AFTER nigh on 25 months in office, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua now likely appears to General Olusegun Obasanjo more as a promise of harm than a divine successor he'd announced Yar'Adua as two years ago. For even in a not so piquant coincidence, General Obasanjo had simply kept quiet on May 29 - at Nigeria's 10th anniversary of civil rule - choosing to say nothing for his successor, even as Ijaw militant groups in southern Nigeria were announcing they've killed and dis-embowelled a Lt. Colonel; "who is the son of a former head of state" deployed to the south marine commando by the Nigerian military in its on-going raids on Ijaw militants' bastion.
Three months earlier, Obasanjo's status as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was intentionally diminished to a sinecure post at a party convention organised solely for that purpose. At that convention, Obasanjo had cleverly abstained. Now, in effect, no longer shall Obasanjo have the personal power to call any PDP member to order, since that power shall henceforth be exercised by the 60-odd member Board of Trustees as a collective.
Before his personal diminution in the party hierarchy, certain bilateral agreements on crude oil exploration with South Korea, which General Obasanjo signed as Nigeria's President in 2005, were promptly shredded on January 7 this year by President Umaru Yar'Adua. "Non-payment in full by the Koreans for the two oil blocs" was cited as official reason for unilaterally revoking the oil blocs awarded South Korea by Nigeria under the bilateral agreement (in exchange for six billion dollars of promised Korean investments in Nigeria's energy sector).
Meanwhile, the more prominent of Obasanjo's official aides are wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for thefts and conversion of public property to cronies and family members. Nuhu Ribadu, for example, was the EFCC Chairman under Obasanjo. He fled Nigeria on exile into Europe whilst under investigation in Nigeria by the EFCC for financial crimes, fearing assassination by certain stalkers, as he said, who had shot bullets at his car.
Femi Fani-Kayode, Obasanjo's vociferous spokesman, probably had no such means of escape. He is on trial for N250 million allegedly deposited into his bank account, and his wife's, on the same day. "Yar'Adua's government is lawless", he'd blurted in frustration over his two-time detention in prison custody pending bail, but now, Fani-Kayode is on trial on 140-count charge for monetary crimes.
Nasir El-Rufai - Obasanjo's more vociferous Minister - is now subject of an extradition proceeding by Yar'Adua's government. He is alleged to have criminally allotted plots of land in Abuja to his wives and relatives in criminal breach of trust whilst in public office as Obasanjo's federal capital minister. El Rufai says he is very eager to attend his criminal trial but only at his own time and not earlier than when he shall have finished his self-assigned studies in the United States.
In a spirited fight-back meanwhile, El-Rufai wrote a commentary for the global audience on the internet last week, intending to seek logical inferences from a set of impossible facts - that Obasanjo's actions are the proper examples Yar'Adua fails to follow, but Yar'Adua's attorney-general (Aondooaka) earlier made clear that massive corruption, on the contrary, majorly defined Obasanjo's two-term presidency from 1999 until 2007, making Obasanjo's regime a crass example to avoid. General Olusegun Obasanjo's daughter, Iyabo, who is a Senator, has herself been on trial since 2008 for drawing out money from the Ministry of Health, knowing, as earlier notified by the EFCC, that the money in her possession was taken by the then Minister of Health, Professor (Mrs) Grange.
Iyabo's trial started just about the same time that her brother, Gbenga Obasanjo, was alleging in a divorce court paper that their father, General Olusegun Obasanjo, had incestuously slept with his own wife whilst in public office as Nigeria's President. The court proceeding was in consequence held in camera, to protect the children of the marriage, resulting in the grant of a court divorce on publicly un-disclosed terms.
In a further beleaguering development for General Olusegun Obasanjo since leaving office, a fellow named "Jack Stanley" - recruited by United States Halliburton Company - has testified at a United States federal court that $180 million was distributed to top Nigerian government officials as bribes to secure a $6 billion federal contract for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects in Nigeria between 1994 and 2006 - straddling the successive regimes of Generals Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo.
