Atiku and the Kano Intifadah
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
The reader might have come across times when stones were used as weapons in history. For example, in the antiquities, a rain of stones was used to annihilate the people of Prophet Lot as a punishment from heaven. Similarly, when the Abyssinian monarch, Abrahah, attempted to wipe out the Ka’abah in Mecca, God destroyed his army using pebbles from hell delivered by birds. The father of monotheism, Abraham, also used stones to send the devil away while he was on his way to sacrificing his only son, Ishmael. Muslims have maintained this practice to date. They repeat it annually during Hajj at the jamra.
Today, stones have become the first hand weapons of the weak, on whose face all doors of justice are closed. Champions in using these missiles are the Palestinians in their struggle – called intifadah – against Israeli forces of occupation. In Nigeria, the masses have discovered the potency of these missiles. There are strong indications that pebbles and shoes are gaining popularity among the masses who do not have any share of air time in the government controlled media; neither do they possess any ammunition to fire against those that betrayed them among their elected executives and representatives.
Thus when elder statesman and Danmasani of Kano, Dr. Maitama Sule, arranged to launch his book in Kano on 4 May 2001, I doubt if he expected that it would turn into a little Gaza or Ramallah – ending prematurely in a commotion that saw the Chief Guest and his host pelted with stones and shoes.
It is not our intention to render a graphic portrait of that incident here nor lend it any measure of support. Ordinarily, the event would have been left to fade away from our memories. But this week two governors – Dariye and Yerima – also got their own fair share of stones. It seems the masses are convinced, mistakenly though, that some of their politicians are deaf and only these pedestrian missiles could deliver the message of their plight accurately into their heads.
It is therefore important to recall the Kano incident because many people see it as a security threat that the government should study carefully and for which a solution is necessary before 2003. This article is our contribution to that study. We have reviewed the events and attempted to trace their origin. In it we have advised government officials wishing to avoid such catastrophes and the general public on how they can use democratic institutions to deliver themselves from the ‘tyranny of the elected.’
The chain
It will be a big mistake for government to listen to people who suggest that the Kano incident was an isolated event. Kano was not the first time Vice-President Atiku Abubakar had an encounter with missiles. It happened a week earlier at Kafancan and Kachia during his five-day visit to Kaduna State. That prevented any rally taking place at Makarfi – the hometown of his host, the Kaduna State Governor. They entered the town quietly and left without visiting anyone. The question here is, if the governor of a state is scared of carrying a Vice-President to his hometown, who among us is safe to visit any part of Nigeria for a political campaign?
Political opponents of Atiku were quick to explain that Kafancan and Kachia intifadah were directed against him. No. Not even when he shamelessly condemned Buhari for joining politics on the ground that he was a former military dictator who had no plan to hand over power to politicians. I am more comfortable supporting the theory that the stones were directed at Makarfi by his political opponents from within the PDP.
Now, to Kano. Some two days before the incident at the book launching, the Vice-President and Kano State governor, Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, went to commission a project at one part of the town. On their return, they received the least greeting they expected. People were pointing their ten fingers at the officials, doing what the Hausa call dakuwa. I can tell you what dakuwa is but I cannot tell you the offensive language that accompanies it.
People now complain, with the benefit of hindsight though, that Governor Kwankwaso should have seen the abuses as security threats. He would have remained behind to address the issue and assess the situation before the Vice-President returns the following Saturday for the book launching. Instead, he followed the Vice-President to Abuja. He only made sure that all arrangements were completed for the importation of ‘supporters’ from various local governments of the state to receive his host.
The ‘supporters’ came in large numbers. And here lies the problem. Governors are always anxious to prove that they have the necessary support to deliver their states to the President. Compelled by the desire for deceit but incapacitated by popular backing, they resort to hiring crowds. There is every danger in this because such crowds have the potential of turning into a mob whose behaviour is very difficult to predict.
Various interpretations have been given to the Kano incident. One, I heard Adamu Ciroma in Jalingo drawing a parallel between the stoning of Atiku in Kano and that of Prophet Muhammad in Ta’if. But as Sheikh Aminuddeen Abubakar said this was a grave mistake, if not a blasphemy. That was the Prophet of Islam and this is Atiku, only.
Two, embarrassed by the situation, the Kano State government was quick to shift blame to the APP. This led to the arrest of Alhaji Haruna Danzago, for the simple reason that the commotion started with the arrival of Buhari. But did the APP also sponsor the intifadah at Kafancan and Kachia? When has APP in any PDP state mustered enough strength, courage and resources to attack a sitting Vice-President and its resident governor?
Three, a more plausible theory is that opponents of Kwankwaso from within the ruling PDP organized the incident, as it happened earlier at Kachia and Kaduna. Something similar has once happened in Gombe when a podium was turned over as the State Minister for Power and Steel was addressing a PDP rally. The party definitely knows who organized it.
The fourth theory, which the press were interested in picking quickly, linked the incident to General Buhari directly. There was even an editorial in one of the southern papers intimidating him that the same will happen to him when he visits the zone of the Vice-President for campaign. To buy this argument is to divert the ruling PDP from the numerous problems it is presently facing.
I have also read the interview of Alhaji Lawal Kaita in which he charged Buhari of breaching protocol. Perhaps Kaita does not know that Buhari himself suffered from the commotion that day. He stayed outside for over an hour unable to enter the hall due to the thickness of the crowd. On his way out of the hall he could not reach his car. He was rushed into a strange CVU car that had no cooling facility at all. The place was hot and the atmosphere was tense as missiles were flying over the car. Many of his close associates also could not reach their cars. They had to return to their rendezvous point in taxis, some of them barefooted. (I said that is good for them. They must taste, at least once in thirty years, the inconvenience from which the masses suffer daily. They are into politics. Abi?)
