US embassy cable - 02ABUJA2539

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ABUJA 002539 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL 08/23/12 
TAGS: PGOV, KDEM, PREL, NI 
SUBJECT: NIGERIA -- FORMER VP EKWUEME SAYS 
PDP IN TURMOIL; PRESIDENTIAL RACE UNCLEAR 
 
 
(U) CLASSIFIED BY AMBASSADOR HOWARD F.JETER; 
                  REASONS 1.5(B) and (D). 
 
 
1.  (C) SUMMARY: During two meetings with 
the Ambassador in late July and mid-August, 
former civilian Vice President and current 
Chairman of the PDP Trustee Board Alex 
Ekwueme waxed about the danger of massive 
defections from the party due to President 
Obasanjo's waning popularity. As a result, 
the Trustees established a committee to 
assess Obasanjo's electoral chances. Ekwueme 
unconvincingly stated that he did not want 
to be in the running, but thought former 
Head of State Ibrahim Babangida would seek 
the UNPP's banner and would present a 
formidable challenge. Former Head of State 
Buhari, seeking the ANPP nomination, was 
popular in the Muslim North but had little 
appeal in other regions and had ostracized 
the Christian community by intemperate 
statements on religion. Perennial also-rans 
such as Umaru Shinkafi were not serious 
contenders, but were jockeying for Cabinet 
positions and other pay-offs. Ekwueme 
predicted that after a few more months of 
backroom bargaining more serious candidates 
would emerge and the real picture of the 
presidential contest would unfold.  End 
Summary. 
 
 
-------------------- 
IRE IN THE PDP HOUSE 
-------------------- 
 
 
2.  (C) As Chairman of the ruling PDP's 
Board of Trustees, Ekwueme should be looking 
forward to the upcoming elections.  Instead, 
Ekwueme, in two separate meetings with the 
Ambassador in late July and mid-August 
respectively, related his discomfort with 
the disunity infecting his party. During 
their most recent meetings, the Trustees 
decried the internecine battles between the 
President and party leadership in the 
National Assembly and despaired over the 
violence and shameless cheating that 
characterized PDP local government primaries 
in July.  Yet the biggest headache was 
President Obasanjo's sagging popularity and 
the President's now renowned tendentiousness 
which has alienated numbers of party 
members.  Important people were prepared to 
leave the PDP and join other parties, 
particularly if Obasanjo attempted to hijack 
the nomination, Ekwueme said. Because of 
this intra-party power struggle and due to 
the growing perception that Obasanjo might 
be an electoral liability, the Board was 
forming a committee to study the Party's 
internal troubles, Ekwueme added. 
 
 
3.  (C) COMMENT: Preferring understatement 
and subtlety, the soft-spoken Ekwueme 
generally shuns blunt frankness. What he 
leaves between the lines is as important as 
what he says explicitly. Thus, things may be 
even worse than Ekwueme's description of the 
PDP misfortune.  Clearly, Ekwueme holds 
Obasanjo largely responsible for the party's 
woes. Because of Obasanjo, the PDP may be 
courting a major decline in its electoral 
fortunes. With Obasanjo steadily sinking, 
Ekwueme and others do not want to be pulled 
down by or because of him. Consequently, the 
committee will assess damage done to the 
party by its self-inflicted internal 
conflicts. In reality, we have learned that 
the real motivation for the committee's 
formation was to gauge Obasanjo's electoral 
prospects. The formation of the committee 
evinces a diffusion of power within the PDP 
and the democratic freedom to challenge the 
Head of State, a development unprecedented 
in Nigerian politics. However, it also says 
legions about the President's diminished 
political stature and the growing 
disenchantment of the PDP leadership with 
Obasanjo. End Comment. 
 
