Nigerian High Commissioner to South Africa, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has revealed the confrontations he had with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar while they held sway as members of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cabinet.
In an article titled The Seventh Bid of Waziri, the former Minister of Aviation recalled how he confronted Atiku on two separate occasions during cabinet meetings demanding apologies for his relentless determination to undermine and destabilize the government he was elected to serve and ‘utterly destroy his principal’.
Fani-Kayode said Atiku ‘betrayed Obasanjo to such a point that I as Minister of Aviation at the time was constrained to demand that he should be thrown out of cabinet meetings on two separate occasions during full sessions of cabinet’.
He said he did so in the course of the meeting and in the presence of other cabinet members, adding that when he did, there was pin-drop silence in the cabinet chambers.
The ex-minister said: ‘The first time, Obasanjo saved him from the humiliation and appealed to me and the other ministers to allow him to stay while he sat there looking daggers at me and clearly in a state of shock.
‘The second time, which was a few weeks later, I made another demand in our cabinet meeting under ‘other matters’ that if he did not get up and leave the chamber as a consequence of his betrayals and treachery against our President then we the Ministers would walk out and leave him to conduct the Federal Executive Council meeting alone with the President.
‘Obasanjo again appealed to us to allow him to stay but compelled him to apologise to the entire cabinet there and then for his treachery and outrageous behaviour all motivated by the fact that he wanted to topple the President and take his place.
‘Atiku apologised there and then to the entire cabinet and consequently was allowed to stay at the Federal Executive Council meeting. But he NEVER attended another cabinet meeting after that.
‘This episode proves how over-ambitious he was as Vice President and how he coveted the seat of the man that brought him out of obscurity in Adamawa State and made him his Vice President.’
Fani-Kayode also revealed how Obasanjo survived the alleged plot by Atiku to topple him as the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2003 general election.
He recalled that Atiku’s obsession with the presidency dates back to that period, when he allegedly mobilised the governors elected on the platform of the then ruling party to move against his boss who had nominated him as his running mate for the second time and topple him as the party’s presidential candidate.
Two interventions, he said, saved Obasanjo. ‘Firstly, the God factor, which was the most important, and secondly, a stupendously wealthy businessman from Kano (who I shall not name), who made virtually all the money that was needed available for both the delegates at the convention and the election itself.’
He said to Obasanjo’s credit, he refused to drop Atiku mid-stream as running mate and he was re-elected as Vice President on the same ticket.
‘It was after the second term began after the 2003 election that the real war between the two camps began, and I am proud to say that yours truly and others like Nasir Ei-Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu, Akin Osuntokun, Abiye Sekibo, Frank Nweke, Uba Sani, Adamu Bello, Julius Ihonvbere and many other that were either working in the Presidency or were ministers together with others like Peter Odili of Rivers State, Umaru Yar’Adua of Katisna State, Ahmad Makarfi of Kaduna State and a number of other governors took the battle to the gates of the Vice President and gave him hell over the next four years,’ he said.
Only the occasion of the birthday of controversial singer Charles Oputa a.k.a. Charly Boy in July, Obasanjo had reiterated the allegation that that Atiku plotted his impeachment as President by inducing a former speaker of the House of Representatives, the late Rt. Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba, with the sum of N5 million.
But responding to the allegation in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, Atiku described Obasanjo’s claims as a politically motivated attempt to rewrite history, adding that the former President’s decision to raise the allegation only after Na’Abba’s death was both unfair and reckless considering that the deceased lawmaker could no longer defend himself or refute the allegation.
He accused Obasanjo of reviving ‘stale allegations’ to tarnish his image, saying that the former President’s hostility towards him dates back to his opposition to the controversial third-term agenda during Obasanjo’s administration.
‘My offence was that I stood firmly against the unconstitutional third term agenda (of Obasanjo). As a democrat, I chose the path of constitutionalism and the rule of law. Rather than surrender democratic principles on the altar of personal ambition, I defended the constitution and successfully asserted my rights through the courts in a series of landmark legal victories against a sitting president,’ he said.