Yar'Adua's administration early this year said $140 million of that amount has now been found in a Swiss bank and frozen. Very quickly, a letter for mutual assistance in criminal investigation was dispatched from Abuja to both Switzerland and the United States two months ago by the Yar'Adua government. That mutual assistance letter, as later published, sought the evidence under seal in the United States federal court, but also irrelevantly sought the names of individuals and companies overseas who participated in the Halliburton bribes scheme, so that they might be prosecuted in Nigeria - thus complicating any immediate response from either the United States or Switzerland.
If replies to Nigeria's mutual assistance requests eventually come, officials of the Obasanjo administration could be indicted, perhaps including Obasanjo himself, if the evidence irresistibly point at his complicity, ex-officio, as head of government.
Not taking chances, President Yar'Adua has separately set up a multi-agency investigation team comprising the Nigeria Police, the EFCC, the Military, and Defence Intelligence Units, to "publicly name the Nigerian officials found complicit in the Halliburton bribes". That committee has till end of June to make its findings public, whether or not responses to mutual assistance letters are received. Whilst awaiting this "public naming and shaming process" ordered by President Yar'Adua, it is as likely as not that General Obasanjo would be under severe political pressure, since he has no way of knowing just what this multi-agency investigation could reveal.
And because the records of the evidence are perpetuated in a United States federal court - without any availing statute of limitations - there is hardly a wiggle room for arguments in denial by anyone indicted, except for arguments between any set of co-accused persons. In terms therefore, this criminal investigation now underway in four countries under the United Nations Merida Convention has the potential to escalate into a reputation-incinerating proceeding for all accused persons because international criminal law is in issue, and no single country is in control of the eventual outcome. For already, the United States government has begun extradition proceeding against a British lawyer, named Mr. Tessler, who is suspected to have finessed the money-laundering papers. Mr. Tessler has since sued for protection against extradition at the Royal Courts in England. The matter is pending a hearing.
Meanwhile, as this international legal web spreads home to reach General Olusegun Obasanjo's regime at its centre, there is the other key problem of Obasanjo having lost critical numbers of his erstwhile military allies. One such lost ally is Lt.General Yakubu Danjuma who gave an interview to The Guardian a year ago, saying he would rather see to it that General Obasanjo returns to prison. Lt. General Danjuma was paradoxically the chief fund-raiser for Obasanjo's 1999 presidential campaign who said he gave N600 million of his personal funds to Obasanjo as campaign donations.
Another lost ally is General Ibrahim Babangida who has not even bothered to visit General Obasanjo's residence since 2006, on the polite pretext of being too busy to visit - as he'd done every year prior. Thus left alone by his long-time military allies to bear these current burdens, General Olusegun Obasanjo looks too politically vulnerable to ride the rising storms as they trench on his governing reputation, especially given President's Yar'Adua's announced determination to jail everyone corruptly involved with Halliburton.
Unless Obasanjo can somehow be exonerated by clear and convincing evidence that demonstrates that he neither knew nor had any reason to know (as head of government) that Halliiburton distributed bribes over a 10-year period for LNG projects, it would be blues and goodnight to Nigeria's self-described "father of the nation".
AFTER nigh on 25 months in office, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua now likely appears to General Olusegun Obasanjo more as a promise of harm than a divine successor he'd announced Yar'Adua as two years ago. For even in a not so piquant coincidence, General Obasanjo had simply kept quiet on May 29 - at Nigeria's 10th anniversary of civil rule - choosing to say nothing for his successor, even as Ijaw militant groups in southern Nigeria were announcing they've killed and dis-embowelled a Lt. Colonel; "who is the son of a former head of state" deployed to the south marine commando by the Nigerian military in its on-going raids on Ijaw militants' bastion.
Three months earlier, Obasanjo's status as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was intentionally diminished to a sinecure post at a party convention organised solely for that purpose. At that convention, Obasanjo had cleverly abstained. Now, in effect, no longer shall Obasanjo have the personal power to call any PDP member to order, since that power shall henceforth be exercised by the 60-odd member Board of Trustees as a collective.
