*Security meeting that missed the target
*How some ministers and governors misled him
A meeting in Aso rock villa
Muhammadu Buhari turned down the invitation.
He made it clear that if President Jonathan was going to be in attendance, then he was not going to attend. And when the meeting eventually held, those at the meeting wore long faces.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had arranged it. But Sunday Vanguard could not confirm whether he himself attended the meeting.
As for former head of state, Yakubu Gowon, he simply turned down the invitation – he had been quoted as insisting that the subsidy should not be removed yet, long before its removal penultimate Sunday; but some government officials lampooned him for expressing his views last year..
President Goodluck Jonathan, National Security Adviser, NSA, Andrew Owoye Azazi, some other security chiefs and former President and Commander-in-Chief, Alhaji Usman Aliyu Shehu Shagari, were in attendance. The meeting was held penultimate Monday, the day after the removal of the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, popularly known as petrol.
It was not a National Security Council or National Defence Council meeting.
Yet, those in attendance could fit the bill. They were there to discuss the possible implications of the intended strike action by organized labour, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC.
The first issue that was tackled was the security implications!
Sunday Vanguard was informed by a source privy to the meeting that the prognosis, according to the security chiefs, was very terrible. President Jonathan was made to understand that everything that ought to be done to avert the strike should be done. The briefing made it very clear that should the strike go ahead and last beyond a week, “there would be serious implications for this administration”. Although the source said the language at the meeting was very weighted, “there was no mistaken the fact that the prognosis was very bad”.
Specifically, Sunday Vanguard was informed that one of those in attendance at the meeting pointedly stated that allowing the strike to go on for “up to 11 days would mean total disaster and eclipse” for the Jonathan administration.
As the briefing went on, President Jonathan reportedly stared into thin air like a ‘night creature caught in daylight’ – that was how the Time magazine described former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar in 1998, as one of its runners-up for the person of the year!
The former President in attendance was said to have made very useful contributions, assuming the role of loco perentis, even while President Jonathan sat in.
The economic implications were as far reaching as the security ones.
At the end of the meeting, President Jonathan’s body language suggested that something would be done earnestly to avoid the mass action.
How ministers misled govs
However, information made available to Sunday Vanguard suggests that one of President Jonathan’s cabinet members from the North Central Zone, who had himself been a student union leader, might it be added, and who has been forceful in his propagation of the subsidy removal tune, Information Minister, Labaran Maku, along with another minister from the South South geo-political zone, Elder Orubebe, prevailed on President Jonathan not to shift or accede to labour’s demand.
The Information Minister impressed it on President Jonathan that reverting to N65 would be seen as a sign of weakness and unseriousness. He may have been right!
Secondly, according to Sunday Vanguard’s source, President Jonathan was made “to believe that the strike action would normally kick off on the first day as threatened by labour but would quickly lose steam by the second day.
Sunday Vanguard was told that the impression conveyed to President Jonathan was that the strike action would not go beyond just two days before it loses steam.
It was this advice that President Jonathan took hook, line and sinker.
But the President did not stop there. He also made his own moves.
Intervention from the national assembly
But the presidency became jolted very late on Friday, January 6, 2012, when the leadership of the House of Representatives sent out words that it would hold an emergency session on Sunday, January 8.
President Jonathan
So, what did the presidency do? And how did the House respond? (See details in Abuja Bulletin, HOUSE SESSION ON SUBSIDY REMOVAL: The winners and losers)
In formation made available by a very strategic leader in the House to Sunday Vanguard suggests that last Sunday’s session was with a “with a view to ensuring that a middle ground was reached by both labour and the federal government”.
Sunday Vanguard also learnt that members of the House of Representatives, angry with the slide in the affairs of the country, were more peeved by the invocation of religious sentiments to defer the sitting. Presidency officials, it was learnt, had tried to persuade the house leadership to call off the sitting on the grounds that it would offend the religious sensibility of Christians.
That invocation was, however, dismissed by both Christian and Muslim members of the House who said the timing of the sitting was determined by the exigencies of the issues facing the nation.
A leadership cadre member of the House told Sunday Vanguard that “it was very wrong to begin to invoke religion in this matter. Committees sit on Fridays but religion is given its pride of place as members still go for Jumat which is respected by other committees’ members. Last Sunday’s session recorded a whopping 296 membership attendance. But beyond that, why would the Presidency that is still grappling with the menace of Boko Haram be toying with that type of thing”, Sunday Vanguard was told.
Apart from the religious angle, President Jonathan was said to have worked the phones trying through aides and some other leaders to get some state governors to talk to their Reps not to attend last Sunday’s session. That attempt, too, failed woefully.
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