How Jonathan’s Men Tried To Scuttle Buhari ‘s Presidential Victory In 2015 – APC Scribe
Bolaji-AbdullahiMinister of Sports in the regime of Goodluck Jonathan, the immediate past Nigerian President, Mr. Bolaji Abdullahi, has revealed how men around the former President tried all they could to scuttle the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari in the 2015 Presidential election.
Bolaji, who is now the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress(APC), in his book, titled: “On a Platter of Gold: How Jonathan won and lost Nigeria,” said that the first attempt at scuttle the election was plans by the cabal around Jonathan to abduct the then Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, in the thick of the announcement of the results of the 2015 presidential poll.
He said that in the alternative, Professor Jega was to be forced to resign or declare the election as inconclusive, saying that there were also moves by the cabal to bomb the International Conference Centre (ICC) where the results of the poll were being collated.
Bolaji, in the book said also that a military takeover was mooted by Jonathan’s men to scuttle the emergence of Buhari, but that the two most senior military officers at the meeting said it was too late.
He said that the former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, in the thick of the contest to scuttle the results of the election, issued a terse text message to a former Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Suleiman Abba, in which he accused the ex-IGP of treachery.
The author was quick to admit that Dr. Jonathan was not aware of all such multi-dimensional plots even as the book implicated some top military officers, a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Sotonye Wakama (who is from Okrika like the former First Lady, Patience Jonathan), heads of security agencies and senior politicians from the South-South.
According to the book, a former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Mr. Godsday Orubebe, was to spearhead the plot to cause chaos in ICC while others, including policemen, will withdraw and allow a mob to cause the commotion which will lead to the abduction of Jega.
But while Orubebe acted his script, the ex-IGP Abba chose to uphold the rule of law and instead of deploying policemen to the ICC to disrupt the collation of results, he reinforced security.
Abba overruled a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Sotonye Wakama, who was allegedly part of the plot.
The scuttling of the plot made Orubebe to carry out the act alone because no one else joined him in the plot.
The book reads in part: “In the early hours of Tuesday, 31st April, an urgent meeting had just been concluded in a private house in the Maitama area of the nation’s capital. At the meeting were some top military and security chiefs believed to be loyal to President Jonathan and some senior politicians from his South-South region.”
“The meeting had been convened to save what was turning out to be a disastrous situation for their ‘son’. Something had to be done and it had to be done quickly. The situation appeared desperate, truly, but all was not lost yet. As long as the final results had not been officially announced, there was still a chance to do something.”
“The first option on the table reflected the desperation of the moment. If an explosion were to go off near the International Conference Centre (ICC) where the results were being collated, this would create the situation that could allow some agents to move in and remove or burn election materials.”
“This option was, however, rejected. Not only was it considered extreme. It carried a high risk of unintended consequences, especially with the menace of Boko Haram running wild and loose in the country, it could also lead to loss of lives.”
“If the goal was to render the election inconclusive and stop the announcement of the final results, there must be some other way of achieving this.”
“The other way was to mobilize as many people as possible to invade the venue and disrupt the collation process. This was seen as a better option. It was low risk and had the added advantage of live television coverage to show the whole world the injustice that had happened in Nigeria and how the lNEC was part of the conspiracy.”
“No matter what happened, President Jonathan could not be informed of these plans. Everyone agreed that they had to save the President, even against his own will. It was a moment of blind passion. But this was not all about Jonathan. Apart from the personal benefits that had turned many of them into millionaires overnight, they saw the Jonathan presidency as the culmination of the Niger-Delta struggle that had started many years earlier and cost so much in human lives.”
“It was the ultimate recompense for so much bloodshed, which would, perhaps, require more blood to preserve. But they also knew that President Jonathan was no militant. To some of them, he wasn’t even Ijaw enough.”
Therefore, if he knew what was being planned, he would no doubt stop it. The only way to get him to act ‘more presidential was to keep everything away from him till the last minute, thereby forcing his hands.’ For the plan to succeed, however, the Inspector General of Police and the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS) had to withdraw their officers from the International Conference Centre. While they did not envisage any problem with the DSS, the same could not be said of the police.
This was why the Deputy Inspector General, Sotonye Wakama, was invited to the meeting instead of the Inspector-General himself. Wakama was an Ijaw man from Okirika in Rivers State, just like the First Lady. He could be trusted. The same could however not be said of his boss, Suleiman Abba, from Jigawa.
“About the decisions arising from the meeting he had been invited to, Abba declared in no uncertain terms that the police would not be party to such obnoxious plan. Instead of withdrawing his men, he decided to send in reinforcements. This was a major setback, but not enough to scuttle the entire plan.”
“Text messages had already been sent out to some key people, inviting them to join the protest at the International Conference Centre. Even though only a few had acknowledged the text messages, they believed everyone would turn up. After all, those invited also had a lot to lose with President Jonathan out of power.”
“Unknown to the plotters, a few of those that received the text messages planned to heed the call. Not having attended the meeting, they had little or no background information about the protest they were being invited to participate in.”
“Many also wondered who the brains behind the plot were. The Jonathan campaign had been fractious and disjointed and it was often difficult knowing who was doing what.”
“Those within the party hierarchy were particularly bitter at their perceived alienation from the presidential campaign. Therefore, they were not going to join a battle they were not considered important enough to be part of in the first place. A good number ignored the call to being because they did not want to make a spectacle of themselves live television transmitting to the whole world. And so it was that almost everyone stayed away. Except for one man, Peter Godsday Orubebe.”
The book also revealed the botched plans to abduct the ex-INEC chairman, Prof. Jega.
It says: “The stoic calmness displayed by Jega during the stormy session soon attained the metaphorical status believed to have contributed to upending the plot hatched to truncate the electoral process.”
