Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, no matter anyone’s personal reservations, or, collective down-talking, has by some complex dint of hard work, catapulted himself into an endearing and topical political phenomenon in Nigeria. My assertion, however, depends on what side of the political divide, or, political persuasion informs your political thinking, or, response stimuli, or, perhaps, defines your behavourial pattern.
Instructively, despite his political accomplishments, will Atiku be able be actualised his priced political goal in becoming the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the course of his active political career?
True, his closest opportunity was in 2003, when as vice president to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Atiku surreptitiously set up a formidable campaign machinery that almost scuttled Obasanjo’s second term bid. Atiku reportedly acquired hundreds of campaign buses. His political structures in the 36 states and six geo-political regions were also very active.
And while Atiku set out to accomplish his desire to become former President Obasanjo’s successor, Obasanjo, who, surprisingly, had no inkling, about Atiku’s political foray into the heart and minds of fellow PDP leaders and members, plunged himself vigorously into matters of state policies, suffused with an unbroken penchant for foreign sojourns to most countries of the world. Obasanjo loves to evince the grandeur evocative of the international statesman, that he truly his.
Obasanjo appointed Atiku as the Chairman of the National Economic Council, NEC, as well as the Chairman of the National Privisation Council, NPC, which gave Atiku so much leverage to harness so much economic power and, concomitantly, dispensed a wide range of economic largess to his loyalists, supporters, political associates and an endless list of friends that have been with him for decades.
Atiku, by nature, is a very generous man, so, the act of giving to him is a way of life! He also supported members of the National Assembly who were campaigning for a second term in office with appreciable funds to power their campaign efforts in 2003.
As the presidential primary of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, to nominate its candidate for the 2003 presidential election drew closer, Obasanjo became really frantic because as he later discovered, the party hierarchy in the states and at the national secretariat, at Wadata Plaza, the PDP, headquarters, in Abuja, were firmly within Atiku’s control.
The late amiable First Lady, Stella Obasanjo, took it upon herself to plead with Atiku not to publicly ridicule her husband as a captain without a ship. Mrs. Stella Obasanjo, who remained a pillar of support for her husband during his presidency while she was alive also appealed to highly revered Yoruba traditional rulers to urge Atiku to allow her husband go for a second term of another four years.
Even Obasanjo, acclaimed for his legendary confidence and brash demeanour had to kowtow to Atiku to allow him have a second berth at the presidency which he has come to cherish with an overdose of overt aplomb.
Faced with a barrage of overpowering pressures from different political power centres within the PDP, Atiku, eventually buckled, but gave a proviso: that President Obasanjo should proclaim him as his running mate, in the course of his acceptance speech, at the PDP presidential convention.
Obasanjo saw the raw strength of Atiku’s political power when he discovered to his chagrin that delegates from most of the states that came for the convention were unreachable. Atiku’s foot soldiers had sequestered the presidential delegates beyond the reach of Obasanjo in the comfort of some hotels, unknown to Obasanjo and his dwindling band of supporters.Some delegates that were later tracked to their hotels by the Obasanjo group refused to grant audience to Obasanjo and his men, until Atiku, intervened.
As it later turned out, Atiku, in withdrawing his presidential ambition in response to entreaties from the Obasanjo camp, made a rare political blunder that has continued to hunt him in his political career. Obasanjo, promptly, announced Atiku as his running mate to a thunderous ovation from the former vice president’s teaming supporters.
But that was all there was to it, as Obasanjo, reputed for his deep-seated bosom for harbouring old bile’s of vicious old tackles, so, so marginalised Atiku, as his vice president in his second term in office. To cap Atiku’s humiliation in his government, Obasanjo set up a probe panel which indicted Atiku of perceived financial impropriety in government.
But Atiku, desirous of running for the office of president; confident that his trial by Obasanjo was high-handed and specifically contrived to essentially forestall his presidential ambition approached the court for redress. He eventually got justice at the Supreme Court, on April 16, 2007. Atiku, had earlier been disqualified by the Independent
National Electoral Commission, INEC, claiming that his indictment by the probe panel made him unfit and ineligible to aspire for the office of president.
