and recounted how he went round the country with Yar’Adua during the 2007 presidential election campaign.
“I campaigned with President Yar’Adua and when the rumours came that he (Yar’Adua) was dead, I called him on phone and asked him: ‘Umoru, are you dead or alive.’ For you to say that Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately picked an invalid to succeed me is an insult.
“I know the sacrifice that I made for this country, both in peace and in war. How can I, who has made huge sacrifices for the country, do what will not be in the interest of this nation? Nobody picked Yar’Adua so that he will not perform, if I had done that, may God punish me,” he said.
The former president, who also spoke extensively on the issue of power problem in the country, described the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) as the most corrupt public institution in the country.
He said faced with the reality, his administration made a lot of investment in the power sector, but lamented that for 20 years, there was no investment in the sector. He added that the last investment made in that sector was during the Second Republic by Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
Yesterday’s briefing from Yayale was the fifth the Senate had received from different groups on Yar’Adua’s health. The Safe Nigeria Group led by Prof. Wole Soyinka, the Gen. Muhammadu Buhari-led National Democratic Movement, the Senator Anyim Pius Anyim Concerned Nigerians, and the Attorney-General of the Federation, had all made submissions to the Senate on the matter.
Briefing journalists shortly after the two-hour closed-door meeting with Yayale at the National Assembly, Senate spokesman, Ayogu Eze, declared that the Upper House had resolved to deliberate on all the submissions, especially Yayale’s submission and take a decision.
The SGF did not want to say a word about what he told the Senate when confronted with series of questions from journalists.
He simply declared: “I have briefed the authority and the authority will brief you,” and went away.
But the meeting was full of drama as different interest groups tried to manoeuvre the plots and manipulations that characterised the Senate since the Yar’Adua’s health crisis broke out.
Senators were seen in different groups within and outside the chamber a few minutes to the beginning of the meeting.
The excitement on the faces of some senators before the meeting changed after the departure of the SGF as they looked quite moody and harassed.
A senator described the briefing by Yayale as “an avoidable moment of displeasure and misinformation.”
Yayale was said to have bluntly told the lawmakers that he was not in a position to offer any information because he had never had any contact with Yar’Adua since November 23, 2009 when he left Nigeria for Saudi Arabia on medical grounds.
When the question was reportedly put to him on why the President failed to write to the National Assembly before going for medical treatment as dictated by the constitution to allow the Vice President to act as President, Yayale allegedly said he could not answer the question.
On when the President could be expected back in the country, Yayale reportedly replied that he was not the medical doctor of Yar’Adua to determine that.
Another senator noted that the decision to defer deliberations on the series of submissions made to the Senate might be a strategy adopted by the Senate President, David Mark, to persuade most senators agitating for radical solutions to sheathe their sword for now.
Although Ayogu said the meeting with Yayale was frank, he declined to give details, saying he was not mandated to speak on the matter until Tuesday next week.
The Lower House raised the ante of the plan to visit Yar’Adua in the hospital in Saudi Arabia by appointing a six-man team to undertake the trip.
The Speaker, Dimeji Bankole, at the start of yesterday’s plenary session, announced that six members had been selected to visit Yar’Adua in the hospital. He named them as Baba Shehu Agaie, Deputy Leader, Ali Ndume (Minority Leader), Nnena Ukeje, Patrick Ikhiare, Fatai Moruf and Jibril Adamu.
In his message at the Lagos rally, Nobel laureate, Prof. Soyinka, said it should be of concern to Nigerians, what the absence of the President has caused the nation .
Soyinka, who sent in a message from New Delhi, India said the fundamental issue was not about who ruled or the vacuum created, but what the vacuum had caused the country.
Reading Soyinka’s message, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, President of Campaign for Democracy (CD) said: “The fundamental issue is not about which individual rules, or is denied the right to rule, but about how the nation is ruled. It is not about who leads or who does not, but about how a people are led.
