[size=14pt]Gusau’s next move[/size]
By Brian Ajayi Jatto
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 

For rather inexplicable reasons, a strident and sustained media campaign has been activated to undermine the overwhelming victory of President Goodluck Jonathan and the office of the National Security Adviser.
This scheme, with national and global focus, is calculated to rubbish and consequently erode the National Security Adviser’s wide power base and performance.

It is believed that the ultimate aim is to trigger the removal of General Andrew Owoye Azazi (retd.), the current occupant of the position of NSA and replace him with someone who had virtually “colonised” that position in three different administrations.

It is noteworthy that General Azazi is the only Southerner and Christian so far, to hold the position of National Security Adviser in either a military or civilian setting.

In addition to the ideals of the new campaign to relocate Lt. Gen. Gusau within Nigeria’s power matrix and position him for some covertly-noxious activities within the Presidency, the main objective is to oil the general’s obsession to be Nigeria’s leader in 2015 – and even, possibly, earlier.

To achieve this ‘not-to-strange’ objective, a frenetic campaign has started in earnest. The Friday, April 22, 2011 (Vol. XXIX No. 18) edition of Defence and Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, D&FASA, a publication of Global Information System/ISSA, painted a macabre picture of Nigeria as a rudderless, lawless and uncontrollable loose aggregation of mortally antagonistic peoples that can only be reined-in and saved from the precipice by one over-hyped “super-sleuth”.

The journal’s sponsored and skewed analysis of Nigeria under the elected presidency of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan even failed to mention the cases of innocent persons who were recently gruesomely murdered in some parts of northern Nigeria, even though they were never a part of the power equation in active terms. It did not also refer to the so-called Northern Political Leaders Forum’s face-saving but abortive deal with President Jonathan to corner “juicy” ministerial appointments like those of Works, Finance, Petroleum, Education, Health, Defence, Foreign Affairs etc, leaving the “trash” for Southerners.
In its report, D & FASA asserts that “Dr. Jonathan’s ambition - and that of his wife – drove him to override all objections to sustain his bid for the Presidency, but he will need to turn to at least one powerful and truly nationally-conscious figure to rebuild the presidency and the country. It is a man he mistreated, but now cannot do without. And if he attempts to do without him now, Nigeria will continue with its protests, its anarchy in the Niger Delta energy states, and its debilitating inefficiencies due to its skewed and corrupt political structure”.

The D&FASA report in its doomsday posturing goes further to postulate that “it is former National Security Adviser and one time Chief of Army Staff Aliyu Mohammed – often referred to as Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, because he was born in Gusau who must make PDP and the Nigerian system work again”
Now, the game plan. This view is further heightened by the groundswell of moves within the Northern power – seeking elite to sell the notion that the security breaches occasioned by the twin areas of challenges – the Jos creeping sectarian crises and the Boko Haram unending blood-letting can only be solved if General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (retd.) is returned as NSA – a position he voluntarily relinquished to pursue his obsessive quest for the presidency.

The insinuation in the extant report that he was “mistreated” by President Jonathan is spurious and misplaced since we all know that he resigned from certainty to uncertainty. It is also a well-known fact that these undertakers who masquerade as saviours are peeved because their individual or group interests are no longer served. They should off-load their new-fangled hocus-pocus of a Nigeria that will only survive if a certain Aliyu Gusau is recycled as NSA in a ‘fourth re-incarnation’ process.

[b]Perhaps there is the need to look into the antecedents and pedigree of General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau. He was the National Security Adviser under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo when the Odi and Zaki Biam massacres were perpetrated, largely due to the “security advice” given to the then President by the NSA before the Dogs of War were unleashed on the hapless people of the two areas. The Umuleri/Aguleri bloody internecine confrontation went full-blast and occasioned mass destruction of lives and property under Gusau’s famed “security stabilisation tactics”. The Jos crises bloomed and blossomed while the seeds of exploitation, marginalisation and oppression of the Niger Delta over the years by the northern hegemonistic class, represented by people like Gusau, germinated in the peoples’ agitation. Gusau, as the NSA, never proffered any workable solution until the coming of the late Umar Musa Yar’Adua Administration.

