Since returning her critically ill husband to
the country in the dead of the night
yesterday, Turai Yar’Adua has in the last
twenty-four hours effectively seized control
of the apparatus of government, shoving
aside Goodluck Jonathan and unilaterally
causing a reversal of the decision by the
National Assembly to name him Acting
President.
She has a combination of factors working
to her advantage: on the one hand, her
husband is back in the country and
expected to resume Presidential functions;
on the other, the state of his health renders
him incapable of exercising any presidential
authority, automatically creating a vacuum
for a proxy.
This bizarre scenario is what Mrs. Yar’Adua
is exploiting, with urgency and precision.
Yesterday, she instigated a series of
puzzling actions, aimed at curtailing the
movement and powers of the Acting
President.
These include the deployment of two
members of the brigade of guards to
barricade the “presidential seat”, allegedly
to prevent Mr. Jonathan from sitting on it to
preside over the meeting of the Executive
Council of the Federation; and the early
afternoon ransacking of Mr. Jonathan’s
office by personnel of the State Security
Service (SSS).
Not long after that action, the President’s
spokesperson, Segun Adeniyi issued a
statement announcing that, “while the
President completes his recuperation, Vice
President Jonathan will continue to oversee
the affairs of state.” There is however no
evidence that the Acting President is in any
position to oversee Nigeria’s affairs, as he
spent most of Wednesday holed up in his
office or home, as ignorant as the rest of
the country about happenings in the
corridors of power. In the vacuum, the First
Lady is in absolute control, not only of the
affairs of state, but also of access to the
President.
Acting in the dark
Over 20 hours after arriving in the country,
no public official has yet seen Mr. Yar’Adua,
NEXT findings reveal. It emerged yesterday
that even Mr Jonathan, has not seen or
spoken to Mr Yar’Adua since he returned to
the country. A highly placed source in Aso
Rock revealed this Wednesday, adding that
a political stalemate is in the offing between
the two men.
The source confirmed that the Mr. Jonathan
was completely unaware of the president’s
homecoming until just a few hours before
his plane landed in Abuja. In addition, all the
security and army personnel that were
dispatched to the airport did not receive
their orders from the Acting President’s
office.
Two army units, the 4th battalion and
Guards brigade, were deployed to secure
the road leading to the airport and escort
the presidential convoy back to Aso Rock.
According to our source, “300 carefully
selected officers were secretly deployed
and conveyed in 25 vehicles for the
operation. Even the weapons were released
to them at night.” The directive for this
deployment was not issued by the Acting
President who is also the present
commander in chief of the armed forces of
Nigeria. This caused a little pandemonium
among the ruling class who wondered who
deployed the men.
“The Acting President did not give orders
for the deployment of the troops and
neither were we consulted on such.
So we all wondered if the army was just
acting on its own. Maybe it was the Chief of
Defense Staff, or the Chief of Army staff or
the National Security Adviser who deployed
them; you know they all never liked Mr.
Jonathan. We don’t know even up till now,”
our source stated.
A President held hostage
The list of persons who are being denied
access to the President by the First Lady is
growing.
Apart from the Acting President, none of the
Ministers or Presidential aides has seen or
spoken to Mr. Yar’Adua. Not even Segun
Adeniyi, Mr. Yar’Adua’s senior special
assistant on media and communications,
who issued a press statement on behalf of
the President has seen or directly heard
from him, NEXT findings reveal.
The Chairman of the Governors’ Forum,
Bukola Saraki, and the Chairman of the
ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP),
Vincent Ogbulafor, have also been
unsuccessful in their attempts to see Mr.
Yar’Adua.
“They are preventing everyone from seeing
him. None of us, except his wife and his
security aides have seen him since his
arrival. Right from the airport, they hid him
from everybody. The Vice President even
tried to go see him yesterday, but was
disallowed by Turai,” a senior government
official stated.
At the moment, no one outside the tiny
inner circle has any details about the
current state of the President’s health. A
widely-quoted NEXT exclusive story in
January reported that he was “seriously
brain damaged.” Our investigations
continue to point to a man who remains
incapacitated and clearly unable to function
as President, contrary to Mr. Adeniyi’s
statement that the President had been
“discharged” by his Saudi doctors.