 
4.  (C) Continuing along this line, 
Obasanjo's re-nomination was not a fait 
accompli, Ekwueme told the Ambassador. 
Already there were four other contenders who 
had formally announced their bids for the 
PDP nomination. Ekwueme expected more people 
to contest for the PDP banner, but doubted 
the veracity of rumors that Vice President 
Atiku would leave the ticket to seek the 
nomination in his own right. 
 
 
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PRESIDENTIAL RACE -- THE PICTURE IS CLOUDY 
------------------------------------------ 
 
 
5. (C) Looking outside the PDP, Ekwueme 
thought former Head of State Babangida was 
inching closer to a formal declaration.  A 
long-term Babangida associate recently told 
Ekwueme that Babangida would run, Ekwueme 
confided to the Ambassador. Also, 
Babangida's men were busy purchasing 
vehicles and other equipment and materials 
in apparent preparation for mounting a 
campaign. He thought IBB would run under the 
banner of the UNPP, political home of 
numerous retired general officers, including 
Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida's 
military Vice-President and subsequent 
political front-man. 
 
 
6. (C) Although IBB would probably run, 
Ekwueme believed, the former Head of State 
characteristically was keeping his options 
open. IBB was also still exploring the 
possibility of an Igbo candidate and a 
northern Vice Presidential running mate. 
Many more late night negotiating sessions 
and horse-trading would be required before a 
candidate emerged that could appeal to the 
different segments of the fragmented Igbo 
political elite. 
 
 
7. (C) Being a former Vice President and a 
still widely respected figure, the urbane 
Ekwueme would fit the bill; however, he 
doubted Babangida would seek him out to 
forge common cause. After masterminding the 
coup that toppled Shagari and Ekwueme in 
1983, and later using his political muscle 
and riches to snatch the PDP Presidential 
nomination from Ekwueme's grasp to hand it 
to Obasanjo in 1999, Babangida saw Ekwueme 
as an aggrieved adversary who might seek 
vengeance. While professing no ill will 
toward the former Head of State, Ekwueme 
thought IBB would always be wary of him. 
Instead, Babangida was looking at Igbos like 
Senator Ike Nwachukwu, a former general and 
Babangida's Foreign Minister. 
 
 
8. (C) In the ANPP, former military strong- 
man Muhammadu Buhari currently was the man 
to watch. However, Buhari's strident and 
divisive religious statements had made most 
Christians and many moderate Muslims cringe. 
While Buhari was popular with the young, 
poor and restive in the Muslim community, he 
could not pay one Northern Christian to vote 
for him, Ekwueme declared. Obasanjo 
benefited the longer Buhari, a regional and 
religious lighting rod, remained a serious 
candidate. Buhari would split the anti- 
Obasanjo vote in the North while forcing the 
Northern Christian and Southern vote, both 
anti-Christian and Muslim, to unite and 
gravitate to Obasanjo. Ekwueme did not 
consider other announced candidates such as 
perennial also-ran Umaru Shinkafi as 
presidential timbre.  He thought Shinkafi 
and others had entered the race in order to 
raise their visibility and leverage that 
visibility to gain Cabinet posts and/or 
other future pay-offs. 
 
 
9. (C) While discussion of the relative 
strengths of Obasanjo, Babangida and Buhari 
was interesting, Ekwueme cautioned that the 
list of presidential candidates was not 
static. In Nigeria's political culture, 
presidential candidates emerge primarily 
from the closed door bargaining among the 
leaders of the political elite. The one who 
announces his candidacy early and publicly 
is rarely the one left standing when the 
backroom political trade-offs are over.  The 
most serious candidates usually emerge later 
in the game.  While Obasanjo and the two 
other former military Heads of State are the 
most serious names right now, Ekwueme 
predicted that the really formidable 
contenders among the civilian politicians 
would not emerge until December, when all of 
the political bartering has been done and 
the secret electoral compacts sealed. 
 
