By Rotimi Ajayi
Posted to the Web: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

* Says he, Obasanjo have not spoken in the last three months
* Hits Buhari on dictatorial record

'I cannot guarantee you. It all depends on his own attitude. If he (Obasanjo) continues with the attitude of wanting to manipulate the elections, by hook or crook, the ruling party must return to power, I cannot guarantee you that there will be peaceful elections.'

ABUJA—VICE President Atiku Abubakar says President Olusegun Obasanjo is warming up to truncate the April elections with a view to imposing a state of emergency in the country. Vice President Atiku told a team of American editors in Nigeria to observe preparation for the elections that there was noting, for now, to guarantee peaceful elections in April.

On the possibility of a state of emergency, for instance, he said: “I agree because we are dealing with a monster, a monster almost at the point of a dictator.”
The dialogue:

Are we going to have a peaceful election?
“I cannot guarantee you. It all depends on his own attitude. If he continues with the attitude of wanting to manipulate the elections, by hook or crook, the ruling party must return to power, I cannot guarantee you that there will be peaceful elections. People are not likely to take it from him but that determination is there in him, whether Nigerians like it or not. He must return the ruling party to power, his candidate must win because he believes he will be ruling from outside the State House because he has amended the constitution of the party where he remains life leader of the party, the life leader of the Board of Trustees, so that he can continue to govern the country from his farm.

So the PDP candidate will eventually be a puppet?
The PDP candidate will eventually be a puppet according to his own expectation.
Are you concerned that INEC may disqualify you from contesting the election? What would be your response to that?
Currently, the electoral committee has no power under the law to disqualify me. The only way you can disqualify me under our law is that if you have anything against me, you will petition the court and let the court determine whether your petitions are valid or not. But I am not saying that this President is not going to use INEC to do something illegal because that is his pattern of behaviour. He could direct INEC to do it and then we will end up in court again, believing that by the time we go to court, he would have distracted me enough to win the elections because he knows I am the only one who could stand against him in this election. Nobody else could do that.

Are you saying you have nothing to do with Jefferson’s case?
Absolutely nothing.
Can you describe your relationship with Congressman Jefferson?
Purely official. No other relationship. I respected him because he was a high ranking congressman. He said he was bringing investment to Nigeria. That is all.
On Ribadu as head of EFCC.
I brought him into that job.

Would you say he is being used by the President?
He is absolutely being used just like he is being used all over the country to arraign political opponents of the President. He has said it. He said ‘look, if I don’t do what the President asked me to do, he is going to fire me and I don’t want to be fired.’ He came in here. I recommended him to the President. I know him because we come from the same state. The only offence that they said I committed was that I approved investment of those funds in the banks and the investment I approved brought them money, about N1.6 billion in interest. I did not expend any money. This is a President who expended  money which was not appropriated by the National Assembly; the same PTDF fund. He expended them in billions without appropriation by the National Assembly, a serious constitutional breach. He has even done worse than I have done. How do you expend public money without appropriation by the National Assembly. It is just like the President of United States expending money that is not appropriated by Congress. It is an impeachable offence.

If you are elected, would you remove Mr Ribadu from office?
I don’t know whether I will remove Mr Ribadu from office. Surely he needs independence. If he gets his independence, he will do a good job. I would not want to use Ribadu against political opponents. I certainly not.

Do you believe that what is done to you has undermined your chances?
No. In fact more or less, it has even enhanced my chances because people see that there is clear political victimisation of me.
On possibility of imposing a state of emergency.
Yes, I agree because we are dealing with a monster, a monster almost at the point of a dictator.

Will you have a pact with Buhari if you are prevented from running for the office?
I don’t even think Buhari is the best candidate because Buhari as military head of state has the worst human rights record in the country. I will prefer a neutral candidate. I don’t mind but I will prefer a neutral candidate because we will even get back to a worse situation than we are going through now. There are many top contenders of third party who are really truly democratic, who we can always support to emerge.