We have it on reliable authority that since
the President’s arrival in the country on
Wednesday, his critical condition has
necessitated his continued stay in the Ford
E-250 intensive care ambulance that picked
him at the Abuja airport. He is expected to
be in the ambulance until the intensive care
unit that will receive him is retrieved by
Julius Berger from Katsina and re-installed in
House 7 within the grounds of the
Presidential Villa.
Sources also said that the President was
carried on a stretcher aboard the ambulance
that airlifted him into the country. The
arrival of the President in the early hours of
Wednesday was engineered to take place in
utmost secrecy. Just before midnight on
Tuesday, the military units sealed off the
presidential wing of the airport and
cordoned off the area, ordering all airport
staff to move to the international wing. The
airport was sealed off from journalists and
other visitors who had begun to gather at
the presidential wing.
The air ambulance conveying the President
landed at 1.45am in a remote section of the
Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport
runway. Tarmac floodlights were also
dimmed, heightening the covertness of the
operation.
Sinking deeper into confusion
A brief private meeting between Mr.
Jonathan and the ministers held in place of
the customary Wednesday Executive
Council meetings, which Mr. Jonathan has
consistently chaired in the absence of Mr.
Yar’Adua. The meeting, which traditionally
starts at 10.00am, was postponed by Mr.
Jonathan as soon as news of the President’s
arrival broke.
The Ministers were duly notified.
A minister confirmed that the instruction to
postpone the council meeting came from
Jonathan.
“I received a call at about 8.30 from his
secretary saying that our meeting would be
postponed,” the minister said. “I was asked
to come directly to the conference room by
2 (o’clock) where they would explain why
the meeting did not hold.” The minister
went on to say that many of his colleagues
did not know about the arrival of the
President until Wednesday morning. “Some
of us were hearing it from you people in
the media as of this morning,” the minister
said. “As for me I have not spoken to him
since he left and that remains so.” The
failure of the meeting to hold is just one of
the many manifestations of the deepening
confusion that has plagued the country
since news first broke on Tuesday evening
of Mr. Yar’Adua’s return.
At the end of the meeting, the Minister of
Information, Dora Akunyili announced that
the Mr. Jonathan would be meeting with Mrs
Yar’Adua on yesterday evening. Even
though a source said the meeting was not
at Mrs Yar’Adua’s behest, but an attempt to
stave off a constitutional crisis, the fact that
it is taking place at all is yet another pointer
to the significant role that the President’s
wife will be playing in the current power
configuration.
It remains unclear what the agenda of the
meeting will be, but a source insisted that
the ongoing political stalemate cannot be
dispelled until the Acting President meets
with the President. “Until the Acting
President receives a secure directive from
the President, the executive council cannot
fulfil its duties,” the source said.
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/News/National/5531732-146/turai_takes_charge___.csp

A security source in Abuja told
Saharareporters that the sudden and
sneaky return of Umaru Yar ’Adua to Nigeria
in the early hours of this morning was
“ Turai’s attempt at a coup d’etat.” Our
investigations reveal that the latest dramatic
twist in the Yar ’Adua saga was long in
coming. Saharareporters had reported
persistently that Turai Yar ’Adua and her
husband’s core political associates and so-
called “kitchen cabinet” were afraid of
permanently losing power, and the longer
Yar ’Adua remained sick, the more obvious
that reality became.
The key plotters of Yar’Adua’s audacious
midnight “return” to Abuja, as earlier
reported by Saharareporters, are Hajia
Turai; James Ibori, the former Delta State
Governor; Tanimu Kurfi, Yar ’Adua’s Chief
Economic Adviser; Adamu Aliero, the
Minister for the Federal Capital Territory;
and Gen. Sarki Mukhtar (rtd), the National
Security Adviser.
The kitchen cabinet ’s plot to bring in a still
bed-ridden Yar’Adua was dictated by their
desire to salvage several of their big
economic deals they felt would be
threatened by “Acting President” Goodluck
Joanthan. Tanimu Kurfi and his team are in
the thick of plans to award oil block
allocations to the Chinese government and
to sign a huge gas deal with Russia. Turai
and members of the kitchen cabinet stand
to receive lucrative pay-offs from the two
deals. But they feared that the deals might
collapse after Jonathan indicated he wanted
to stop work on oil allocation deals.
