Chief of Army Staff Dambazau Considered Jonathan “Sectional” and “Easily Swayed” - Wikileaks

Another Wikileaks cable about Nigeria written in early 2010, in the days following the return from Saudi Arabia of Umaru Yar’Adua, the country’s ailing leader, shows that the Army Chief of Staff, General Abdulrahman Bello  Dambazau, considered Goodluck Jonathan at that time to be the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

But Dambazau worried, however, that Jonathan was becoming very sectional and that he was too easily influenced by others.  He also felt that most Northerners considered Jonathan’s most pronounced weakness to be his relationship with former President Obasanjo. www.naijapaymentsonline.com

The meeting between Dambazau and the American ambassador, Robin Sanders, took place on February 24.  Dambazau told Ms. Sanders that Obasanjo was "in and out of Aguda House, Jonathan's residence, several times a day now, and it is making people uncomfortable, particularly in the North." 

He urged the ambassador to call on Jonathan to be “his own man,” which she did in another cable, which was previously reported by SaharaReporters, as it appeared to everyone that whatever Jonathan was saying was being orchestrated directly by Obasanjo.

On the tension in the country in the days following Yar’Adua’s return to Nigeria, Dambazau explained to Ms. Sanders that the "Katsina group" around Yar'Adua had "caged" him off even before his departure for Saudi Arabia, leading to Yar’Adua no longer being seen as a national figure. 

He told the ambassador that, unfortunately, Jonathan was beginning to exhibit the same tendencies, with the people around him behaving just as badly as the Katsina clique, and Jonathan handing out favors to his ethnic group.

Wrote the ambassador, “He [Dambazau] gave the example of the recent transfer of Naira 19 billion of GON (government) funds to a Niger Delta environmental project that was done at the end of a meeting that Jonathan had with a group from his region. Dambazau said this was done outside of the normal Cabinet decision-making process.”

The Dambazzau cable is yet another of the many that throw light on how key Nigeria government functionaries routinely empty government’s deepest secrets on the laps of the American ambassador.www.naijapaymentsonline.com