Before his personal diminution in the party hierarchy, certain bilateral agreements on crude oil exploration with South Korea, which General Obasanjo signed as Nigeria's President in 2005, were promptly shredded on January 7 this year by President Umaru Yar'Adua. "Non-payment in full by the Koreans for the two oil blocs" was cited as official reason for unilaterally revoking the oil blocs awarded South Korea by Nigeria under the bilateral agreement (in exchange for six billion dollars of promised Korean investments in Nigeria's energy sector).
Meanwhile, the more prominent of Obasanjo's official aides are wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for thefts and conversion of public property to cronies and family members. Nuhu Ribadu, for example, was the EFCC Chairman under Obasanjo. He fled Nigeria on exile into Europe whilst under investigation in Nigeria by the EFCC for financial crimes, fearing assassination by certain stalkers, as he said, who had shot bullets at his car.
Femi Fani-Kayode, Obasanjo's vociferous spokesman, probably had no such means of escape. He is on trial for N250 million allegedly deposited into his bank account, and his wife's, on the same day. "Yar'Adua's government is lawless", he'd blurted in frustration over his two-time detention in prison custody pending bail, but now, Fani-Kayode is on trial on 140-count charge for monetary crimes.
Nasir El-Rufai - Obasanjo's more vociferous Minister - is now subject of an extradition proceeding by Yar'Adua's government. He is alleged to have criminally allotted plots of land in Abuja to his wives and relatives in criminal breach of trust whilst in public office as Obasanjo's federal capital minister. El Rufai says he is very eager to attend his criminal trial but only at his own time and not earlier than when he shall have finished his self-assigned studies in the United States.
In a spirited fight-back meanwhile, El-Rufai wrote a commentary for the global audience on the internet last week, intending to seek logical inferences from a set of impossible facts - that Obasanjo's actions are the proper examples Yar'Adua fails to follow, but Yar'Adua's attorney-general (Aondooaka) earlier made clear that massive corruption, on the contrary, majorly defined Obasanjo's two-term presidency from 1999 until 2007, making Obasanjo's regime a crass example to avoid. General Olusegun Obasanjo's daughter, Iyabo, who is a Senator, has herself been on trial since 2008 for drawing out money from the Ministry of Health, knowing, as earlier notified by the EFCC, that the money in her possession was taken by the then Minister of Health, Professor (Mrs) Grange.
Iyabo's trial started just about the same time that her brother, Gbenga Obasanjo, was alleging in a divorce court paper that their father, General Olusegun Obasanjo, had incestuously slept with his own wife whilst in public office as Nigeria's President. The court proceeding was in consequence held in camera, to protect the children of the marriage, resulting in the grant of a court divorce on publicly un-disclosed terms.
In a further beleaguering development for General Olusegun Obasanjo since leaving office, a fellow named "Jack Stanley" - recruited by United States Halliburton Company - has testified at a United States federal court that $180 million was distributed to top Nigerian government officials as bribes to secure a $6 billion federal contract for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects in Nigeria between 1994 and 2006 - straddling the successive regimes of Generals Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo.
Yar'Adua's administration early this year said $140 million of that amount has now been found in a Swiss bank and frozen. Very quickly, a letter for mutual assistance in criminal investigation was dispatched from Abuja to both Switzerland and the United States two months ago by the Yar'Adua government. That mutual assistance letter, as later published, sought the evidence under seal in the United States federal court, but also irrelevantly sought the names of individuals and companies overseas who participated in the Halliburton bribes scheme, so that they might be prosecuted in Nigeria - thus complicating any immediate response from either the United States or Switzerland.
If replies to Nigeria's mutual assistance requests eventually come, officials of the Obasanjo administration could be indicted, perhaps including Obasanjo himself, if the evidence irresistibly point at his complicity, ex-officio, as head of government.
Not taking chances, President Yar'Adua has separately set up a multi-agency investigation team comprising the Nigeria Police, the EFCC, the Military, and Defence Intelligence Units, to "publicly name the Nigerian officials found complicit in the Halliburton bribes". That committee has till end of June to make its findings public, whether or not responses to mutual assistance letters are received. Whilst awaiting this "public naming and shaming process" ordered by President Yar'Adua, it is as likely as not that General Obasanjo would be under severe political pressure, since he has no way of knowing just what this multi-agency investigation could reveal.
