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Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was in the news almost throughout last week for what many stakeholders and political observers have described as a complete humiliation of a man who is supposed to stand in for his principal, but instead has been relegated to the background.
According to Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the president is expected to transmit power through the National Assembly to his vice to take charge of the country in his absence, but this did not happen, which automatically means that President Muhammadu Buhari has either left the country on an auto-piloting mode and taking charge from the United Kingdom.
There have been several insinuations that certain cabals in the presidency are bent on ensuring that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is frustrated out of office. In the last few months, Osinbajo has been moving from one predicament to the other. To a lot of political analysts, the professor of law found himself where he is today, just because of the way and manner he acted in 2018 when Buhari was in the United Kingdom to attend to his health.
It all started when the Vice President sacked the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Lawal Musa Daura. Osinbajo, who was then the acting president, failed to realise that sacking a man occupying such sensitive position could be given wider interpretations.
Administratively and on the surface of it, Osinbajo acted well for a government in serious need of discipline and sense of direction, but he forgot to note that when politics arrives the scene wearing the toga of religion and tribe, rationality goes into hiding and that was exactly what happened. Secondly, the Vice President was believed to have truncated an already organised agenda of making sure that Walter Onnoghen never occupied the position of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).
In a recent interview, Yinka Odumakin, the spokesman of Afenifere, expressed the belief that the appointment Hon. Justice Onnoghen as CJN and the removal of Daura as DG of DSS by Osinbajo, were the root cause of his travails.
Odumakin said: “It is very clear that Osinbajo is out of this government only that they have not removed him because there is a constitutional process required to get him out.
“Some of the functions of Osinbajo’s office are at the discretion of the president but handing over to the Vice President when the president is away is not discretionary, it is constitutional. Since Osinbajo sacked Lawal Daura, the President has never handed anything to him since that time.
“I was at Ile-Ife, Osun State, when Sir Kensington Adebutu was being honoured. Osinbajo was seated right there, but Rauf Aregbesola (Minister of Interior) got up to say he was representing the President. So there is no doubt that the Vice President has been made a figure head in this government and the presidency is showing it clearly.
“What is the urgency in the bill that Abba Kyari took to London for Buhari to sign if it is not a deliberate act to send a message to Osinbajo that he is out of power?” Odumakin asked.
Also, elder statesman, Tanko Yakassai, explained that the recent bill signed by President Buhari, which was taken to him in London by his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, was a deliberate action by the presidency to send a message that Osinbajo is out of power.
Yakassai said the Vice President was made redundant after he removed Daura, an ally of President Buhari while he was acting president.
“From the time when Osinbajo removed Lawal Daura as the Director General of the DSS and also when he nominated Walter Onnoghen for confirmation as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, I suspected that he would not be in the good books of the President. I have been watching very closely and from that time till date, the President has never handed over governance to him to act anytime he travels. I suspected that it didn’t augur well with the presidency that he nominated Onnoghen as the acting CJN. So, whether he is being sidelined in the presidency, I don’t know, but I would not be surprised if that happens.
“Buhari was hesitant to confirm Onnoghen as substantive CJN as he was given acting appointment twice. Why? If somebody is given acting appointment the first time, there is no big deal there, but if the person is given acting appointment the second time, then there is a message there. The President was away when the second acting appointment elapsed and Osinbajo who was the acting president had no alternative than to nominate Onnoghen because that is the rule. I don’t know if Osinbajo didn’t consult the President before making that appointment but I think that the President didn’t take it lightly.
“When Lawal Daura occupied the National Assembly, as a senior lawyer, Osinbajo didn’t take it lightly because it is unconstitutional and should not be allowed. It amounts to a coup d’etat. I know that the removal of Daura didn’t augur well with the presidency because it seemed that the President relied on Daura for some kind of activities. I hear that Daura is still being consulted on many issues even though it is done unofficially.”
On the alleged sack of 35 out of 80 of Osinbajo’s aides, Yakassai said; “If it was done without the recommendation of the Vice President, then it is absolutely strange. If those working under you are removed without your knowledge, it doesn’t speak well of the relationship.
