‘No Second Term For Yar’Adua’

Powerful politicians come together seeking to frustrate President Umaru Yar’Adua’s bid for a second term in office, even as the President’s loyalists unofficially flag off campaign for his re-election

By Babajide Kolade-Otitoju

On Monday last week, the first of a motley crowd that will sooner than later take up the challenge of campaigning for a second term for President Umaru Yar’Adua got down to business. The group tagged itself: Yar’Adua For New Nigeria and is under the direction of Senator Polycarp Nwite, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Political Matters. The group has already appointed national and state coordinators.

Though the group only made itself known last week, TheNEWS investigations in Abuja late last week showed that the group had existed for over a year now. It maintained a temporary office at a shopping complex opposite a popular hotel in the Garki area of the capital city. Though it had long sought the blessings of the presidency to flag off campaign for President Yar’Adua’s second term, the presidency was said to have only recently given its nod to the commencement of its activities in response to the spate of meetings by prominent politicians like former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, Olu Falae and Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, after which the President always came under attack.

“What we are holding is a meeting of Nigerians who believe in the continuity of the programme and policies of President Umaru Yar’Adua to take Nigeria to a new level,” Nwite, who claimed that the group is non-partisan, said in an interview.

Indeed, a key objective of Yar’Adua For New Nigeria initiative, as stated in a pamphlet distributed last Monday, “is to defend, protect and propagate the policies and programmes of President Yar’Adua’s administration from detractors and anti-progressive elements”. Senator Nwite said at the inauguration last week that the group had no government backing and cuts across political affiliation. He added that he decided to identify with the group because it is concerned with showcasing the achievements of the Yar’Adua administration. Alhaji Farouk Abdulazeez, Chairman, YFNN, said the group believes that President Yar’Adua is doing a good job and therefore deserves to have a second term.

During the last national convention of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, President Yar’Adua stressed the point that it was too early to begin to campaign for the 2011 elections. Doing that, he reasoned, would distract elected officers.

Former governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa rates President Umaru Yar’Adua low and affirms that the President is not fair to Nigerians. He accuses him of not assembling the right team to lead Nigeria to the promised land, noting that only a sound team can help him to move Nigeria forward. “If he wants to move this country forward, he must copy Obasanjo for once. You know Obasanjo assembled a good team from home and abroad; and it helped in some achievements of his administration. For him to cage himself in the Villa and think the country can improve with his team, he is not being fair to us. He needs to come out and assemble the best,” he stressed.

He argued that Yar’Adua was unprepared to lead. “I blame the person who brought him, I still blame Yar’Adua for accepting it. He should not have accepted what he was not prepared to do. Nigeria is not a local government that can be governed by a single individual… if he has been on honeymoon, I think it is over now. He should come out and work for the people. Much needs to be done. He should come out of the cage he found himself in Aso Rock,” he declared.

In declaring his interest to challenge President Yar’Adua in the 2011 election, the Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress in the 2007 elections told TheNEWS recently that Nigeria is in a national emergency as a result of Yar’Adua’s bad leadership. He called for an all-politicians summit. “I think most Nigerians do not even realise that life is better in Cotonou than it is in Lagos. Most Nigerians don’t realise that the quality of life in Ghana, that we think we are supporting as big brother, is much better than in Nigeria. Most Nigerians don’t realise that when you complain about the level of corruption of our political class, Botswana is way high on the index of countries that don’t have much corruption. It’s an African country. So our excuses just pale when you see African examples. Most Nigerians don’t realise that if you live in Dakar, Senegal, you have a much higher quality of life than you have in Abuja, in spite of the money that has been sunk into Abuja. Why?”

Key leaders of the opposition parties are already working together to deny Yar’Adua a second term. The Action Congress and All Nigeria Peoples Party entered into a pact to challenge the PDP recently. The National Democratic Initiative was thus converted to the National Democratic Movement. Their goal is the formation of a mega party. They reasoned that any of the political parties could serve as platform for a mega fusion in the 2011 election, and that their presidential candidate could emerge from any geo-political zone.