Atiku later ran under the aegis of the Action Congress, AC, in 2007, with Ben Obi, who later became a Senator. While Obasanjo was fighting Atiku, he was frantically gunning for an unprecedented, an unconstitutional, third term in office by working underground to arm-twist Senators and members of the House of Representatives to deviously amend the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, through some very odious, and utterly atrocious process: a thoroughly ill-advised gambit that has continued to dwarf Obasanjo’s public profile as a veritable statesman in the democratic free world.
Atiku, former military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, (retd), Prof. Ben Nwanbueze, a member of The Patriots, a group of elder statesmen, former Governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, scores of civil society groups, academicians, labour unions and the Nigerian media, vehemently shot down the ill-motivated third term agenda championed by Obasanjo.
Without doubt, the neutralising role played by the, then, Senate President, Kenneth Nnamani, remains, a decisive masterstroke which constituted the last major onslaught that torpedoed former President Obasanjo’s ill-conceived third term agenda.
In summary, Atiku’s undying quest to become the president of Nigeria, has taken him on a political sojourn through the PDP, 1998 to 2007; the AC, 2007 to 2009; and back to the PDP in 2009 to 2013,, hoping he will be able to entrench himself in the party to enable him vie for the PDP’s presidential primary in 2011. But his efforts came to naught as former President Goodluck Jonathan who completed late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s first term muscled his way to vie for the presidency on the platform of the PDP.
On Saturday, August 31, 2013, Atiku led seven aggrieved PDP governors to walk out of the ongoing PDP convention, at Eagle Square, Abuja, which typified the implosion in the PDP, clearly a manifestation of the smouldering and pervasive discontent that had severely ravaged the then ruling party; provoked by the supercilious demeanour and unspeakable domination of the party by state governors, who had not only hijacked the electoral structures of the party in their states but were, nonchalantly, imposing their cronies as candidates to vie for elective positions, in flagrant disdain to more popular aspirants with appreciable grassroots support.
The governors who walked out of the convention with Atiku were those of Adamawa, Kwara, Jigiwa, Niger, Sokoto and Kano States. The then Governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, who was then suspended from the party later joined them at the Musa Yar’Adua International Conference Centre, where they held a news conference and announced the formation of the new-PDP, that was short-lived due to two separate court judgments in Lagos and Abuja that declared that there was no faction within the PDP.
The former Acting National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Abubakar Baraje, and some aggrieved Senators and members of the House of Representatives also walked out in solidarity with Atiku and the displeased governors.
The walk out was a major slight on the party leadership because the then leader of the party, former President Goodluck Jonathan, Vice President Namadi Sambo, and the then National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, were seated at the convention. Uncomfortable with his inability to clinch the political structures of the PDP, Atiku, again, defected back to the PDP in 2013, in preparation for the 2015 general election. But Asiwaju Tinubu led the South West delegates to thwart Atiku’s ambition to emerge as the presidential candidate of the APC, wrestled by President Muhammadu Buhari.
As the re-alignment of political forces gathers momentum for the 2019 general elections, with the presidency as the major trophy, Atiku, is again revving up his expansive political network of friends, political associates, and political foot soldiers to chart a definitive course geared towards the realisation of his utmost political desire: the presidency!
There are snippets of information, here and there, that the Turaki Adamawa, may be getting set to cross over to his political first family, the PDP, where he started his political career in the 4th Republic as the governor-elect of Adamawa State, in January 1999, before former President Olusegun Obasanjo chose him as his running mate, to the utter shock and amazement of many political bigwigs in the PDP, paving the way for his erstwhile political protégé, Mr. Bonny Haruna, a journalists, formerly with The Week, a weekly magazine founded by Atiku, who was his running mate to emerge as the governor of Adamawa State.
