illusion that the three others would support an Atiku take-over so that Babangida could get Atiku to
bury himself without having to make any effort at it.
Meanwhile, Atiku had been meeting with a second group of politicians, 17 governors from the ruling
People’s Democratic Party, who all wanted him to be the next president, in return for assurances of a
second term for themselves. These governors were very powerful because they controlled the
selection of voting delegates to the party’s national convention, which then determines the
presidential nomination. So when he called Nduka, Usman and I together, he wanted our opinion on
this because he knew that three of us were not only well informed but were likely to give frank
advice. Usman Bugaje said, “Sir, I think you should go for it. I think Obasanjo is a disaster and you
should just go for it, and with 17 governors on your side we would have a fighting chance.”
Nduka Obaigbena was more careful. He felt that the support of the governors was vital but asked,
“Excellency, do you believe Babangida would not want to run for president and let you run
first?”
“Well Babangida said he would not want to run against his boss and in any case
since I am a sitting vice-president, they think it is only fair that I go for it now,” replied Atiku.
Atiku asked me what I thought and I said,
“Quite honestly, this is not an area that I have a lot of competence in, but it does not sound
right to me, just gut instinct.”
We debated it at length and at the end, Nduka made a very brilliant suggestion.
“Look, we need to know if this is all for real,” Nduka said. “So we should assume governors
are on board. However, we should not listen to what Babangida says, but make him walk the
talk.”
'Walking the talk' meant the following: Nduka suggested that Atiku go back to the G4 and tell them that
he had done some consultations within Nigeria and it was positive so far, but that he needed to now
undertake international consultations. So Atiku should tell them that he was sending Nasir to the US,
because of my contacts within the US government and in Washington – friends in the US Congress and
the Clinton Administration, the World Bank and the IMF – and that Usman was being sent to the UK
because Usman did part of his Ph.D research at the School of African and Oriental Studies and had
some good contacts in the UK parliament, and a few people in the British media as well. Atiku should
say that he did not have good contacts in Germany and France. Babangida had very good friends in
Germany and France – he knew Presidents Mitterrand and Chirac, and former German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl, as well as senior management from some of the major construction companies in those
countries - Bilfinger & Berger (Julius Berger in Nigeria), Fougerolle and Bouygues, in addition to
rumoured connections with major financial institutions like BNP in France.
So Nduka essentially suggested that Atiku should pass the buck back to G4 and IBB. He should ask
IBB to arrange for Atiku to visit President Chirac, former Chancellor Kohl and incumbent Gerhard
Schroeder to discuss this planned challenge, to get their take on whether it made sense for Atiku to
contest the presidency against Obasanjo while Nasir and Usman took care of the same issues at lower
levels in the US and the UK respectively.
“If Babangida arranges the appointments for you, then you know it is serious, and he is not
leading you on.” said Nduka. “If he refuses to take your calls from that day on, then you know
it was a set-up all along and you better just go to Obasanjo and explain everything.”
It was very sound advice. We all agreed to move forward on this front. I was immediately instructed
to purchase a ticket to go to Washington to start this consultative process and Usman was to go to
London. We never got to the point of having those consultative meetings abroad because before they
even took place, Babangida had already failed the Nduka test.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked Atiku.
“Well, from the very first time they invited me to these meetings, I told Obasanjo about it and
asked him what he thought they wanted to discuss. Obasanjo had no idea but said, ‘go and
discuss with them and brief me after the meeting.’”
“And have you been briefing him fully?”
“Yes, but not including every little detail.”
“I think you better go and come clean.”
“No, I still think that he should go for it,” interjected Usman Bugaje.
Dr. Usman Bugaje, Atiku’s political adviser, was pushing for it because he truly believed that
Nigerians at the time were fed up with Obasanjo. He worked with Atiku day to day, while Nduka and
I only saw Atiku once in a while, so he had greater capacity to influence him. I think that Usman was
probably right in the sense that Atiku could have pulled it off, as he had the bulk of the PDP
governors. In the end, I learnt that Atiku had to reconsider because he could not get the broad support
of the northern political elite. I was made to understand that Adamu Ciroma, Mallam Liman Ciroma,
Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Alhaji Isyaku Ibrahim and Etsu Nupe, Umaru Sanda Ndayako, on behalf of the
various political tendencies in the North, signaled to Atiku that the North had largely agreed to
support a southern president in 1998. Since he was not constitutionally barred from running again,
unless Obasanjo decided not to run, they would not go back on their word and support any northerner.