If there was any breach of protocol then it should be directed against the host of the occasion – Maitama Sule – because he announced, when Atiku was about to deliver his speech, that Buhari had long ago arrived the venue and was stranded outside, unable to reach the hall. The Emir of Kano, who should know what is protocol better than Kaita, then volunteered some of his guards to usher in Buhari. I sincerely believe that neither the Danmasani nor the Emir thought that the arrival of Buhari was enough to make the gathering spontaneously go ‘wild’ the way it did.
For 30 minutes the hall was booming with applause. When finally the Vice-President got the opportunity to start his address there were jeers all over. We must recall that, with Buhari joining politics, the political atmosphere in the country, particularly in the North, has changed in the nine days before the Kano incident. The presidency had earlier told Nigerians that there is no credible challenger to Obasanjo. They are now quiet. Buhari has at least saved us from that tyranny. As we said earlier, the Vice-President condemned that decision publicly just a week before. Now, people, who are naturally given to drama and amusement, had this rare occasion: Buhari is in politics and possibly he is going to run against the wishes of Atiku and Babangida. And all the three have gathered in one hall.
The people were quick to cease the opportunity to express their support for Buhari, even if it were only to spite Atiku and Babangida. The crime of Babangida is known, combined with the fact that he is not the best friend of Buhari since 1985. The jeers of “sit down, sit down, we do not want your speech” silenced Atiku. He finally folded his paper and went back to his seat. When Babangida attempted to come forward, the crowd shouted at him with unprintable names and asked him to sit down. He complied. My personal opinion here is, well, booing could be permitted, but calling a former head of state such names is least expected from the dwellers of a city as ancient as Kano, particularly if he has not been convicted of the capital crime yet and his accusers cannot prove the offence other than the circumstantial evidence of his apparent luxury. Kano is a Shariah state and its citizens must guard against qazaf, I advise.
Well, the jeers inside gave rise to the commotion outside. We cannot tell with any degree of certainty whether the missiles were directed at Kwankwaso or at Atiku, or both. It is therefore a tall lie to link Buhari, who was then only one week old in politics, with a momentous event like this. But this is politics. People feel they are free to undermine their opponent anyhow.
Few days later, Atiku visited Adamawa where he was scheduled to attend the wedding fatihah of one of his aides in Mubi. The government learnt that the residents of the town were planning an intifadah against the Vice-President and the state governor for totally neglecting the area. (It takes three to four hours to reach Mubi from Yola, instead of one a half). Initial ‘incentives’ sent from Yola did not avert the danger. So a tight security was prepared. The father of the bride was also requested to shift the venue of the fatihah from his house to the more secured palace of the His Royal Highness, the Chief of Mubi. I reasoned with them. But the father I learnt refused, protesting that if it will not take place in his house they should give up the idea of marrying his daughter. People, for this rejection, instantly turned the father into a local celebrity, carrying him over their shoulders around the town.
These incidents were not restricted to Atiku. Joshua Dariye, the Plateau State governor, did not have it easy at Langtang last week. The Zamfara State governor was also stoned at Tsafe as he was returning form the tour of newly created local governments in the area. Obasanjo, if we remember, caught the intifadah cold after the Kano incident. He rushed his condolence visit to the victims of the plane crash in Kano because he was afraid of missiles. He came hours before schedule and did not have the patience or the courage to meet with the relatives of the victims personally.
Suggestions
Intifadah is fast becoming part of our political culture. It seems people are using it to express their disapproval with the status quo. They are successfully using it to cow the leadership until it finds it difficult to move around except under tight security conditions. It is a development that must be checked because it threatens peace, the very foundation of democracy. In the remaining few paragraphs, I have suggested ways by which a resolution could be achieved, not believing that it is too late.
One, the people must realize that this is a democratic era. Agreed that they have the right to express themselves, but they can only do so through legitimate means. First they can try, wherever possible, to express their opinions using the media and other peaceful means. Engaging in violence will only give the PDP government an excuse to trample on the rights as individuals during an election year. If there is a lot of violence, Obasanjo can use it as a pretext to declare a state of emergency and continue beyond 2003.
The second option will come in the next ten months or so, when they will have the opportunity to vote for fresh leaders, if they wish. The ballot box is there, waiting to contain all their anger and frustration with the present government. Let them fill it with anti-Atiku, anti-Makarfi, anti-Kwankwaso and anti-whoever votes. Let them ensure by all means that their votes are counted and reported correctly. That will be the grievous injury they can inflict on those in power today. We are not under occupation, so let us leave intifadah to the Palestinians.
On the side of government, the following suggestions and advices will definitely be useful. The degree to which governments have monopoly over government-owned media has reached painful levels for the opposition. Take the NTA news for example. Everything there is Obasanjo, and nothing for the opposition. We are tired of this monotony. The same thing with radio stations belonging to the federal and state governments. A room is required that will provide the opposition and the people the opportunity to express their opinions. It is the refusal to do so that results in intifadah.
However, the greatest antidote against violent public protest is good governance. That has been the focus of this column for the past three years. We have said it, time without number but to no avail. To ga irinta nan. Now that the missiles have started flying, perhaps, consideration will be given to our ‘noise’.
As an illustration, the government should investigate what has made Buhari popular among the masses. All the common man can remember today about Buhari was that he once saved him from the exploitation of people like Tsoho DanAmale who used to run court sessions in his house, detain people there for not paying usury on the debt he gave them and hoarded thousands of tonnes of grains when the masses could not find enough in the markets in 1983. Buhari also fought for their freedom against bad governance. That should be the goal of our leaders today. Can they revert to this ideal before 2003? It is doubtful.
I will also advise, on a serious note, that governors and the Vice-President should order for cars that are stone proof. The cars they use now are impermeable to bullets, which are sharp objects, but not to stones and shoes. Stones could sometimes be precise with catastrophic results especially when launched from the hand pad of the oppressed. Let us remember that David killed Goliath using just one stone.