Would you describe the difference between you and the President as very personal?
It is not personal. What is personal in all these differences I have stated. I don’t regard them as personal. I regard them as political differences.

Do you guys speak?
We haven’t spoken in the last three months.
How are you governing the country?
He is governing alone.

What are you doing?
I am sitting down in my house.
When do you begin your campaign?
I am beginning next Saturday from Kano.
The Vice President who first briefed the journalists on the background to the disagreement between him and the President said: “It all started in our first term in office, when there were calls by the parties for constitutional amendment. And then there were calls by the party’s committee to discuss constitutional amendments. That committee went into a coma. So, not much work was done.

“Primarily, when we came back for a second term, the president revived the constitutional amendments committee. First of all, he convened a constitutional conference, a conference which he announced when he came into office that he was not going to do, he never believed that we needed to amend the constitution so soon, therefore he was not going to convene a constitutional conference. Certainly, he made a move,  constituted a constitutional conference based on some indirect elections asking state governors to nominate representatives and so on. That temporary scheme deliberated and recommended constitutional amendments but unfortunately did not give a very strong support to the extension of the term of the president because he wanted another third term inserted into the constitution and the way the constitution has been interpreted here in this country, any time you amend the constitution, there arises a dispute.

When you go to court, the court will declare that that constitution is a new one. What that meant is that if we had a third term inserted, if the president now goes to the court to say that he is now entitled to not one more term of four years but three more terms of four years each making 12 years, the court will grant him because he will argue that this is a new constitution all together and therefore we are operating a new constitution and not the old one irrespective of how many years he remains in power unless it is specifically stated that those three terms included the previous two terms under the previous constitution, unless that provision is made.

"We went through that, the president did not get what he wanted from the constitutional conference. The next thing he did was to get the constitution itself amended by a select committee together with himself.

"Very early in our second term, he called me one morning and said Mr. Vice President and I said Mr. President. He said look, am sending my attorney general and my political adviser to discuss constitutional amendment with you. I said they are welcome. When they came, they came with a draft constitution. This was draft made in his own hand green and white, in fact we discussed it for two hours. After that, I realised that what the president was intending to do was amend the constitution, to again have a third term. Then I asked them. I said gentlemen,  most of you are members of the ruling party; we all belong to the same party, PDP.

In November 2002, we had a party caucus, we agreed that after two terms of power in the South, power would now rotate to the North for another eight years before we even contemplate to amend the constitution. That was the decision of the party. I said thank God all of you are members of the party, have we reviewed that decision before we think of another? If we have not reviewed it, why are we bringing this issue? They now said it was the president that said they should bring up the issue. I said okay, if I give you a message to the president, will you take it? They said yes. Go and tell the president that I will not be a party to this amendment and that I will not support it because it is against the party’s resolution we took at the caucus.

“Also, this president was not there when we crafted this constitution in 1994 because I was a member of the of committee that drafted this current constitution in 1994-1995 during Abacha regime. And we agreed on power rotation between the North and South because then the main issue of political instability in the country was that the South accused the North of dominating political power whether through military regime or any elective regime for almost three decades. And, therefore, in the process of discussing consensus, we agreed as politicians that we were now going to adopt power rotation system between the North and South. I was an elected member of that committee. That was why when we now formed parties in 1998, the two national parties, both PDP and ANPP nominated presidential candidates from the South. We went to election with a Southern candidate and elected a southern president.

“After this party resolution, for you now to come and say that power should not rotate to the North, I think it is a breach of the party’s resolution. I am not saying that we should not go back to the party caucus and debate the issue again.

He brought you in as a candidate with an understanding in 1999 that he would step down after four years and that you would get a shot at the presidency?
Somehow, it started at that point in time. Therefore, in 2003 when he announced that he was going to run, he did not announce that he was going to run with me. I now said if I am not going to run with you as vice president, I can as well run myself. I now threatened him I was going to run on my own. He felt threatened because the party was supporting me. The members, the governors, were all supporting me. Then he now came back to me and said Mr. Vice president, I am sorry. I made a mistake I was misadvised. Let us run together and take over the campaign as we normally do and run the country. I said okay if you were misled and misadvised, announce it that you are now running with me and that I am going to take over the campaign, and then we go on.

