Dora Akunyili's "shock and awe" memo: Yar'Adua's kitchen cabinet faces tough week ahead

Members of Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet are disoriented over the shock memo presented to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday by Information Minister Dora Akunyili asking Yar’Adua to present a letter of vacation to the Senate as required by section 145 of Nigeria’s 1999 constitution. But aides and kitchen cabinet members loyal to ailing Yar’Adua are now strategizing on how to react to the memo, which we understand she will represent at the FEC's meeting next Wednesday. Already, a core member of t Yar'dua's loyalists, Nigeria's notoriously corrupt Attorney General, Michael Aondoakaa has called on Mrs. Akuyili to resign from the cabinet. Saharareporters sources say the kitchen cabinet has reactivated the option of calling in the military to take over power, in preference to handing power over to Goodluck Jonathan, Yar’Adua’s deputy. It is now known that Akunyili’s five-page memo, which she first circulated yesterday at the FEC meeting, has now been formally submitted by the minister, who is insisting that the FEC change its earlier position that Yar’Adua was fit to continue in office and therefore does not need to hand over power to his deputy. According to a minister who did not wish to be named, after Mrs. Akunyili presented her circular to the FEC yesterday, Yar’Adua's loyalists led by the Minister of Agriculture, Sayyad Abba Ruma, shouted her down, but Akunyili stood her ground and insisted that the memo be discussed. Things reportedly got out of hand as a majority of the ministers said she had not properly presented the document to the body through the office of the Secretary to the Federal Government, Ahmed Yayale. Sensing that the memo might be sabotaged, Akunyili agreed to withdraw the circular and went out of the council chamber to call on one of her aides to present it as a memo. She succeeded in submitting it to the FEC before the meeting was over. She is insisting that the memo be discussed next week and our sources confirm it is now part of the agenda for next week’s FEC meeting. Her memo specifically asked the cabinet to rescind its 3 December 2009 declaration that the President is not incapacitated.

Yar’adua camp spends N20 billion to scuttle his removal

Saharareporters has learned authoritatively that the closest associates of missing and sickly Nigerian ruler, Umaru Yar’adua, have gone on a bribing spree to scuttle moves to remove him from office. In the face of increasing local and international pressure on Yar’adua to handover power to his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan, the ailing “president’s” kitchen cabinet has handed Speaker of the House, Dimeji Bankole, the sum of N2 billion and another N4 billion to Senate President David Mark to stop any legislative or judicial initiative to either impeach Yar’adua or compel him to hand over power to Jonathan. Some of the top players in Yar’adua’s unofficial but powerful inner cabinet are his wife Turai, former Governor James Onanefe Ibori, special economic aide, Tanimu Yakubu, Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa, and Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara. Former President Ibrahim Babangida maintains constant consultation with the group.

It is not known how the kitchen cabinet hopes to impose their agenda on restive Nigerians, but Tanimu Yakubu reportedly told Bankole and Mark yesterday that the Yar’adua group was prepared to spend three times what Obasanjo spent on his third term agenda to stop the popular movement for Yar’adua to resign and hand over power to Jonathan.

The group’s selling point against Jonathan is to tell legislators, judges and Nigerian opposition groups that Jonathan is too close to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and, as president, would be controlled by the hugely despised Obasanjo.

In interviews with several lawmakers as well as sources close to the Yar’adua camp, Saharareporters gathered that the huge pay offs to Bankole and Mark were part payment of a N20 billion campaign to stop the judiciary and the legislature from acting against Yar’adua as he struggles against a deteriorating health condition.

The Nation Dangles as Yar’Adua Pines Away

A very ominous sign hangs over the badly battered country called Nigeria presently and all flow from the present deteriorating state of health of President Yar’Adua. Apart from the palpable confusion that presently envelope governance, one would be damned to deny that the power mongers and the speculators that live off government are making their nocturnal shrifts to take advantage of what is obviously a lacuna that is now so obvious in the nation’s seat of power.

Even with the thick patch of pan cake being spruced on what is a delicate situation, most Nigerians know that the country is dangling on the precipice, shorn of a leader and bereft of any sense of mission.

For whoever can bet on it, the dangers ahead are so real and much more complicated than they have been made to look. It goes far beyond the self serving permutations of a notorious political party for untrammeled and infinite power. It goes beyond the craving of a hideous cabal for the traps of office. It goes beyond the mad and deadly struggle to take advantage of the huge lacuna that has prevailed in the country’s seat of power since Yar’Adua was forced down on us all by the grand principality himself.

What is very certain to happen is that in the near future, something is going to give and this flows from the risky political cobweb that birthed the Yar’Adua presidency? The looming danger may hasten the doomsday prophecy about Nigeria’s possible implosion into chips of disparate ethnic nations in the near future. The certain fate that hangs over this unfortunate country obtains in the gravy aftermaths of having an infirm president. The early warning signals obtain in the present rancor and deep division over whether Yar’Adua should resign or continue ‘ruling’ Nigeria from the sick beds of foreign hospices. It obtains in the intra-class intercalation that debate has spawned such that huge questions are being raised over some peoples’ consistency in the struggle so early in the day; when the real battle is yet to begin.

Prominent Nigerians call on Yar'adua to resign!

Eminent Nigerians today in a press statement asked Umaru Yar’Adua to “immediately and unconditionally hand over to the Vice-President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan to complete the current term of office.” As Acting President, said the 55 signatories who emanate from all over Nigeria, Jonathan should then conduct the next general elections on the basis of the report of the electoral reform committee headed by Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais.

In the statement, which was made public only a short while ago, the concerned Nigerians offered Yar’Adua the option of resigning his office immediately, arguing that his poor health “has created a dangerous situation whereby no one is in charge of the affairs of the State contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution.”

On the other hand, they said that if Yar’Adua is confident of his current health, he should “request the Federal Executive Council to pass a resolution pursuant to Section 144 (1) of the Constitution to the effect that the President appears incapable of discharging the functions of his office.”

They said such an “honorable step” would enable the Senate President to appoint a Medical Panel to confirm the fitness or otherwise of Yar’Adua to continue in office.”

Sympathizing with Yar’Adua’s condition, the signatories said his health should be given priority attention, but stressed that the need to provide effective governance for this nation of over 150 million people cannot be compromised.