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These are the facts: The presidency is a prize with a heavy price. The burden of national unity rests heavily on the President. He shares this burden with the Vice President with whom he campaigned and won the presidency. But each partner that makes up a presidential ticket is often advised not to be in a haste to say how splendid his experience in the presidency has been until it’s all over. It’s an advice well taken by some politicians. Those who ignore the advice come to regret it when things begin to go wrong. That’s why Sophocles, one of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived till now gave this evergreen, timely advice: “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been, because there is still some time before the sun goes down”.
When the bond of friendship, trust and respect between two men elected on the same ticket begins to get weaker rather than stronger, it becomes somewhat difficult for the President to move his agenda. And for the Vice President himself, it dims the electricity that’s supposed to come from his own presidential prospects , if at all he has any. For now, it will be unkind to say that the sun has gone down with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
Neither will it be correct to say that there is a clear feud between him and his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari. But even now, it’s safe to say there’s a dissonance in the camp of both men based on the speculations swirling around the vice president, making the following questions necessary: Is there a smoking gun against the vice president? Where could Osinbajo have gone wrong a flying start of a cozy relationship with the President that was once described in superlative terms as a partnership of diamond brilliance? How come now that this friendship we were told by the President himself, has been so nice, with a warmth of styrofoam, couldn’t cut ice anymore that dirts are being dug up against the number two citizen of the country?
Disregard the fact that the Vice President and some of his core supporters, as ppoliticians will often do, have denied any feud between him and the President. Also, dont be surprised to hear that it’s all unfounded rumours, crass speculations, remorseless criticism, and even insult on the veep. Indeed, last week, the Vice President himself spoke in similar vein in Ekiti when he described the rumoured plot to unseat him as the “work of saboteurs and fifth columnists working against government plans to develop the country”. The gritty truth is that the vice president must have been watching over himself, pondering what is going on, and his fate in the presidency, how, in the past four years, he has grown from a substantial figure who the President needed to send on key national matters to calm frayed nerves, and now, being perceived as a man held in strong suspicion by his boss and his inner Cabinet. Looking at the trove of allegations against Osinbajo, one thing that readily comes to my mind is what Vice President Thomas Marshall of the United States said in 1920 when he compared the vice president to a cataleptic. He said the vice president “cannot speak, he cannot move, he suffers pain, yet he is perfectly conscious of everything that is going on about him”. If it’s easy to read a man’s mind as an apple on a tree, vice president Osinbajo in deep worry and introspection. That’s exactly the nature of difficulties he is going through right now, even though he will not admit it publicly. His position has become a frustrating one, and the plot is thickening. It’s a pain some who had been in the same position faced. If he’s doubt, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar can give him unvarnished truth of what he went through in the hands of Obasanjo as President. Nelson Rockefeller went through the same pain and was subsequently dropped by President Gerald Ford in the run-up to the 1976 presidential election in the USA.
But let’s look at some of the allegations against Osinbajo. The media has been buzzing with these allegations for weeks now. But yesterday Daily Sun, gave more perspective on the plot in a banner headline: “Osinbajo in more trouble”. According to the paper, the plot to remove the vice president has gathered momentum. The plot, the paper claimed, dates to when he was Acting President in May 2017. That was when President Buhari was on medical vacation in the United Kingdom, consequent upon Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution(as altered) which gives the vice president the powers to function as Acting President during temporary absence of the President.
One of the allegations is that, as Acting President, (Osinbajo) “authorized payment of N5.9bn to the National Emergency Management Agency(NEMA) without approval from the National Assembly. His trauducers also claim that though he is Chairman of the governing board of NEMA, he still needed the approval of NASS before any money could be withdrawn from the Consolidated Revenue Fund but the vice president did not go through that laid down channel.
Besides, that he reportedly signed N25bn for the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC) as ‘funding contract’ when he had no such powers. Another allegation is the disbursement of funds by the Federal Government -backed Social Investment Programme(SIP) said be domiciled in his office. The accusers say he has not managed that pool of fund in a transparent manner, adding that “traces of money” exchanged hands between the vice president and the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service(FIRS), Mr. Babatunde Fowler. Only recently, Fowler was queried by the Chief of Staff to the President, Mallam Abba Kyra to explain the shortfalls in projected revenues for the government for some years. This story is ended yet, and Fowler’s fate may be in the balance as well. Interestingly, the camp of the vice president has dismissed the allegations, saying they are “recycled”, according to the Daily Sun repor, insisting that the allegations have not changed from the report of the House of Representatives Committee on Emergency Disaster Preparedness, which exonerated the vice president of any wrongdoing. Other reports have linked the travails of the vice president to the sack of the all-powerful, former boss of the Department of State Services(DSS), Maman Daura in 2017 , by Osinbajo as Acting President.
Last Wednesday, THE NATION newspaper quoted Osinbajo as saying he has always complied with the law. But, the newspaper said that the fate of the vice President “was hanging in the balance”, citing the disbandment of the Economic Management Team(EMT) which he chairs, and its replacement with the new Economic Advisory Council(EAC) headed by Prof.Doyin Salami. In all of this, few things are plain: Buhari and Osinbajo are no more the chummy partners that they were before. Gleaning from Atiku’s feud with Obasanjo in 2004-2007, it always starts with little misunderstanding of policy direction, anchored on allegation of ‘corruption’ on the part of the vice president, it then grows from bad to worse, and deepens by stripping the veep of all essential duties, sometimes goes to the ridiculous level of his trusted loyalists in the corridors of power, and subsequently, the investigation of the companies where the vice president or his family members and friends may have interests.
When the spat between Obasanjo and Atiku began in 2004, over the desirability or otherwise, of a National Conference, as Editor of Sunday Champion then, I wrote in my column of June 6, 2004, entitled :Killing Atiku subtly, subtly, that this would be long-drawn political battle with the aim of extinquishing Atiku’s future presidential ambition. The feud deepened that Atiku’s Aide de Camp(ADC) was removed. His top media aide, Mallam Garba Shehu, was also removed. I still remember what happened that fateful evening. Garba was on his way back to Abuja from Jos, Plateau state, when the NTA broke the news. Apparently, he was unaware until he got to his house then at NNPC quarters, Abuja . One of Atiku’s companies, Integrated Logistics(INTELS) also suspended from operations at the nation’s ports. The company was accused of allegedly pushing other competitors out of business. A six-nember panel was set up by the then Minister of Transport to investigate the operations of Intel’s. It was a mean-spirited plot to kill Atiku’s presidential ambition. It failed. Obasanjo’s mistake was this : No good politician willingly cedes power to another politician he cannot control. Atiku was a “master” serving as an “apprentice” under a strong-willed President. Disagreement was only a matter of time.