Speaking on the formation of NDM in Abuja, Atiku Abubakar, ex-vice president said: “There comes a time in the life of a nation when all patriots have to stand up, come together and do the hard work necessary to rescue the nation from imminent catastrophe. Such a time demands collective effort and selfless leadership; at such a time, petty partisanship and bickering have to be put aside for the greater national interest. Political ambitions have to be primarily directed at rescuing the country. At such a time, the saying that the country is bigger than the individual citizens, including political leaders becomes truer.”

The preponderance of opinion among the NDM members is that President Yar’Adua has failed to move the nation forward. They contend that in the area of roads, transport, economy and others he has shown an inability to move the nation foward.

TRANSPORTATION
When President Yar’Adua assumed office in 2007, he flaunted his Seven-Point Agenda as his key to fixing Nigeria’s lingering, deep-seated problems. A cardinal point in the agenda is Mass Transportation. The two major legs of mass transportation in the country are road and rail transport. But over the years, government has neglected the two transportation modes so much so that intra and inter commuting has become for Nigerians a pain in the neck.

Since massive corruption and mismanagement by the leaders destroyed the rail network, the roads have virtually been solely bearing the weight in the country’s social and economic life. The country is connected by a road network of about 193,000km which accounts for more than 90 per cent of the passengers and freight that move around. But over the years, the leaders have neglected the roads, which have gone bad and, indeed, unmotorable in many areas. The Sagamu-Benin expressway, for instance, has become a death trap, as are many roads in the South-South and South-East.The roads really degenerated during the administration of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. So it was with much applause that Nigerians welcomed the inclusion of mass transportation in Yar’Adua’s Seven-Point agenda.

But there has been no departure from the rot as the Yar’Adua administration limps on. The government has not done much on the roads and both inter-state passengers and intra-city commuters continue to suffer greatly as travelling on Nigerian roads remains a nightmare. Worse, the federal government compels them to pay more as fares periodically go up due to the hitches in the fuel supply chain. Next year, Nigerians are expected to even pay more as the federal government accelerates on its deregulation of the downstrean sector of the oil industry.

Nobody is believing government’s promise of reviving the comatose rail system. In the 2009 budget, the Yar’Adua administration voted a total allocation of N22bn to the Nigeria Railway Corporation, NRC, for the purpose. But so much money has been spent on reviving the rail system since the Olusegun Obasanjo administration with nothing to show for it that widespread pessimism is attending the Yar’Adua effort. So far, there have been no results to show for it.

Manufacturing
Not a few Nigerians believe President Yar’Adua has not done enough in his over two years of occupation of Aso Rock Presidential Villa to deserve another term in the office.One area in which most critics who hold such views believe that the President has failed is in the management of the economy. In the real sector, for instance, the promise of revival to operators when Yar’Adua came into office in 2007 has remained a mirage. Worsening infrastructure and depreciation in the value of the naira have in the last one year led to closure of many manufacturing companies, increase in the prices of locally manufactured products and relocation of many Nigerian companies to neighbouring countries. Nigerian manufacturers have complained about problems such as near absence of public water and power supply, persistent congestion at the ports, multiple taxes, low capacity utilisation, faking and counterfeiting of made-in-Nigeria products, and dearth of long-term loans to operators without any reasonable succour from government.

As Bashir Borodo, president, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, revealed during the 37th Annual General Meeting of the association early this year, that 820 manufacturing companies have closed down in the past nine years and thousands of Nigerians rendered jobless on yearly basis as the challenges take their toll on the operators. He, especially, noted that real sector operators have had to battle with the problem of lack of funds in the past two years. The unfavourable operating environment has resulted into some companies relocating to other West African countries. “This unfortunate trend is a matter of serious concern and should be halted in view of Nigeria’s unchallenged leadership role as the hub of industrial production in West Africa. It should be noted that no national industrialist would wish to ignore Nigeria’s market with its strengths and potentials. We also need to acknowledge that this development is the outcome of breakdown in infrastructure. This is a wake-up call for Nigeria to remove infrastructure road blocks and provide incentives. The reality is that notwithstanding the relocations already effected and others that may follow, the obvious and primary market target of these industries remains Nigeria,” Borodo said on the reasons for relocation of many companies from Nigeria to neighbouring West African countries.