Reliable information indicate that Atiku is quietly, but seriously, shopping for a viable running mate that will complement his tag team for the 2019 presidential election on the pedestal of the PDP. Atiku is said to be looking towards the South South to pick a former governor as his running mate. But should that be the case, he must identify a former governor that would not be dragged for whatever reason before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, or, the lily-livered Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Matters, ICPC, before 2019.
It is not unlikely, though, that any former governor arraigned by the EFFC and the ICPC before the court of law will be shuttling between his home, or the Senate, that has now become a retirement rendezvous for former state governors who had served two unbroken terms as governor but cannot resist the allure of elective office, even though, there are hundreds of thousands of other eminently qualified men and women who are willing to serve.
But would, obviously, not be allowed, either because they lack the wherewithal, or are not trusted enough, or, most likely, do not belong to the former governors political camps, and therefore, considered not malleable, pliable, or, subservience enough to be given the honour of such a representative opportunity.
The name of the former Governor of Cross Rivers State, Donald Duke, has been repeatedly mentioned. Duke’s father was Atiku’s boss in the Customs were Atiku worked for 20 years after his law programme at Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, after his graduation in 1969, during the Nigerian Civil War. He attended the university on the auspices of a scholarship from the regional government of the then Northern Nigeria.
Atiku, also served as the interim Student Union President of the School of Hygiene, in Kano, where he also earned a Diploma in 1967. Duke’s father reportedly took Atiku, then, a young Customs officer like a son, and groomed him, showing him how to climb the ropes, steadily and dutifully. In the course of his working relationship with Duke’s father, Atiku and Donald became like brothers, and have remained so up to now.
Again, Duke has an appeal that cuts across the country, essentially because of his liberal views and his open resentment against the gale of imposition that consumed the PDP in the past years, of which, he, too, was a victim, when he wanted to vie for the 2007 presidency, which former President Obasanjo, single-handedly gave to late President Umaru Yar’Adua on a gold platter. Donald Duke has also been spared of the magnifying glass of the EFCC.
His name is not among the list of former governors that was recently released by the office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, that are currently been investigated for corrupt enrichment while in office. So, that gives Duke some form of leverage, but in Nigerian politics, the tide changes so rapidly it has become increasingly difficult to appropriately gauge anyone political development.
Former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, who has publicly signified his intention to vie for the 2019 presidential election if the PDP finds him worthy enough to hand him the baton is also mentioned in the list as one of the former governors to be probed for alleged corrupt enrichment. So, that makes the coast a little less cumbersome for Atiku should he defect again to the PDP in furtherance of his willingness to contest for the 2019 presidency on the Platform of the PDP.
His recent views, on Sunday, July 31, on restructuring Nigeria are receiving rave reviews in the South South and the South East. And his cerebral and well thought-out position on the need to de-emphasise over reliance on fossil fuel and make a detour to strategic investments in renewable energy like wind, solar, nuclear, are just the way any serious political leader or government should contemplate and plough national resources into.
As for going back to the PDP, Atiku should watch very, very, carefully because the short-lived new-PDP that he led is not the same with the original PDP that he was a founding member, or, when he was vice president. Without doubt, the engaging political skirmish between the Senator Modu Ali-Sheriff and Senator Ahmed Makarfi factions over the leadership of the PDP should be of keen interest to Atiku.
In all, Atiku should begin to look for and sponsor at least two alternative political platforms, specifically from among the smaller political parties already recognised by INEC, to give him enough leeway to maneuver should the feud between both factional PDP leaders diminish the electoral chances of the PDP in the 2019 general elections.
Undoubtedly, it will be extremely difficult for Atiku to earn the APC presidential ticket as far as Asiwaju Tinubu remains as influential as he is now in the APC. Therefore, his speculated move to edge his way to the PDP, or, any other political party in preparation for the 2019 presidential election may just be worthwhile.
Again, Atiku must always, always, take into cognisance the Obasanjo factor in his political permutations. The options, indeed, are varied, but it is Atiku’s onerous responsibility to confront them frontally if he wants to remain relevant in Nigerian politics!
