The People’s Democratic Party, PDP, standard bearer in the 2023 Presidential election must have stirred the hornet’s nest with his undiplomatic vituperation in Kaduna last week.
Out of his inordinate ambition to be Nigeria’s president, Atiku seems suddenly becomes the Niccolo Machiavelli of our time and the Prince of political anarchy, not minding if Nigeria goes into extinction as long as he becomes president. Nigeria may go to hell, or Nigerians choose to embark on internecine killings but Atiku must be President. He must take over the mantle from President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, 2023.
Atiku in Kaduna unabashedly said: “What the average northerner needs is somebody from the North who also understands the other parts of Nigeria. This is what the northerner needs. He doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate or an Ibo candidate. I stand before you as a pan Nigerian of Northern origin.”
On the surface, this statement might look innocuous and ignorant till you try to unravel the real message. When you biset Atiku’s intestines, it will be obvious that he is poised to divide Nigeria. This explains why he feels unconcerned with the war of attrition between him and the Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike. Wike is merely calling for equity, justice and fairplay. But the maverick Norther politician wants the sword first so that he can easy chop off Wike’s head as soon as he steps into Aso Rock.
Beyond rhetoric, all Nigerians should take this time bomb from Atiku very seriously. It should be treated as a pejorative explosion with the capacity to set the whole country on fire. Thank God, the condemnation has been massive coming from North, East, West and South. But it should be more. It should be seen as a divine warning that Atiku has a hidden agenda to balkanize Nigeria.
According to the Turakin Adamawa, the essential quality required to be president of Nigeria is to be a Northerner. That is the world view or mind set of the man who is contesting to be President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
There have been enough signs to quickly decipher who Turaki is and why he dollarized the PDP presidential ticket even when there was either written or unwritten agreement that there should be rotation in the country. He bought over Dr Iyorcha Ayu and Tambuwal to do his hatchet job. And since Wike and other brought out the daggers, Iyorcha, the Eleshi Oba ‘taku’.
Unfortunately, when the PDP presidential candidate angrily deleted and disowned the tweet condemning Deborah Samuel’s killing by a mob in Sokoto, people who understand Nigerian politics immediately understood that the old political war horse has hinged his success at the polls on northern votes. By his Kaduna declaration Atiku only reiterated what political observers had already known.
The people who should be worried most are the supporters of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is also seriously banking on northern votes to add to his banked votes from the South West. Will the north reward Tinubu’s support for President Buhari or simply vote for their own son and brother, who told them in Kaduna that no Yoruba or Igbo man can understand the north like him?
What an unstable character! In 2014, Atiku was part of the new PDP that defected to APC to contest the primary which he lost and later returned to PDP. It was the crisis in PDP that actually prepared ground for APC victory in 2015. Today, after Atiku Abubakar succeeded in dividing his PDP with five governors dragging the dagger from both ends with him. But rather that put his house in order, an irredentist Atiku feels something must be done to evoke crisis by embarking on ethnic chauvinism in order to cause national upheaval and disaffection among the groups in Nigeria.
We can understand the workings of Atiku’s inner mind trying to fight the political battle of his life. For a man who lost to the late Bashorun MKO Abiola in 1993, lost to Yar’Adua, Buhari in 2007, lost to Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, lost to Buhari, Kwankwaso in 2014 and Buhari again in 2019, he needs to look beyond hiring an internet scammer from Kenya who insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, made use of server for the 2019 election and shamelessly pushed that to the Supreme Court. But ‘o lule’
Unfortunately, Atiku has always claimed to be putting on the toga of a unifier but this new twist of his campaign has given him out as a greedy and parochial minded war monger.
Atiku’s blunt and tactless refutation of an otherwise sensible tweet condemning religious murder on the streets of Sokoto is enough guarantee that this man will never protect religious freedom and that Christains will not be safe in the North? Pure and simple!
His opaque response to the opposition to having the presidential candidate of PDP, the party chairman and the DG of the campaign Council all emerging from the North is an indicator that Atiku has no respect for a united Nigeria. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now conclude why Atiku is not bothered about the lopsided arrangement in the PDP.
To him, the South can go to hell, if they like. Shekinna.
.Otunba Sola Olatunji, Chairman Ikale Heritage Development Association, writes from Lagos