Bola Olayinka, president of the Paints Manufacturers Association of Nigeria noted, at the group’s 22nd yearly general meeting last month, that skyrocketing transport and haulage costs, as well as cost of generating own electricity increased paint makers’ operating costs by over 40 per cent. He identified persisting energy crisis as a major problem of the sector, saying that there seems to be no solution in sight. Johnson Olanrewaju, Director-General of the Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association, NTMA, said the state of the textile industry which is almost becoming history is a serious headache to the stakeholders: “It could be generalised that there is distress in the country’s manufacturing sector but that of textile industry is very much pronounced because it had always been a major player in the manufacturing sector of our economy.” Many industrialists believe that despite Yar’Adua’s constant mouthing of making the Nigerian economy one of the 20 biggest economies in the world by year 2020, there is not any viable plan in place, at least for now, by government.

Rather than a gradual increase to the 13 per cent consistent growth in Gross Domestic Product, GDP, which Nigeria needs to achieve its 2020 ambition, GDP has been on the decline in the past two years as the bottleneck of poor infrastructure continues to have a hobbling effect on the industrial sector. “Definitely, the prevailing situation has affected the performance of the sector this year, 2010 will even be worse. Apart from the global recession, the poor infrastructure and poor operating environment are other issues. The situation at the ports presently is chaotic. How long it takes to clear one’s cargo is not known, whether it will be three to four months or even more. There is nowhere in the world where it takes two months to clear your goods at the ports. Also, the devaluation of the naira has increased the cost of operation from about 17-18 per cent to between 30-40 per cent. Yet, the market is limited, even as demand is shrinking. So, generally, nobody is anxious to put in money for new investments. The best thing for now is to wait and see and watch for the direction of the economy so as to know where we are going,” Executive Chairman, Nigeria Foundries Limited, Mr. Romeo Barberopoulos, said of the situation.

About 10,000 workers have been sent home in the textile sector this year alone as the promised bailout of the sector – which used to be the largest employer of labour – by the Yar’Adua administration remains a pipedream. Some months ago, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Achike Udenwa announced that the N70bn bailout package has been increased to N100bn. But not a single textile manufacturer has benefited from the fund. The Minister had also at the MAN’s 37th AGM announced a N500bn stimulus package for the resuscitation of the industrial sector, which has failed to materialise to date. Udenwa also said at a recent forum that government is planning to establish industrial clusters across the country as a way of tackling the problem of operators in the manufacturing sector. But Sam Ohuabunwa, chairman of the Organised Private Sector, said this is like putting the cart before the horse. “If you want to start an industrial cluster, you have to be alive where you’re clustered first before starting another one. The principle of industrial cluster is that you must provide infrastructure and other basic things. But in a country where existing clusters are not surviving, there is no need to set up another one,” Ohuabunwa explained. He lamented that no serious attention is being given to the setbacks being recorded in the country’s manufacturing sector: “Dunlop is closing, it’s nobody’s business, Michelin is closing, it’s nobody’s business,” he warned.

Budget Implementation
The Centre for Social Justice noted that the effect of the inability of government to fully expend the capital budget in the past three years “is that improvements in infrastructure promised under the seven-point agenda, Vision 2020 and MDGs may not be realised”. But the organisation is not alone. Indeed, the two chambers of the National Assembly had in the past few weeks lamented the non-implementation of the capital projects in the 2009 budget as manifested in the worsening state of Nigerian roads, and inability of contractors to mobilise to site for scheduled projects. Out of concern that the Federal Government has been less than faithful in the implementation of the budget, members of the House of Representatives had last July mandated its committee on Finance and Appropriation to investigate the implementation of the 2009 Appropriation Act. This followed claims by the Presidency in a four-page letter on 13 May titled “Optimal Implementation of the 2009 Budget: Matters Arising” that the 2009 Appropriation Act cannot be implemented as passed by the National Assembly due to shortfall in expected revenue.

