By Louis Odion, FNGE
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| Oduah |
Even days ahead of its unveiling, a new book by ace
journalist and APC spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, is surely stirring the
political waters already. Since teasers began to appear in Simon
Kolawole's TheCable last week, many can hardly wait anymore
for tomorrow's presentation in Abuja to grab copy and see what fresh angles
"On A Platter of Gold: How Jonathan Won and Lost Nigeria"
brings to Segun Adeniyi's earlier block-buster, "Against The Run of
Play".
Abdullahi is by no means a casual chronicler of the
momentous events that shaped the Jonathan presidency; he was an insider having
served as minister.
Perhaps the juiciest extract featured thus far by TheCable is
the sensational claim by Stella Oduah that she lost her Aviation portfolio in
the last dispensation due to the machinations of now embattled Diezani
Allison-Madueke (then the powerful oil minister) in what seems to illuminate
intensely the psycho-sexual tension within the Jonathan
presidency.
History reminds us that empires had risen and fallen over
nothing more than lust or wounded love, and the remains of many great men were
found near discarded skirt and camisole.
According to her, Diezani strongly believed leaks of
her incurring a bill of whopping N10b jetting around "privately"
emanated from the Aviation ministry. To exact a pound of flesh, Oduah alleges
that Diezani funded sustained media spotlight on her own N250m bulletproof BMW
cars scandal.
(A presidential panel headed by then NSA Sambo Dasuki
had found the Aviation minister culpable in the shady $1.6m auto deal.)
"She thought I was the one who leaked the issue of
private jet that put her into trouble with the House of Reps," she says,
adding "For her, it was payback time. Diezani was paying people to keep
the story alive. At the same time, she was whispering in (the president's) ears
that he had to take action."
But the real meat is in her next comment: "I knew
all along that Diezani could not deal with having another female around who had
the kind of access I had to the president."
In what suggests more than official relationship with
GEJ, Oduah was quoted by the author to be uninhibited enough to then pointedly
demand of the president, “Did Diezani ask you to sack me?", which he
flatly denied.
Of course, in power circles then, it didn't require
much political intelligence to know there were actually five powerful women
around the President. Aside Oduah and Diezani, the three others included
First Lady (Mama Peace herself), the president's ebony-black mom and Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, the "Coordinating Minister" and thick-set Amazon of
the exchequer.
Romantics are likely to swoon over that and interpret
as omen that GEJ was a "ladies' man".
This however makes Jonathan the stark
opposite of his successor, President Muhammadu Buhari, said to be very, very
"shy among women" (apology Information Minister Lai Mohammed). It
then perhaps explains why women today enjoy less visibility around PMB's wooden
paternalism.
Responding to a question posed by a foreign journalist
in faraway Germany following First Lady Aisha's philippic against the
presidency last year, Buhari hardly betrayed any emotion in dismissing her
sense of political judgement outside what he considered her exclusive
jurisdiction: "My wife belongs to the kitchen, the living room and the
other room."
Now, the puzzle is the definition of the
"access" Oduah alludes to. Of course, everyone agrees that, both in
and outside office, GEJ remains a perfect gentleman, with amazingly charming
smile and killer athletic build capable of making the opposite sex drool,
ordinarily.
So, could Oduah be referring to a "special pin no"
from which other top female officials around Jonathan were restricted? The kind
that conferred extraordinary privileges like having their proposals or memos
approved with dizzying dispatch, without second look, let alone scrutiny.
The only conclusion that could drawn from Oduah's
revelation is that she and Diezani were both shamelessly locked in a cold war
over long-suffering Madam Patience's fine husband. Now, if a scavenger
gets swollen-headed over the possession of a treasure found by accident, what's
expected of the original owner? Between the feuding princesses, every
waking moment seemed spent agonizing over which plot the other might be
hatching to monopolize the king's attention.
In the circumstance, the puzzle then: what time did
they really have left for official duties? We can, therefore, only continue to
speculate and imagine the titanic battle poor Jonathan must have waged against
falling into the sort of temptation Adam found irresistible in the biblical
Garden of Aden.
When similarly charming Bill Clinton found himself in
such tight corner as president at the Oval Office in Washington in the 90s, he
succumbed to curvaceous Monica Lewinsky. The ghost of that affair with its
salacious details would come back to exact a price that almost cost him the
presidency. Though he survived narrowly, he would endure the shame for the rest
of his life.
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| ODION |
One of Clinton's predecessors, John F Kennedy, was not
that lucky. His hyperactive testosterone is believed to have been largely
fueled by the side effect of a medication he took for Addison's disease.
Compulsive philanderer, aside the steady stream of paramours smuggled into the
White House through the back door, among his other conquests were government
secretaries and one Judith Campbell who incidentally happened to be linked to
mafia boss Sam Giancana. This shred of evidence formed the basis of the
enduring conspiracy theory that JFK's assassination in 1963 involved the
mob.
Elsewhere in Zimbabwe about the same time Clinton was
being tempted, Robert Mugabe had also come under the bewitching spell of Grace
inside the White House in Harare. Sashay after tantalizing sashay up and down
the presidential office, the salivating ex-guerrilla apparently began to see
his dashing secretary in a totally different light. Incentives then came to
work longer hours in the office. The death of the much-beloved Ghanaian-born
First Lady would finally open the door for Grace to be formally unveiled to the
nation as the new presidential consort.
Following Mugabe's ignominious fall from power last
week, pundits may still be divided today over the political epitaph to engrave
on his political tombstone. But regardless, there is consensus already that
Grace's vain ways contributed in no small measure in stoking public anger against
the old comrade.
Well, the good news is that GEJ left office in 2015
through the electoral door, certainly not through any proven peccadilloes.
Maybe, the ghost would have been finally laid to rest had the usually blunt
Oduah, presently a senator representing Anambra, taken a step further to stave
the ambiguity that incriminates. By either confirming or denying the
long-standing rumour in some mischievous quarters that that "access"
had, in fact, some amatory taste.
Or, since she is known to be single and available, did
she ever, at any time, have a crush on the Prince Charming from Otuoke?
With the raft of grave charges still pending at the
British court, we wager Diezani would, on her own, wish to be spared this sort
of question, at least for now.
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