May 5, 2010
Saharareporters learnt today about a last-minute scam designed by Turai Yar’adua and a cabal around her days before Umaru Yar'adua's death on Wednesday night (Nigerian time). Aware that the ailing ruler could not survive another week, the cabal made a desperate move to coax Acting President Goodluck Jonathan “to accept Yar'adua's resignation,” several sources told us. Our sources revealed that a seven-man panel led by Adamu Aliero, the disgraced former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, anchored Turai Yar’adua’s latest game plan. The Aliero team was in serious negotiations with Jonathan's group, led by Alaibo Graham-Douglas, a cabinet member under the Sani Abacha regime. “The two groups met at the instance of the Yar’adua team to discuss terms for Yar'adua's formal disengagement from power,” a source involved in the negotiations told Saharareporters.
Our sources said that Aliero and his group had even convinced Jonathan’s team to fire some of the recently appointed ministers and “to return some of the removed ministers to their former powerful positions.” One source told Saharareporters that, if Yar’adua had not died suddenly, the scam might have worked.
In a related development, Nigeria’s Chief Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and current Attorney General Adoki Bello had also constituted themselves into a power bloc to make demands on and wrest concessions from Jonathan. Our sources indicated that the chief justice and attorney general informed Jonathan that members of Yar’adua’s cabal had told them that Yar'adua had recovered and was ready to resume office on May 29th 2010. But the duo promised Jonathan that they could use the law to frustrate Yar’adua’s return to office. The two men then insisted that Jonathan retain the current EFCC chairperson, Mrs. Farida Waziri, who hails from the CJN’s state of Benue.
In the wake of Yar’adua’s death, it is unclear what fate awaits Jonathan’s negotiations with the Aliero and Katsina-Alu groups. But late tonight, one of our sources, a member of the presidential advisory board, told Saharareporters, “with full presidential powers now in his hands, Jonathan may jettison all these deals.”
Yar’adua’s death last night validated our series of reports detailing the former ruler’s health troubles and exposing his cabals’ use of local and international media to deceive Nigerians into believing that Yar'adua was on a path to full recovery.
Turai Yar’adua personally oversaw the massive media blitz that bribed newspaper and television top shots to carry often-laughable stories about Yar’adua’s imminent reclamation of the presidency. The Abuja-based DailyTrust newspaper stood out among the newspapers that were used for Turai Yar’adua’s mindless games which ended up “degrading her husband,” according to an Abuja-based Northern politician. In numerous shameless reports, the Trust and such newspapers as The Nation and Daily Sun claimed that Yar'adua was playing with his grandkids, nieces, and nephews or that he took walks in the gardens of Aso Rock Villa, making stops to commune with birds.
Yar'adua will be buried in his hometown of Katsina at 2:00 p.m. (Nigerian time) today – Thursday May 6. His body will leave the Presidential Villa accompanied by his wife and family at 10:00 a.m. following the swearing-in of Goodluck Jonathan at 8:00 a.m.
Meanwhile, Jonathan has declared 7 days of mourning and also requested that flags be flown at half-mast across Nigeria. The acting president has also declared today, Thursday, as a public holiday.
Yar'adua died late yesterday evening after a crisis resulting from an autoimmune disease known as "Churg Strauss Syndrome".
He will be buried according to Muslim rites at a cemetery in Katsina.
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