The letter was a reaction to an earlier outrage on the floor of the lower chamber that the 2009 budget may not be implemented like the others before it. The Executive had indicated that only 20 per cent of the funds in the budget was used in the first quarter of the year. “In the first quarter of 2009, N200.37bn was released, comprising N187.68bn for on-going capital projects and N12.69bn by way of Authority to Incur Expenditures, AIEs. Despite the early releases of the first quarter capital warrants on 9 January 2009 for on-going projects, capital budget implementation averaged 20.68 per cent at N33.26bn out of the N160.84bn cash backed by the Office of the Accountant-General,” the Minister of Finance said in a statement signed by Ms Chinwe Deborah Okafor, his Special Assistant on Communications. But it added that the situation has improved in the second quarter of the year. “Recent data from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation on MDAs’ utilisation of capital funds in April shows improvement from an average of 20.68 per cent in the first quarter to an average of 52.72 per cent as at end of April 2009. It is expected that overall budget implementation performance should further improve over the rest of the 2009 fiscal year,” she added. The two committees, however, disputed the claim by the Presidency in their report submitted on 14 July.

According to the committee, government made N27.98bn above its expected revenue projections in the first four months of 2009 in addition to other revenue sources available to the Yar’Adua administration for the funding of the budget. “Federal Government’s actual revenue (expendable fund) was N27.98bn higher than the budgeted figures during the first four months of the year 2009. Given the above, therefore, enough funds were available for full implementation of the budget as passed for the period under review i.e. January to April 2009,” said Andy Ichendu, deputy chairman, House committee on Appropriation. The lawmakers thus unanimously adopted the recommendation of the joint committee “to insist that in line with the President’s mantra of strict adherence to the rule of law, the 2009 Appropriation Act must be complied with to the letter, failing which the House will invoke all constitutional provisions to sanction the President for his inability to fully implement the budget”.

Though the threat of impeachment soon fizzled out on the intervention of the PDP national executive, members of the National Assembly and other Nigerians have continued to lament the penchant of the Yar’Adua administration, just like the others before it. to ignore the budget. Budget implementation in 2008 has been put just about 50 per cent.

Power Problem
Less than two months to the end of 2009, the Federal Government has for the past few weeks been giving indication that it is on the way to achieving its promised 6000 megawatts. Lanre Babalola, the Minister of Power said recently that the country’s power generation capacity currently stood at about 5000 megawatts. But he seemed to have a ready alibi for the inability of the improved generation to translate to better electricity supply in the homes of most Nigerians. According to the Minister, the nation’s transmission system will need to be improved to take the electricity generated to the homes of Nigerians. But not many Nigerians are convinced. For one, many Nigerians believe that President Yar’Adua well understood the problem of the sector before he said during his campaign for election that he would declare a state of emergency in the sector. As noted by the Transition Monitoring Group, TMG, a coalition of over 360 civil society organisations in a press release last week, the failure of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration to find remedy to the country’s parlous power situation has not only made nonsense of the much-trumpeted seven-point agenda of the administration but also heightened infrastructural decay and cost of living in the face of declining value of wages and salaries and macro-economic policy instability.

ELECTORAL REFORM
In his inaugural speech, Yar’Adua made a promise to fix the nation’s wonky electoral system. It was a promise that won him instant applause, especially with his admission that the election that brought him into office was flawed.

Three months after he took office, Yar’Adua constituted the Electoral Reform Committee, headed by Mohammed Uwais, former Chief Justice of Nigeria.

