Breaking News! Obasanjo joins bid to pick Nigeria’s new vice president

Details: Category: Politics; Published on Friday, 11 December 2009 10:40; Written by Admin; Hits: 1096

obasanjo The battle to identify a successor to Nigeria’s Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has begun and is generating heavy steam.

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua is critically ill in Saudi Arabia. The race to succeed him has exposed frustration and antagonism among the country’s heterogeneous political landscape and its dinosaurs.

By all indications, former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s candidate, Alhaji Sule Lamido who is the Governor of Jigawa State is most likely to snatch the post from among several other candidates.

Local reports yesterday said former president Obasanjo has since last weekend, moved to the country’s political capital, Abuja in a bid to strategically position himself to effectively hobnob with those at the centre stage of the supreme decision-making process.

Mr Obasanjo’s paramount task is ostensibly to outmanoeuvre a candidate from the northern part of the country in a bid to ensure an even distribution of power and mitigate the collusive national sentiment caused by an undying Northern Muslim and Southern Christian political divide.

Political analysts had praised Mr Obasanjo for successfully managing the delicate and hyper-sensitive issue, when he smoothly landed Mr Yar’Adua, a Muslim from the North, into the post at the detriment of outstanding Southern and Christian cadidates during the 2007 elections.

From the North, the political force is contemplating on fielding one of three indomitable candidates including the country’s former Minister of Finance, Malam Adamu Ciroma, who is also a former National Security Adviser.

The other two, are the populist and enigmatic Gen Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, and Ambassador Adamu Aliyu, a former Group Managing Director of Northern Nigeria Development Corporation, who also was an ambassador to Japan — widely regarded as a “man of integrity and an achiever”.

The leadership struggle is heightening in the wake of the confusing and unconvincing developments emanating from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where President Yar’Adua is undergoing treatment for a recidivist heart ailment. Mr Obasanjo’s move was based on negative developments on President Yar’Adua’s health condition and which might not enable him to continue with his official assignment as president of Nigeria sooner or later.

Equally uncompromising, is the candidate that will emerge from the Nigeria Governors’ Forum which is agitating for the vice presidency and claiming to have tested and trusted men and women who can measure up adequately to the post.

But, dissatisfied with the former president’s activities in the succession battle, the National Secretary of Mr Obasanjo’s Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has criticised the leader for having roped in the ailing Umaru Yar’Adua to replace him.

“We of the National Democratic Party are of the considered opinion that Chief Obasanjo should simply hide his head in shame for the selfishness and greed exhibited in the twilight of his administration, by putting the destiny of over 150 million Nigerians in the hands of a sickly President,” local media quoted a release issued by the PDP on Wednesday.

“While sharing the sentiments being expressed by some Nigerians that the President needs prayers” the party said, “Obasanjo should be blamed for this political logjam, and so deserves to be ignored in the unfolding scenario.”

The release went on: “Even though we are not against the aspiration of anyone. It will be bad publicity to have Obasanjo marketing any candidate for a post that is yet to be vacant. Nigerians will forever live to regret Obasanjo’s decision to this effect.”

Media reports quoted the PDP official statement as further saying that “the current crisis would have been avoided had Obasanjo had the interest of the country at heart during the 2007 electoral process,” adding that “at the height of the build-up to the 2007 elections, Mr Obasanjo and his co-travellers in the PDP stage-managed the entire process and foisted Mr Yar’Adua on the nation, knowing fully well that the man had serious health challenges.”

It can be recalled that Yar’Adua, 58, has been flown abroad to be treated twice for the same heart ailment since he came to power in 2007.
Meanwhile, only Yar’Adua’s doctors will decide when he returns home, the government said yesterday.

“It is only the doctors that can determine when Mr President will be back, but I can confirm to you that the President is still in the hospital and responding to treatment,” Information Minister Dora Akunyili told reporters in the capital Abuja.

Nigeria’s Cabinet unanimously agreed a week ago that there were no grounds on which to seek the president’s resignation, rejecting calls for him to quit or let a panel of doctors determine whether he is fit to govern. The Cabinet came out strongly backing Yar’Adua after at least nine Nigerian newspaper front pages carried a statement reportedly signed by more than 50 public figures calling on him to resign or allow a medical panel to assess his health.

The opposition Action Congress party described the Cabinet’s decision as “unprincipled, self-serving and predictable” and said its assertion that government was functioning properly in Yar’Adua’s absence was “the biggest joke of the year”.

Source: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/820664/-/item/0/-/1406l1w/-/index.html