Vice President Kashim Shettima,has revealed how former President Goodluck Jonathan plotted to remove him from office as then Governor of Borno State.
It took the intervention of former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Bello Adoke to salvage the situation,he said.
Adoke,he said, told Jonathan it was unconstitutional to do so.
He said these intrigues played out in the last four years of the Jonathan administration, which was later succeeded by Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
The number two citizen made the remarks at the public presentation of OPL 245: Inside Story of the $1.3bn Nigeria Oil Block, a memoir written by former Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke.
Adoke was later exonerated by the court, the OPL 245 Malabu Oil Deal, became controversial because of an agreement in which Royal Dutch Shell and Italy’s Eni paid $1.3 billion to acquire Nigeria’s deep-water oil licence.
Shettima also chronicled the role played by then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal who also told Jonathan of his limited powers to unseat an elected governor.
“In the last four years of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, I was the most demonised person; I was the public enemy number one.
“There are two gentlemen seated here. Certain decisions are taken in a very rare peace circle. The President, the Vice President, the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“In one of such conclaves, former President Goodluck Jonathan, with whom we have sheathed the sword and have now recalibrated our relationship, was muting the idea of removing this Borno governor.
“Aminu Tambuwal, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, had the courage to tell the President that your Excellency, you don’t have the powers to remove an elected councillor.
“The President was still not convinced, he muted the idea at the Federal Executive Council,”Shettima revealed at the book launch which held at the Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja.
At the book launch, Shettima said his admiration for the former Minister grew in leaps on account of the courageous move to advise Jonathan not to toll that line.
“He (Mr Adoke) told the then President that Mr President you do not have the powers to remove a sitting governor, not even a councillor.
“They sought for the opinion of another SAN in the cabinet, Kabiru Turaki, who said I’m concurring with the opinion of my senior colleague.
“That was how the matter was laid to rest but that was how my relationship with Mr Adoke and Aminu Tambuwal became eternally sealed,” he stated.