The Uwais committee spent 16 months on the job, submitting its report on 11 December 2008. But soon after the submission of the report, the hefty fund of goodwill that the President had built up started suffering depletion. When the report went through cabinet debate, the Federal Executive Council, FEC, rejected many of ERC’s  key recommendations. Notable among these was the procedure for appointing the chairman and members of the Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, and the determination of election petitions before winners are sworn into office. According to the ERC report, the appointment of the Chairman and members of INEC should be as follows: The National Judicial Council should advertise the positions and spell out qualifications; receive applications/nominations from the general public; shortlist three persons for each position and send the nominations to the National Council of State to select one for each position and forward them to the Senate for confirmation.

But FEC rejected the recommendations on the excuse that it would amount to a disrespect for the principle of separation of powers. Suspicions of further fiddling were reinforced by the decision of the National Council of State to uphold the government White Paper issued by a three-man panel raised to look at the report and the rejection of the abolition of State Independent Electoral Commissions, SIECs, which FEC had earlier accepted.

On the rejection of the ERC’s recommendation that the INEC Chairman should no longer be appointed by the President, former Information Minister, John Nnia Nwodo, said: “I was very enthused when President Umaru Yar’Adua said soon after he was elected that he was going to carry out a major electoral reform. I think it is wrong in principle for a member of two contending teams in a football match to nominate the referee.

“It traverses the principle of natural justice because you cannot be a judge in your own case.”

To Maxi Okwu, National Chairman, Citizens Popular Party, CPP, the reform process has failed. “Look at the beautiful statements Yar’Adua made on the 29th May 2007; see the bills he presented about two years later. You can see that he has changed his mind. When you look at the bills, he removed about two key areas. The terms of reference he gave to Uwais include a better way of selecting the electoral management body and a way of concluding petition before inauguration. But he rejected recommendation to this effect. He started advancing arguments on separation of powers. So Yar’Adua has changed his mind on electoral reform and his body signals have been passed to his party members who are in the majority at the National Assembly and the states,” he reasoned.

Okwu argued that the PDP, on account of its near-total control in all the three tiers of government, can amend the constitution in a fortnight if it wants to do so. He, however, reckoned that the PDP is deliberately stalling.  “All these shenanigans about retreat, fighting over who is chairman and co-chairman is a time-buying method. Take it from me, the electoral reform is dead.”

Keen to dispel suggestions of insincerity, Yar’Adua sent seven bills, which he assumed was a condensation of the Uwais report, to the National Assembly. The bills included one for the amendment of the 1999 Constitution; amendment of the Electoral Act 2006; enacting of a new Act to be called Electoral Offences Commission; a bill to establish a Political Parties Registration and Regulation Commission; a bill to Amend the Independent Electoral Commission Act, Cap 15; and a bill to further amend the Police Act 1967. A bill to establish the Centre for Democratic Studies and other related matters were added by the government.

But the President’s recommendations met with rejection by the Senate, which sneered at the bill for establishment of a Political Parties Registration and Regulation Commission on the grounds that it amounts to duplication of functions that a department in INEC could easily handle.

Another setback manifested in the rejection of a second bill to amend the INEC Act on grounds that it was pointless working on it, given that changes to the Act requires amending the constitution. Senators were particularly critical of the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Michael Aondoaaka, for perceived poor drafting of the bill and failure to offer sound legal advice to Yar’Adua.

Dahiru Umar, Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary and Legal Matters, said: “What we are going to discuss is totally in conflict with the constitution, yet the Ministry of Justice went ahead to draft a bill for the President to send to us.”

On account of the lack of progress made in the reform process, Uwais urged the government to act fast on the ERC recommendations so they could be useful in the next elections. “The Committee recommends that there should be urgency on the part of the President, the National Assembly, governors, state assemblies and others in effecting the constitutional, statutory, administrative and institutional changes required to achieve the desired effect,” Uwais said.

The handling of the ERC recommendations has continued to provoke anger, especially because the reform process has been slated by a legislature dominated by the President’s own party, Peoples Democratic Party. Critics contend that the government’s reasons for ripping up the report are unconvincing.