“It is not so much about a vacuum but about how that vacuum is filled, what is done in secret caucuses, what is deliberately withheld, delayed, subverted, or degraded in the time of such a vacuum.”
Presenting a message on behalf of other Nigerians to Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN), Pastor Tunde Bakare of The Latter Rain Assembly, in company of Lagos lawyer Femi Falana, Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (rtd), Gen. Alani Akinrinade (rtd), Chief Supo Shonibare, Charles Oputa (Charlie Boy), Shettima Yerima, Farouk Adamu Aliu, who led the protest, said Nigerians were piqued by the flagrant violation of the constitution by those in power. He argued that the constitution made provisions for how the president can transmit power, in case he could not perform his role as expected of him.
Bakare said the statements by some governors and members of the National Assembly on the refusal of Yar’Adua to hand over power to his deputy were annoying and showed the indifference of the governors to what was happening.
Fashola assured the protesters that he would deliver their letter to the Governors’ Forum and commended them for being orderly in expressing their grievances.
He said Nigerians have the right to hold their leaders accountable, because a public servant is in office to serve the people, and they have the right to tell the public servant that he has not done enough or needs to do more.
Fashola said: “Whether you know it or not, your voices are being heard louder, and I know that sooner than latter, your aspiration on this civil issue will be achieved. As we struggle to get more, let us look back and acknowledge the gains that we have made, let us not as we struggle to get more lose what we have gained.”
The protest, which started with a procession at 11.02 a.m., took the protesters over an hour to get to the seat of power in Alausa at 12.26 p.m.
As early as 8.30 a.m., people had started assembling at the Skypower Playground, just as speakers took turn to highlight the implications of the President’s absence.
Okei-Odumakin said that it was wrong for the President not to have respected the constitution in line with section 145, which stated procedures he needed to follow if he could not be available for any reason to discharge his duty as the nation’s leader.
Falana said the verdict by Justice Dan Abutu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, did not empower Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to perform the functions of the President because it only confirmed that he remains the Vice President, and that as it is, he could not deploy troops to crisis points nor appoint ambassadors for Nigeria.
Akinrinade said Nigerians needed to do more if they were interested in making the country great while Yerima said the protest was not about North or South dichotomy but about Nigeria, and how to address the problems the absentee president had caused Nigerians.
The rally was titled: “Enough is Enough.”
Other eminent Nigerians who joined the protest were Chief Ayo Opadokun, Mike Igini, Prof. Shola Adeyeye, Babatunde Ogala of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Publicity Secretary of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), Yinka Odumakin, Mr. Sam Asemota (SAN), and star comedian, Gbenga Adeyinka.
At Alausa, Mrs. Okei-Odumakin read a text message from Soyinka. It read: “This campaign is not about who leads or who does not; it is about how a people are led. It is not so much about vacuum but about how that vacuum is sealed. Without the people there is no nation, but years of neglect had turned governance to the rule of contempt. It is surprising that the Senate’s priority in the midst of hunger and want, decay of infrastructure, insecurity of life and the collapse of social order, is appropriating N70 billion for a mansion for its president, while a discredited illegitimate cabal seeks to perpetrate itself and seeks to gain endlessly from this current vacuum.
“Again and again, the people’s fundamental right to choose its leaders has been violated with arrogance and disdain. There is however one choice that no one can take away. The choice is to remain under a heavy yoke or to cast off that yoke and reclaim sovereignty. The moment of that choice is now. Let your voices be heard even in the chambers where the deaf reside.”
The National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prof. Rufai Alkali, in a chat with The Guardian yesterday, said mass rallies are part of the democratic process. “That is when they are organised and focused. If you want to press home a point, yes, there are laws that contain people’s rights to assemble. But if you look at people that are there, they are highly respected Nigerians. Yet when they organised this particular demonstration in Abuja, we went there, the Speaker came out, they were shouting at him.” |