“What the INEC chairman probably did not know at the time was that part of the plan was to abduct him under the smokescreen of the confusion that would ensure the moment the police began to fire tear gas canisters into the venue.”
“Once abducted, he would either be forced to resign or to declare the election as inconclusive. However, with other actors not playing their part and the police not reacting as envisaged, all had gone awry within minutes.
“Having failed on all fronts, some loyalists of the ex-President came up with the idea of a military takeover to prevent Buhari from becoming the president.” [myad]
One of the 13 students of the Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete, a 200 level student of the Department of Mass Communication, Dorcas Oluwatimilehin Olanrewaju, has narrated how they were kidnapped by suspected ritualists.
The Presidency has put to lie, claim by the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, that for about 15 years, President Muhammadu Buhari could not enter America “on account of religious considerations.”
Political Duplicity In Mariam Ali’s Defection To APC, By Sufuyan Ojeifo
The gale of defections in the nation’s political circles is not unexpected, given the nature of politics in our country. It is difficult to pin a Nigerian politician and his or her political party down to any political ideology and principle. This is so, given the level of poverty in the land, which gives rise to all manner of crimes both in and outside government. As a matter of fact, it is pretty difficult to idealize politics and pursue ideological leanings in the ecology of Nigeria’s public administration. The political system that authoritatively allocates values is inured in politics of prebendalism, in a sustained bid to privatise our commonwealth. Like ants scamper for sugar, the political mercantilists gravitate in the direction of our patrimony in order to plunder it.
This is what motivates their politics and engagements. They always, therefore, strategically position themselves within and around the corridors of power to access the goodies of public office. For them, the ruling party is the attraction and the right place to be. This explains why they jump ship either at the federal or state level. Such movements do not add value to the political system. They only help to satiate the desire of the politicians to belong to the mainstream party where their personal political interests can be accommodated and taken care of.
In recent times, we have witnessed the affliction of both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by the defection scourge. In a positive way, both have also benefited from the enterprise that has raised the political temperature of the nation. The interesting thing is that every politician that has defected has a thousand and one reasons to justify his or her action.
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has just resigned from the APC and it has been authoritatively confirmed that his next port of call is the PDP, which he helped to found in 1998 and on which platform he was vice president from 1999 to 2007. By the time this piece is published, he might have fully settled in the PDP. Former senate president, Ken Nnamani resigned from the PDP and moved to the APC. An influential leader of the PDP in Enugu state, Chief Jim Nwobodo, left the PDP for the APC. In Lagos, former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, dumped the PDP for the APC. The list is seemingly inexhaustible.
However, the defection of Dr Mariam Nneamaka Ali, wife of former national chairman of the PDP, Dr Ahmadu Ali, from the party to the APC in Delta state is of more interest to me because of the duplicity inherent in the political enterprise. Mariam’s movement to the APC while her husband remains in the PDP smacks of sheer shenanigan. The truth is that I would not have made an issue out of this if the two lovebirds had decided to exit the PDP together having benefitted a whole lot together from the party and the government it produced at some time in the past.
Although former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, was reported to have said in a March 3, 2017 edition of The Punch newspaper, that PDP sank when he and Ahmadu Ali left the party; the report in Vanguard of November 24, 2017 about Mariam’s defection, wherein the APC was reported to have said that it expected that her husband, Ali, would soon align politically with her, confirmed somewhat that Ali is still in the PDP. Mariam was quoted in the report of her defection in THE NATION newspaper to have said that the fact that her husband is an active member of the PDP is a clear indication of the uniqueness of her family.
To further confirm that Ali is an active member of the PDP, a report by the New Telegraph of November 24, 2017 quoted a certain Kogi East Youths Organisation to have lampooned him for criticising or attacking the state governor, Yahaya Bello. According to a statement signed by the National President of the group, Mr Daniel Enemona, “Nothing explains the current desperation by Col. Ahmadu Ali and his co-travelers like the fact that his son, Ogala Ali, who served in successive PDP administrations in the state is now in the cold….”
It is thus safe for me to assume that Ali is still a bona fide PDP member, otherwise he should, without more ado, speak out. It is not enough for Obasanjo to claim that the PDP sank the day he and Ali left; Ali is in a better position to confirm his membership status. I hereby challenge him to let the world know where he is; and until he does that, he is still a member, who has benefitted so much from the party especially when he was in the saddle as national chairman and as Director-General of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Organisation.
Therefore, the decision by his wife, whose appointment into a juicy board position that he influenced, to defect to the APC while he remains in the PDP, is a cheap strategy of not putting their eggs in a basket. The unfolding scenario is that while his wife would access benefits in the APC, Ali would partake in the goodies in the PDP. Head or tail, it is not going to be a total loss for them, especially in the forthcoming 2019 presidential election. Whether it is APC or PDP, it will be all well and good for the Ali political family.
Besides, I must make the point that Mariam Ali has the right to freely associate with any political party of her choice and she has chosen the APC; but it is laughable to read her say that the only way for her to continue to render service to her people and Nigeria was through the APC. It is not in my place to question what service she rendered to her people as chairman of Nigerian Shippers Council while in the PDP where she was also appointed very briefly into the position of chairman of the board of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and what service she wants to continue to render.
The point at issue here is that it is immoral (although they say there is no morality in politics) for Mariam to defect to the APC while Ali is staying back in the PDP. Ali should join his wife in the APC or in the alternative withdraw from active politics to play the role of an unbiased statesman. Will Ali make this move? Until he does so, I will comfortably see the Ali political family as wanting to make certain that it does not lose out completely in 2019. This is a deceptive political scheme. And, toeing the path of chicanery for political expediency is not how to build a lasting and enviable legacy.
Ojeifo, Editor-in-Chief of The Congresswatch magazine, contributed this piece from Abuja via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com. [myad]