Dr. Junaid Mohammed, National Chairman, Peoples Salvation Party, PSP, criticised the membership of the ERC, but admits that what the committee produced is good enough to work with. “As far as I am concerned, the electoral reform recommendations were nothing but a start. To imagine that the recommendations were comprehensive, practicable or infallible is to give greater credence to the panel than they deserve,” he said.

Junaid contends that politicians were deliberately excluded from the process. “The electoral reform exercise is a con game and the person who was supposed to execute the con game was the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, over whose head there are serious allegations of misconduct while in power. If we want a credible report, we must have credible people, and even when you have credible people you must have people who have basic knowledge and experience over the matter that they want to recommend. In composing the panel they studiously avoided practising politicians or people who had practised politics in the past,” he added.

Yar’Adua’s response to the gale of criticisms was a declaration, on national television, that recommendations were not sancrosanct and that the government was not bound to adopt all. He challenged critics to send their own bills to the legislature for passage into law.

For a while, Yar’Adua’s challenge seemed to have shut critics up. But a twist in the tale was served with the emergence of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms, CODER, which came up with a vigorous clamour that the government should respect the recommendations of the ERC. CODER, which is working to generate 20 million signatures, to support the passage of the ERC recommendations into law, is dominated by members of parties in opposition to the PDP.

Its stated objective is the achievement of electoral integrity. At its launch in Abuja on 28 July in Abuja, CODER, said the nation’s electoral process has deteriorated since 1999, when civil rule returned.

The group’s clamour, much more to the government’s irritation, has returned the ERC recommendations to the front burner.

Northernisation Of Appointments
At a press conference a few months ago, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, President and founder of the Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, accused Yar’Adua of indifference to the Federal Character principle. In Fasehun’s view, the President operates a policy that is designed to ‘northernise’ political appointments. To support his position, Fasehun argued that key appointments so far made by the President in recent times have been in favour of the North.
He listed such appointments as headship of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC; Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN; Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and Secretary to the Government of the Federation among others.

“President Yar’Adua’s administration continues to demonstrate flagrant disregard for the Federal Character principle. In the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, it shelved Yar’Adua as Managing Director, only to have a Northern kinsman, Alhaji Barkindo as his replacement. A similar scenario played out in the EFCC, where Mrs. Farida Waziri replaced Malam Nuhu Ribadu. Something happened when a Northerner, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, yielded his seat as Secretary to the Federal Government to Malam Yayale Ahmed.

“While in the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasir el-Rufai vacated the seat for Aliyu Modibbo Umar and later Senator Adamu Aliero, all Northerners. Now in the Central Bank of Nigeria, a South-Easterner, Chukwuma Soludo is leaving and Lamido Sanusi from the North is stepping in as governor. This new appointment comes when the President’s Minister of Finance, Minister of National Planning and the President’s Chief Economic Adviser hail from the Northern region,” he said.

It does not require much effort to dismiss Fasehun’s observation as that of a man pushing a Yoruba agenda. OPC, which he heads, is an organisation that espouses Yoruba nationalism. But it is not only Fasehun that has criticised the apparent tilt of juicy appointments towards the North. In an article in the Abuja-based Daily Trust, Mahmud Jega, former editor of the pro-North New Nigerian, once observed that the President’s insular choices have been forced on him by his narrow circle of friends. Jega observed that the closest people to Yar’Adua are those he knew from his days as governor of Katsina State. “They include the Chief Economic Adviser, Dr. Tanimu Yakubu; the Agriculture and Water Resources Minister, Dr. Abba Sayyadi Ruma, and the controversial businessman Alhaji Dahiru Mangal,” he wrote at the time. He also mentioned other figures, who have since been dropped from office. According to him, “danger here is all these men are Northern Muslims.”