While Yar ’adua was away in a Jeddah
hospital, the hawks around him succeeded
in forging his “signature” on a
supplementary Appropriation Bill and also
succeeded in pushing through oil-lifting
contracts in December 2009. But they
feared that, without Yar ’Adua’s presence in
Nigeria, their other deals in the pipeline
could be thwarted.
Although Yar ’adua’s return was facilitated
by members of the kitchen cabinet, facts
are now emerging as to how the Chief of
Army Staff (COAS), Lieutenant General
Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau, was co-opted
into the deal. Our sources indicate that
Dambazau last night ordered the
deployment of two battalions in Abuja
without clearing with Jonathan, the acting
president. A diplomatic source from an EU
nation told Saharareporters, “The ability of
the army chief to move troops without the
knowledge or approval of the acting
president raises serious security questions.”
Our sources indicated that Dambazau is
deeply implicated in improper financial
deals that made it easy for the Yar ’adua
hawks to enlist him in their plans. According
to a petition shown to Saharareporters, the
COAS, through the Ministry of Defense, had
awarded “peacekeeping” contracts worth
N9 billion to fictitious companies reportedly
owned by James Ibori, an Israeli arms
supplier, Alon Neiken (the owner of
Megaplaza in Lagos) and Dambazau. Sources
told Saharareporters that Dambazau has a
stake in four of the companies that received
the jumbo “peacekeeping” contracts. The
companies involved in the scandalous
contracts are HIS Nigeria, Nurit International,
Yommy Logistics, Mass International,
Arsenal International and M-2 International,
were reportedly involved in the scandalous
contract.
Yar’Adua’s core loyalists from the office of
the National Security Agency confronted
Dambazau with the petition, which had
been submitted to the EFCC and copied to
the NSA last Monday. “The team basically
blackmailed Dambazau with their
knowledge of the peacekeeping contracts,”
said a source. Dambazau, a Lieutenant
General in the Nigerian Army, reportedly
objected to earlier calls to take over power
and fought back initially. But he soon gave
in and started taking orders from Yar ’Adua’s
ADC, Mustapha Onoedieva, an army infantry
colonel, to deploy troops without question.
We have determined that, in addition to
Goodluck Jonathan, neither the Director
General of State Security Services nor the
Inspector-General of Police knew what was
going on.
Since Yar ’Adua’s return to Nigeria this
morning, members of the kitchen cabinet
have engaged in several maneuvers to
move their agenda forward. Part of their
gambit was a plan to dissolve the cabinet
today. “That plan was shelved because they
knew it would be impossible without
Yar ’Adua putting up a physical appearance
to explain himself to the nation or approach
the Nigerian Senate to approve a list of new
ministers, ” said a source aware of the
moves.
Saharareporters had reported that
Yar ’Adua’s return would mean his “going to
sleep” upon arrival while his minions figure
out what to do about him. That situation
has not necessarily changed, given all the
trouble Team Turai has taken to ensure
nobody sees the feeble, bed-bound
Yar ’adua in the foreseeable future – if
anyone ever does. The residence where
Yar ’adua lies comatose has been medically
fortified and secured by Nigerian soldiers
and access is highly restricted. Our sources
said several medical doctors imported from
Saudi Arabia would manage Yar ’adua’s so-
called “recuperation”. There is no timeline
for how long this would last, but several
sources told us that it would be as long as
the associates can get away with holding
the farce in place. “They have enough cash
to buy noisy legislators and will also be
using threats of assassinations to silence
those who speak out for Yar ’adua’s
impeachment,” said one of the sources.
Meanwhile, Saharareporters has learned that
the sudden return of Yar ’Adua was as a
result of the decision of the Saudi
authorities to minimize the diplomatic
pressure that his indefinite stay in the
Kingdom was inflicting on them.
Also, Yar ’Adua’s wife chose to move him out
of Jeddah yesterday because some of the
Ministers visiting the kingdom were
insisting on seeing him, going through the
Saudi government.
