Former special adviser on public prosecution to ex-President Muhammad Buhari, Okoi Obona-Obla, has accused the former Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, of working with other people to undermine the government of President Bola Tinubu.
According to Obona-Obla, Malami, and some other disgruntled members of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) started speaking against Tinubu’s government in April 2024.
The former presidential adviser, however, added that Malami lacks the moral standing to undermine President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
Naija News reports he made this known while speaking on Arise TV’s programme on Saturday in response to Malami’s rejection of claims made by Senator Umaru Tanko Al-Makura’s group, asserting that the CPC bloc within the All Progressives Congress (APC) had endorsed President Tinubu for the 2027 election and ruled out defection.
However, Obona-Obla submitted that Malami lacks the moral standing to speak for the CPC, having contested an election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party in 2007.
“He has no right. Malami cannot speak for CPC. He came from the PDP. He had even ran for election in 2007 under the platform of PDP. As I told you, I was among the people who put the political association known as CPC together. When we went to register the association as a political party, I was among the national officers who visited INEC to register it as such. That was in 2008. He was not there.
“I became the national interim adviser from 2008 to 30th December 2010. And then the party was already registered by INEC in 2010. We were going to have our first national convention. So they asked those of us who were interim officers and interested in contesting in the national convention to resign, and I resigned.”
“I emerged as national deputy secretary from January 2011 until CPC was dissolved,” he said.
Meeting Against Tinubu
Obono-Obla accused Malami and others of initiating plans to undermine Tinubu’s government even when the government was yet to settle down in office.
He recalled how he innocently attended one of such meetings before realizing what their intentions were.
Obono-Obla alleged that Malami and several former CPC state chairmen, including individuals previously expelled from the party were at the event.
“This thing did not start because President Bola Tinubu is not doing well,” he said. Last year, 28th of April, Emeka Nwajiuba, who was minister of state for education, he was also a member of the CPC merger committee.
“He’s from Imo State. He invited me for a meeting. He said, ‘Obla come, we want to have dinner in a hotel in Maitama, Abuja, to celebrate Sallah’. So I went, innocently. I didn’t know what they were going to do. I just went to have dinner.”
“You know, because I was a national officer, we expelled some people in 2011. After Jonathan was elected, because some of them endorsed President Jonathan after the election, we were very angry, so we expelled them.
“All those people were there, and something told me that this thing is political. So the meeting started. Emeka spoke and denounced the government of President Bola Tinubu. That government was not yet up to one year in office. It was on the 28th of April, 2024. Then Malami spoke. Then the people they invited, some of them were very unhappy, they were angry.
“They said, ‘Look, we put you in government, ministers for eight years, you were very powerful. Somebody like Abubakar Malami, he was very powerful. ‘What did you do to help CPC as a party? What did you do to ensure that CPC is not marginalised? Why are you now coming to us?’”
“They couldn’t say anything, and so they started planning this thing since last year. It’s not today,” he added.