Yar’Adua, however, has seen no danger. When Senator Florence Ita-Giwa resigned her appointment as the Presidential Liaison Officer at the National Assembly, her replacement was Senator Abba Aji from Borno State. The next major appointment the President made was to replace Hamman Hamed from Adamawa State as the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service, NCS, with Abdullahi Dikko Inde, another Northerner.

The muscle of the North in appointments is more than apparent. Yar’Adua is from Katsina State. David Mark, the Senate President, is from Benue. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Legbo Kutigi, is from Niger, while Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, is from Bauchi. His predecessor, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe is from Borno. The Energy and Power Ministry is headed by Dr. Rilwanu Lukman from Kaduna State. Finance is headed by Mansur Muhtar from Kano. The National Planning Ministry is under Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, a former Finance Minister, from  Kano State. Kano also produced the Central Bank Governor, Mr. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Other key positions in the hands of the North are Chief Economic Adviser, Tanimu Kurfi (Katsina); Director-General, State Security Service, Afas Gadzama (Yobe); and Accountant-General of the Federation, Ibrahim Dankwabo; Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Michael Aondoakaa (Benue); EFCC, Farida Waziri (Benue); Group Managing Director, NNPC, Sanusi Barkindo (Katsina), who replaced Abubakar Yar’Adua, also from Katsina.

On the occasion of his first anniversary in office, Yar’Adua was accused by Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, of running a “Federal Government of the North”.

“Like the witch lady, who continues to give birth to female children, the President has continued to load his appointments with Northerners that we can say without equivocation on his first anniversary that we have a Federal Government of the North,” the group said in widely published statement.

Yar’Adua defended his choices, saying: “Appointments made so far are usually based on merit. Take for example the nine parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Information, only two are from the North while the other heads are from the South. Even at that, those appointments were based purely on merit.”

Perhaps. However, the general perception, especially with the composition of his Economic Team, is that Yar’Adua is way behind his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, in terms of equitable spread of appointments.

Anti-Corruption Crusade
The Yar’Adua administration’s claim that it has zero-tolerance for corruption has found a ringing endorsement in the recent conviction of Chief Olabode George, former Deputy National Chairman (South-West) of the PDP. George, who was jailed two years alongside four other officials of the Nigerian Ports Authority for a hefty contract scandal, appeared immune from prosecution under the Obasanjo administration. Yar’Adua’s supporters are quick to parade George as a trophy for his administration’s efforts at fighting corruption. More importantly, it is advertised as proof that the administration and the PDP do not harbour sacred cows.

Yet, most Nigerians remain unconvinced by the administration’s anti-corruption credentials. The first seed of doubt was sown when the government launched an all-out war against Malam Nuhu Ribadu, former EFCC Chairman, who was eventually removed from office, demoted and dismissed from the Police before he was hounded out of the country. That Ribadu was removed after the arrest and commencement of the trial of James Ibori, former governor of Delta State, hardly offered other reasons for his perceived persecution. The attempt by Michael Aondoakaa, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, to wrest prosecutorial powers from anti-corruption agencies, and the energy expended by Farida Waziri, Ribadu’s successor, to demonise her predecessor, are widely assumed to be at Yar’Adua’s behest. Ibori is seen as the President’s closest friend. The former governor, who has been exposed as a double convict in the United Kingdom, once recommended another  fugitive convict, Tokunbo Enaboifo, to Yar’Adua as Executive Director (Finance and Administration), Nigeria Sao-Tome JDZ. Ibori also facilitated the appointment of David Edebvie as Yar’Adua’s Principal Private Secretary. Edebvie has been mentioned in one of Ibori’s court cases in Britain. The former governor was also instrumental to the appointment of Waziri and Aondoakaa. Though the Attorney-General continues to say that the government is committed to the anti-corruption war, there are suspicions that he has frustrated the British authorities’ efforts to successfully prosecute Ibori for money laundering and has helped in stifling the trial begun by Nuhu Ribadu. These suspicions have attracted nothing but disbelief in the government’s efforts to fight graft. On her visit to Nigeria a few months ago, Mrs. Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, was unsparing in her criticism of the anti-corruption war.