Finally, if these suggestions have failed, Atiku must henceforth stop sitting in the same vehicle, sharing the same space and time with any of his hosts. He should know that more often than not a stone does not have the precision of laser-guided missiles or precision bombs. So once the Vice-President falls within its margin of error, he becomes vulnerable, though the target might be Makarfi, Kwankwaso or Boni Haruna. The target was actually these governors, not our beloved Vice-President who bothers himself very much with the sad state of education and industry in the North. He has twice presided over educational summits attended by northern governors who equally care about education to the extent of paying our brothers and children N3,000.00 as scholarship per annum, and at a time when Kano would remain for weeks without electricity and as a result over 80% of its industries have been relocated to Ogun State.
So thank you Atiku. You are the best Vice-President we ever had, and Obasanjo is the best thing that ever happened to the country. Take care when next time you visit Kano. We have no intention of converting Sani Abacha hall into another jamra, or the villages of Mo’tafikat
Showing posts with label Atiku Abubakar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atiku Abubakar. Show all posts
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Discourse 134 Laale e Atiku
Friday Discourse (134)
Laalee e Atiku
I have come to support Atiku, not to praise him. He is accused of conniving with Ghali Na-Abba to impeach Obasanjo. People may think it is wrong. I think it is not only right but also necessary for his sake, for the sake of the party and for the sake of a vibrant democracy beyond 2003.
It should not surprise Atiku, his aides, the PDP or my readers if I commit my pen to support Atiku in the ongoing feud between him and Obasanjo. Even on the surface, I have enough reasons to do so. I am from the same zone with Atiku; in fact I did my secondary school in his hometown, Ganye. He speaks my language very fluently. That is enough, in the judgement of many, to qualify him as one of my own and so defend him in whatever way possible.
However, I am not motivated by any regional or ethnic commonality. I am siding with truth, conscience and justice. No one has inherited Aso Rock from his father. Until it is privatised, as Nasiru intends to do with the National Assembly complex, the President has no right to exclude other Nigerians, Atiku inclusive, from vying for it. His tenancy is expiring next May and the landlord – majority of Nigerians – is justifiably not ready to renew it. Obasanjo has proved to be a bad tenant. He has kept the house clumsy, noisy and made it a brothel of political prostitution. Worse still, in the past three years he has been vandalizing its parts. If the landlord allows him another tenancy there is strong evidence to suggest that he will sell it to a third party, of course with the help of Nasiru and in accordance with the suggestion of his friend, Sam Nda-Isaiah.
To begin with, however bad is his situation, Obasanjo has himself to blame, not Atiku or anyone else. He has refused to listen, neither to the public nor to any well meaning adviser or minister close to him. He only respects the counsel of his prison experience and some few micro-nationalists and political opportunists. The input from the two has misguided him into neglecting five out of six geopolitical zones in the country and the economy. He has become restless, like ping-pong, visiting nations at odd times and with odd frequencies to the extent that they have now shown signs of host-fatigue. I believe neither Atiku nor Ciroma would advise the President on this chicken itinerary. Neither could they advise him to abandon agriculture, to fail in registration of voters, to fail in revitalizing NEPA, and so on. He should blame the people he trusted, particularly his de facto Vice-President – Mr. fix it.
Happily for the country, in spite of the billions his team has gathered for the campaign, Obasanjo has reached the end of the road. He must swallow the bitter pill of defeat. The crux of the matter is who among his army of ministers and assistants is ready to share that pill with him? I see the President offering it to each of them, and quickly does each shake his head sideways, in decline. Obasanjo stands alone.
I know it is too late for some. They are too old to nurse any ambition anymore. They have crowned their lives with failure. Sorry. As for the young – and Atiku has just two years ago counted himself the young – the sky is the limit. They are beginning to see the writing on the wall more clearly than before, now that it is at a close range. Many of the assistants and advisers will certainly find accommodation in other camps. Many ministers will return home and try finding some relevance in their states, within the limited breathing space that their governors could permit, before contesting gubernatorial elections in 2007. In any case, these ministers must know that they are leaving Aso Rock latest next May 29, whether Obasanjo is continuing or not. If he loses, they are surely going to leave along with him; if he wins, which is most unlikely, he will bring in fresh hands that are not soiled or oiled enough during his first tenure to calculate rebellion.
For the Vice-President however, the spectrum of political arithmetic is not so wide. He could only look up or side ways. As one time Vice-President, we do not expect him to look down and vie again for the position of Bony Haruna. He must have known by now that he has never been the governor of Adamawa and I join him in his prayer that there should never arise a situation that will compel him to be one any day in the future. Forward ever, backward never. He cannot also be a minister under Obasanjo or under any PDP government. That is a position less executive than that of the governor. Perhaps, a senator; yes, for the sake of its honour. Whichever way you look at it however, Atiku has only one clear choice. That choice is to vie for the Presidency, now. If he leaves it until 2007 or beyond, he is not sure of the factors that will come into play to make his dream unrealistic. The decision therefore is immediate. It must be now or never during the tenure of this administration.
That was my first line of defence. Here is the second. Doing away with Obasanjo is a decision that the PDP must take in order to remain relevant at the Federal level, as I argued over three weeks ago. I have no doubt about its success at the state and local government levels. It has a number of governors and local government chairmen, who, combined with their incumbency, stand the best chance of winning. But Obasanjo is a dead wood. Hence, my advise to the party to support the move by the House to impeach him, even if that may fall short of removing him from office. It will anaesthetise the President and make him inactive to contest even the primaries. I am happy that this is exactly what is taking place.
The PDP, if I will digress a bit, should not be allowed to sink completely. Just let it remain neck-deep. As I said two weeks ago, the alternative party – the APP – is yet to prove that it is better in ideology and in practice. It is only enjoying the opportunity of being in opposition that is blessed with the windfall of Obasanjo’s failure. When it is in power, the APP will have the opportunity to prove that it is better. Until then, ba za mu yi saurin yabon dan kuturu ba. In fact in 2003 presidential elections, Nigerians will most likely vote for the merit in a candidate, not for the manifesto of his party.