“Obasanjo did the same to Atiku but what helped Atiku was that he is a very strong character who was creating opportunities for himself. Most of what he was doing was his own personal business but people saw him being very active all the time. Osinbajo is not a businessman so he can’t do that,” Yakassai said.
There was a recent announcement that Osinbajo would henceforth seek presidential approvals in the running of the parastatals and agencies, which are statutorily under him. Also, the dissolution of the Economic Management Team headed by the Vice President and its replacement by a new Economic Advisory Council and the dissolution of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel set up by the Vice President when he was the Acting President are some of those signals that the cabals in Aso Rock are doing everything possible to force the number two citizen out of office.
A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, who has been on the Vice President’s case, condemned the treatment of Vice President Osinbajo, saying that by the action, Buhari has relegated and treated the Vice President with contempt.
Fani-Kayode said, “Despite his constant fawning on Buhari, his cowardly and quisling disposition and his penchant to defend the indefensible, Osinbajo seems to have been relegated and treated with disdain and contempt by the object of his praise and the recipient of his worship. First, he is thrown off the economic team, then some parastatals are removed from his supervision and finally he is told that he must get presidential approval for any expenses he seeks to incur.”
The former Aviation Minister revealed 10 ways that Osinbajo has been allegedly undermined by President Buhari.
Fani-Kayode wrote on his Twitter page: “1. His helicopter crashed but instead of him to proceed to a hospital, his boss asked him to continue sharing trader money. 2. A SAN and Prof. of Law, yet under him lawlessness is practiced: he deputises for a fellow who has no proof of both primary and secondary education. 3. They took a Bill to the United Kingdom for your boss to sign and publicised it to further humiliate you.“4. As an ERRAND boy, your boss sent a junior Minister to represent him in an event that you were present. 5. A real ERRAND boy! They have removed all your aides from Aso Villa to a rented apartment in Maitama. 6. ERRAND boy, you went and knelt before Abba Kyari to stop the criminal investigation against you. “7. We told you this would happen but you refused to listen. Today, your two bosses, Tinubu and Buhari, are against you. 8. Sorry! With this latest humiliation of taking a document to an ailing man without recourse to you, it serves as a confirmation that you are now a certified ERRAND boy.
“9. The latest is that your boss has now sacked 36 of your aides in your office. Are you waiting for them to lock you out of Aguda House before you resign and go back home to Ikenne? 10. We don’t pity you. You opted for it. While he’s in the United Kingdom he sent you to his village Daura to attend the turbaning/coronation of an unknown Chief. So sad! We pray you receive sense.”
Also, the former second vice president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Monday Ubani, faulted President Buhari for signing the Bill amending the Deep Offshore (and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract) Act outside the shores of Nigeria.
Ubani described the President’s action as an act capable of politically sending a signal to the outside world that the country’s sovereignty as a nation is in doubt.
The legal practitioner, who made this known in a post of his Facebook page, explained that, “Some acts attract dignity, some do not. This one certainly does not. If I were the president who loves and respect my country, I will instruct that the bill should wait until I come back and sign it in our shores.
Ubani’s post read: “For the second time in his 8th year reign as the President of Nigeria, President Muhammed Buhari has jetted out of the country to UK on a visit he termed ‘private’. The last time he did this was sometime in April this year during which he spent about seventeen days before returning back to the country.
“Just like the earlier visit, the President again failed to transmit power to the Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osibajo in accordance with Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). That section mandates the President to transmit power through the National Assembly to his Vice to take charge of the country in his absence.
“The drafters of the constitution have genuine reason to insert such a section in an important document like the constitution one of which is to ensure that vacuum does not exist and also to give a sense of belonging to whoever the country has elected as vice to the president of the country.
“The most important reason may be also the fact that presidential duties are enormous and any hardworking president deserves to take a rest from the onerous burden of the presidency and allow his vice to man the office while he rests and resumes refreshed for the task ahead. There may be more reasons than this but I think these are the major reasons for that provision.
“When President Yar’Adua was in power and took ill and failed to hand over the reins of power to the then Vice President, former President Goodluck Jonathan, that failure created so much crisis, that the National Assembly had to device the ‘doctrine of necessity’ to obviate the conflagration that was about to blow up the country then. It was not a pleasant time for Nigerians as words like ‘the president can rule from anywhere in the world’ rented the air to the annoyance of majority of Nigerians. Sadly, we are being treated shockingly to the same menu under the new dispensation.