 
10. (C) Although he felt Babangida would 
enter the UNPP, Ekwueme felt IBB's hand also 
was in the NDP and, to a lesser degree, the 
ANPP. He did not see IBB's hand in the APGA 
as others thought, but acknowledged that 
some of the APGA hierarchy made their 
fortunes during IBB's reign. Ekwueme was not 
surprised the APGA was registered as a 
national party by INEC even though parties 
fielded by more widely known politicians 
could not fulfill the geographic 
requirements of having field offices in 24 
states. The APGA's ability to meet this 
requirement had little to do with manifest 
national character or being a party of 
ethnic   diversity; instead, the APGA relied 
on the wide diffusion of Igbos throughout 
Nigeria. Igbos are in every state and you 
can find an Igbo trader in almost every 
village. Thus, the APGA simply used these 
Igbo outposts as the address for their field 
offices in the various states. 
 
 
11. (C) Ekwueme stated that the larger 
number of opposition parties generally 
favored the PDP and Obasanjo. He predicted 
that an integral part of Obasanjo's 
political strategy would be to clandestinely 
promote minor opposition candidates in order 
to prevent a unified opposition around one 
candidate. 
 
 
12. (C) Asked when the PDP convention would 
occur, Ekwueme thought it would not take 
place in October as originally slated. He 
noted that the National Executive Committee 
and the Board of Trustees had to finalize 
the guidelines for the party primaries for 
the state and national offices and for the 
election of delegates to the primaries prior 
to establishing the date for the convention. 
Therefore, it was highly unlikely that the 
convention would take place before December. 
 
 
13. (C) Ekwueme lamented the confused status 
of the local government elections, saying 
that the machinations that have delayed them 
set a discordant, unfortunate precedent for 
the state and national polls ahead. He 
remembered the PDP trustees had advised 
Obasanjo last year that he would rue the 
decision to extend the tenure of the local 
government councils. However, Obasanjo was 
fixated on having his own independent 
political constituency by making sure the 
PDP could take the local governments in his 
home state away from the Yoruba-dominated 
Alliance for Democracy (AD). Obasanjo 
thought he could accomplish this feat if 
given more time, but he was wrong. Now, with 
his popularity dramatically declining, the 
President is afraid of holding local 
elections prior to the party convention. He 
does not want to limp into the convention 
having again lost his local government area 
and with the PDP possibly suffering a net 
loss nationwide. That would be the closest 
thing to a vote of no confidence that would 
make the convention an untidy, and open 
affair. Thus, Ekwueme predicted that local 
government elections would not hold until a 
month after the PDP convention. 
 
 
14. (C) While he could not completely mask 
his ambition, Ekwueme disclaimed any 
intention to seek the presidency. He said 
that he would be abroad, and thus out of the 
picture, most of August and September when 
much of the horse-trading would be done. 
 
 
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COMMENT 
------- 
 
 
15. (C) The exceptionally intelligent and 
experienced Ekwuewe may have been a bit 
disingenuous regarding his own ambitions. He 
has come close before and clearly he thinks 
he can do a better job than the man 
currently at the helm. Yet, Ekwueme is 
caught in the bind of being in the same 
party as Obasanjo. If he openly attacked 
Obasanjo, he would be accused of disloyalty 
and seeking self-vindication. However, 
Ekwueme would not mind too much should 
others continue fustigating the President. 
By absenting himself during this potential 
gathering storm within the PDP, he can watch 
on the sidelines as things unfold, thus 
averting blame from Obasanjo's friends and 
foes. While a longshot, Ekwueme is probably 
trying to position himself as an elder 
statesman who could reconcile both camps in 
the party should Obasanjo's renomination bid 
fail. Given the fluidity and 
unpredictability of Nigerian politics, 
Ekweume could indeed be a political dark 
horse; certainly, he would serve, if called. 
 
 
15. (C) Ekwueme's views on the rest of the 
Presidential candidates are insightful. 
While Obasanjo, Babangida and Buhari are the 
big three now, it is almost inevitable that 
other names will emerge who will be serious 
contenders.  We are hearing this refrain 
more and more. 
JETER