Why OBJ Quit PDP Job

Waning influence, not a desire to devote more time to international commitments, made former President Olusegun Obasanjo resign his position as Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees

Olusegun Obasanjo

Did he jump before he was pushed? Perhaps, not exactly. All along though, there had been signs that former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s influence in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was being nibbled at. For a man of his pride – and stature, as Chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees – that must have been difficult to take.

On 3 April, the former president decided he had had enough of the diminution in status. This, to the surprise of the general public, was expressed in his desire to resign his position as Chairman of the PDP BoT.

The resignation announcement came via a remarkably short statement Obasanjo issued. In it, the former president said he had formally informed the PDP National Chairman, as prescribed by the party’s constitution, of his intention to quit, as well as formally requesting President Goodluck Jonathan to allow him do so and to issue a short statement to that effect.

For the reasons, Obasanjo said: “By relieving myself of the responsibility for chairmanship of BoT of the PDP, I will have a bit more time to devote to the international demand on me” as well as “give some attention to mentoring across the board nationally and internationally in those areas that I have acquired some experience, expertise and in which I have something to share.” Obasanjo also claimed that his resignation will afford him more time to mobilise and encourage investment in Nigeria and Africa. There is also the not-so-small matter of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, in which he claimed he wants to invest more attention.

Party members described the resignation as a shock. After a visit to Obasanjo in Abeokuta by members of the South-West caucus of the party, Engr. Segun Oni, PDP National Vice Chairman (South-West), said Obasanjo’s exit was a surprise. He, however, said the former president set a good example for leaders who would rather die in office than quit.

Oni claimed that Obasanjo relinquished power without any pressure from anywhere.

The BoT Secretary, Senator Walid Jibril, also said that the board was surprised.

But the reasons given by Obasanjo, said sources, are merely technical ones. There are actual reasons. These revolve around his diminishing influence, which sources attribute to other centres of influence in the party and around President Jonathan. Notable among these, said sources, are Chief Tony Anenih, Obasanjo’s predecessor as BoT Chairman; Chief Anyim Pius Anyim, Secretary to the Government of the Federation; and Lt. General (retd.) Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, who headed the Presidential Advisory Committee set up by Jonathan when he became acting president. Each of these personalities bear grudges against Obasanjo and have fought, with the support of like-minded individuals and groups, to curb his influence on the President and the party.

Anenih and Obasanjo have not been a mutual admiration society since 2007, when the former’s tenure elongation plot was botched by the National Assembly. To get a prominent post-office role in the affairs of the party and government, Obasanjo, before leaving office, engineered an amendment of the PDP constitution.

The amended constitution exclusively reserved the chairmanship of the BoT for former presidents and vice-presidents. It also made the BoT the highest decision-making body of the party.

Less than a month after leaving office, the former president was the Chairman, PDP BoT. In a move that bore the imprimatur of the Sicilian Mafia – and to Anenih’s considerable chagrin – Obasanjo shoved his predecessor out of office.

On the day, Anenih, as BoT chairman, had fixed the meeting of the board for 8p.m. But the time of the meeting, which held at the Kano Hall of Abuja’s Transcorp Hilton Hotel, was changed without his consent to 10a.m. The meeting, which predictably produced Obasanjo as Anenih’s replacement, started at 12.30p.m. and ended at about 3p.m.

It was the first time in the party’s history that the BoT meeting would be held in the morning. Traditionally, they held at night. Though Anenih was absent at the meeting, his wife, Josephine, was present where the decision to replace her husband was taken.

Anenih, with some justification, seethed. Variously called “Leader” or “Mr. Fix It”, Anenih is an iconic figure in the party. And for an icon to have been conned and turfed out the way he was meant that his ego and profile took a hit. The episode naturally drove a wedge between him and Obasanjo, whose successful installation of the late Umar Yar’Adua as president and Jonathan as deputy, ensured that he had some credit in the bank with the party faithful. But he had none with Anenih and Danjuma, whom he appointed Minister of Defence during his first term in office.

In an interview with The Guardian early in 2008, Danjuma, who famously vowed to go on exile if Obasanjo lost the 1999 presidential election, spoke woundingly about the former president and his protege, Yar’Adua.

Obasanjo, Danjuma told The Guardian, did not fail in his tenure elongation bid. “Third term hasn’t failed; we are still in third term. Obasanjo is still in charge. Aremu of Ota is the de-facto ruler of this country, sitting in Ota and manipulating the government through Umaru (Yar’Adua),” he said.

He also accused Obasanjo of corruption and threatened to expose his alleged corrupt deeds, saying that such entitled him to a “second term” in prison. “We will expose the dirty details, which I have in my possession. We will make them public, to compel even Umaru to do something. Umaru Yar’Adua is a decent human being, but he is spineless,” he declared.

• Obasanjo and other party members at the PDP national convention in Abuja recently

Danjuma argued that Yar’Adua’s government was hobbled by election petitions, but would still have been so even if he did not have the baggage of such petitions. “Umaru started well by making all the right noises – rule of law, due process, electoral reform, bla, bla, bla. And he appears to be on the right track. But if you are on the right track and you are moving but don’t move fast, you will be overrun.