Sources in Abuja and Saudi Arabia told
Saharareporters that Turai had contacted
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ojo
Maduekwe, and persuaded him to delay the
trip and to re-route the six-ministers to
Riyadh first. This delay enabled her to move
quickly to evacuate her still gravely sick
husband out of Jeddah, the sources said.
Maduekwe’s bizarre change of plan and his
puzzling statement that the cabinet team
was not on a medical mission was a script
handed to him by Turai, said our sources.
Maduekwe ’s changed itinerary was
contrary to the original plan of the Federal
Executive Council for the six-man team first
to visit Yar ’Adua in Jeddah, and then make a
“Thank You” visit to the King of Saudi
Arabia before returning home. Playing his
part in Turai ’s script, Maduekwe connived
with aviation officials at the Presidency to
delay the trip by one day. By the next day
and to the utter shock of the other cabinet
ministers who took the decision to send the
team to Saudi Arabia, Maduekwe had
unilaterally changed both the mission of the
team and its itinerary.
Meanwhile, the time Maduekwe had bought
for Team Turai was being taken advantage
of. Thus, by the time the FEC delegation
arrived in Saudi Arabia, Turai had succeeded
in packaging Yar ’Adua into an air
ambulance and left for Abuja. The Ministers
— besides Maduekwe—were shocked, and
found themselves scampering back to
Nigeria early this morning.
Yar ’Adua’s arrival was a dramatic display of
desperation and power-grab by his wife
and 10 other acolytes who have vowed
never to allow Goodluck Jonathan to be
President even for one day. Their plan is to
use Yar ’Adua’s “presence” as a trump card
to ensure that Jonathan’s tenure does not
gain any traction, and it has not escaped
Nigerians that this morning ’s statement by
the presidency did not once refer to
Jonathan in his acting capacity. An e-mail
heralding Yar ’Adua’s return, which was sent
by Turai and partly written in Hausa to his
foot soldiers, shows that she was having
difficulties reaching some of them. This is
probably because she had announced to
them that her ticket to power and privilege,
Yar ’Adua, would be back in 10 days, but she
was six days early.
Several sources in Abuja have told
Saharareporters that the game has changed
and that Turai ’s next maneuver is to fully
take charge of the government. That
situation seems confirmed by Jonathan’s
announcement that he would meet with her
this evening. Our sources also say that she
is on a mission of vengeance and her co-
kitchen cabinet members are no longer
hiding their confidence and pre-eminence.
And to demonstrate their confidence, the
former Attorney General of the Federation,
Michael Aondoakaa, is expected back in
Abuja today or tomorrow from self-exile,
according to a source in the government.
Saharareporters heard from several sources
who noted that tension was high amongst
government ministers as rumors circulated
that their replacement would occur in a
matter of weeks if not days.
Meanwhile, no one has seen or heard from
Yar ’Adua officially since his secretive return
early this morning except the snippet of
controlled information passed on to
diplomats claiming that Yar ’Adua was only
resting because of the long flight and
another group claiming that they saw him
walk into the ambulance or descend from
the air ambulance by himself.
The National Assembly is keeping mum as to
how to interpret Yar ’Adua’s return in view
of their resolutions installing Jonathan as
Acting President. But a highly-placed
lawmaker told Saharareporters that
Yar ’adua’s return early today was to disrupt
the Wednesday FEC meeting that might have
declared him incapacitated if he had
remained absent.
Several diplomatic and government sources
told us that tensions remain high in Abuja,
especially among politicians and
government officials, with anxiety about
the prospects of a coup in the air. Some
opposition elements, including Muhammadu
Buhari (rtd) and former Vice President Atiku
Abubakar, were meeting in Lagos and Abuja
to assess the “uncertain and dangerous
developments,” in the words of a diplomat.
But an official of a militant group in the
Niger Delta told Saharareporters that a
military coup could be too expensive for
Nigeria. In separate interviews, the
spokesman of Niger Delta militants and the
leader of Ohaneze, an Igbo group, told
Saharareporters today that the notion of a
united Nigeria may die if the Yar ’adua camp
engineers a coup to hold on to power.

WHAT ARE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY MEMBERS DOING ?
CANT HE BE GIVEN AN ULTIMATUM TO ADDRESS THE NATION PUBLICLY OR GET IMPEACHED ?