A BBC correspondent queried why I should assist the PDP to solve its problems. I defended myself by saying that though I would like a certain APP candidate to win, I would also like to see him compete against a strong contender from the PDP and, after winning, run an APP government with a national assembly that has a PDP majority.
Nigerians must not repeat the mistake they committed in 1999, giving away both the presidency and the legislature to the same party. No. Let us do it the American way. Even if we have a transparent and honest leader, the best guarantee against the sort of abuse of power that we witnessed under Obasanjo is meaningful opposition from a legislature that belongs to a different party. Democracy is best protected and it flourishes most under a bipartisan leadership. The President will be forced to circumspect and resort to extensive lobbying and consultation, since by his transparent nature he will not employ any ‘Ghana must go.’ Then, only the constitution, reason and fairness will see him through. That is my stand.
So let both parties remain strong, PDP in the National Assembly and at the level of states and local government. APP occupies the presidency, that is controlling about 54% of the federal revenue. Wai angulu da kan zabo. For PDP to remain strong, Atiku is necessary today. It cannot have a better presidential candidate than him. In fact, not even Obasanjo can win the primaries of his party without Atiku. If Obasanjo does not know it, Atiku must educate him.
So far in our discourse we have established that the end of Obasanjo’s political carrier does not necessarily end Atiku’s, unless the latter chooses it to be so. Two, the interest of the PDP should override the interest of any single individual, including the President if it is to remain relevant to our democracy. I believe these are the personal and corporate political exigencies that compelled Atiku to contemplate opposing Obasanjo.
The third. Obasanjo will prove an ingrate if he should doubt the loyalty of Atiku. Atiku has throughout the tenure of this administration given enough support to Obasanjo at the detriment of his people and the risk of his political carrier. When at the beginning of this administration his constituency – the North – started to express its disenchantment with some policies of Obasanjo, it was Atiku who fired the first anti-aircraft. He visited Arewa House and bluntly and boldly accused the so-called Arewa leaders of opportunism. That week, I think, he gave an interview to the Weekly Trust in which he disowned his northern constituency and claimed that his constituency is the whole Nigeria. Fair enough.
At the middle of the tenure we have seen him even resort to misinforming the public just in defence of the administration, like when he announced his infamous reversion to status quo ante on shariah as the decision of the Council of State. Nothing has proved catastrophic in his relationship with the North like it. Even two months ago at a PDP rally in Sokoto he publicly claimed that the federal government has spent N45billion in rehabilitation of roads in the Northwest zone. Since then, Bafarawa and the APP in the zone have been relentless in their attacks on Atiku. They have listed all the federal roads in the zones and challenged Atiku to show where even N1billion was spent. However, they should not press much on this because Atiku is only exhibiting his loyalty to Obasanjo. After all, we know the figure is not correct; it was for the consumption of that gathering. More importantly, we know he does not allocate resources nor does he award or supervise contracts of that magnitude. Mr. Fix It will answer that some day.
Even recently, Atiku has been doing his best to ridicule the political fortune of Muhammadu Buhari despite the crushing support for him that he witnessed in Kano. We do not bother because there are strong signs that as far as 2003 is concerned the North in particular has made up its mind. It is only seeking the support of God. Atiku is making matters worse for himself from this angle. What a pity.
Many of such instances can be cited. The first one-year was particularly full of costly mistakes for Atiku, all made in his effort to prove his loyalty to Obasanjo. He joined the bandwagon of presidential aides who liked booing the North whenever it complained of one misdeed or another. In the jubilation of having found a new master they jumped at every microphone of the Lagos media and start parroting like a recorded tape. They thought the best compensation they should offer Obasanjo for their appointment was to hang the North, making it irrelevant and guilty at the same time.
I knew it wouldn’t last. That was why I quickly wrote Atiku and His Excess Luggage. I still remember the final words of that composition which read thus: “I am only afraid that Atiku will painfully realize that when the market of this regime closes, everyone will return to his house. What a pity, he is presently helping others to set his own ablaze!”
I am glad that the message did reach him. He has been trying his best to mend fences his own way by reassuring the North of his support through holding conferences on the state of its education and industry. He has also sponsored programs on the radio in which he tries to broadcast the contributions he made to the region as Vice-President. I can see that the name of Obasanjo is conspicuously absent from such programs, as if the Vice-President is eager to dissociate himself from his master.
What I have tried to prove on this line is that Atiku has fulfilled his own side of the obligation as a Vice-President. He has patiently toed the line of the President even though on many instances he is ignored for the counsel of political pundits and fixers. Having done so, I think, he has every right to disembark, without waiting for Obasanjo to throw him out.
The fourth. Yes. Obasanjo has been under intense pressure, so I heard, to drop Atiku, if he is to qualify for the second time political support of the forces that claimed to have brought him to power in 1999. Atiku knows this and it has already led to the initial reluctance of the President to announce him as his running mate in 2003. He did so only half-heartedly to forestall the premature disclosure of his true intentions regarding Atiku which he plans to ripen only after the primaries. Who does not know that he has promised an adviser and at least three northern governors the vice-presidency? Since then it must have been clear to Atiku that the degree of doubt about his political career has reached dangerous levels in the mind of the President.
How then do we expect Atiku, who believes he is still hail and healthy in politics, to sit back and watch the coffin of his burial crafted and the rope of his execution weaved without making any attempt to play the game of survival? How fair are the President and other Nigerians to him?
The efforts of survival he has made so far, according to the Presidency, include instigating the impeachment of the President. Some magazines have elaborately covered this last week. They claimed that the President has called Atiku and told him, point blank, that he strong evidence linking him to the impeachment terror in the House. Ordinarily, we expect Atiku to swear heaven and earth that he is not involved. In fact he even offered to negotiate a truce by visiting the House and tangentially pleaded with them to drop the matter. Given the situation, this is cowardly.