And because the records of the evidence are perpetuated in a United States federal court - without any availing statute of limitations - there is hardly a wiggle room for arguments in denial by anyone indicted, except for arguments between any set of co-accused persons. In terms therefore, this criminal investigation now underway in four countries under the United Nations Merida Convention has the potential to escalate into a reputation-incinerating proceeding for all accused persons because international criminal law is in issue, and no single country is in control of the eventual outcome. For already, the United States government has begun extradition proceeding against a British lawyer, named Mr. Tessler, who is suspected to have finessed the money-laundering papers. Mr. Tessler has since sued for protection against extradition at the Royal Courts in England. The matter is pending a hearing.
Meanwhile, as this international legal web spreads home to reach General Olusegun Obasanjo's regime at its centre, there is the other key problem of Obasanjo having lost critical numbers of his erstwhile military allies. One such lost ally is Lt.General Yakubu Danjuma who gave an interview to The Guardian a year ago, saying he would rather see to it that General Obasanjo returns to prison. Lt. General Danjuma was paradoxically the chief fund-raiser for Obasanjo's 1999 presidential campaign who said he gave N600 million of his personal funds to Obasanjo as campaign donations.
Another lost ally is General Ibrahim Babangida who has not even bothered to visit General Obasanjo's residence since 2006, on the polite pretext of being too busy to visit - as he'd done every year prior. Thus left alone by his long-time military allies to bear these current burdens, General Olusegun Obasanjo looks too politically vulnerable to ride the rising storms as they trench on his governing reputation, especially given President's Yar'Adua's announced determination to jail everyone corruptly involved with Halliburton.
Unless Obasanjo can somehow be exonerated by clear and convincing evidence that demonstrates that he neither knew nor had any reason to know (as head of government) that Halliiburton distributed bribes over a 10-year period for LNG projects, it would be blues and goodnight to Nigeria's self-described "father of the nation".
AFTER nigh on 25 months in office, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua now likely appears to General Olusegun Obasanjo more as a promise of harm than a divine successor he'd announced Yar'Adua as two years ago. For even in a not so piquant coincidence, General Obasanjo had simply kept quiet on May 29 - at Nigeria's 10th anniversary of civil rule - choosing to say nothing for his successor, even as Ijaw militant groups in southern Nigeria were announcing they've killed and dis-embowelled a Lt. Colonel; "who is the son of a former head of state" deployed to the south marine commando by the Nigerian military in its on-going raids on Ijaw militants' bastion.
Three months earlier, Obasanjo's status as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was intentionally diminished to a sinecure post at a party convention organised solely for that purpose. At that convention, Obasanjo had cleverly abstained. Now, in effect, no longer shall Obasanjo have the personal power to call any PDP member to order, since that power shall henceforth be exercised by the 60-odd member Board of Trustees as a collective.
Before his personal diminution in the party hierarchy, certain bilateral agreements on crude oil exploration with South Korea, which General Obasanjo signed as Nigeria's President in 2005, were promptly shredded on January 7 this year by President Umaru Yar'Adua. "Non-payment in full by the Koreans for the two oil blocs" was cited as official reason for unilaterally revoking the oil blocs awarded South Korea by Nigeria under the bilateral agreement (in exchange for six billion dollars of promised Korean investments in Nigeria's energy sector).
Meanwhile, the more prominent of Obasanjo's official aides are wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for thefts and conversion of public property to cronies and family members. Nuhu Ribadu, for example, was the EFCC Chairman under Obasanjo. He fled Nigeria on exile into Europe whilst under investigation in Nigeria by the EFCC for financial crimes, fearing assassination by certain stalkers, as he said, who had shot bullets at his car.
Femi Fani-Kayode, Obasanjo's vociferous spokesman, probably had no such means of escape. He is on trial for N250 million allegedly deposited into his bank account, and his wife's, on the same day. "Yar'Adua's government is lawless", he'd blurted in frustration over his two-time detention in prison custody pending bail, but now, Fani-Kayode is on trial on 140-count charge for monetary crimes.