Last Tuesday, Nigeria was reported to have dropped nine places to 130th position out of the 180 countries ranked on the global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2009 by Transparency International, TI, a global anti-corruption watchdog.

The survey evaluates domestic public sector corruption in selected countries. In terms of level of perceived corruption, Nigeria, which had moved up 27 places to rank 121 out of 180 countries in 2008, placed 10th out of the 16 West African countries.In the CPI 2009, Nigeria obtained a score of 2.5 out of a possible 10 marks, to emerge 27th out of the surveyed 47 nations in sub-Saharan Africa, and 33rd out of the 53 countries in Africa.In a recent interview, radical preacher, Pastor Tunde Bakare, dismissed the anti-corruption effort of the Yar’Adua administration as an attempt to establish corruption as a culture.

Last month, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, Chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, an amalgam of opposition groups, accused the government of protecting corrupt politicians. He called on Yar’Adua to dismiss Aondoakaa and empower EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Offences Commission, ICPC, to recover looted funds. “We ask: Is war against corruption now deleted out of President Yar’Adua’s 7-Point-Agenda template? Where is the Federal Government White Paper on Halliburton, Wilbros, and Siemens etc scams? Why is President Yar’Adua still retaining Chief Michael Aondoakaa, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, who has clearly been obstructing the War Against Corruption? Can our democracy grow under gross corruption, more so, when the ex-President and ex-governors who looted state resources are allowed to bestride our political landscape, using the looted funds to corrupt our electoral process?” Musa asked in a statement.

Beyond the array of threats from without,  very serious obstacle to a second term for Yar’Adua may well come from within his party. Over the two years that the President has been in office, he has made enemies from within the PDP who are not desirous of seeing him remain in Aso Rock beyond 2011. The intra-party opponents include his godfather, Olusegun Obasanjo, who ensured, in a “do-or-die” manner that Yar’Adua emerged president; and former speakers of the House of Representatives, Ghali Na’abba and Aminu Maisari.

Obasanjo is angry with Yar’Adua that the President has been working at cross-purposes with him since he assumed office. The President has undone certain legacies that he, Obasanjo put in place while in office. One of the first things that the President did on assumption of office was the reversal of the sale of refineries to Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola, two favoured boys of Obasanjo. The former president was also not happy that the Yar’Adua administration painted his tenure as wasteful over the power projects that he, Obasanjo initiated. The Obasanjo government was alleged to have wasted about N16bn on NIPP projects with nothing to show for it. Key players in the Obasanjo administration like Liyel Imoke, now the Cross River State governor, who were involved in the power projects had to make spirited efforts to explain that the amount expended was not more than N3.5bn. Imoke would be proved right by a committee headed by Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to probe the matter.

Yar’Adua also whittled Obasanjo’s powers as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the PDP in a deliberate ploy to weaken the latter’s hold on the party by having the party constitution amended to reduce Obasanjo’s powers.  Moreover, he ensured that Sam Egwu, who was Obasanjo’s candidate for the chairmanship position of the party in 2007, did not emerge. Rather, Yar’Adua and some other party leaders, especially governors brought in Vincent Ogbulafor who is the incumbent chairman.

Another sin of Yar’Adua before Obasanjo is that the President has been hounding some elements well known to be Obasanjo’s boys. Such characters include Chief Bode George, former chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority who is already in prison for committing fraud while he was chairman of NPA; Nuhu Ribadu, former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and Nasir el-Rufai, former Minister of the Federal Capital Authority, both of who are currently abroad. Babalola Borisade, former Aviation Minister and Femi Fani-Kayode are on trial for criminal offences allegedly committed while he was Aviation minister.

Therefore, the road to a second term looks really bumpy for the president even though it would be foolhardy to write off his chances.

– Additional reports by Tayo Odunlami, Bamidele Johnson and Oluokun Ayorinde.

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