The Truth is Always Constant -El Rufai
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Mallam El-Rufai
2009 December 9
My readers may recall that when the administration of president Umaru Yar’adua began to persecute me as far back as June of 2007, several well wishers, journalists and inquiring minds had wanted to know why former president Olusegun Obasanjo, who almost single handedly installed President Umaru Yar’adua as president did not intervene in my plight and that of Nuhu Riabdu.
In fact, I was asked this question directly by Ijeoma Nwogwugwu of Thisday Newspapers sometime in September 2009 and my response to her was exactly as follows:
“President Obasanjo himself is a target of Yar’Adua. It is just that he has not got enough (reason) to send him to prison. If he had found enough, he would have got him. What do you think the power probe is about? Look! They want to get him. So I would rather president Obasanjo spends time saving himself than saving me.”
When I made the above statement, I knew it to be true, but I never expected that this statement would be validated so soon after I made it, but alas, circumstances have compelled the president’s men to corroborate in public what I knew to be true. I refer specifically to the statement made by Alhaji Issa Mafindi (who claims to be a confidante of President Umaru Yar’adua) and published in the Punch newspaper of Thursday, November 3, 2009. Alhaji Mafindi said as follows:
“Despite Chief Obasanjo’s shortcomings in his eight years as President, the incumbent President is still tolerating him and stopped all embarrassment which ought to have come to him in terms of probing his administration. He should not play God.”
Mafindi added further:“The action of former President Obasanjo is not only anti-party, but capable of destabilising the party and the country. He is a spent force and should not be allowed to continue to meddle in the affairs of the party.”
The Nigerian House of Representative in Session
The above statement not only validates what I said about Obasanjo being the principal target of President Yar’adua’s witch hunting, but serves to buttress what I said publicly several months ago to the effect that president Yar’adua suffers from a paranoia that causes him to consistently destroy his benefactors all his life. And as far as human beings are concerned, his greatest recent benefactor is former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
A mass protest in Nigeria.
Alhaji Mafindi, just like the so-called ‘mysterious security official’ (the NSA – Abdullahi Sarki Mukhtar) who authorized the memo to Nigeria’s foreign missions ordering that Nuhu Ribadu and I be denied consular services, will never make such a statement without the knowledge and blessing of President Yar’adua especially against a personality like former President Obasanjo.
And it is certainly a lie that President Yar’adua has been shielding former President Obasanjo.
Militancy in the creeks of Nigeria.
On the contrary, the series of events that led to the Obasanjo Administration being probed by the House of Representatives were initiated and encouraged by the utterances of President Yar’adua while receiving Oby Ezekwesili in her capacity as Vice President for Africa at the World Bank.
Nigerians may recall that Yar’adua said that he was not keen on spending more money on the power sector because of the ‘$10 billion wasted under the previous administration’. Indeed when some thought he was misquoted, President Yar’adua proved them wrong when he fired his Senior Special Assistant on Power Sector Reform, Engr. Foluseke Somolu. The firing was a reaction to Somolu’s stand on the reported $10 billion “wasted” by the Olusegun Obasanjo government on the power sector.
Nigerians subsist at the edge of one of the greatest record of poverty in human history, amidst a nation wealth and prosperity from proceed from oil, but shared by microscopic lucky few in Nigerians.
Somolu, who also served President Obasanjo in a similar capacity, had written a memo to the Economic Adviser to the President, Mr. Tanimu Yakubu, in which he disputed the $10 billion figure stated by the president saying that the amount spent on power sector investments between 1999 and 2007 without “achieving much results” was US $2.2 billion, while a total of US$2.96 billion was released to the NIPP, bringing the grand total to US $5.16 billion – which tallies with the figures given by Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, a former minister in Obasanjo’s cabinet.
What saved former President Obasanjo was that the House was unable to corroborate Yar’Adua’s outlandish allegation and even more embarrassing to Yar’adua was the fact that a separate review led by Governor Gabriel Suswan of Benue state on behalf of the National Economic Council revealed that the figure stated by both Engineer Somolu and Mrs. Oby Ezekwesilii was the accurate one.
A musical maestro, Fela once dubbed Nigerians as ‘Suffering and smiling’…There can be no better appendage to attach to the Nigerian people. Despite the groaning hardship and poverty…the worst epidemic ever bestowed on mankind ,Nigerian still have the ability to smile and smile-‘The happiest people on earth’ cant do any better.