Nasir El-Rufai - Obasanjo's more vociferous Minister - is now subject of an extradition proceeding by Yar'Adua's government. He is alleged to have criminally allotted plots of land in Abuja to his wives and relatives in criminal breach of trust whilst in public office as Obasanjo's federal capital minister. El Rufai says he is very eager to attend his criminal trial but only at his own time and not earlier than when he shall have finished his self-assigned studies in the United States.
In a spirited fight-back meanwhile, El-Rufai wrote a commentary for the global audience on the internet last week, intending to seek logical inferences from a set of impossible facts - that Obasanjo's actions are the proper examples Yar'Adua fails to follow, but Yar'Adua's attorney-general (Aondooaka) earlier made clear that massive corruption, on the contrary, majorly defined Obasanjo's two-term presidency from 1999 until 2007, making Obasanjo's regime a crass example to avoid. General Olusegun Obasanjo's daughter, Iyabo, who is a Senator, has herself been on trial since 2008 for drawing out money from the Ministry of Health, knowing, as earlier notified by the EFCC, that the money in her possession was taken by the then Minister of Health, Professor (Mrs) Grange.
Iyabo's trial started just about the same time that her brother, Gbenga Obasanjo, was alleging in a divorce court paper that their father, General Olusegun Obasanjo, had incestuously slept with his own wife whilst in public office as Nigeria's President. The court proceeding was in consequence held in camera, to protect the children of the marriage, resulting in the grant of a court divorce on publicly un-disclosed terms.
In a further beleaguering development for General Olusegun Obasanjo since leaving office, a fellow named "Jack Stanley" - recruited by United States Halliburton Company - has testified at a United States federal court that $180 million was distributed to top Nigerian government officials as bribes to secure a $6 billion federal contract for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects in Nigeria between 1994 and 2006 - straddling the successive regimes of Generals Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo.
Yar'Adua's administration early this year said $140 million of that amount has now been found in a Swiss bank and frozen. Very quickly, a letter for mutual assistance in criminal investigation was dispatched from Abuja to both Switzerland and the United States two months ago by the Yar'Adua government. That mutual assistance letter, as later published, sought the evidence under seal in the United States federal court, but also irrelevantly sought the names of individuals and companies overseas who participated in the Halliburton bribes scheme, so that they might be prosecuted in Nigeria - thus complicating any immediate response from either the United States or Switzerland.
If replies to Nigeria's mutual assistance requests eventually come, officials of the Obasanjo administration could be indicted, perhaps including Obasanjo himself, if the evidence irresistibly point at his complicity, ex-officio, as head of government.
Not taking chances, President Yar'Adua has separately set up a multi-agency investigation team comprising the Nigeria Police, the EFCC, the Military, and Defence Intelligence Units, to "publicly name the Nigerian officials found complicit in the Halliburton bribes". That committee has till end of June to make its findings public, whether or not responses to mutual assistance letters are received. Whilst awaiting this "public naming and shaming process" ordered by President Yar'Adua, it is as likely as not that General Obasanjo would be under severe political pressure, since he has no way of knowing just what this multi-agency investigation could reveal.
And because the records of the evidence are perpetuated in a United States federal court - without any availing statute of limitations - there is hardly a wiggle room for arguments in denial by anyone indicted, except for arguments between any set of co-accused persons. In terms therefore, this criminal investigation now underway in four countries under the United Nations Merida Convention has the potential to escalate into a reputation-incinerating proceeding for all accused persons because international criminal law is in issue, and no single country is in control of the eventual outcome. For already, the United States government has begun extradition proceeding against a British lawyer, named Mr. Tessler, who is suspected to have finessed the money-laundering papers. Mr. Tessler has since sued for protection against extradition at the Royal Courts in England. The matter is pending a hearing.
