Buhari's govt treating Osinbajo like a glorified house boy, says Osuntokun

A former Political Adviser to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, Akin Osuntokun, in an interview with PUNCH, says President Muhammadu Buhari’s government treating Yemi Osinbajo like a glorified houseboy. Saying that the VP's helicopter crash in Kabba Kogi state is an example. 

Osuntokun said this while reacting to a question if there would be a repeat of 1984 should Buhari wins the presidential election. 

Excerpt: 

Are you expecting a repeat of 1984?

That was military dictatorship. Up till 1998 when Gen. Sani Abacha died, the politics and Presidency of Nigeria was like a plain yard of the North. The hegemony they had exerted was reinforced in 1966. Don’t forget they wanted to secede but they didn’t.

The so- called northern hegemony of civilians and the military said that they were going to remain in Nigeria on their own terms and their terms of permanent domination. We will be unfair if we are attributing the shortcomings of Buhari to the North. From my own random investigation, I am sure that the majority of the northern elites are not really with him. 

There is something like mob democracy, so he is able now to appeal to the base sentiments of the northern masses, ‘that is our leader, this is the man, we versus them’; so, once he attains the leadership of that kind of chauvinistic ethnic base, the other leaders are being put on the spot. If you now come out to criticise them, they will accuse you of being a sellout or a traitor. You shouldn’t mistake the silence of many of these people as consent or collaboration with Buhari in whatever agenda he is prosecuting.

President Buhari and the so- called cabal, have not demonstrated what I will call enlightened self- interest. They are prone to internal squabbles. The Director- General of the DSS and the EFCC chairman work directly with the President. This President kept on nominating Ibrahim Magu to the Senate for confirmation; the DG of the DSS under him was the one providing evidence why he should not be confirmed. So again this is a kind of dysfunctional administration that you have. Your own the DG of the DSS, answerable to you, goes to the Senate to provide an evidence to propose that the person you, his principal, has nominated should not be honoured. So we are going to have more of this. There is a lot of this in the way they treat Vice - President Yemi Osinbajo like a glorified houseboy.

The helicopter accident Osinbajo had in Kabba, Kogi State, was scandalous and it was very revealing. I worked in the Presidency for five years, the Vice -President of Nigeria, by protocol, has access to innumerable helicopters, including military ones and then where he found the need to go and charter a private helicopter, this is an indication of the way they treat him. He has no business taking a private commercial helicopter on an errand that is not personal to him. That is an illustration of how you can have an idea of what is going on in that place. We thank God that he survived it.