Also, a few days ago, the Code of Conduct Tribunal with Justice Constance Momoh presiding has been forced to admit in court that the Code of Conduct Bureau does indeed have the asset declaration form filled and filed by Nuhu Ribadu in 2003 and 2008 respectively, exactly as Nuhu Ribadu had been proclaiming to the whole world. Now if the tribunal has admitted that indeed Nuhu filed his asset declaration form, what is the basis of the case that the government filed against him for failure to file his asset declaration?
In fact, if an impartial and independent investigation is carried out today, it will be revealed that rather than Nuhu Ribadu, it is the persons behind the Attorney General of the Federation whose office initiated this frivolous case that have not filed their true, accurate and correct asset declaration with the Code of Conduct Bureau. But more of this sometime soon.
.This is Nigeria in the 21st century,the common folks must help themselves to eke out a living in a nation where nobody cares-no good road,no drinking water etc.Suffering in the midst of abundance.Nigeria is like a living hell to more than 80% of its inhabitant.
Why am I saying all these? I am saying it to prove to the world that what I asserted before in my essays is true and to further show a clear pattern of behavior of a government that is so insecure that its officials must improperly use state apparatuses to malign, smear and harass its imagined enemies all in a bid to remove the perceived legs of the table that holds up its intended principal victim, former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Many had tried to portray me to the Nigerian public as a man who is disgruntled because he lost out in the power game. In fact many including leading lights of the Yar’Adua administration have claimed that I would not have taken my present stance against the government if I had been given a high position in government.
While this may appeal to some on a pedestrian level, both former President Obasanjo and President Umaru Yar’Adua know that I made it clear to both of them that I was unavailable for full-time public service. I had decided to complete my law degree at the University of London and take up a Public Policy Fellowship at Harvard University. Working in Yar’Adua’s administration was never on my program, and while people were lobbying for positions, I went for lesser Hajj and a North Atlantic jazz cruise!
Furthermore, thinking people may recall that when I was nominated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a ministerial candidate, I was asked for a bribe BEFORE I could be confirmed especially as the bribe seekers had gotten wind of the fact that I was to be made FCT minister. However, I refused to succumb and pay the bribe demanded and risked not being confirmed as a minister.
If as has been said I was so enthralled with high public office, what I would have done would have been to pay the bribe, as at least one of my colleagues admitted that he did. I not only refused, but blew the lid off the scandal and named names. I recall these issues to serve two purposes.
One, I have a history of not going with the path of least resistance and two, I am not prepared to keep quiet in the face of injustice because of a high position. Those who designed my persecution on the assumption that I will surrender and keep silent therefore completely miscalculated. I would rather die protesting falsehood and injustice than live a minute longer in what is the peace of the graveyard!
This abandoned aircraft, captures succinctly, the general picture of the Nigeria nation, where most infrastructures that could have better the lot of an average Nigerian, have been abandoned.
As has been said in the past, truth is always constant and I urge all those who are quick to always condemn me before they consider what I say, to go back to my essay ‘Umaru Yar`Adua: Great Expectations, Disappointing Outcome’ and compare what I said there with current events in Nigeria, Yar’Adua’s governance style and then soberly consider if I raised a false alarm then, or not.
For instance, in that essay, I had alluded to the fact that Yar’Adua has a sit-tight agenda that will make the Obasanjo Third Term agenda look saintly. Many considered this outrageous. In fact, anyone who still has doubts on the sit tight agenda of president Yar’adua should listen to the words of his sister quoted in various papers on Sunday, 6th December, where she revealed as follows;
“The president wiIl soon bounce back, stronger than ever, to assume the leadership of the country. President Yar’Adua cannot be changed by anyone. If the president is given the chance, he has the ability and capacity to lead the country for another 16 years.”
People with some experience in life undoubtedly know that where there is pressure, people begin to lose caution and say in public what they have conspired to do in private.
Finally, let me state that the only reason why President Umaru Yar’adua has not gone after president Obasanjo in the same way that he has gone after the reformers in the previous administration is because he has not yet found the smoking gun to use against him.
His appointments into the EFCC, Law Enforcement (Attorney General, heads of the Police and security agencies) as well as his hobnobbing with corrupt ex-officials known to have grudges against former president Obasanjo are intended to achieve the end of bringing to naught his benefactor such that he (president Yar’adua) will not be beholden to anyone. We must remember that no matter how far and fast falsehood has traveled, it MUST eventually be overtaken by truth.
The Nigerian House of Representative in Session
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