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Beyond A Fragile Consensus …My Worries For Candidate Atiku
The first was the question of its workability, considering the fact that the Northern part of Nigeria is not a registered political party and so lacks the constitutional power to field a candidate. Another is the flawed meaning of the word ‘consensus’, when, there are several other presidential aspirants from the same Northern part of Nigeria that can never be bound by the decision of the Mallam Adamu Ciroma-led Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF).
There are former Military Head of State, Gen Mohammadu Buhari who has repeatedly dismissed the zoning principle as not only retrogressive of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and of course, Kano State Governor, Mallam Ibrahim Shekaru who believes that he is the most stainless of the pack of Nigerians eyeing the Presidency of Nigeria.
What all these translate into is that even if Atiku Abubakar wins the PDP ticket at the expense of President Jonathan, the North will require another search for a consensus candidate to stop any other Southern candidate, from any other political platform to successfully impose an internal PDP arrangement on Nigeria and Nigerians.
Most unlikely as these appear, a greater obstacle to an Atiku emergence as flag-bearer of the PDP is, to the former Vice President’s inadvertent disregard for the warning against how not to hate an enemy; that if one must hate an enemy, it must be done in a manner that can make future reconciliation easy and potent.
It is in appreciation of this fact that George Chapman in the Alphonsus warned, “Trust not a reconciled friend, for good turns cannot blot out old grudges”. If you are tempted to dismiss this viewpoint as undue generalisation, even ungodly, you are entitled, but knowing what politics is like in Nigeria, very few can be depended upon to do any less.
Here is where my major worry over a likely Atiku success in the PDP is truly rooted.
In 2007, following countless irreconcilable differences between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and himself, Vice President Atiku abandoned the PDP that he laboured hard to build along with others, and contested that year’s presidential elections on the platform of the then Action Congress (AC).
Visibly hurt by what the vice president considered political betrayal that denied him the PDP ticket, Atiku went all out to paint his former party in countless dull colours, and fell short of calling the membership of the PDP a family of thieves that meant no good for Nigeria and her peoples.
Apart from soap box attacks on the PDP, with the promise to sweep away the rot it represented, Atiku placed newspaper advertisements that were so destructive that they depicted the mindset of a determined and principled politician that would find no reason to return to such devilish fray.
In one such paid advertisement in The Guardian Newspaper of April 9, 2007, Atiku said of the PDP:
“PDP means Poverty Development Party…
PDP would continue to deceive Nigerians and therefore voting for them would mean another round of hardship”.
But in a move that shocked many, Atiku this year, returned to the same party and resolved afterwards to seek ticket to fly the same party’s ‘useless flag’ as presidential candidate. Which political party, no matter how forgiving and benevolent would give away its pricest treasure the presidential ticket to such repentant returnee, within less than a year? Even the highly respected, principled and unrepentant apostle of fairness and equity, would not grant such request if the positions between Atiku and the PDP were reversed. I stand to be corrected, but it is undoubtedly a moral issue that would expose the party to bigger ridicule by other competing political parties.
Take for instance, Atiku emerges presidential candidate of the PDP and other political parties decide to reproduce all of Atiku’s smear attacks on his own party, what better arsenal would other parties require than those the candidate himself gave to his opponents.
Atiku strikes me as a goodman, who shares others’ problems and seems ready to render help to others when required. He strikes me as one who is fearless, bold and determined to achieve whatever he believes in. Indeed, the former vice president appears to me one of the very few respectable political leaders that is equipped and qualified to contest the presidency of Nigeria.
It is therefore, no surprise that he has endeared himself to several people who have come in contact with him and should naturally feel compelled to return his favour. Even among some serving PDP governors, there are those who would naturally like to stand by Atiku, not necessarily because of zoning or rotation as Mallam Adamu Ciroma makes Atiku appear. It is instead for the man’s lofty antecedents, his leadership qualities, his ability to stand for what is right and his drive to have power with which to serve.
All these qualities notwithstanding, Atiku’s decision to leave the PDP for the sole purpose of contesting for president and returning to the same party he variously vilified, for the sole purpose of becoming president, strike me as missteps of a desperate kind.
Even in these days, when traditional medicine dealers, those we knew years ago as Native doctors, prescribe all manner of despicable therapies like cow urine, one’s own urine and even a dog’s urine for the treatment of various ailments, none is known to have prescribed one’s own vomit as remedy for any medical condition.
If Atiku had remained in the PDP after late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s victory at the 2007 primaries; if Atiku had not embarked on such destructive smear campaign against the same political party which ticket, he today seeks; if Atiku had not returned to the PDP and instead nurtured the AC, now Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) with four governors, the Turaki would have been seen as an ideologue, a man of strong character and a principled democrat, but his hasty political decision of 2007 depicts him otherwise; and questions his honour, integrity and his motive to grab power.
My Agony is that Mallam Ciroma and other wise men who screened all four presidential candidates of Northern extraction in the PDP: former Military President, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, former security adviser to the President Aliyu Gauso, Kwara State Governor Saraki and former Vice President Atiku, did not consider all these as worrisome enough for a consensus ticket.
Methinks they should because some party elements have started raising the question, “Atiku, what do you now want in the PDP?” And for the right reasons.
Nothing would have been my answer, if I were Atiku, and stay put in ANC to avoid risking, swallowing my own vomit.
For integrity sake. For Honour Sake.