ACN fires back, plans own counter-strategy

The CJN and AGF connection


As Nigeria’s two most powerful zones in the country – the North-West and the South-West emerge as the nation’s highest potential voting blocs, the President and his handlers are said to be devising counter-measures to penetrate the zones ahead of the decisive April presidential polls, Empowered Newswire reports.

Specifically the Jonathan/Sambo campaign has now released N2.9B to challenge the progress of ACN in the Southwest. Aware of this, the ACN is also fighting back considering its own counter-attack.

But it is on the president and his party that the greater searchlight is on based upon the usually corrupt incumbency advantage of the PDP in past elections. While the ACN on the other hand threw up controversial primaries within its own fold, the fear of its rise and the potential to fritter away the PDP’s chances is now said to be political wisdom at Legacy House, Abuja, base of the Jonathan/Sambo PDP presidential campaign.

Even though he is playing the ostrich and using “reconciliatory” tones in his recent public statements, informed political sources reveal that the president has ordered the release of N2.9 billion to specifically destabilize the “opposition zone” of southwestern Nigeria.

With the faltering campaign rally in Kaduna last week and the uncertainty of how Southwest will flow in April, President Jonathan’s campaign team is now said to be concerned and fearful of losing the April 2011 presidential election, especially because of the developments in the Northwest and Southwest zones.

The Jonathan/Sambo campaign is clearly unwilling to tolerate a run-off presidential poll which it is feared may force the opposition parties to unite against the PDP and spell doom for the Jonathan presidential ambitions.

It is an indication that the 2011 presidential electioneering campaign is gathering much more political storm than had been envisaged by political watchers with the worry that dirty tricks and foul means may begin to come to play from all contending interests, parties, and candidates in the countdown to April.

The deal to destabilize the southwest and destroy the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria, which in recent judicial electoral reversal have started regaining foothold in Yoruba land and elsewhere, is code-named “Southwest Project.” The first tranche of N500 million is said to have been released to the coordinating team which includes Ogun State Governor, Mr. Gbenga Daniel.

Apart from destabilizing the opposition party in the southwest, the “Southwest Project” is also charged with ensuring that Justice Ayo Isa Salami, the President of the Federal Court of Appeal, is removed from office before the April polls, so as to ensure that he does not preside over the constitution of the election tribunals.

As a major plank of President Jonathan and the ruling People’s Democratic Party’s plan to ensure victory by all means in the April elections, the Attorney General of the Federation, Bello Adokie, has been appointed at the head of a sub-committee to “get rid of Justice Salami” as soon as possible. Adokie is said to be working with the Chief Justice of the Federation, Aloysius Katsina-Alu, to ensure the removal of the President of the Appeal Court before the April elections.

As earlier reported, AGF Adokie, was nominated for his position by the CJN Katsina-Alu, when Jonathan decided to remove the CJN’s kinsman and President Yar’Adua’s AGF, the controversial and discredited Michael Aondoakaa. It will be recalled that Justice Salami recently accused the CJN of attempting persuade him to pervert the course of justice in the Sokoto State gubernatorial case.

The committee in charge of the “Southwest Project,” it was gathered, include embattled Ogun State Governor, Gbenga Daniel and Chief Kenny Martins, the former coordinator of the Police Equipment Foundation, who was until recently under trial for criminal breach of trust, conversion, and misuse of public funds totaling more than N800million by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Others in the group are former Lagos State Deputy Governor, Femi Pedro, one Dr. Kalejaiye, Senator Iyiola Omisore and one of Jonathan’s Senior Special Assistants.

Sources at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, told our reporter that, at a meeting last week Friday at the Villa, it was decided that Osun and Ekiti State PDP leaders should petition the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the President on the appeal cases which were resolved by the Appeal Court in favour of the ACN candidates, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and Mr. Rauf Aregbesola respectively last October and December.

Before the petition was written, President Jonathan had mandated the State Security Service (SSS) to compulsorily obtain phone records of Justice Salami and the lawyers involved in the cases without any court warrant, so as to use these as “evidence” in blackmailing Justice Salami and “discrediting” the ACN. It turns out earlier this week that the phone numbers and records were included in the petitions submitted by the Osun and Ekiti States’ PDP leaders.

The plan, according to our source, was not so much to revisit the appeal cases in Osun and Ekiti States, but to engineer a crisis that will lead to the exit of Justice Salami before the April elections. Justice Salami is regarded as “a threat to PDP’s victory” in the likely election petition cases that might result from the April polls.