The reference to Obasanjo’s position in 1999 that he would run for only one term ‘to stabilize the
country’ was not helpful in convincing the northern political leaders.
The Only Currency in Politics
This essential argument was that a deal was made to zone the presidency to the South. In our country,
geography is destiny. Zoning is a political philosophy that has saturated every sphere of our national
life, and has become insidious and destructive. I personally think zoning as the overriding
consideration in identifying leaders is nonsense, for reasons that I have stated publicly several times.
While accepting that zoning as a policy of inclusion has contributed to stabilizing our fragile nation,
giving everyone a sense of belonging, it has on balance not served the nation well. It has been
stretched to such unreasonable extents that qualifications, experience and merit have taken back seats.
The perverse application of zoning and federal character principles has unleashed the exact opposite
of the competitive forces that would throw up the best people to lead our nation. It has led to
compromises that ensured the primacy of mediocrity, rewarding the worst prepared or the least
threatening, and not the most competent, for leadership at all levels.
Despite my misgivings, however, an agreement is an agreement in politics and in life, and one should
not be capricious about breaking it. If necessary, one should negotiate one’s way out of it – but until
then, a bargain is a bargain, to paraphrase the old TV drama, Village Headmaster. Many northern
politicians understand that the currency of politics is keeping to verbal, even if legally unenforceable
agreements, because politicians always sit and agree all kinds of deals and arrangements. A
successful politician keeps his word, no matter how inconvenient. That is the only currency in politics
> – keeping one's word.
Though Atiku was a northerner and, at that point in 2002 could possibly have taken the nomination of
the PDP, many of the political leaders in the north, the religious leaders, and traditional rulers,
essentially said to him, “You can’t do this.” The message was, “We agreed in 1998 to cede power to
the south. The constitution says Obasanjo can do two terms. Unless Obasanjo says he does not want a
second term, you cannot challenge him. That would be dishonourable.”
In any event, we told Atiku that it was best if he dropped the whole thing, go to Obasanjo, come clean
about what had transpired and declare that everything was now back on track. He nodded, but
subsequent steps he took indicated that he did not agree with that position. From that point on, we
never talked about the issue, but relations with Obasanjo got worse when Atiku got several
governors, led by Orji Uzor Kalu, Boni Haruna, Lucky Igbinedion, Joshua Dariye and James Ibori, to
suggest to Obasanjo that he should not run for a second term, mere weeks to the PDP national
convention. The political brinkmanship got so bad that Obasanjo had to visit Atiku's residence
unannounced to plead for Atiku’s support. Upon arriving at his deputy’s residence, he reportedly knelt
before Atiku and begged the vice president to remain onside, thus guaranteeing the support of the 17
PDP governors. In return, Obasanjo had to agree to retain Atiku as his running mate (he was rumoured
at the time to be considering an alternative.) The stakes were high enough for Obasanjo to swallow
his considerable pride and go to Atiku on bended knee..
Obasanjo had no problem going down on his knees to beg for what he thought was impossible to
obtain any other way. As president, he would threaten to kneel before his subordinates if that was
what it took to get them to do something they would otherwise be reluctant to do. At the back of his
mind, Obasanjo was no doubt saying, thinking of Atiku, ‘Okay, enjoy your temporary power. I am
going to be president again in a few months and I am going to get you.’ There is a Hausa saying
“Durkusa ma wada ba gajiya wa ba ne” and a corresponding Yoruba maxim to this effect which says:
k’á dòbálè fún aràrá, kò’pé ká dìde k’amá tun ga ju lo. (Prostrating before a midget does not make us
shorter than him when we rise up.)
And that was what happened. Obasanjo did whatever it took to get Atiku’s support, until he secured
the nomination, was declared winner of the 2003 presidential election, and set about politically
decapitating Atiku day by day, shortly after their second term started. Compounding this tension was
the fact that once their catholic marital vows were renewed, Obasanjo expected that the bulk of the
money for the re-election campaign would come from Atiku and friends. Atiku basically gave him
open palms and said, ‘What money?’ The money was gone – spent, according to Atiku, on oiling the
political machine, keeping the party activities going, stopping the National Assembly from
impeaching Obasanjo not once, but twice, and - this was not stated but alleged by the EFCC in 2006 -
acquiring material assets to enhance Atiku’s personal and political status. So when I, all of a sudden,
and unknowingly had a way of making Atiku’s life a bit more complicated by going public with the
Senate bribery scandal, Obasanjo was more than happy to be more than a reluctant bystander. He
relished every second of the embarrassing drama.