“Right now, we are standing still and the handlers of Yar’Adua tell us that it is because of the court case; that after the court case, he’ll start performing. I doubt it. Even if Umaru has no case, for as long as Aremu of Ota is allowed to control the party and to manipulate things, so long will the standstill continue,” he searingly said.

Exactly what sparked the rush of bad blood remains unknown. Signs of deterioration in their relationship started manifesting towards the end of Obasanjo’s first term in 2003. Shortly after quitting the government, Danjuma claimed he was frustrated out of office by a clique. Things got tetchier when the Obasanjo administration revoked an Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 246 earlier awarded to his South-Atlantic Petroleum Limited, SAPETRO, which sat astride an area of 2,590km2.

A very sore Danjuma went to court to stop the government’s action, but failed. That blow to his financial empire was widely thought to have been responsible for Danjuma’s undisguised opposition to Obasanjo’s third term bid and the subsequent profusion of expletives contained in the interview with The Guardian.

When Danjuma celebrated his 70th birthday in 2008, he said, to the astonishment of journalists, that he did not invite Obasanjo and he could not predict his reaction if the former president had turned up uninvited. “I did not invite him and I don’t know what I would have done if he came uninvited. I would have called the police to throw him out,” he ranted.

Given the toxic relationship between the two men, Danjuma’s appointment as Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee in 2010, sources maintained, did not sit well with Obasanjo, a major factor in getting Jonathan to stay within a breath away from the presidency and eventually, the ultimate prize.

Jonathan’s search for a candidate for the chairmanship of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, led to a contest of influence between the Danjuma-headed committee and Obasanjo. While the former president wanted Mr. Buhari Bello, a lawyer with the National Human Rights Commission, PAC plumped for former Chief Justice of the Federation, Alfa Belgore. Neither side had its way, as Jonathan picked Professor Attahiru Jega, a radical university teacher.

Understandably too, Anyim is not fond of the former president. His time as Senate President (2000-2003) almost ended in impeachment, when Arthur Nzeribe, on the prompting of Obasanjo, was the arrowhead of an impeachment bid against Anyim. In 2002, the former Senate President had himself introduced a motion to impeach Obasanjo, who had recruited the quixotic Nzeribe to help thwart the bid.

Nzeribe paid for his action with an indefinite suspension. Anyim kept his seat till 2003. Perhaps suspecting that Obasanjo would use his presidential muscle against him, he decided against seeking re-election. Anyim blamed the failure of his relationship with Obasanjo on his opposition to the former president’s desire for an additional term in office. In an interview, he said he became estranged from Obasanjo when “they were test-running the plan for third term in office for the president.”

Anyim said the failed bid, which Obasanjo still denies – unconvincingly – was in stages. “One of the stages was to clean up the National Assembly and remove everybody that was independent-minded, which was done in 2003. The other stage was to take over the party, which was effectively done.

“Another stage was to destabilise the leadership of the ethnic groups. It was effectively done. Another stage was to cow the governors, to intimidate them. This too, was effectively done. At every stage, you may not know that this was the plan. Some would simply fall victims and others thought that things were taking a natural course, without knowing that there were underlying currents. So, people were whipped into line,” he said.

Sources close to Obasanjo said he had informed Jonathan of his plan to quit as BoT Chairman last October, but the President severally pleaded that he should not do so. But there were reasons for him to do exactly that, sources maintained. Aside from the hostility from these foes, the President was said not to have picked his nominees from the South-West geo-political zone as ministers. A source close to him said representatives of Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Osun and Ekiti in the federal cabinet were picked without recourse to him.

“He did not oppose the President’s choices, but was not happy that he had been overlooked in a zone where he is the biggest factor,” a source told TheNEWS

Another source said Obasanjo was also disappointed that Iyabo, his daughter who lost her bid to return to the Senate, was not made the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. However, another source denied this, saying that line was being peddled to smear the former president. “If you know him, he is not a man to do that. It took the daughter a whole year to get his nod for her to contest for a senatorial seat. In fact, the closer you are to him, the more difficult it is to get him to do this type of thing for you. Sometimes, I think it is sadism that makes him behave that way,” explained the source, who added that Obasanjo’s influence was also chiselled at by prominent figures from the Niger Delta who encouraged Jonathan to imbue the presidency with its character, not Obasanjo’s.

For now, the quest to replace Obasanjo has provoked a scramble among the geo-political zones.

Party sources said the South-West geo-political zone is working on assumption that the position has been conceded to it. But the South-East and North Central are also staking claims.

Names like Senator Ahmadu Ali, former PDP National Chairman; Senators Adolphus Wabara and Ken Nnamani, both former Senate Presidents; Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, former Chief of General Staff; and even Anenih are thought to be interested in the position. Wabara is also an Obasanjo adversary. He was forced to resign as Senate President in 2005, following the outbreak of a bribery scandal for which Obasanjo made a national broadcast.

Those opposed to the retention of the position by the South-West point to the party’s amended constitution. Amended in 2009, the PDP constitution currently prescribes that the BoT shall have the power to elect its chairman and secretary, who will also be members of the National Executive Committee. Prior to the amendment, only former presidents and vice-presidents were eligible.