“In 2010, the National Assembly in conjunction with the 36 State House of Assemblies cured the defect by inserting Subsection (2) to the Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution to avoid a repeat of that ugly incident. The sum total of that subsection is that if the President fails, refuses and or neglects to transmit power to his Vice President, the National Assembly is mandated after the period of 21 days to pass a resolution empowering the Vice President to start to act automatically ‘as the Acting President of Nigeria’.
“That section did not and never provided that it is only when the president will spend more than 21 days outside the shores of the country, that he will be required to hand over power to his Vice President. The 21 days provision is meant to give the maximum period the president will be allowed to be in breach of Section 145 of the Constitution as the National Assembly will come in to do what the President ought to have done in the first place by mandating the Vice President to act in the place of the ‘travelled president’.
“The president has breached the constitution of 1999 constitution no doubt by his inability to transmit power to the Vice President of the country for the 19 days or less that he wants to spend for his ‘private visit’ in the UK. His ‘private visit’ has no place in Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution in the first place. He is only allowed outside the shores of Nigeria for official visits, medicals and or vacations.
“More troubling is the signing of Offshore Bill in the UK, outside the shores of Nigeria. The act of signing the Bill outside the country politically sends a signal to our friends that our sovereignty as a nation is in doubt. Some acts attract dignity, some do not. This one certainly does not. If I were the president who love and respect my country, I will instruct that the bill should wait until I come back and sign it in our shores. The signing of that Bill in far away UK sent wrong signals on so many fronts and it is not healthy for this government.
“I love Nigeria so much and believe that God will give us leaders who will listen to sound advice to make Nigeria a great country in all ramifications. May God not allow our leaders to surround themselves with bootlickers and sycophants that will tell a ‘naked leader’ that he is wearing the most expensive apparel ever sewn by any living being, AMEN.”
It is hoped that the President would on return from his UK trip, address the Vice President’s issue once and for all. Political pundits are waiting to see where and how the issue would end. (Daily Independent)
According to Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the president is expected to transmit power through the National Assembly to his vice to take charge of the country in his absence, but this did not happen, which automatically means that President Muhammadu Buhari has either left the country on an auto-piloting mode and taking charge from the United Kingdom.
There have been several insinuations that certain cabals in the presidency are bent on ensuring that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is frustrated out of office. In the last few months, Osinbajo has been moving from one predicament to the other. To a lot of political analysts, the professor of law found himself where he is today, just because of the way and manner he acted in 2018 when Buhari was in the United Kingdom to attend to his health.
It all started when the Vice President sacked the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Lawal Musa Daura. Osinbajo, who was then the acting president, failed to realise that sacking a man occupying such sensitive position could be given wider interpretations.
Administratively and on the surface of it, Osinbajo acted well for a government in serious need of discipline and sense of direction, but he forgot to note that when politics arrives the scene wearing the toga of religion and tribe, rationality goes into hiding and that was exactly what happened. Secondly, the Vice President was believed to have truncated an already organised agenda of making sure that Walter Onnoghen never occupied the position of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).
In a recent interview, Yinka Odumakin, the spokesman of Afenifere, expressed the belief that the appointment Hon. Justice Onnoghen as CJN and the removal of Daura as DG of DSS by Osinbajo, were the root cause of his travails.
Odumakin said: “It is very clear that Osinbajo is out of this government only that they have not removed him because there is a constitutional process required to get him out.
“Some of the functions of Osinbajo’s office are at the discretion of the president but handing over to the Vice President when the president is away is not discretionary, it is constitutional. Since Osinbajo sacked Lawal Daura, the President has never handed anything to him since that time.
“I was at Ile-Ife, Osun State, when Sir Kensington Adebutu was being honoured. Osinbajo was seated right there, but Rauf Aregbesola (Minister of Interior) got up to say he was representing the President. So there is no doubt that the Vice President has been made a figure head in this government and the presidency is showing it clearly.
