Posted by The Port Harcourt Telegraph on
It is no longer a secret that the President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar have parted ways.
... Atiku admits, apologizes to Nigerians
It is no longer a secret that the President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Vice, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar have parted ways.
Evidence of the rift between the two men appeared on the streets of New York a couple of days ago.
Vice President Atiku who was addressing an audience acknowledged that the Obasanjo administration of which he is part came in for a second term in office through massive rigging never before witnessed by the Nigerian people.
The admission was literarily a slap on the face of the President who has spent more time selling himself to the West as anti-graft campaigner at a time there are serious suspicions at home that he may be scheming for a third tenure.
And proof that in the weeks to come Atiku might put as much distance as possible between him and the man who has bossed him for the better part of five years.
Atiku sounding repentant and open appealed to the audience, saying they should forgive he and his colleagues who robbed them of their mandate.
He pledged that in 2007, the Nigerian political elite and the carry-go-government of which he is part at the moment would do its utmost to ensure that a freer and fairer election is held in the country.
The president and his vice have disagreed over several things ranging from the question of who would be the successor in 2007,and the penchant for the removal of serving party chairmen by the president to the battle against corruption that many here suspect is one sided and what appears to be the ploy of the president to take absolute control of party machinery.
Although the vice president has said nothing, many insiders opine he has been totally unhappy over the decision of the president to sack his aides over and above his head
The New York outing really threw a spanner in the works and showed Atiku may have had enough of President Obasanjo