“So, he did that. The governors of our party assembled in this very conference room and said look, we do not agree, we do not want this president to go for a second term. We want you to go. I said look, many of you are young and many of you did not know how this president came into office. It was done so that we could bring about national unity and stability. I plead with you, let’s allow the president to have a second term so that the South will have two terms of eight years so that they do not say we took away the president from the South just after four years. Many of them were saying we do not care; we do not give a damn. I pleaded with them. I took them from here to see the president. And I said Mr. President we are having problems. These are governors and these are their position and I want you to dialogue with them.
“He now said please gentlemen, feel free, tell me what are my faults. Then they came out openly and freely, sincerely believing that they meant well. They told him many things. He got up, defended himself and I also got up and defended some of the things I knew. Eventually, I got the governors to come along with us. We went to elections. After that, almost all those governors who spoke against him are some of the governors who have been removed today meaning that the issue of his unforgiving and vindictiveness has been proved.

“But let’s come back to the issue of constitutional amendment. I gave them my words that I would not support it, I would not be a party to it. They went and told him. Since they did, he now made sure he set up plans and strategy to render me irrelevant and ineffective in office. First of all, he withdrew all of the staff that were delegated to me. He went a step further, he tried to take away the party from me. He put an un-elected executive on the committee of the party. We had a very rowdy debate with him and the party executives. I got up with two constitutions in my hands, the party’s constitutions and country’s constitution which mandated every political party to elect its officers periodically and at every interval to run the party. I now told him, Mr. President, you know in the past elections, I have always called the party members to elect whoever you wanted. One thing I omitted to tell you is you also removed four or five party chairmen.

“Any chairman who disagreed with him, he removed unconstitutionally. In the case of Audu Ogbeh, he had to call him at gun point and asked him to resign. So I told him that we have always elected anybody you wanted, why wouldn’t you allow us to go into an election? Let the people of this country go into an election to elect a national executive which is in conformity with the constitution of the party, which derives its authority from the constitution of the country.

“He got up to say yes, Mr Vice President you are right, at least election can be by affirmation or by acclamation. I said that is no election, Mr President. If the framers of the constitution wanted it so, they would have said election can either be by affirmation or acclamation. He wouldn’t listen. He insisted. We went to national convention and then I went to court and challenged it. The court ruled that election null and void but he refused to obey the judgment of the court. From there he said every member of the party should be registered afresh. It was an attempt to get me out of the party. I went back to my home state, I went back to my ward to get registered because that is what the constitution says that you should get registered in the ward. I was denied registration. I called him, I said Mr President, I have been denied registration in the party and they showed it on television, you went to your home state, to your own ward and you were registered. I am the Vice President, I went back to my home state, to my own ward and I was denied registration. Why? He started mumbling: ‘I will call the party chairman to look into it.’

“After few days, the party chairman came into my office with a new register. I told the party chairman: ‘what you are doing has no place in law. Look at our party constitution, if you want me to be validly and lawfully registered, was to ask the chairman and secretary of my ward to come all the way and then I register with them. You are coming, you are not authorised by the constitution of the party to register me and so there is no way that will give me a lawful membership of the party.  The registration was not a valid one.

“The next after that was for the President to move for my suspension very close to the conduct of the presidential primaries. Again, he went ahead to suspend me for three months which was unlawful because the constitution of the party says you can only suspend a member for one month and that he does not lose the right to vote or be voted for. He suspended me for three months. He said I lost my right to vote and be voted for. I went to the court, the court declared the suspension null and void, illegal. He would not obey the court order. So I was out of the party.

“The next thing now he tried to do was to, of course, use the famous Jefferson case to institute an investigation on me and he now accused me of corruption in the management of Petroleum Technology Development Fund, which was a government agency that for a brief moment reported to my office. He got the EFCC, which was investigating the issue of Jefferson, ignored the issue of Jefferson, concentrated on the PTDF management and concocted allegations of conspiracy, diversion, money laundering and so on against me.

