As people often say in the local parlance, ‘agreement is agreement, whether written or unwritten.’ This agreement has been the palm oil with which Nigerian politicians licked their fingers to savour the political largesse since the return to Democracy in 1999 after the long interregnum from the military dictators.
To guarantee peace and harmony in a country with different nationalities, it was natural for the players to agree on a formula. Then the idea of rotation for the position of President was muted and signed.
It is therefore apposite for the next president after Mohammadu Buhari who is a Fulani from the north to come from the South.
The All Progressives Congress, APC, in their wisdom adhered to this system even as the northern governors and leaders vehemently opposed a northerner to emerge as presidential candidate at the party’s primary election in May. That agreement produced Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the party’s standard bearer. We can’t but applaud the efforts of the progressive governors of APC in the North who made frantic efforts to ensure that a Southern presidential candidate emerged at the presidential primary election held in Abuja.
According to these leaders, they were more conscious of the unity and growth of Nigeria because it would be morally wrong for them to hold on to power even after Buhari would have spent eight years in power.
While APC and its leadership are being applauded in the country for their progressive decision by making power to shift to the South, PDP and Atiku Abubakar tendentiously continued to hold on tenaciously to this old fashioned ideology of ‘born to rule’ by shamelessly, holding on to the entire structure of PDP and the temerity to contest the presidential election against the Southern candidates.
A perennial face in the presidential race since 1993, Atiku Abubakar became the Vice President to Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999. During the eight years, Atiku Abubakar, a notorious rebel and author of power must shift to the north did all things to frustrate Obasanjo including wrecking the ship even as the second in command.
In his recent interactions with northern leaders in Kaduna, Atiku openly exposed his inordinate ambition to wrest power at all costs not minding whose ox is gored when he asked the northerners not to vote for Igbo or Yoruba. His reasons at that meeting sounded paranoid for a man who claimed to be apostle of restructuring of the contraption called Nigeria.
Atiku’s lack of contentment and satisfaction has today pitted him against the Governor Nyesom Wike-led G-5 and the integrity group. These gentlemen are The G-5 Governors
clamouring for justice and fairness in the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and its organogram especially the lopsidedness in the structure entirely dominated by the north.
If you ask Nigerians about the personality of Atiku Abubakar, the former vice president to Obasanjo, they will be quick to describe him as a very treacherous person as variously described by Obasanjo himself even in his book, My Watch, and at various public fora where he had had the opportunity to speak on his second in command.
Between 1999 and now, Atiku Abubakar has decamped and decamped from and to different political parties. He is certainly not a consistent person politically. His style of politics is without ideology and the unity of Nigeria is none of his business as long as he is at the helms of affairs or any of his kinsmen are in charge of the political leadership of this country. Atiku’s ‘ born to rule’ ideology must have fueled his recent ethnic card during a meeting with the Arewa leaders in Kaduna.and the withdrawal of a tweet on the massacred College of Education student in Sokoto.
As recent as 2014, a desperate Atiku literally destroyed the PDP by leading five governors and others to join APc . Immediately Buhari won the primary, he plotted his way back to PDP. In one of his encounters with the former President Goodluck Jonathan, Atiku is alleged to have asked the president to step down from contesting because it was the turn of the north to produce the president. Eventually, Jonathan lost the election in 2015.
Today, to further demonstrate his combating posture, he has effectively pocketed PDP with the national officials including the Chairman of the party. The simple message is that the South can go to hell as long as the north is in charge. But, he has met his match in Wike, the G-5 and the Integrity group. The picture here is that of a Fulani man who is not interested in anyone, except himself and his desperation for power.
Nigerians should ask Atiku Abubakar how he suddenly became stupendously rich after he left office as the vice president. He should tell Nigerians his role in the privatisation of public assets during the Obasanjo regime. More than 130 companies were privatised by Atiku. In the real sense of it, there is nothing wrong with privatization policy of government provided it was not designed to enrich certain people.
But in this case, it was a complete failure, even so many Nigerians including the former president, Goodluck Jonathan attested to this.
Rather than expand the economy of the country by creating employment opportunities and increase productivity, the reverse was the case. Most of the assets sold by Atiku were alleged to have been given away to friends and cronies.
Ironically, some of the privatized companies are today being occupied by reptiles and some have become tick forests.
Suffice to conclude here that if Atiku Abubakar can’t restructure his political party where the umbrella has been torn into smithereens, can Nigerians now trust him to restructure the country?
More worrisome and disappointing is his continuous connivance with some media houses like the Arise TV and ThisDay Newspaper, with the founder himself a PDP chieftain. Nduka Obaigbena has continued to arrogate so much power that he does not possess, blackmailing other presidential candidate especially, Tinubu to please his pay master.
Who appointed Arise TV owner as the media mirror for 2023 general elections?
Who appointed Nduka Obaigbena/ Thisday and Arise TV who were beneficiaries of mismanagement of resources under the watch of Goodluck Jonathan including the N650m he received because of the bombing of his media house in Abuja under PDP?
It’s a pity that those who parade themselves as media professionals including Dr Ruben Abati can’t emulate what is happening at TVC where the outfit is professionally run as obtainable anywhere in the world.
This is absolute nonsense! We are waiting for where Nduka and his principal will end up after losing the general elections in 2023.
Opposition like Atiku Abubakar are the ones behind the religious wars in politics. He is a religious mongers who asked his wives to convert to Islam before he can marry them.
So far, so good, Atiku Abubaka, hanging all these sins on his neck like a big masquerade, cannot and should not be trusted with the future of Nigeria. Pure and simple!
- Otunba Sola Olatunji, Chairman of Ikale Heritage Development Association, writes from Lagos
