Anenih, other PDP leaders made Yar’Adua not implement Uwais report before dying, says Bolaji Akinyemi

Akinyemi gave a damning remark on the management of Nigeria’s resources, stating bluntly, “I can’t award pass mark”.

By Jeffrey Agbo

Former Minister of External Affairs, Bolaji Akinyemi, has blamed the late former chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Tony Anenih, as one of the reasons why proposals for electoral reform stated in the Justice Mohammed Uwais report did not see the light of day.

Akinyemi, a professor of political science, told Newswatch in an interview published on December 28 that Nigeria’s elite would not allow for meaningful reforms to displace the “mess” which he claimed they were benefitting from.

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The 81-year-old said that for Nigeria to move forward, three reports should be put on the table — the Justice Uwais panel report, the report of the 2014 national conference, and the El-Rufai/APC report.

He said, “I remember President Yar’Adua said to us ‘I know I didn’t win this election. I know it’s not credible. Please come to me and help me build a model that will produce a credible and acceptable election. And I promise you, I will implement it.’ I’m not into governance, I was only in the corridor. Rather than in the bedroom but I know there’s no government that is supposed to pledge itself to implementing a report that has not even been written. Unless they are going to give you a copy of what they expect you to submit to them. And he never did. He never directed us. He never gave us any proposal.

“And when we submitted the report to him, he still repeated it, i will implement it because I have faith in the credibility of people who wrote it. Unfortunately by that time he was ill. I knew the man was dying. And the PDP, may God send them to hell. Anenih and co took advantage of that. Someone told us that they had sent for Uwais when they wanted to discuss. But Justice Uwais, behaving like the judge he had been, said ‘What do they want me for? We’ve written the report. It’s got nothing to do with me.’ So he never went. The president then presented the report and told the cabinet he’s committed to the report and I intend to implement but I’ll like to have your views.”

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Speaking further, Akinyemi said, “The cabinet: every single member of the Yar’Adua cabinet said ‘I am in favour sir. I approve sir.’ That night, Anenih led a group of PDP leaders to him. ‘Mr. President, you shouldn’t have done this. This is how we win elections. These people have overturned everything. We will never win an election in this country with the reforms that they have suggested. And which you have committed yourself to.’ I think it was Babagana Kingibe who told me the story because he was there. He said Yar’Adua was so tired but he said he would re-submit it to the cabinet. He said which he did the following meeting. And every member of the cabinet voted against it. And that was the end.”

Akinyemi, however, noted that pieces of the Uwais report, and the 2014 national conference have been implemented by the National Assembly without giving credit to those two documents.

The octogenarian said Nigeria has never had democracy, but civilian rule, noting that elections have always been pre-determined in the country.

Akinyemi gave a damning remark on the management of Nigeria’s resources, stating bluntly, “I can’t award pass mark”.

On the ways the Tinubu administration can do better, he said, “If you plug the stealing of our oil, if you deploy the security offices in the North.West, North East and North Central so that farmers can go back to the farm, because there was a time in this country that agriculture was adding more to the GDP than oil. And the third one is plug corruption. You see the corruption is in three sectors that are critical. The civil servants even steal more money than the ministers. The civil servants would teach the ministers how to take their 12%. While the civil servants walk away with the rest. You have to plug that too.”