THE strained diplomatic relationship between Nigeria and the United States may be further escalated, if the allegation by the Nigeria government that consultants to All Progressives Congress (APC) are associates of President Barack Obama is true.
The PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) controlled government, according to a minister who spoke with TheCable yesterday, is poised to protest ‘strongly’ against White House’s ‘meddling’ in the Nigerian elections, which it believes, is influenced by AKPD Media and Messages, the firm handling APC’s political strategy in the U.S.
The political consulting firm was co-founded by David Axelrod, an Obama confidant, who was a chief campaign adviser to Obama during the campaign for the presidency in 2008 and was later appointed senior adviser to the president.
In 2011, Axelrod left government and became the senior strategist for Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.
The minister told TheCable that the Jonathan administration would raise concerns with the Obama administration over its ‘hostile’ attitude to the Nigerian president and its obvious endorsement of the APC candidate, Muhammadu Buhari.
John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, had issued a strong-worded statement on Sunday condemning the postponement of the general election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and warning against further delays.
Unconfirmed reports say that Kerry, on a recent visit to Nigeria, had asked Jonathan why he did not fire Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel and National Security Adviser, for suggesting in London on January 22 that the 2015 elections should be postponed because of the fiasco over 30 million uncollected biometric voter’s cards.
Also, in a report in the Washington Free Beacon, an online newspaper, AKPD was accused of lying that it had stopped working for the APC. AKPD once said it stopped working for the APC since March 2014, but that its e-mail exchanges with senior party members and advisers since then “show that contrary to the firm’s claims, AKPD has quietly continued to perform political work on Buhari’s behalf as he fights to unseat current President Goodluck Jonathan.”
Isaac Baker, AKPD spokesman, had told the Washington Times last year that the firm worked with the APC from December 2013 to March 2014 “to form a new political opposition party and create a platform in advance of their first national convention. We were no longer working with the APC when the Boko Haram kidnapping of the young girls took place.”
However, he was said to have admitted on Monday that the firm worked again with the APC in December 2014.
“AKPD worked with APC from December 2013 to March 2014, at which point our contract ended. Nine months later, in December 2014, the APC re-hired AKPD for a 3-week engagement to help the party in organising announcement events,” Baker told the Free Beacon in an e-mail.
“That was our only involvement with the party since we completed work in March. That project is now complete and we have no ongoing relationship with them,” he said.
But Free Beacon says the internal e-mails sent between APC advisers over the past several months and obtained by the newspaper confirm that the work with AKPD continued after March 2014. Kerry met with Jonathan where he reportedly warned against polls’ shift.
“The meeting went well and the report well received. Governor Rotimi Amaechi will meet with the AKPD team tomorrow to discuss the facilitation of the event but no dates fixed yet,” APC member Olubunmi Adetunmbi is reported to have written in one September 23 e-mail to Kayode Fayemi, former governor of Ekiti State.
AKPD’s work is again mentioned in a separate chain of e-mails sent between Buhari’s running mate, Yemi Osinbajo and adviser, Fayemi.
“I also think the AKPD surveys also clearly showed that the South-West is the battle ground for this election,” Osinbajo writes in a discussion about boosting election turnouts for the APC.
A third e-mail chain from January 21 shows APC leader, Nasir El-Rufai, discussing an “October 2014 AKPD poll” that he hoped to disseminate to “the team”, the newspaper reported.
Lai Mohammed, APC’s spokesman, was quoted as saying ‘the fact that AKPD is APC’s consultant is in the public domain’, another U.S. firm, Levick, led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s confidant, Lanny Davis, currently works for the Jonathan administration after signing a consultancy deal with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in 2014.