Gusau’s Scorched Earth Policy, in the resolution of the Niger Delta agitation, was a commentary on further oppression and repression. His fascist tactics exacerbated the situation and alienated the federal and state governments concerned, from finding a lasting solution. When viewed from the perspective of precise preparation, pin-point deployment of men and materials, mobility etc, most of the bombings, arson, killings and even the “spontaneous” reactions to the electoral victory of President Goodluck Jonathan, may not have been conceptualised, planned and funded solely by almajiris. The proliferation of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) – the assembly and deployment of which has become common place in the North, is a development that may have been spun by some masterminds out to score political points and gain thereof.[/b]

General Andrew Owoye Azazi retired as Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) after many years of meritorious service in the Nigerian Army. He was at different periods, the Director of Military Intelligence, Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, General Officer Commanding, First Division, Nigerian Army and Chief of Army Staff for a period longer than Gusau’s brief stint in the same position.

This brings us to the issue of stability in the polity. On the issue of Gusau being the “key to the stability of the government, then, is likely to remain in the hands of Aliyu Mohammed (Gusau)” and the veiled threat that “If it emerged that President Jonathan reneged on his promise to allow General Mohammed (Gusau) control over a number of Nigerian ministries, then the government would lose substantial credibility with the major powers from Russia, to the US, the PRC (Peoples republic of China) and EU”, is to say the least an exercise in overrating the retired general as a prime stabilizing factor in Nigerian politics. Nothing is farther from the realities on the ground.

This self-serving campaign by sponsored apologists that the continued stability of the country’s political system and establishment rest on Gusau reclaiming his political inheritance of NSA, is palpable hallucination. The signature tune now is hinged on verifiable performance not time-worn primordial sentiments that the oppressive elite has used to suppress the masses of the people over the decades. This is obviously a power hangover.

In retrospect, for a well-known power-monger and former military super-spy, Gusau’s two cameo appearances on the presidential aspiration circuit (2007 and 2011) has largely helped to evaporate the myth and undue hype built around him as a modern-day Sherlock Holmes who is at home with the dynamics of power and the strategic deployment of Machiavellian tactics to achieve set goals. After the drubbing he received from the former Customsman, Atiku Abubakar, in the NPLF shadow contest for the “northern” presidential consensus candidate (or aspirant), the tag of a cold and calculated Gusau, whose antecedents and pedigree are often shrouded in mystery, was reduced to nothingness.
Perhaps, it is this bruised ego that Gusau and his sponsored apologists are desperately trying to gather together, patch, repackage, launder and re-project as the only solution to Nigeria’s myriad of problems.

It is time to say that this present agenda that powers the messianic toga that the authors of the spurious D&FASA report places on the 68-years old shoulders of Gusau that he subsumed his ambition for the cohesion and survival of the Peoples Democratic Party after the presidential primaries is, inherently, not true. The truth (as every Nigerian knows) is that he was already shunted out of contention before the party’s primaries by Atiku Abubakar in the NPLF pseudo-primaries. With his much-touted “security correctness”, Gusau could not deploy those attributes to place himself in line for the country’s numero uno position.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the Defence and Foreign Affairs Special Analysis (D&FASA) report under review, concludes its voodoo white-washing of the Gusau persona with a prediction that did not come to pass and a recommendation that will never come to pass. The author(s) insists that: “There is still one more piece in the election drama: the forthcoming state gubernatorial elections (held on Tuesday, April 26, 2011). These will also unleash a period of further violence, before the national healing can begin, if it is to begin. But in the end, the situation will remain entirely unstable unless Aliyu Mohammed (Gusau) is invited – and is prepared – to once again drag Nigeria back from the brink”. What a Nigerian version of Superman or Nostradamus? Certainly, there is a level at which we should extract fabulous praise-singing and grandiose delusion from our body politic if we must move forward as a serious nation determined to make a mark in the world’s political arena.

By BRIAN AJAYI JATTO
A Political Commentator lives in Kubwa, FCT

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/opinion/2011/may/10/opinion-10-05-2011-001.htm