Ethnic and religious sentiments are bound to frustrate plans to remove President Muhammadu Buhari from office, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe has inferred.
He spoke against the background of what he admitted as the ethnic considerations that overshadowed the only serious plot ever taken to remove a president of Nigeria from office during the first term of the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency in 2002.
Ogunlewe, an All Progressives Congress, APC chieftain in Lagos State spoke on Arise Television on Thursday where he, however, sharply contrasted with another APC chieftain, Mr Adegoke SAN who affirmed that the Muhammadu Buhari government has grossly failed in its basic responsibility of protecting lives and property in Nigeria.
While Senator Ogunlewe blamed members of the National Assembly for not stemming the spate of insecurity, Adegoke on his part put the blame squarely on Buhari, saying that he could not leave the head to blame the neck for not thinking.
Ogunlewe spoke from a background of experience. He was elected to the Senate in 1999 on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy, AD and was a close associate of the former and popular Lagos politician, Funso Williams.
Following the then Governor Boal Tinubu’s dominance of the party structure in Lagos towards the end of his first term, Ogunlewe and Williams exited the party to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Ogunlewe was appointed by President Olusegun Obasanjo as minister of works and became a thorn in the flesh of Governor Tinubu. He remained a chieftain of the PDP until just after the 2019 election when he defected to the APC.
Speaking against the background of the insecurity in the nation and the recent call by the minority elements in the Senate for Buhari to leave office, Ogunlewe in the interview smacked his former party stalwarts saying that their efforts would be in vain.
Speaking on the challenges involved in removing a president, he said the presiding officer, that is the Senate President or the Speaker would be pivotal to such a decision.
“The role and conviction of the presiding officer, the Senate President is very important. If he is not convinced that the process should go ahead, it is dead on arrival. So, he is the presiding officer and there is hardly anything anyone can do on the voice of the presiding officer.”
Noting the domineering influence of the Northern caucus and the ethnic flavours involved, he said:
“When it comes to impeachment and northern interest, it is a different kettle of fish entirely. They (northern caucus) would hold meetings at night and override you because they have the majority. So it is better for them to make the noise but my view is that it is just impossible.”.
Noting the ethnic factors that played out in the 2002 impeachment threat raised against Obasanjo in the Senate in 2000 and then more seriously in the House of Representatives, in September 2002.
Saturday Vanguard reports that the House of Representatives had prepared for the impeachment process by first appointing Hon. Farouk Lawan as the spokesman of the House who regaled the nation with several impeachable offences against Obasanjo.
Hon. Nduka Irabor, though seen at that time as part of the brain box of the House, had, however, called for caution from all sides saying that Obasanjo was like a Bull in a china shop who must be managed well in the interest of the nation.
Speaking of that plot against Obasanjo in the Senate, Ogunlewe said:
“It was externally motivated. Some power blocs wanted him out. We were only 19 AD Senators and the ANPP was also there. We were in a very bad minority and they held meetings at night and decided to impeach President Olusegun Obasanjo and they already had the numbers, the two-third majority to do so and they were in the process of consummating it on a Thursday morning and our leader, Senator Mojisola Akinfenwa called us together and asked “how do we save Olusegun Obasanjo, being from the Southwest of Nigeria and we said, ok, let’s abort the plan for Thursday and give us time before the next Tuesday and see how we could salvage the situation and that was what we did.
“Immediately that was done, we now sent an emissary to tell him the position of things and as bad as they were and that he should go and see the Emir of Kano where Na`abba (Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Naabba) came from and see all the traditional rulers in the Southeast where Senator Anyim Pius Anyim, (Senate President) came from so that they could douse the tension and call their people.
“The people in the National Assembly consult very well at home and that was what Obasanjo did and they had to contact those external people and that was why he was able to escape. But if not for the decision of the AD Caucus to inform him (Obasanjo) of the position of things he would have been impeached. But that is not what is happening now.”
Upon that claim, he affirmed that “the majority APC members will never allow an impeachment in the year of election.”
According to him the impeachment of Buhari irrespective of his guilt would be an indictment of the ruling APC which has the majority in the two chambers of the National Assembly.
Ogunlewe, remarkably, said that President Buhari had not committed any impeachable offence.
The former lawmaker even while admitting several security breaches and failures in governance, put the blame on the National Assembly.
According to him the legislators failed in their duties by apportioning more money for the military instead of the police. He said that the focus on the military is what has caused the insecurity in the land to fester.
“Things began to wobble when the National Assembly concentrated on the military at the expense of the police. It is the duty of the police to protect the citizens within the country but everybody shifted attention to the military, gave them more money including $1 billion at the expense of the police,” Ogunlewe submitted.
Adegoke, also an APC chief and leader, however, disagreed sharply with Ogunlewe, saying that the issues were beyond partisan politics. According to Adegoke, the Buhari led government has failed in its fundamental duty of securing lives.
“I am a member and leader of the APC in my own right and I do not think we should reduce everything to politics, we must speak the truth. If my children were the ones abducted, if my wife was the one being violated, if my family members were attacked and if I were the one daily being subjected to threats along the roads of Makurdi, Adamawa and different parts of the country, would I be comfortable to still give pass mark to somebody elected to guarantee my security and guarantee the security of my family?
“The fact that it has not affected us so much in Lagos does not mean that we should close our eyes to what is happening to other people in other parts of the country.
“If these were the things we condemned President Jonathan for and under our own party’s leadership we have not been able to achieve it, let us be honest to ourselves, whoever ought to have resigned should resign and get out office and let someone else do the work.
“We have our president jetting out of the country at every opportunity, sightseeing, moonlighting. I don’t think that is a proper government that we deserve in Nigeria or in any part of the world.”
The learned silk while urging Nigerians to put aside tribal sentiments in the consideration of the assessment and fitness of Buhari in office, said:
“We must be honest to ourselves, there is no nation, no group of people who will be satisfied with the kind of insecurity playing out in the nation today. However, we must realise that Nigeria is a funny country where all manners of primordial sentiments infiltrate into public discourse.
“We cannot rule out the influence of religious considerations becoming the cornerstone of some peoples thinking.”
Adegoke, however, surmised that the lawmakers would not assess Buhari without putting sentiments of tribe and religion into consideration.
“I do not believe that the majority of them do have the capacity to critically consider this issue from a detached point of view.”
In his opinion, the APC, chief, however, summarized Buhari as having failed saying he should take the fall.
“I do not think that it is right to put the blame at the door of the National Assembly in this instance. There is no way you leave the head and be blaming the neck for what is going wrong in the thinking process of a human being. I believe that the president has fallen below par, he has performed well.
“We elected Mr President in the belief that as a former general in the army, as someone who has led this country before that he had a solution to the insecurity problems we were having under President Jonathan. We all trooped out, I was among those who trooped out when students in Northern state of Borno were abducted and if today we are talking of this problem in a grosser dimension definitely it would be mischievous for me to join the group of people who would be giving Mr President pass mark and condemning someone else. The bulk stops at the president’s table.
“If there is a challenge confronting him, making it impossible for him to perform his duty, this ought to have been made known to Nigerians.
“No matter who voted for him or who did not vote for him, the fact that he emerged the first and the second time as president means that Nigerians invested their expectations, their hopes in his regime. And as at this moment if we are still talking of Boko Haram terrorists, bandits invading Abuja and knocking on the door of the president telling him we are coming to abduct you, definitely that government cannot be said to have done well, it is a failed government.”
