A former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Senator Amadu Ali, says he supported tenure elongation for former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006 because the ex-President had done remarkably well.
Ali said this in his biography titled, ‘The Many Colours of a Rainbow,’which was launched in Abuja on Thursday.
He said the decision to support Obasanjo’s tenure extension was a personal one and he never used his position as party chairman to manipulate the system in favour of Obasanjo.
The book read, “What happened was that in the previous PDP administration (1999-2003) a number of constitutional amendments – 106 of them – was proposed. The new House took up the unfinished business which had been publicised and gazetted and began to debate.
“One of the proposed amendments was on the extension of the term of the President. The press focused on this one proposal and spawned new emotive descriptions to characterise the proposal as ‘President for life’, sit-tight President,’ tenure elongation campaign and so on.
“Senator Amadu Ali had his personal views about it and in fact, supported Obasanjo’s ‘tenure elongation’ wholeheartedly because he genuinely believed that Obasanjo was an extraordinarily good leader in spite of his perceived failings.”
Ali, who was also a Federal Commissioner for Education during the ‘Ali Must Go’ university protests which left students killed in 1978, said he was wrongly blamed for the incident.
He explained that the protests erupted after the decision to increase the lodging fee from N150 to N468 per session while the cost of feeding was also increased by 50k.
The former PDP chairman said the decision was taken by the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Prof. Jibril Aminu, and Chief of Staff to the Supreme Military Council, Gen Shehu Yar’Adua, without his knowledge.
Ali, who is the protem chairman of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement, said Gowon, who was 31 when he became head of state, had already imbued himself with leadership skills before he rose to power as he was already controlling a battalion of 1,000 men before becoming commander-in-chief.
Punch