“What is the urgency in the bill that Abba Kyari took to London for Buhari to sign if it is not a deliberate act to send a message to Osinbajo that he is out of power?” Odumakin asked.
Also, elder statesman, Tanko Yakassai, explained that the recent bill signed by President Buhari, which was taken to him in London by his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, was a deliberate action by the presidency to send a message that Osinbajo is out of power.
Yakassai said the Vice President was made redundant after he removed Daura, an ally of President Buhari while he was acting president.
“From the time when Osinbajo removed Lawal Daura as the Director General of the DSS and also when he nominated Walter Onnoghen for confirmation as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, I suspected that he would not be in the good books of the President. I have been watching very closely and from that time till date, the President has never handed over governance to him to act anytime he travels. I suspected that it didn’t augur well with the presidency that he nominated Onnoghen as the acting CJN. So, whether he is being sidelined in the presidency, I don’t know, but I would not be surprised if that happens.
“Buhari was hesitant to confirm Onnoghen as substantive CJN as he was given acting appointment twice. Why? If somebody is given acting appointment the first time, there is no big deal there, but if the person is given acting appointment the second time, then there is a message there. The President was away when the second acting appointment elapsed and Osinbajo who was the acting president had no alternative than to nominate Onnoghen because that is the rule. I don’t know if Osinbajo didn’t consult the President before making that appointment but I think that the President didn’t take it lightly.
“When Lawal Daura occupied the National Assembly, as a senior lawyer, Osinbajo didn’t take it lightly because it is unconstitutional and should not be allowed. It amounts to a coup d’etat. I know that the removal of Daura didn’t augur well with the presidency because it seemed that the President relied on Daura for some kind of activities. I hear that Daura is still being consulted on many issues even though it is done unofficially.”
On the alleged sack of 35 out of 80 of Osinbajo’s aides, Yakassai said; “If it was done without the recommendation of the Vice President, then it is absolutely strange. If those working under you are removed without your knowledge, it doesn’t speak well of the relationship.
“Obasanjo did the same to Atiku but what helped Atiku was that he is a very strong character who was creating opportunities for himself. Most of what he was doing was his own personal business but people saw him being very active all the time. Osinbajo is not a businessman so he can’t do that,” Yakassai said.
There was a recent announcement that Osinbajo would henceforth seek presidential approvals in the running of the parastatals and agencies, which are statutorily under him. Also, the dissolution of the Economic Management Team headed by the Vice President and its replacement by a new Economic Advisory Council and the dissolution of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel set up by the Vice President when he was the Acting President are some of those signals that the cabals in Aso Rock are doing everything possible to force the number two citizen out of office.
A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, who has been on the Vice President’s case, condemned the treatment of Vice President Osinbajo, saying that by the action, Buhari has relegated and treated the Vice President with contempt.
Fani-Kayode said, “Despite his constant fawning on Buhari, his cowardly and quisling disposition and his penchant to defend the indefensible, Osinbajo seems to have been relegated and treated with disdain and contempt by the object of his praise and the recipient of his worship. First, he is thrown off the economic team, then some parastatals are removed from his supervision and finally he is told that he must get presidential approval for any expenses he seeks to incur.”
The former Aviation Minister revealed 10 ways that Osinbajo has been allegedly undermined by President Buhari.
Fani-Kayode wrote on his Twitter page: “1. His helicopter crashed but instead of him to proceed to a hospital, his boss asked him to continue sharing trader money. 2. A SAN and Prof. of Law, yet under him lawlessness is practiced: he deputises for a fellow who has no proof of both primary and secondary education. 3. They took a Bill to the United Kingdom for your boss to sign and publicised it to further humiliate you.“4. As an ERRAND boy, your boss sent a junior Minister to represent him in an event that you were present. 5. A real ERRAND boy! They have removed all your aides from Aso Villa to a rented apartment in Maitama. 6. ERRAND boy, you went and knelt before Abba Kyari to stop the criminal investigation against you. “7. We told you this would happen but you refused to listen. Today, your two bosses, Tinubu and Buhari, are against you. 8. Sorry! With this latest humiliation of taking a document to an ailing man without recourse to you, it serves as a confirmation that you are now a certified ERRAND boy.
