Why I rejected N250m bribe for third term agenda—Wabara

A former Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, has revealed that he turned down a bribe of N250 million aimed at swaying him to the side of the pro-third term senators in 2006 because of his educational background.

It would be recalled that the third-term agenda, a major watershed moment in Nigeria’s 25 years of uninterrupted democratic governance, came in the form of a bill for a constitutional amendment that would see then-President Olusegun Obasanjo qualify to run for a third term in office. The bill had seen pro-Obasanjo senators plot to foist the third-term agenda on Nigerians, while the anti-Obasanjo forces also arranged their cards.

Wabara, who had lost his position as Senate president a year before the moment after resigning in the heat of a budget scandal in 2005, revived his beleaguered career with a moving speech on the floor of the Senate, which many believed changed the course of the voting that followed.

“Ordinarily, I would have considered this bill, but my people, oh my people, have asked me to vote against it,” he said in the speech now famously referred to as the “Oh my people” moment. The speech resonated across the Senate floor and across Nigeria because many had expected Wabara to support the third-term agenda because of his then ongoing case over the budget scandal.

Speaking in a television show, Untold Stories with Adesuwa Giwa-Osagie, which is to be released on Youtube on Wednesday, the current chairman of the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) Board of Trustees said he had no regrets about rejecting the bribe and believes his education background in the Soviet Union, where he was trained to hate corruption, played a huge role in his decision.

In a snippet of the interview shared with Daily Trust, Wabara said, “I turned down a N250 million bribe to support the third term agenda. The money came to me by 1:30 a.m., before my third-term speech. It came in a sparkling black G-Wagon. I can still remember that it was in a black G-Wagon and a rickety 504 station wagon. The money was discharged, and my wife was there.”

Also speaking on the current situation in the country, Wabara, 76, said it was unfortunate that those in power had weaponised poverty.

“Hunger misdirects, and my people say that when you are having leaves or whatever the goat eats, you are the person they will continue to follow. That is what is happening in our democracy today because of hunger. The elders and the politicians—those in government—are not creating the enabling environments to eschew hunger. It is a deliberate act to continue to make the electorate hungry so that they will continue to follow sheepishly. So, there will be stomach infrastructure before they start thinking whether we are being led aright,” he said.