Meanwhile, as this international legal web spreads home to reach General Olusegun Obasanjo's regime at its centre, there is the other key problem of Obasanjo having lost critical numbers of his erstwhile military allies. One such lost ally is Lt.General Yakubu Danjuma who gave an interview to The Guardian a year ago, saying he would rather see to it that General Obasanjo returns to prison. Lt. General Danjuma was paradoxically the chief fund-raiser for Obasanjo's 1999 presidential campaign who said he gave N600 million of his personal funds to Obasanjo as campaign donations.
Another lost ally is General Ibrahim Babangida who has not even bothered to visit General Obasanjo's residence since 2006, on the polite pretext of being too busy to visit - as he'd done every year prior. Thus left alone by his long-time military allies to bear these current burdens, General Olusegun Obasanjo looks too politically vulnerable to ride the rising storms as they trench on his governing reputation, especially given President's Yar'Adua's announced determination to jail everyone corruptly involved with Halliburton.
Unless Obasanjo can somehow be exonerated by clear and convincing evidence that demonstrates that he neither knew nor had any reason to know (as head of government) that Halliiburton distributed bribes over a 10-year period for LNG projects, it would be blues and goodnight to Nigeria's self-described "father of the nation".
AFTER nigh on 25 months in office, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua now likely appears to General Olusegun Obasanjo more as a promise of harm than a divine successor he'd announced Yar'Adua as two years ago. For even in a not so piquant coincidence, General Obasanjo had simply kept quiet on May 29 - at Nigeria's 10th anniversary of civil rule - choosing to say nothing for his successor, even as Ijaw militant groups in southern Nigeria were announcing they've killed and dis-embowelled a Lt. Colonel; "who is the son of a former head of state" deployed to the south marine commando by the Nigerian military in its on-going raids on Ijaw militants' bastion.
Three months earlier, Obasanjo's status as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was intentionally diminished to a sinecure post at a party convention organised solely for that purpose. At that convention, Obasanjo had cleverly abstained. Now, in effect, no longer shall Obasanjo have the personal power to call any PDP member to order, since that power shall henceforth be exercised by the 60-odd member Board of Trustees as a collective.
Before his personal diminution in the party hierarchy, certain bilateral agreements on crude oil exploration with South Korea, which General Obasanjo signed as Nigeria's President in 2005, were promptly shredded on January 7 this year by President Umaru Yar'Adua. "Non-payment in full by the Koreans for the two oil blocs" was cited as official reason for unilaterally revoking the oil blocs awarded South Korea by Nigeria under the bilateral agreement (in exchange for six billion dollars of promised Korean investments in Nigeria's energy sector).
Meanwhile, the more prominent of Obasanjo's official aides are wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for thefts and conversion of public property to cronies and family members. Nuhu Ribadu, for example, was the EFCC Chairman under Obasanjo. He fled Nigeria on exile into Europe whilst under investigation in Nigeria by the EFCC for financial crimes, fearing assassination by certain stalkers, as he said, who had shot bullets at his car.
Femi Fani-Kayode, Obasanjo's vociferous spokesman, probably had no such means of escape. He is on trial for N250 million allegedly deposited into his bank account, and his wife's, on the same day. "Yar'Adua's government is lawless", he'd blurted in frustration over his two-time detention in prison custody pending bail, but now, Fani-Kayode is on trial on 140-count charge for monetary crimes.
Nasir El-Rufai - Obasanjo's more vociferous Minister - is now subject of an extradition proceeding by Yar'Adua's government. He is alleged to have criminally allotted plots of land in Abuja to his wives and relatives in criminal breach of trust whilst in public office as Obasanjo's federal capital minister. El Rufai says he is very eager to attend his criminal trial but only at his own time and not earlier than when he shall have finished his self-assigned studies in the United States.
In a spirited fight-back meanwhile, El-Rufai wrote a commentary for the global audience on the internet last week, intending to seek logical inferences from a set of impossible facts - that Obasanjo's actions are the proper examples Yar'Adua fails to follow, but Yar'Adua's attorney-general (Aondooaka) earlier made clear that massive corruption, on the contrary, majorly defined Obasanjo's two-term presidency from 1999 until 2007, making Obasanjo's regime a crass example to avoid. General Olusegun Obasanjo's daughter, Iyabo, who is a Senator, has herself been on trial since 2008 for drawing out money from the Ministry of Health, knowing, as earlier notified by the EFCC, that the money in her possession was taken by the then Minister of Health, Professor (Mrs) Grange.