Our sources disclosed that Mr. Segun Oni who was removed as the governor of Ekiti State readily embraced the plan, because he was hopeful that it might lead to his return to office – since he can still run for another term.

However, former Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, whose term would have ended about five months away from the time he was removed from office, was not very enthusiastic about the plan. At the other end, Senator Iyiola Omisore, who is desperate to become the PDP candidate for the Osun State governorship, was very supportive of the plan. Omisore therefore got the acting chairman of the Osun State PDP, Sunday Ojo-Williams, to send a petition to the NJC. While Ojo-Williams sent his own petition to the NJC, Oni sent his to the president.

Sources said that Governor Gbenga Daniels, Segun Oni and Iyiola Omisore are the ring leaders of the team that convinced President Jonathan that he would need the votes from the southwest to “counterbalance” the bloc votes that either the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari or the ACN candidate, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, might get from the northwest – the zone which tops the voters list with 6.2 million registered voters.

Convinced that this move is important given the cold shoulders he has been getting from the core conservative northern leaders, Jonathan ordered a massive influx of money, men and materials into the ‘Southwest Project.”

He also ordered the AGF to work with all the security agencies and the anti-corruption agencies to ensure that former Governor of Lagos State, Senator Bola Tinubu, is “put in the cooler” before the April elections. Part of what heightened the felt-need to “cage” Tinubu before the April elections is the renewed attention that conservative Islamic leaders of the north are giving to the Ribadu ticket deemed dangerous for the progress of the Jonathan/Sambo platform.

In line with the task to ensure that Justice Salami leaves the Appeal Court before April, members of the “Southwest Project” Team in Lagos have recruited a man who is popularly called “Bishop” to quickly set-up a non-governmental organization, NGO, which will begin a “civil society-driven campaign” to force Justice Salami to resign his job based on the “allegations levelled against him by Osun and Ekiti States PDP.” Bishop, it was learnt, is to be paid N25 million, as first instalment, to set-up the NGO in Lagos – a city which is described as the “home of civil society” in Nigeria.

A source at the Villa said one of the consultants to the team raised the question of what should be the appropriate response to some of the issues that will be raised by the “politically-savvy people of the southwest” over the allegations of “compromise” against Justice Salami when it is compared with the “buried case” of Justice Thomas Naron, the Chairman of the first Osun State Elections Petitions Tribunal.

The NEWS

Another meeting of the team was held on Sunday, February 20, at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja, where it was decided that the Attorney-General, Adokie, and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Katsina-Alu, should convince the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), J. B. Daudu, to speak out in defence of Katsina-Alu, so as to “protect the office of the CJN”, while denouncing the action of Justice Salami.

Part of the plan is to ensure that while Salami is “kicked out of office,” Justice Katsina-Alu, who is “trusted,” should be made to stay in office beyond his date of retirement. This is to ensure that he “supervises” the process of “consolidating PDP’s victory at the polls” between now and the few months after the April elections. In line with this, even though Justice Katsina-Alu’s will clock 70 on 28 May, 2011 going by his date of birth on the payroll record, his spokesperson has now told the press that the man is due for retirement on 28 August – while putting his date of birth at 28 August, 1941.

ACN on the other hand are also planning their counter-counter offensive. For instance, some of the party lawyers whose phone records have been revealed in calls to Salami through the PDP offensive have vowed to go to court to clear their names suing the PDP and the papers that published the records for libel. Moreover top ACN chieftains are also beginning to mobilize their own teams to meet the PDP on their own turf.

Our reporter learnt that as the battle for April elections rages, President Jonathan has been convinced by members of the team and his other handlers that he has to “adopt the Obasanjo method of do or die,” given the formidable opposition he faces all over the country, particularly in the north and the south-west, the two most populous and most politically-powerful regions of the country.

　

magazine had accused Naron of exchanging text messages with one of PDP’s lawyers, Mr. Kunle Kalajaiye, and thus compromising himself in the process. Kalejaiye was a counsel to the then Governor Oyinlola in the case which was eventually decided by Justice Naron and co. in favour of Oyinlola. It was consequently decided that “friendly newspapers” will be persuaded to ensure that this “comparison” is not given prominence in the press, if at all it is raised by the opposition. Governor Gbenga Daniel was given the task of ensuring that the “friendly newspapers” in the southwest are influenced for this project.

courtesy www.osundefender,org

Another useless and meaningless story.

2.9 Billion ko, 78956986325.258 Trillion ni.

^ ^ real uselsss and meaningless story