I would like to assure Atiku, as I will do to every governor and minister, that he does not need to fear Obasanjo anymore. The Vice-President must henceforth look straight into the eyes of his boss and tell him that “one, oga you be responsible for the mess you found yourself in o. Two, if you want be president again, you need me. Otherwise, terminate the dream here and now.” Obasanjo will, after Atiku might have left, think twice and know that what he said is a actually true.
Going through the impeachment, in my opinion, is long, tedious and unnecessary. What I would have done as the Vice-President is to work through the party. I will get the most influential people in the party convinced that Obasanjo is a bad product for 2003. Then we will together seek appointment with the President and put before him his ‘unmarketability.’ We should also be bold enough to bluntly tell him that, therefore, for the interest of the party we are not supporting him in the primaries. And suddenly leave. From then we must have gotten the freedom of action that is necessary to save our party from defeat.
Atiku has the background, having grown among the Fulani, to take this route that is more honourable than engaging in conspiracies and intrigues, justified as they could be in this case. It will seem like a coup. But sometimes coups are the inevitable answers to questions of survival. Being apologetic will only make Obasanjo feel that he is still relevant to the party while in actual sense he is a liability. He has exhausted his usefulness and Nigerians, and indeed the international community, will be glad when one day they wake up to find out that they are relieved of his nuisance.
So, factually speaking, all the exposition about Atiku working against the President is cheap as his doing so is totally in consonance with the rules of power. What will be surprising is for Atiku to remain on the sinking Titanic without disembarking. He needs to save himself, the PDP and the nation from Obasanjo. Right now, from here in the North, I assure him that, in spite of all that happened between him and the region, he is welcome back home. Laalee e sumpo. Laalee e Atiku.
Laalee e Atiku
I have come to support Atiku, not to praise him. He is accused of conniving with Ghali Na-Abba to impeach Obasanjo. People may think it is wrong. I think it is not only right but also necessary for his sake, for the sake of the party and for the sake of a vibrant democracy beyond 2003.
It should not surprise Atiku, his aides, the PDP or my readers if I commit my pen to support Atiku in the ongoing feud between him and Obasanjo. Even on the surface, I have enough reasons to do so. I am from the same zone with Atiku; in fact I did my secondary school in his hometown, Ganye. He speaks my language very fluently. That is enough, in the judgement of many, to qualify him as one of my own and so defend him in whatever way possible.
However, I am not motivated by any regional or ethnic commonality. I am siding with truth, conscience and justice. No one has inherited Aso Rock from his father. Until it is privatised, as Nasiru intends to do with the National Assembly complex, the President has no right to exclude other Nigerians, Atiku inclusive, from vying for it. His tenancy is expiring next May and the landlord – majority of Nigerians – is justifiably not ready to renew it. Obasanjo has proved to be a bad tenant. He has kept the house clumsy, noisy and made it a brothel of political prostitution. Worse still, in the past three years he has been vandalizing its parts. If the landlord allows him another tenancy there is strong evidence to suggest that he will sell it to a third party, of course with the help of Nasiru and in accordance with the suggestion of his friend, Sam Nda-Isaiah.
To begin with, however bad is his situation, Obasanjo has himself to blame, not Atiku or anyone else. He has refused to listen, neither to the public nor to any well meaning adviser or minister close to him. He only respects the counsel of his prison experience and some few micro-nationalists and political opportunists. The input from the two has misguided him into neglecting five out of six geopolitical zones in the country and the economy. He has become restless, like ping-pong, visiting nations at odd times and with odd frequencies to the extent that they have now shown signs of host-fatigue. I believe neither Atiku nor Ciroma would advise the President on this chicken itinerary. Neither could they advise him to abandon agriculture, to fail in registration of voters, to fail in revitalizing NEPA, and so on. He should blame the people he trusted, particularly his de facto Vice-President – Mr. fix it.
Happily for the country, in spite of the billions his team has gathered for the campaign, Obasanjo has reached the end of the road. He must swallow the bitter pill of defeat. The crux of the matter is who among his army of ministers and assistants is ready to share that pill with him? I see the President offering it to each of them, and quickly does each shake his head sideways, in decline. Obasanjo stands alone.
I know it is too late for some. They are too old to nurse any ambition anymore. They have crowned their lives with failure. Sorry. As for the young – and Atiku has just two years ago counted himself the young – the sky is the limit. They are beginning to see the writing on the wall more clearly than before, now that it is at a close range. Many of the assistants and advisers will certainly find accommodation in other camps. Many ministers will return home and try finding some relevance in their states, within the limited breathing space that their governors could permit, before contesting gubernatorial elections in 2007. In any case, these ministers must know that they are leaving Aso Rock latest next May 29, whether Obasanjo is continuing or not. If he loses, they are surely going to leave along with him; if he wins, which is most unlikely, he will bring in fresh hands that are not soiled or oiled enough during his first tenure to calculate rebellion.
For the Vice-President however, the spectrum of political arithmetic is not so wide. He could only look up or side ways. As one time Vice-President, we do not expect him to look down and vie again for the position of Bony Haruna. He must have known by now that he has never been the governor of Adamawa and I join him in his prayer that there should never arise a situation that will compel him to be one any day in the future. Forward ever, backward never. He cannot also be a minister under Obasanjo or under any PDP government. That is a position less executive than that of the governor. Perhaps, a senator; yes, for the sake of its honour. Whichever way you look at it however, Atiku has only one clear choice. That choice is to vie for the Presidency, now. If he leaves it until 2007 or beyond, he is not sure of the factors that will come into play to make his dream unrealistic. The decision therefore is immediate. It must be now or never during the tenure of this administration.
That was my first line of defence. Here is the second. Doing away with Obasanjo is a decision that the PDP must take in order to remain relevant at the Federal level, as I argued over three weeks ago. I have no doubt about its success at the state and local government levels. It has a number of governors and local government chairmen, who, combined with their incumbency, stand the best chance of winning. But Obasanjo is a dead wood. Hence, my advise to the party to support the move by the House to impeach him, even if that may fall short of removing him from office. It will anaesthetise the President and make him inactive to contest even the primaries. I am happy that this is exactly what is taking place.
