Osinbajo’s London trip and allied matters

Much like the much-touted 13 February telephone conversation between President Muhammadu Buhari and his United States counterpart, Donald Trump, which literarily broke the Nigerian internet space, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo’s trip to London last Tuesday to meet with the ailing Nigerian president dominated public discourse for the better part of last week.

If the apparent urgency and secrecy of that trip had agitated the minds of Nigerians, the near confidentiality with which its purpose and outcome were handled raised the bar of suspicion of foul play.

Osinbajo had, after making brief remarks at the Presidential Quarterly Business Forum he held with the private sector at the Presidential Villa on Tuesday, jetted out to visit President Buhari who had been on medical vacation in London since May 7. He quickly returned to the country to preside over Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.

The news of the meeting was broken in a tweet by Laolu Akande, Osinbajo’s spokesman, at about 7:34 pm on Tuesday without giving any detail.

Most of Osinbajo’s key aides and cabinet members were oblivious of the trip, even as a national daily reported the trip was a closely guarded secret and carried out through “covert diplomatic and intelligence methods”.

In the absence of the right information from the appropriate quarters, rumours and speculations took the centre stage.

Purported reasons for the trip

Up until Wednesday when the acting president broke the ice and the purpose and outcome of the meeting began to filter out in bits and pieces, much of what was known remained in the realm of conjecture.

While some Nigerians speculated that it could have been a fallout of the report by wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, barely 24 hours earlier, that her husband was recovering quickly and that “hyenas and jackals” in her husband’s government would be flushed out soon, a source claimed “the trip had been planned in the past three weeks but was only known to few people for strategic reasons”.

An online medium, Naij.com, had come up with eight reasons why Osinbajo may have visited President Buhari in the UK. The reasons the medium gave included to check on the president’s health after Aisha Buhari brought back news of the president’s improved condition; to intimate the president of the growing disconnect between the executive and legislature; to report the Aso Rock cabal who are said to have been working to undermine the influence of the acting president and the smooth running of governance; and to inform the president of the general situation of the country.

Others were to brief Buhari on the implementation of the 2017 budget which was passed in his absence; to intimate him about the state of things as regards the Biafra agitation; to inform the president of the agitation for the country’s restructuring which is gaining momentum; and to brief him on the current state of things as regards the fight against insurgency and the menace of the Fulani herdsmen.

Osinbajo breaks silence

But while these speculations rent the air, Osinbajo on Wednesday told State House Correspondents in Abuja that his meeting with President Buhari was fruitful, that he was able to see Buhari face to face, and that he briefed the “recuperating president” on the activities in the country. Osinbajo also said the president would soon be back to the country.

Asked what he had discussed with Buhari, Osinbajo said, “Well, first as you know I went to see him, I went to check up on him to find out how he was doing. I had of course been speaking on the phone and I thought it will be a good thing to go and see him and, you know, generally check up on how he was doing and also to brief him on developments back at home.”

He added, “So we had a very good time, we had a very good conversation on wide-ranging issues and he is in very good spirits, he is recuperating very quickly and he is doing very well.”

When he was asked specifically about the President’s state of health, Osinbajo said, “Well, as I have said he is in very high spirits, he is recuperating very well and we had very long conversation, we spoke for well over an hour and his humour is all there. He is doing well and he is recuperating fast.”

Osinbajo also said Nigerians should expect Buhari back to the country “very, very shortly” and that the president would be back “much sooner perhaps than you will expect”.

He reiterated that he had discussed “wide-ranging issues” with Buhari but was, however, unwilling to “go into specifics of all of the discussions we had”.

Against the backdrop of speculations that part of the discussion was the inauguration of the two ministers cleared by the Senate, Osinbajo said the swearing-in of the two ministers did not feature in their discussion and that there was no date yet for their inauguration.

Nigerians doubtful

But many Nigerians are still in doubt regarding the president’s true state of health. They recall that in February, shortly before Buhari’s return to the country, Osinbajo had assured everyone that he spoke with Buhari on the phone and that the president was “hale and hearty”.

“The president is hale and hearty. I spoke to the president just this afternoon and we had a long conversation. He was interested in knowing about the budget process and how far we have gone and the meeting today with the private sector and the economic recovery growth plan and I informed him about the protest march and feedback about what people are saying about the economy. He is in good shape,” Osinbajo said onFebruary 6.

But on his return to the country on March 10, Buhari told government officials during a meeting, to the consternation of all Nigerians, “I couldn’t recall being so sick since I was a young man, including in the military with its ups and downs.”

Divided house

There are indications that Acting President Osinbajo is not fully in charge of the nation’s affairs. This is even as he does not seem to be enjoying the full support of some members of the cabinet who are not fully committed to his being in charge.

Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, renowned industrialist, echoed this sentiment in a recent article “Nigeria and the parable of the plane on auto-pilot”, where he compared Nigeria to a troubled plane on auto-pilot.

“In this plane, the captain is sick and so can be assumed to be sleeping. So the co-pilot is awake which is good. But the equipment in front of the co-pilot seems not to be exactly what is in front of the captain. His equipment is hamstrung and suboptimal. And so I am worried that this co-pilot may have problem adequately steering the plane in the current rough weather that Nigeria has run into,” Ohuabunwa said.

He also suggested that the co-pilot “seems not to have full empowerment to steer the plane at this period of rough weather” and as such, “fatigue and incompetent equipment may imperil the plane and its full load of passengers”.

Furthermore, Ohuabunwa observed that “the crew seems to have divided loyalty to the co-pilot who to all intents and purposes has become the acting captain”.

“Rather than take orders from the co-pilot, some crew members first have to ask the resting captain before responding, some others ignore the co-pilot outright,” he said.

To buttress this point, a reliable source said on Wednesday that some powerful people in government who have access to the president had painted a wrong picture of the situation at home to Buhari in order to create a wedge between him and Osinbajo.

The visit to Buhari in London on Tuesday, therefore, may have been an avenue to brief the president on certain decisions he had taken and also clear misgivings that he had abandoned the president’s agenda, he said.

Governance suffers

Buhari’s continued absence and Osinbajo’s apparent limited powers to fully take control of affairs of state have meant that governance is suffering as key decisions have been kept in abeyance.

For instance, the House of Representatives on Tuesday moved a motion asking Osinbajo to inaugurate the ministers who had been screened and cleared by the Senate.

Stephen Ocheni from Kogi State and Suleiman Hassan from Gombe State, who had been nominated as ministers by President Buhari in March, were screened and cleared by the Senate on May 3. Ocheni is to replace James Ocholi who died in an accident last year, while Hassan is to take the place of Amina Mohammed who has gone to take up an appointment at the United Nations.

But beyond the issue of ministers, the 45 non-career ambassadorial nominees who were confirmed by the Senate on March 23 and the additional three who were approved on June 7 are yet to receive their postings, even as Geoffrey Onyeama, minister of foreign affairs, said lack of ambassadors was affecting bilateral relations; boards of many Federal Government agencies are yet to be appointed, among numerous other pending issues.

 

CHUKS OLUIGBO