Observers of the recent upheaval at the Presidency, have noted the increasing roles being played by certain actors who had taken the back stage during the one year electioneering that led to the victory of the President, but now seeking the limelight via staging an unlikely comeback. In the overall scheme of things, the attempt to push out the Vice President from the stage he shared with his boss and poison their good relationship is now apparent if not more than obvious.
The recent onslaught was said to have been kickstarted by Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu who once held sway in a large state and who reportedly entered alliance with Presidency insiders to sully the sterling reputation of the number two man with his boss.
Relying on insider information, the Presidential Aspirant now masquerading himself around as a self-announced successor to the President, embarked on a campaign of calumny that started with convincing the President and his team to move the popular social investment programs over-sighted and promoted by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo into the newly created Ministry of Humanitarian affairs.
While on the surface of it, this move was necessary given the expanding mandate of the old Ministry of Budget and Planning in overseeing aid and donor agency programs, the real target was the Vice President. The unholy characters behind the move reasoned that despite the fact that the SIP was actually being executed by the MBNP and only coordinated by the Vice President’s Office, the portfolio made him too popular in the up-run to the election and it was necessary to cut him to size.
The emissary to cut the deal between the Lagos gang and the Abuja cabal to execute the job was a former Vice Presidential Aspirant, who was in the same party as the Lagos man during the third republic and a well known foreign intelligence asset. The man said to be carrying on as a Prime Minister in waiting is reportedly nursing his own Presidential ambition being of North East origin and reasoning at the minimum he can negotiate a Vice Presidential position with the Lagos gang.
At the meeting to cut the deal held during a recent overseas contact in the Middle East, the strategy to rubbish the Vice President using insider information which were mostly propaganda and untrue was agreed. The emissary was said to have had it with the Vice President because of a run-in with him at an international event where he was upstaged when the VP arrived unannounced, instead of him who was earlier positioned as the emissary of the President. This event was said to have angered the Borno chief greatly.
Feelers from the Presidency was that the President and his closest advisors are increasingly uncomfortable with Asiwaju and his ungodly alliance with the elements. And he may indeed have signalled this while in New York. This allegedly led to summons of the current Secretary General of the Federation, Mr. Boss Mustapha, who left the country hurriedly and could not make the Wednesday FEC meeting presided over by the Vice President.