“After the report was submitted, he set up an administrative panel, which did not give me a proper hearing in the administrative panel of enquiry, found me liable and indicted me. All this happened within 48 hours. He rushed it through the Federal Executive Council, where I am the deputy chairman. Within the same day, he moved it to the Senate, with the intention of instigating the Senate to commence impeachment against me. He timed it in such a way that I had a medical appointment in the US. He knew that I had asked for permission to go to the US to see my doctors. I decided not to go to US. I stayed back to fight it. I fought back. I averted the impeachment proceedings and accused him of doing all that simply because I worked against his amending the constitution.

“Of course we challenged it in the National Assembly because we put together a coalition of what we called the 2007 Movement, with members who are opposed to it and so we were able to stop the constitutional amendment.

“Of course, after that, I was left without a party, without a platform to contest for the presidency which is his main objective. Then I decided to move into another party. It is good for you to be able to predict somebody. I have predicted this President so well in the last two years. With other political associates from other political parties, we put together another political party strong enough to challenge the ruling party. We had a convention and there was an election there even though there was a consensus I was the only candidate but I insisted that we must comply with the constitution of Nigeria because the constitution says that even if all the political parties in this country agree that they have only one candidate, Nigerians must go to election to either say yes or no. We agreed on the choice of the parties.

Even though the alternative platform said that I was the only candidate, I said no, we must go to election. So we went to election. Everybody voted and I got people who voted against me, who said no, they didn’t want me to be the candidate of the party. Of course those who said they wanted me to be the candidate were more and I won the election.

“All what he did, I predicted again. Thank God, I have a brilliant political team, media team and also a legal team. We met and anticipated all what he was going to do. He was going to declare my office vacant and he was going to do this and that. We predicted three weeks ago he was going to deny me an aircraft to go to US. Therefore, I booked my flight on British Airways. Everything we predicted came to pass. This is where we are. 

Are you in a fight of your life-time?
I am not in a fight of my life time. Look I had run to be the President of this country in 1993 before he ever thought he would run for the President. Then I stepped down for MKO Abiola to win the ticket. In 1999 when we founded this party, if I wanted to pick up the ticket of this party, it was just there for me for the picking but I decided to run for the governorship of my state because I knew I was committed to national unity and political stability of this country.

In 2003, when all the governors and the party leadership said I should run, if I wanted to be a President for my selfish reasons, I would have picked it. It is funny for him to say I am fighting the battle of my life. I don’t have to be President this time around but I will continue to fight for the survival of democracy and stability of this country.

Do you think the election will happen as scheduled?
I can’t be very sure.
What will happen if the election will not hold?
Well that is what the President will be looking for and any excuse that will make the election not to take place so that he can stay longer in power.

What will you do then?
What will Nigerians do?
What do you think they will do?
I don’t believe they will accept that.

You said you have been very good at predicting the President. Are you predicting if he will declare state of emergency, so that there will not be an election?
It is not unlikely. When he declares a state of emergency, I believe he will immediately move to dissolve the National Assembly.
What pretence will he use to declare the state of emergency?
Any pretence. He is not a President who obeys the law. He is not governed by the rule of law.
 
Is there a law that permits him to impose state of emergency during election?
There is a funny provision in the Electoral Act, even though the Electoral Act cannot stand against the constitution, which states that in the event of the death of a presidential candidate, INEC can suspend election. Of course we are trying to get that removed before the election at the National Assembly. If anything should happen like that or if it can be instigated, which is not unlikely in this country. How many leading politicians have we lost through assassinations in this country?
Have you been threatened?
Of course. A couple of months ago I had to vacate this residence because I was threatened.

By a phone call or something?
By information. Credible information.
Is that why you went to United States for much of last month?
No, before I went to United State. But of course I lodged a protest when it happened and his attention was drawn to that.

Do you know where this could have come from?
It couldn’t have come from anywhere else other than from his side.