The PDP, if I will digress a bit, should not be allowed to sink completely. Just let it remain neck-deep. As I said two weeks ago, the alternative party – the APP – is yet to prove that it is better in ideology and in practice. It is only enjoying the opportunity of being in opposition that is blessed with the windfall of Obasanjo’s failure. When it is in power, the APP will have the opportunity to prove that it is better. Until then, ba za mu yi saurin yabon dan kuturu ba. In fact in 2003 presidential elections, Nigerians will most likely vote for the merit in a candidate, not for the manifesto of his party.
A BBC correspondent queried why I should assist the PDP to solve its problems. I defended myself by saying that though I would like a certain APP candidate to win, I would also like to see him compete against a strong contender from the PDP and, after winning, run an APP government with a national assembly that has a PDP majority.
Nigerians must not repeat the mistake they committed in 1999, giving away both the presidency and the legislature to the same party. No. Let us do it the American way. Even if we have a transparent and honest leader, the best guarantee against the sort of abuse of power that we witnessed under Obasanjo is meaningful opposition from a legislature that belongs to a different party. Democracy is best protected and it flourishes most under a bipartisan leadership. The President will be forced to circumspect and resort to extensive lobbying and consultation, since by his transparent nature he will not employ any ‘Ghana must go.’ Then, only the constitution, reason and fairness will see him through. That is my stand.
So let both parties remain strong, PDP in the National Assembly and at the level of states and local government. APP occupies the presidency, that is controlling about 54% of the federal revenue. Wai angulu da kan zabo. For PDP to remain strong, Atiku is necessary today. It cannot have a better presidential candidate than him. In fact, not even Obasanjo can win the primaries of his party without Atiku. If Obasanjo does not know it, Atiku must educate him.
So far in our discourse we have established that the end of Obasanjo’s political carrier does not necessarily end Atiku’s, unless the latter chooses it to be so. Two, the interest of the PDP should override the interest of any single individual, including the President if it is to remain relevant to our democracy. I believe these are the personal and corporate political exigencies that compelled Atiku to contemplate opposing Obasanjo.
The third. Obasanjo will prove an ingrate if he should doubt the loyalty of Atiku. Atiku has throughout the tenure of this administration given enough support to Obasanjo at the detriment of his people and the risk of his political carrier. When at the beginning of this administration his constituency – the North – started to express its disenchantment with some policies of Obasanjo, it was Atiku who fired the first anti-aircraft. He visited Arewa House and bluntly and boldly accused the so-called Arewa leaders of opportunism. That week, I think, he gave an interview to the Weekly Trust in which he disowned his northern constituency and claimed that his constituency is the whole Nigeria. Fair enough.
At the middle of the tenure we have seen him even resort to misinforming the public just in defence of the administration, like when he announced his infamous reversion to status quo ante on shariah as the decision of the Council of State. Nothing has proved catastrophic in his relationship with the North like it. Even two months ago at a PDP rally in Sokoto he publicly claimed that the federal government has spent N45billion in rehabilitation of roads in the Northwest zone. Since then, Bafarawa and the APP in the zone have been relentless in their attacks on Atiku. They have listed all the federal roads in the zones and challenged Atiku to show where even N1billion was spent. However, they should not press much on this because Atiku is only exhibiting his loyalty to Obasanjo. After all, we know the figure is not correct; it was for the consumption of that gathering. More importantly, we know he does not allocate resources nor does he award or supervise contracts of that magnitude. Mr. Fix It will answer that some day.
Even recently, Atiku has been doing his best to ridicule the political fortune of Muhammadu Buhari despite the crushing support for him that he witnessed in Kano. We do not bother because there are strong signs that as far as 2003 is concerned the North in particular has made up its mind. It is only seeking the support of God. Atiku is making matters worse for himself from this angle. What a pity.
Many of such instances can be cited. The first one-year was particularly full of costly mistakes for Atiku, all made in his effort to prove his loyalty to Obasanjo. He joined the bandwagon of presidential aides who liked booing the North whenever it complained of one misdeed or another. In the jubilation of having found a new master they jumped at every microphone of the Lagos media and start parroting like a recorded tape. They thought the best compensation they should offer Obasanjo for their appointment was to hang the North, making it irrelevant and guilty at the same time.
I knew it wouldn’t last. That was why I quickly wrote Atiku and His Excess Luggage. I still remember the final words of that composition which read thus: “I am only afraid that Atiku will painfully realize that when the market of this regime closes, everyone will return to his house. What a pity, he is presently helping others to set his own ablaze!”
I am glad that the message did reach him. He has been trying his best to mend fences his own way by reassuring the North of his support through holding conferences on the state of its education and industry. He has also sponsored programs on the radio in which he tries to broadcast the contributions he made to the region as Vice-President. I can see that the name of Obasanjo is conspicuously absent from such programs, as if the Vice-President is eager to dissociate himself from his master.
What I have tried to prove on this line is that Atiku has fulfilled his own side of the obligation as a Vice-President. He has patiently toed the line of the President even though on many instances he is ignored for the counsel of political pundits and fixers. Having done so, I think, he has every right to disembark, without waiting for Obasanjo to throw him out.
The fourth. Yes. Obasanjo has been under intense pressure, so I heard, to drop Atiku, if he is to qualify for the second time political support of the forces that claimed to have brought him to power in 1999. Atiku knows this and it has already led to the initial reluctance of the President to announce him as his running mate in 2003. He did so only half-heartedly to forestall the premature disclosure of his true intentions regarding Atiku which he plans to ripen only after the primaries. Who does not know that he has promised an adviser and at least three northern governors the vice-presidency? Since then it must have been clear to Atiku that the degree of doubt about his political career has reached dangerous levels in the mind of the President.
How then do we expect Atiku, who believes he is still hail and healthy in politics, to sit back and watch the coffin of his burial crafted and the rope of his execution weaved without making any attempt to play the game of survival? How fair are the President and other Nigerians to him?
