On Thursday, January 17, 2019, Nigeria’s media space was awash with the news that former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, had, to the surprise of most people, arrived Washington DC, in the United States for a meeting with US officials and the Nigerian business community there.
Ordinarily Atiku’s visit to the US is of little consequence if the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had not made issues out of it in recent times. The APC had alleged that Atiku would never be issued a visa to the US because of alleged corruption bordering on money laundering. The APC had also posited that Atiku would be arrested if he entered the US over a row with the US authorities that allegedly began after the FBI investigated a bribery scandal involving William Jefferson, former US congressman, in 2004.
Adams Oshiomhole, the national chairman of the APC, had said Atiku could not travel to US, urging Nigerians to elect President Muhammadu Buhari whom he said could go everywhere. “We have a president whose integrity cannot be faulted anywhere in the world, but the PDP has a presidential candidate who can only travel to Dubai,” Oshiomhole had said.
However, the pictures that emerged on Thursday and the statement from Atiku’s media aide, Paul Ibe confirming the visit suggested that the former Vice President had surmounted the challenge making the APC position untenable even as Atiku is scheduled to return to the country to face other contestants especially President Buhari in the much-awaited Presidential Debate billed for Saturday evening.
Some analysts have posited that President Buhari may not face the challenge of debating Atiku on Saturday as the APC campaign machinery appears to have been dazed by success of the Atiku’s US visit.
In the quick succession of events shaping the polity ahead of the 2019 elections, perhaps the biggest of them all was the arraignment of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Walter Samuel Onnoghen at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) and the nationwide outrage that the trial generated.
Onnoghen was to appear before the CCT headed by Justice Danladi Yakubu in Abuja on Monday January 14 to answer a six-count charge bordering on failures to declare his assets as required by law and for operating Bank Domiciliary Foreign Currency Accounts.
But before the CJN could prepare to defend himself, about 50 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) and other lawyers had volunteered to defend him at the Tribunal in what many analysts had regarded as an assault on the judiciary. Many legal experts including Olisa Agbakoba, Femi Falana, and Monday Ubani, among others, have condemned the action of the Federal Government, stressing that the arraignment did not go through the normal process. They also castigated the haste with which the CJN was charged, pointing out that it smacks of political motives, and that the request that the CJN should vacate office was highly questionable.
Speaking to BDSUNDAY on Thursday, a close ally of the former Vice President, who preferred anonymity, said: “Atiku’s visit to the US was timed to coincide with the coming debate so that doubting Thomases and those who want to make a political capital out of a mere visit will be silenced forever”.
A public intellectual, Katch Ononuju told our correspondent that “Atiku’s visit to the US is a boost to the political process; it shows you that those who think is over are mistaken. Atiku will end up being President of this country. Democracy is dynamic that is why Atiku became the choice of people like Obasanjo and others who had earlier opposed him because they understand that Buhari as alternative will spell doom for all of us.”
On whether President Buhari will appear for the Debate Ononuju said Buhari may not appear at the Saturday debate, adding that the reasons the APC do not want Buhari to be subjected to any interrogation is because they know that “Buhari is unwell and can never be coherent. Buhari is legally unfit to run for office due to ill health, which is the reason he cannot perform optimally as a normal human being because he lacks the capacity to comprehend.”
On the trial of Onnoghen, Ononuju said that the APC are targeting him because they fear that if they rig the elections, the matter will get to the Supreme Court where they could lose it, that is the reason they want to remove him and put someone else who they would manipulate. He however, argued that even if they get Onnoghen out they might not succeed in their plans.
“The backlash is inevitable because Buhari and the APC are trying to undermine themselves. They fight the Legislature, they fight the Judiciary, it is not just Onnoghen or the Judiciary but democracy that is trouble and this is because Buhari is not in charge,” he said.
The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) in its reaction to the Atiku’s US visit, said: “Atiku’s USA visit has shown that he is not a wanted man. APC last propaganda option has just collapsed.”
Also speaking on the Onnoghen matter, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), accused President Buhari of attempting to impose a dictatorship through subterranean moves by the eleventh hour, alleging that the arraignment was politically-motivated.
The rights group in a statement said: “There was no way the Chief Justice of Nigeria will get justice from the hand-picked Code of Conduct Tribunal appointed and reorganised structurally by Presidency shortly after the Chairman of the Tribunal acquitted the Senate President, Bukola Saraki of all charges of failure to declare his assets.
It noted that “the CJN headed the appellate panel that finally nailed the coffin of the Presidency’s plot to sustain a case against the main political rival of the current President in the person of the Senate President.
“This politically-motivated war against the CJN is a payback for his principled stand to discharge and acquit Saraki of all charges as framed up by the Executive through the Federal Attorney General. Moreover, HURIWA faulted the call by the Presidency on the CJN to quit based on those charges that are still within the realm of suspicions and have not been so determined by the competent court of law.
“Going by Section 36(5) Onnoghen is totally innocent in the eye of the law and can’t be removed from office based on mere allegations. Buhari must adhere to the principle of rule of law and restrain himself from imposing a fait accompli on the executive Code of Conduct Tribunal.
“HURIWA recalled that Buhari declared political war on Onnoghen, by asking him to immediately vacate his exalted office as head of the nation’s judiciary over alleged sundry asset declaration issues,” the statement said.
At the time of writing this report, efforts to get the reaction of the spokesman of the President Buhari Campaign Organisation, Festus Keyamo, did not yield result as did not pick his calls neither did he respond to a text message.
However, a source from the Presidency who wished to remain anonymous, told BDSUNDAY on Friday that “Atiku’s visit to the US does not in any way bother the Presidency campaign trail, which is generating momentum. Nigerians’ are solidly behind the President, who has achieved in three and half years what the PDP could not achieve in sixteen years of looting.”
The widespread anger over the trial of the CJN and the threat of judicial officers to engage the Presidency in a ‘fight’ may have rattled the ruling party such that the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo came out to state that President Buhari was unaware of the trial until two days to the arraignment. However, not many people found this statement plausible, which suggests that the ruling party may have suffered unexpected backlash over what many analysts considered a ‘fatal error’.
Mallam Isa Onilu, the APC National Publicity Secretary, had earlier in a statement debunked the insinuation that the trial of Onnoghen was politically motivated adding that the law should be allowed to take its cause even as he warned against putting ethnic or religious motive to the arraignment. He said the trial is part of the war against corruption declared by the President Buhari government.
“We have also noticed the very dangerous attempt to designate the CJN’s arraignment along ethnic and religious lines thereby trying to heat up the polity by evoking primordial sentiment which would do the country no good. This is an ungodly ploy when we consider that the CJN was an officer of the federation rather than that of any region,” he said.
As the trial of the CJN as well as Atiku’s visit dominate discourse, the coming days will surely be intriguing as the ruling party APC and the main opposition PDP battle to ‘capture’ the Presidency.
