RELATED - Fraud Allegations Fuel Fight Between Top Nigerian Officials
Reuters
Friday, September 8, 2006; Page A14
ABUJA, Nigeria, Sept. 7 -- President Olusegun Obasanjo sent the Senate a report by a state anti-corruption agency accusing his deputy of diverting millions of dollars in public funds to private business concerns, officials said Thursday.
Vice President Atiku Abubakar rejected the report as a "cocktail of lies" and threatened to present lawmakers with 127 impeachable offenses against Obasanjo, including milking the state oil company of funds for political activities.
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The open warfare between the two politicians raised the chances of chaos in the run-up to elections, scheduled for April, in a country already facing an armed insurrection in the oil-producing Niger Delta, religious strife, political assassinations and widespread violent crime.
"It could trigger a political meltdown, government gridlock, a delay in the ruling party's primaries," said Sebastian Spio-Garbrah, an analyst with Eurasia Group, a consulting firm.
The two men have waged a low-intensity power struggle for years. It escalated into a public feud during a failed campaign to rewrite the constitution to allow Obasanjo to run for a third term. Abubakar opposed the effort and the Senate rejected the amendment in May.
The elections next year should mark the first democratic handover of power in Africa's most populous country since independence from Britain in 1960.
The anti-corruption agency's report details what it said was the authorization by Abubakar of millions of dollars in payments from the Petroleum Technology Development Fund to private business concerns.
Abubakar's spokesman, Garba Shehu, said Abubakar plans to ask the Senate to investigate what he called 127 impeachable offenses by Obasanjo, including the use of "phony accounts" for the president's political activities funded by the state oil company.
The vice president, like the president and state governors, is constitutionally immune from prosecution. But he could be disqualified from running for the presidency if he is indicted for corruption.
Abubakar divides much of his time between Nigeria and Potomac, Md. An ongoing FBI investigation is looking into whether Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) bribed Abubakar to help land a lucrative telecommunications contract in Nigeria. Abubakar has denied the allegation, and Jefferson has denied any wrongdoing.
