The former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, over the weekend, again, jumped out of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) into the All Progressives Congress (APC). There is really nothing surprising or unexpected from Atiku’s latest political peregrination. If anything, it was a matter of when it would happen and not whether it would happen; and the reason for this is very simple: Atiku Abubakar has shown himself a very good advertisement of a desperate politician. The former vice president has never masked his ambition of being the Nigerian President.
The question of his suitability for the top job, of course, is a matter of another discourse. For now, let us concede to Atiku Abubakar that there is really nothing wrong with dreaming and to have presidential ambition. But there is everything wrong when a man or woman, for that matter, allows his or her dream to seize the better part of him or her. When this happens, obsession takes over and desperation becomes the only road to travel. This unfortunately has become the tragic flaw in the character of a man who showed early glimpses of greatness in the nation’s political scene.
For those who think that Atiku’s latest defection from the PDP is a sign of his hatred for President Goodluck Jonathan, they really missed the point. Never mind all the talks about how PDP has deviated from the ideals of the founding fathers and his, sometimes, unguarded tirades against the President, Atiku has nothing against Jonathan other than the fact that the President is obstructing his ambition of becoming president too. And this ambition, which appears to be now inordinate, was hatched several years back after leaving the services of the Nigeria Customs, of course with plenty of money to pursue a political career.
To be fair to Atiku, he went through the period of tutelage learning under the feet of the Late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua by carrying his bag, buying him cigarettes and learning not a few tricks from the grand tactician. However, Atiku also showed early enough glimpses of his tragic flaw when he tried to upstage Baba Gana Kingibe as Chief M. K. O. Abiola’s running mate in the build-up to the famous June 12, 1993, presidential election.
If Atiku’s desperation and conspiratorial politics were not enough to elbow out Baba Gana Kingibe in 1993, they certainly were more effective in undercutting Professor Jubril Aminu in 1999 in the race to become former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s deputy. I was not there, but those who know claim that Obasanjo had almost certainly decided on the choice of Aminu until Atiku and his group launched a desperate campaign of propaganda and sundry tricks to convince Obasanjo that Aminu would be too difficult a person to be his deputy.
Although Atiku won the race, but with the benefit of hindsight, Obasanjo can only rue and curse that decision he made to choose Atiku as his deputy. And trust Obasanjo, he did not only make a meal of the enormity of the mistake of choosing Atiku as his deputy but also made it a policy not to allow his deputy succeed him in office.
Obasanjo’s opposition to the Atiku presidency was not understood then by many Nigerians – maybe Obasanjo himself did not make Nigerians understand. But one thing was clear, the former president had seen the desperation in his deputy to become president so much so that he was willing to run against his boss who possibly would have allowed him to serve out his term as elected governor in Adamawa State in 1999 but instead helicoptered him to be vice president.
While Obasanjo was busy globetrotting seeking to repair the bad image of the country that the immediate past military regimes left behind, Atiku was at home consolidating the enormous powers his boss ceded to him. The former vice president was empowering loyalists, building his own political structure and wooing the governors to his side; and, all these were happening in their first term in office! As 2003 approached, Obasanjo realised that his vice president was the biggest obstacle to his re-election. In his desperation to be president, Atiku nonchalantly was ready to challenge Obasanjo for the PDP presidential ticket until he was talked out of his ambition by the top hierarchy of the party. There were also insinuations that Obasanjo ate the humble pie of begging someone he appointed his deputy before he could secure his return ticket.
So when Atiku begins once again to wax his farcical narration of how he was flushed out of the PDP the first time because of his firm stand in defence of the constitution and democracy, does he think he is addressing people who just returned to the country from abroad? Atiku wants to be president but he has shown brazen lack of respect for constituted authority. When he was vice president, he did his best to bring the presidency, which he was a part of, down by hobnobbing with and funding the opposition. Maybe, the former vice president has forgotten his unfortunate Island Club Lecture, which was the height of irresponsibility and antiparty. By the time Atiku realised that PDP was not going to take kindly to the antics and desperation of an undisciplined senior member, he founded the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria and handed it to Tinubu to run in trust for him while he sought to inflict more damage on the ruling party before his eventual exit.
Tinubu kept his word, at least at that time, as he reserved the presidential ticket for Atiku in the 2007 presidential election. But what happened afterwards was to leave Atiku with black eyes and bruises all over. When Atiku failed to deliver a single local government to ACN in the 2007 general elections, Tinubu showed his real colour and pushed Atiku out of ACN, the party he founded and funded. Again, when Atiku begins to embellish the story of how he was wooed back to PDP, he ought to be more circumspect because, in reality, he was pushed out of ACN and he had nowhere else to go than to eat his vomit by returning to PDP. So as he makes his way back to APC, let Atiku be reminded that a certain Tinubu is still there waiting for him!
More seriously, it is strange that a man like Atiku who had been a former vice president can blatantly accuse President Jonathan of dividing the country along religious, ethnic and regional lines. This is the same Atiku who, in 2011, believed that the only platform he could use to achieve his presidential ambition was the basis of ethnic, religious and regional affiliation. The same man who claims to be fighting for the defence of our constitution and democracy fought frantically to elevate the rotational principle in the PDP constitution over and above the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. When the strategy failed, he mobilized the like of Adamu Ciroma and Ango Abdulahi to pursue the irredentist agenda of a northern president, which Nigerians roundly rejected both within the PDP and the wider Nigerian polity.
Although APC leadership is celebrating the defection of Atiku Abubakar to its fold, the PDP leaders and members should, in fact, be the ones celebrating because they have lost a historical and impenitent “troubler” of the party. What the APC people do not know or are pretending not to know is that Atiku is not a party man; he is driven by his own desperate mission to rule Nigeria. And if, by tomorrow, he sees that his chances of grabbing the presidential ticket of APC are diminished, he will defect again. And mind you, there is another party in his trouser-pocket called the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) just in case!
- Abduallahi sent this piece via Mustaphabdullahi66@yahoo.com
