ABUJA—Former Minister of the
Federal capital Territory, Mallam Nasir
el-Rufai has said that former
President Olusegun Obasanjo was mortally afraid that late President
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua would arrest
him in spite of the fact that he
principally helped Yar’Adua to the
presidency. In his book, “The Accidental Public
Servant,” el-Rufai said that Yar’Adua’s
perceived willingness to arrest
Obasanjo ran counter to Obasanjo’s
motive for endorsing the Umaru
Yar’Adua/ Goodluck Jonathan presidency in 2007, which he
contended was with the hope that he
would be succeeded by the two men
whom he considered weak and would
do his biddings. The Yar’Adua/Jonathan ticket “There are those who say Obasanjo’s
revenge for his third term defeat was
intentionally picking two incompetent
people to be president and vice-
president, but I do not full agree with
that. I think Obasanjo picked them for a different reason. He thought they
were weak people he could control
and through whom he would continue
to exercise power. I think that he
thought Yar’Adua would be an
acceptable president, but would be weak and subservient to him in many
policy areas and would be consulting
him regularly so that Obasanjo might
be a Lee Kuan Yew sort of figure
exercising power from behind the
scenes.” According to el-Rufai, it was not long
in the administration of Yar’Adua
when it became very clear to the Otta
chicken farmer that Yar’Adua would
be his own man when the late
president revolted against him and reversed virtually everything he did. The former minister added that all
through the period late Yar’Adua was
in power, Chief Obasanjo lived in fear
of arrest as Yar’Adua was
investigating him and would have
promptly arrested him. El-Rufai said: “If I am just naïve and
the ticket that ended up succeeding
Obasanjo was meant to be a third
term revenge, it did not exactly work
out. Yar’Adua revolted against him,
reversed virtually everything he did and even began investigating him.
Obasanjo recently admitted to a close
friend of ours that throughout the
years Yar’Adua was in power, he was
constantly in fear of being arrested
because it was clear to him that at some point, Yar’Adua was after him. How Yar’Adua wanted to nail me Mallam el-Rufai alleged that late
Yar’Adua wanted to nail him at all
costs and that the Public Hearing on
land administration in the FCT under
him which was conducted by the
Senate was to find something to latch unto for that purpose. According to him, even though the
sale of houses yielded N96 billion, N64
billion was in the account because
some of the purchases were through
mortgage and the full values were yet
to be paid. Why I ejected late Justice Sambo The former Minister also justified the
ejection of former Chairman, Code of
Conduct Tribunal, late Justice Bashir
Sambo from his official residence in
2006, saying at that time the jurist
was an illegal tenant in the house. El-Rufai, however, dismissed
suggestion that the death of Justice
Sambo few months later was caused
by his forceful ejection from the
residence. According to him, “Perhaps the most
publicised controversy arising from the
sale of houses programme was the
ejection of Justice Bashir Sambo in
August 2006 from his official
residence located at 1, Aso Drive, Maitama District. At the time, the
carefully choreographed media war
led by the Daily Trust newspaper was
going on, I chose to maintain silence,
and just directed the Secretariat to
put out full-page adverts explaining what it had done and why. I thought
that was the end of it. “Sadly, less than a year later, Justice
Sambo who was former chairman of
Code of Conduct Tribunal, died on April
29, 2007 in a Cairo Hospital. He was 76
years old and had been ill for some
time. “For that reason, I decided never to
join issues with those who thought
that the ejection of the deceased
jurist was inappropriate and went as
far as suggesting that it was the cause
of his “premature” death. “I will simply tell my side of the story
on the sale of the house in question,
subsequent cancellation, and the
actions that followed naturally with
reference only to letters written by
Justice Sambo, himself and the other officials in the government. These exchanges of correspondence
culminated in my directive to the sales
secretariat on July 17, 2006 to eject
him immediately from the house in
question because he had by then
become an illegal tenant.”
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/2/obasanjo-lived-in-fear-of-arrest
under Yar’Adua –el-rufai/