“9. The latest is that your boss has now sacked 36 of your aides in your office. Are you waiting for them to lock you out of Aguda House before you resign and go back home to Ikenne? 10. We don’t pity you. You opted for it. While he’s in the United Kingdom he sent you to his village Daura to attend the turbaning/coronation of an unknown Chief. So sad! We pray you receive sense.”
Also, the former second vice president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Monday Ubani, faulted President Buhari for signing the Bill amending the Deep Offshore (and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract) Act outside the shores of Nigeria.
Ubani described the President’s action as an act capable of politically sending a signal to the outside world that the country’s sovereignty as a nation is in doubt.
The legal practitioner, who made this known in a post of his Facebook page, explained that, “Some acts attract dignity, some do not. This one certainly does not. If I were the president who loves and respect my country, I will instruct that the bill should wait until I come back and sign it in our shores.
Ubani’s post read: “For the second time in his 8th year reign as the President of Nigeria, President Muhammed Buhari has jetted out of the country to UK on a visit he termed ‘private’. The last time he did this was sometime in April this year during which he spent about seventeen days before returning back to the country.
“Just like the earlier visit, the President again failed to transmit power to the Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osibajo in accordance with Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). That section mandates the President to transmit power through the National Assembly to his Vice to take charge of the country in his absence.
“The drafters of the constitution have genuine reason to insert such a section in an important document like the constitution one of which is to ensure that vacuum does not exist and also to give a sense of belonging to whoever the country has elected as vice to the president of the country.
“The most important reason may be also the fact that presidential duties are enormous and any hardworking president deserves to take a rest from the onerous burden of the presidency and allow his vice to man the office while he rests and resumes refreshed for the task ahead. There may be more reasons than this but I think these are the major reasons for that provision.
“When President Yar’Adua was in power and took ill and failed to hand over the reins of power to the then Vice President, former President Goodluck Jonathan, that failure created so much crisis, that the National Assembly had to device the ‘doctrine of necessity’ to obviate the conflagration that was about to blow up the country then. It was not a pleasant time for Nigerians as words like ‘the president can rule from anywhere in the world’ rented the air to the annoyance of majority of Nigerians. Sadly, we are being treated shockingly to the same menu under the new dispensation.
“In 2010, the National Assembly in conjunction with the 36 State House of Assemblies cured the defect by inserting Subsection (2) to the Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution to avoid a repeat of that ugly incident. The sum total of that subsection is that if the President fails, refuses and or neglects to transmit power to his Vice President, the National Assembly is mandated after the period of 21 days to pass a resolution empowering the Vice President to start to act automatically ‘as the Acting President of Nigeria’.
“That section did not and never provided that it is only when the president will spend more than 21 days outside the shores of the country, that he will be required to hand over power to his Vice President. The 21 days provision is meant to give the maximum period the president will be allowed to be in breach of Section 145 of the Constitution as the National Assembly will come in to do what the President ought to have done in the first place by mandating the Vice President to act in the place of the ‘travelled president’.
“The president has breached the constitution of 1999 constitution no doubt by his inability to transmit power to the Vice President of the country for the 19 days or less that he wants to spend for his ‘private visit’ in the UK. His ‘private visit’ has no place in Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution in the first place. He is only allowed outside the shores of Nigeria for official visits, medicals and or vacations.
“More troubling is the signing of Offshore Bill in the UK, outside the shores of Nigeria. The act of signing the Bill outside the country politically sends a signal to our friends that our sovereignty as a nation is in doubt. Some acts attract dignity, some do not. This one certainly does not. If I were the president who love and respect my country, I will instruct that the bill should wait until I come back and sign it in our shores. The signing of that Bill in far away UK sent wrong signals on so many fronts and it is not healthy for this government.
“I love Nigeria so much and believe that God will give us leaders who will listen to sound advice to make Nigeria a great country in all ramifications. May God not allow our leaders to surround themselves with bootlickers and sycophants that will tell a ‘naked leader’ that he is wearing the most expensive apparel ever sewn by any living being, AMEN.”
It is hoped that the President would on return from his UK trip, address the Vice President’s issue once and for all. Political pundits are waiting to see where and how the issue would end. (Daily Independent)