Iyabo's trial started just about the same time that her brother, Gbenga Obasanjo, was alleging in a divorce court paper that their father, General Olusegun Obasanjo, had incestuously slept with his own wife whilst in public office as Nigeria's President. The court proceeding was in consequence held in camera, to protect the children of the marriage, resulting in the grant of a court divorce on publicly un-disclosed terms.
In a further beleaguering development for General Olusegun Obasanjo since leaving office, a fellow named "Jack Stanley" - recruited by United States Halliburton Company - has testified at a United States federal court that $180 million was distributed to top Nigerian government officials as bribes to secure a $6 billion federal contract for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects in Nigeria between 1994 and 2006 - straddling the successive regimes of Generals Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Olusegun Obasanjo.
Yar'Adua's administration early this year said $140 million of that amount has now been found in a Swiss bank and frozen. Very quickly, a letter for mutual assistance in criminal investigation was dispatched from Abuja to both Switzerland and the United States two months ago by the Yar'Adua government. That mutual assistance letter, as later published, sought the evidence under seal in the United States federal court, but also irrelevantly sought the names of individuals and companies overseas who participated in the Halliburton bribes scheme, so that they might be prosecuted in Nigeria - thus complicating any immediate response from either the United States or Switzerland.
If replies to Nigeria's mutual assistance requests eventually come, officials of the Obasanjo administration could be indicted, perhaps including Obasanjo himself, if the evidence irresistibly point at his complicity, ex-officio, as head of government.
Not taking chances, President Yar'Adua has separately set up a multi-agency investigation team comprising the Nigeria Police, the EFCC, the Military, and Defence Intelligence Units, to "publicly name the Nigerian officials found complicit in the Halliburton bribes". That committee has till end of June to make its findings public, whether or not responses to mutual assistance letters are received. Whilst awaiting this "public naming and shaming process" ordered by President Yar'Adua, it is as likely as not that General Obasanjo would be under severe political pressure, since he has no way of knowing just what this multi-agency investigation could reveal.
And because the records of the evidence are perpetuated in a United States federal court - without any availing statute of limitations - there is hardly a wiggle room for arguments in denial by anyone indicted, except for arguments between any set of co-accused persons. In terms therefore, this criminal investigation now underway in four countries under the United Nations Merida Convention has the potential to escalate into a reputation-incinerating proceeding for all accused persons because international criminal law is in issue, and no single country is in control of the eventual outcome. For already, the United States government has begun extradition proceeding against a British lawyer, named Mr. Tessler, who is suspected to have finessed the money-laundering papers. Mr. Tessler has since sued for protection against extradition at the Royal Courts in England. The matter is pending a hearing.
Meanwhile, as this international legal web spreads home to reach General Olusegun Obasanjo's regime at its centre, there is the other key problem of Obasanjo having lost critical numbers of his erstwhile military allies. One such lost ally is Lt.General Yakubu Danjuma who gave an interview to The Guardian a year ago, saying he would rather see to it that General Obasanjo returns to prison. Lt. General Danjuma was paradoxically the chief fund-raiser for Obasanjo's 1999 presidential campaign who said he gave N600 million of his personal funds to Obasanjo as campaign donations.
Another lost ally is General Ibrahim Babangida who has not even bothered to visit General Obasanjo's residence since 2006, on the polite pretext of being too busy to visit - as he'd done every year prior. Thus left alone by his long-time military allies to bear these current burdens, General Olusegun Obasanjo looks too politically vulnerable to ride the rising storms as they trench on his governing reputation, especially given President's Yar'Adua's announced determination to jail everyone corruptly involved with Halliburton.
Unless Obasanjo can somehow be exonerated by clear and convincing evidence that demonstrates that he neither knew nor had any reason to know (as head of government) that Halliiburton distributed bribes over a 10-year period for LNG projects, it would be blues and goodnight to Nigeria's self-described "father of the nation".