The efforts of survival he has made so far, according to the Presidency, include instigating the impeachment of the President. Some magazines have elaborately covered this last week. They claimed that the President has called Atiku and told him, point blank, that he strong evidence linking him to the impeachment terror in the House. Ordinarily, we expect Atiku to swear heaven and earth that he is not involved. In fact he even offered to negotiate a truce by visiting the House and tangentially pleaded with them to drop the matter. Given the situation, this is cowardly.
I would like to assure Atiku, as I will do to every governor and minister, that he does not need to fear Obasanjo anymore. The Vice-President must henceforth look straight into the eyes of his boss and tell him that “one, oga you be responsible for the mess you found yourself in o. Two, if you want be president again, you need me. Otherwise, terminate the dream here and now.” Obasanjo will, after Atiku might have left, think twice and know that what he said is a actually true.
Going through the impeachment, in my opinion, is long, tedious and unnecessary. What I would have done as the Vice-President is to work through the party. I will get the most influential people in the party convinced that Obasanjo is a bad product for 2003. Then we will together seek appointment with the President and put before him his ‘unmarketability.’ We should also be bold enough to bluntly tell him that, therefore, for the interest of the party we are not supporting him in the primaries. And suddenly leave. From then we must have gotten the freedom of action that is necessary to save our party from defeat.
Atiku has the background, having grown among the Fulani, to take this route that is more honourable than engaging in conspiracies and intrigues, justified as they could be in this case. It will seem like a coup. But sometimes coups are the inevitable answers to questions of survival. Being apologetic will only make Obasanjo feel that he is still relevant to the party while in actual sense he is a liability. He has exhausted his usefulness and Nigerians, and indeed the international community, will be glad when one day they wake up to find out that they are relieved of his nuisance.
So, factually speaking, all the exposition about Atiku working against the President is cheap as his doing so is totally in consonance with the rules of power. What will be surprising is for Atiku to remain on the sinking Titanic without disembarking. He needs to save himself, the PDP and the nation from Obasanjo. Right now, from here in the North, I assure him that, in spite of all that happened between him and the region, he is welcome back home. Laalee e sumpo. Laalee e Atiku.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Ceasefire, Mr. Vice-President
Cease-fire, Mr. Vice-President
I have resumed. I will start by expressing my appreciation to the Editor for keeping the column lively, despite the short notice I gave him, by publishing the contributions of others. I enjoyed the presence of these guests because some were educating; others were entertaining.
I was in fact surprised that some of the rejoinders were about the Vice President (V-P), Atiku Abubakar. As a weekly, we have limited space. Courtesy demands that I publish opinions that contradict mine; moreover, by so doing, I will accord both our readers and myself the chance to see issues from other angles. So I deliberately suppressed those who wrote in support of my stand, and do hope that they will forgive me. The intention was not to generate a debate about somebody, no matter how important he may be in government, but to advice him, particularly when he is our brother, whenever doing so becomes necessary. This will continue to be our obligation in Friday Discourse. We shall continue with it, in sha Allah.
Nevertheless, to clear the air I think I need to answer a question. What defense do I have for writing Atiku and His Excess Luggage? It seems that I am a poor communicator, for different people gave that article different interpretations depending on their relationship with the V-P. On the one hand, many people would ordinarily feel that I was against the vice-president. Atiku and his aides must have thought so also. They will think that they have found an additional enemy in Tilde, if they were looking for one. The V-P himself would abandon his favorite column – Friday Discourse – and imagine that I have colluded with ‘enemies of the administration’ to muddle up his personality. On the other hand, his political opponents might have viewed me differently; they would be rejoicing that they have cheaply found an ally against Atiku who has just appeared from the blues.
Both camps are wrong. I am neither an antagonist of the vice-president nor an enemy of this administration. Absolutely not, for three simple reasons. One, if my friends here were to be heard, they would have recounted how I greeted Obasanjo’s candidature with all enthusiasm. The articles that I wrote then in this weekly vindicate me. To charge me now, together with many other northerners like me, with enmity ‘against the administration’ would certainly be incorrect. Two, I am not a politician, aiming at something up there. Politicians are people that have ambition in power; they want to get hold of it, retain it or influence it. I am never bothered with all these. Three, where would I get the muscle to antagonize a whole vice-president? Drop this unfair charge.
However, what should concern the administration and the V-P in particular is why do people like me sometimes appear to be antagonistic to them? To find out an answer to this question, the administration should not listen to courtiers who are just after the acquisition of presidential largesse, those that are quick to expound the ‘mischief theory’ to explain the disposition of innocent people like Tilde. No other group has earned past administrations gross public dissatisfaction and hatred like this coterie of flatterers that leave the master struggling with the horn while they enjoy milking the cow for themselves. This administration must be aware of them. They were there in Aso Rock yesterday; they are also there today. The fate that befell the occupants of the villa yesterday should scare its occupants of today. For us, the citizenry, we know that ba a mugun sarki, sai mugun bafade.
With this single strike, I have rejected their charges as a reflection of their bad intention and personality. This column is a mirror that reflects what stands before it. If you are ugly, you will hate the picture, and even attempt to smash the mirror. But that does not make you look better. If on the other hand you are handsome, just give me a smile, and I will make your face shine and your teeth will appear brighter like fresh pearls, hail-stones, camomile flowers, palm shoot and bubbles – to borrow from the composition of al-Hariri.
But have the proponents of the ‘mischief theory’ not heard about the following verse of Abu al-Tayyib al-Motanabbi in one of his spectacular poetic improvisations before Kafour, the one time ruler of Egypt? “If the actions of a person are bad, his thoughts become bad too; and he believes whatever illusions occur to him. He will fight his friends with the words of his enemies and becomes engulfed in the stark darkness of (his) doubts.”