I think the missing money may have been the real tipping point. Even with Atiku’s treachery, if he had
provided the money supposedly raised for the elections, maybe they would have co-existed in
relative peace from 2003 to 2007. But when Obasanjo concludes that you have cheated him out of
even a penny, he never forgets, and tries to extract his pound of flesh. Unknown to us at the time, the
stage was set for a divided presidency in the second term. With General T Y Danjuma unwilling to be
the financial benefactor for the 2003 elections, Obasanjo had to resort to raising money from other
sources and that was how Aliko Dangote came into prominence in the government. From 1999 to
2003, nobody had heard of Dangote having anything to do with the federal government in any
significant way.
Indeed, when the BPE sold the federal government's equity stake in Benue Cement Company in 2000
and the transaction became mired in needless controversy, Obasanjo wanted it reversed, because at
that point, Aliko was closer to Atiku Abubakar than to him. In the BPE, we refused to cancel the
transaction because we were convinced that the objections raised by the Benue State government
were political and driven by blatant ethnic bigotry. The Benue State government preferred a foreigner
to a Nigerian citizen because of his birthplace or religion. We therefore quietly paid the proceeds of
sale to the treasury to make the sale reversal more difficult. About a year later, we sold Savannah
Sugar to Aliko as well, much to Obasanjo's discomfort at the time.
In 2003 and thereafter, Aliko Dangote became increasingly prominent in governmental circles
because, on the suggestion of the late Waziri Mohammed, Aliko allegedly financed Obasanjo’s 2003
re-election, nearly single-handedly and without any strings attached. He did it because his friend
Waziri said Obasanjo needed help and that was all it took.
So by the time we took office in July 2003 for the second term, Obasanjo took very clear, systematic
steps to demystify Atiku and make him a totally irrelevant and disempowered vice-president. My
encounter with the Senate over the bribery demand ahead of ministerial confirmation, amazingly and
inadvertently, wound up playing a small part in this effort.
Chapter Seven
The Economic Team -Key Players
Here is to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-
makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see
things differently.
They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-
quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify
them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things. They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change
the world, are the ones who do.
- Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple Computer
A cornerstone of President Obasanjo’s second term was creating an economic reform team that
brought together a number of cabinet and sub-cabinet staff to debate and coordinate economic policy
formulation and implementation. There were 12 economic team members but five stood out initially
as the prominent figures: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was appointed finance minister and, later,
foreign minister, following a stint as a vice-president and corporate secretary at the World Bank;
Nuhu Ribadu, the executive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission; Oby
Ezekwesili, who worked with the economist Jeff Sachs at Harvard University before taking charge as
presidential assistant on procurement reforms and later as minister of solid minerals and then minister
of education; Charles Chukwuma Soludo, an economist who started out as a member of several
privatization council committees, then chief economic adviser to the president and, finally
, Central
Bank governor. As minister of the Federal Capital Territory, I also was part of this team; the
government intended to use Abuja as the laboratory for testing and adjusting the nationwide economic
reforms being proposed. Other key but lesser known members were Steve Oronsaye (then principal
secretary to the President), Funsho Kupolokun, who ran the state energy company, the NNPC, Dr. Joe
Nnanna of the Central Bank, as well as the heads of the Debt Management Office, my former agency,
the BPE, the tax authority, and the budget office, led at the time by the accounting genius, Bode
Agusto.
The questions we asked at the outset of economic reform design were essentially: “What is wrong
with us as a country? Why do some countries do well, and others poorly? What 'good' policies,
programmes and attitudes differentiate the performing countries from the non-performers? What bad
policies, programmes and habits are prevalent in the poorly-performing economies? What can we do
as a country to leapfrog to the ranks of middle-income nations within the shortest possible time?”
After a lot of research, debates and reflection, we came up with what we identified as six country
conditions that successful developing nations had in common:
· Basic levels of political stability – a stable and legitimate government. This
stability and legitimacy need not necessarily be achieved through democratic means.
· Very strong protection of rights across the board; whether they are property
rights, human rights, contracts or any other.
· Consequences were predictable - there is ‘rule of law’ and a fair, affordable
and predictable legal system.
· Investment in human infrastructure - in education, healthcare and near equal
The Accidental Public Servant Page 26
