April 16, 2009
It all started with secret visit to Ota Farm, to the home of former President Olusegun Obasanjo a visit which the Chairman of the PPA Board of Trustees and former governor of Abia State, Dr Orji Uzor Kalu appropriately labelled "the passage to Golgotha without any of its redemptive force, a high road to perdition with the material and transcendental properties of deepening political ruin, moral miasma and spiritual waste".
Kalu was so miffed at the visit that he alleged that the former vice president was responsible for the collapse of his airline and other businesses.
What followed then was a political brickbat between Atiku Abubakar and Orji Uzor Kalu. Atiku called the former Abia governor a “liar and a liability” and Kalu “advised Atiku and his spin doctors to face his self-inflicted problems and leave Kalu out of it”
Obviously, the political rapprochement between the past Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and his erstwhile Deputy, Mr. Abubakar Atiku also ruffled existing political alliances, a rapprochement that was strengthened on Saturday, 24TH January, 2009 in Katsina, when the duo appeared together at the wedding ceremony of the President's daughter.
What followed was a flurry of activities across the North, between political power brokers anxious to decipher the political dynamics at play, and then of course the positioning that would take place prior to 2010.
The reaction of the President, Mr. Umaru Yar'Adua to the Obasanjo-Atiku rapprochement, according to Presidency insiders, was to put a call across, which he rarely does, to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, reminding him of the need to support his Administration, which he created ab initio.
According to reports, Obasanjo strongly assured Yar’Adua of his assistance. "The call was expected, when it came, our leader made the best of it". The Yar'Adua political camp then decided not to react negatively to the Atiku and Obasanjo development, but to find ways of using it to the benefit of the Administration; A pure Machiavellian instinct of knowing so well how to conceal his mind.
Meanwhile other camps got anxious that the emerging Obasanjo-Atiku group will deprive them of the influence they have been exacting on Mr. President. A flurry of political meetings followed. Prominent Northern leaders, including some governors and elected officials, began a series of nocturnal meetings among those that would not like Yar’Adua to go for a second term although they maintain that they have nothing personal against the President.
Stories started circulating that Yar’Adua would not go for a second term and that Atiku would return to the PDP. Because of his suspected frail health, there had been insinuations that the President might not be interested in a second term, a development which was suspected to have given Abubakar the impetus to seek a return to PDP.
Yar’Adua had to step in, to strongly affirm that he is indeed running for a second term. The Deputy National Chairman of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Mohammed Bello, declared that Yar'Adua would seek a second term in office because the Seven Point Agenda was designed to be implemented in eight years.
PDP senators waded in and warned that the nation was adrift. They said President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua’s performance was uninspiring and therefore would oppose his second term aspirations. According to the senators, the President propels the nation to directions that could hurt PDP's chances in future electoral contests.
Though I strongly believe that the meeting that produced this judgement on the President had a different agenda; to deliberate on enhancing senators' relevance in their states, where they claim governors were shutting their political space.
But then many had thought that Yar'Adua would not contemplate seeking re-election because of his health challenges, but the indications are to the contrary and efforts are still on to persuade Yar'Adua not to seek another term in office.
Meanwhile many of the AC party leaders warned Abubakar after his visit to former President Olusegun Obasanjo on January 19 of this new-found political romance with the PDP. The leadership of the AC had been particularly irked by the fact that Abubakar had been entering into negotiations with various political groups in the country without carrying leaders of the AC along.
Then the bombshell; the former vice-president criticised the electoral reform process of President Umaru Yar ‘Adua‘s administration. Abubakar thundered that the PDP-led government lacked the capacity to give Nigeria any meaningful electoral reform. He castigated President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the PDP and their inability to reform the electoral process.
Reacting to the statements, PDP‘s National Publicity Secretary, Prof. Rufai Alkali, said Abubakar’s comment were borne out of selfish interests, asking whether it was AC that was capable of reforming the country‘s electoral process. The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) further slammed Atiku, describing him as a “hopeless, drowning and unreliable politician; an unusual hard knock on one of its founding fathers.
Prof. Rufai Ahmed Alkali said Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s overtly selfish ambition has left a hopeless politician, susceptible to all forms of miscalculations and misjudgements.
He added that It is an irony that the former Vice President has suddenly woken up to the realisation that the same system that elevated him to the nation’s number two position does not have a system that can bring brilliant people to leadership. Atiku “deliberately and selfishly slumbered away while he enjoyed the same system, the same man who sang Hosanna yesterday is today singing crucify him, crucify him, at top of his voice.”
Since Abubakar visited Obasanjo, there had been reported moves by some interests within the PDP to frustrate perceived attempts by the former vice-president to return to the PDP. Some governors reportedly avoided meeting him when it is apparent Yar'Adua would run for a second term.
His attack on the Federal Government on electoral reforms is clearly opportunistic. He has suddenly come to the realisation that the PDP cannot simply allow him to come back and assume the crown. As the Vice President of Nigeria for good eight years, he cannot today be credited with even a single suggestion he made on how to reform the electoral system.
Where indeed stands Atiku? Is he in the government or the opposition? Is he in the PDP, the AC, or the ‘grand alliance’? Is inconsistency the mettle of opposition politics? Is this an admission that the AC has slipped off Atiku’s hands?
I am not surprised that Atiku has smelt the coffee, neither am I disappointed that he would now be struggling to hastilly put up a mega-partty when it appears he has lost his AC friends with his self serving antics. Obviously, for all of Atiku's pretences, he is definitely not a champion of democracy.
According to AlKali, Atiku’s “recent desperation to repair a battered image and bounce back to reckoning has fallen flat in his face, hence his latest remarks which are symptomatic of a drowning man latching unto every available straw for survival.”
Nigerians should beware of those who while in position of authority had the opportunity to reposition Nigeria and its electoral system, abandoned such a noble cause while saddling themselves with selfish political pursuits. Certainly, Atiku Abubakar is not one of those Nigerians should trust.
As things now stand, the former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, may even lose his position as the presidential candidate of the Action Congress in the 2011 election. His romance with the Peoples Democratic Party and his subsequent humiliation by the leadership of the PDP might have strengthened the argument of AC chieftains who had canvassed for his expulsion from the party. The outburst by the PDP spokesman had vindicated those who warned Abubakar against his romance with the PDP.
His visit to Obasanjo had caused many to lose confidence in him. And now that PDP seems to have rejected him, this will adversely affect his position within the party. The former vice-president has shown he is not a suitable for the party‘s presidential ticket come 2011. Opportunism is not a hallmark of true leadership!
What is happening is a vindication of the fears that those that appeared to be convincing him to come back to the PDP knew what they were doing. When he appeared to have shown enough interest in returning and everybody can see, they have decided to disgrace him. How he imagined that Obasanjo, a good student of Machiavelli, would "empower he, whom he has wronged" is baffling. That is a grave sin in power permutations.
Obasanjo has proved once again that you underrate his political acumen at your own peril. He obviously flirted with Atiku Abubakar so as to increase his bargaining power with Yar’Adua when the chips are down. That Atiku fall for Obasanjo’s antics for the second (or third?) time calls into question the political sagacity of a purported ‘strategic politician that received his tutelage under Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the master tactician’.
As for Yar'Adua, he has served notice that he is becoming adept at the rumble-tumble that is Nigeria politics. It is not for nothing that he exhumed Tony Anenih from the political grave!
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