Some of my guests were deliberate in their condemnation. Take Hassan Umar for example. The Hassan that I know for the past twenty years to be objective and thorough, for whatever reason, started by goofing awfully. He titled his article Hajj 2000-let our heads rule us. But did the head of Hassan rule him, even in that article? Read the first sentence: “Two write-ups by Dr. Tilde appeared in your edition Vol. 3 No. 10 of April 21-27..bla bla.” Foul, Engineer Hassan! If you had used your head a bit, you would have realized that only the first was written by Tilde; our respected brother, Dr. Siraj Abdulkarim, wrote the second.
Then Hassan went to charge me in the most reckless manner, saying: “Only two facts are worthy of consideration as it is full of sarcasm, and it smacks of some mischief against the person of the Vice President. The President should therefore disregard it. As for the Vice President, I am sure the bias against him is because of his pronouncement on Sharia. What has happened has happened, and the continuous bombardment against him is in fact un-Islamic. As he himself has said, it is the price of leadership, and I implore him to continue to look at it that way.”
Foul again, my dear! Both the President and his deputy were not impressed by these cheap appeals. So they have decided that the federal government will henceforth absolve itself of Hajj operations. The vice-president has already announced this resolve, and I believe that he will keep his promise. But it will interest Hassan to know precisely why the government took this decision even before the National Commission on Hajj submitted its report on the last Hajj. It is for no other reason but the very one that I expressed in my article which was cleverly pushed aside by Hassan who dismissed them as ‘not worthy of consideration’ or ‘full of contradictions and sarcasm’. It was simply because of the gross inefficiency and corruption that characterized the operation of the last Hajj. If anybody doubts this he is free to confirm it from the villa.
Hassan may need to learn to give consideration to facts of speech from Dodo na Alkali, an old song that the late Shata recorded for the late Emir of Zazzau, Aminu (may God have mercy on them both), when we were kids. In it, he narrated how his prophecy – that Aminu will one day become the Emir – was dismissed as ‘worthless words of a drunkard.’ But when Aminu became Emir, Shata had this to say: ‘to ga zancen giyan nan ai, na Ahmadu ya zame Sarkin Zazzau.”
The rest of Hassan’s article was just mere theory, nothing more, that ended in dumping the blame for the failure on innocent pilgrims whose hard-earned money was used to fund the ‘charity’ accorded some individuals by our ‘nascent airlines’, as Hassan called them. Well, we are tired of theories. Hajj is over 40 years old; if people entrusted with it can only earn Muslims shame by wasting our personal and public resources, let them go, and go forever. I do not trust the travel agencies either. However, I do still believe that state governments have the competence to handle the affairs of their pilgrims. If any state would like to hire Kabo next year, let it go ahead.
I wonder what heads would rule us better than those of the President, his deputy and that of the minister of state for foreign affairs who, having witnessed the suffering of our pilgrims in Jeddah, declared to the world that it was an embarrassment. Moreover, some members of the Hajj Commission are privately singing a different song from the one Hassan was singing. I wonder why suddenly my Hassan was trying to be more Catholic than the Pope?
Hassan was also wrong in relating my opinion on Hajj to the vice-president’s position on shariah. Men, this is court politics and too skewed to be true. If Hassan were a constant reader of this column, he would have allowed his head to rule him on this matter. In my controversial article on the V-P, I wrote on the shariah saying, “To me, it is time to pardon him for this, especially when we recognize the situation under which the ‘slip of tongue’ was made. The issue is not over, and Atiku has the ample opportunity, if he wishes, to improve his image with the Muslim majority.” A ah! Does Hassan want the V-P to behead me? This is dangerous. Well, Hassan, you will be the first to cry if he does so. Come on, Hassan, be yourself, the role of a courtier does not befit you. Remain the Hassan that I know, thorough and objective.
This brings us back to where we started. What have I got to gain by destroying vice-president? Have I not heard what Mutawakkil al-Laithi said, “if you humiliate your brother or expose him deliberately, you are the one humiliated and the blameworthy?”
If anybody cares to know why a section of the North is bitter about him, he needs to read the famous moallaqah of the ancient young poet and prince, Tarafeh. In it, he said, “the injustice of the kindred is more painful on a person than a strike of a swift-cutting sword.” If we do not deserve the objectivity, respect and gratitude of Obasanjo and the southern press, we feel that we deserve that of Atiku, whom we consider to be one of us. Unfortunately, this young politician fell victim to the ill advice from those that have his ear. Agreed that he, along with his mentor, Shehu Yar’adua were persecuted during the Abacha era, it was still wrong for a politician to assume the puritanical stand of a cleric on his pulpit.
His political associates seem to be terribly poor in mastering the game of power. Feeling of triumph has daunted their adeptness in handling political arithmetic. Their policy would have avoided turning their friends into enemies, the very friends in the North from whom they solicited for votes and were given generously. In fact, they would have moved quickly after their appointments to assist the administration to consolidate its electoral victory by retaining the support of those who voted for it and even going further to win over its opponents. If the opponents appear stubborn, I expected them to tactfully disarm them of their followers, as Haile Selesie did to Balcha of Sidamo in 1927. Once you do that, unless under a very rare circumstance, the opponent has no choice but to come over and kiss your feet, asking for forgiveness.
Instead, the administration is struggling to apply crude and archaic laws like ‘divide and rule’, thus squandering the greatest opportunity for political reconciliation in the political history of modern Nigeria. Do we need ‘divide and rule’ today? Do we need to divide a people that voted us into power so massively as it happened during the last election before we can rule them? This is injustice and a fallacy in the logic of power.
But for the vice-president in particular, the bitterness from the North comes naturally. It feels cheated because its people, leaders and values are subjected to unjustifiable desecration. If this shower of abuses were coming only from the southern press or its politicians, as usual; or even from Obasanjo, surprisingly; we would not have bothered at all. We have never been in their good books. But to have them coming, and repeatedly for that matter, from a person with whom we share similar humble background and invested a lot of hope in is totally unfortunate. And I blame his political associates for this. They would have cautioned him against this.
I am happy that this fact is gradually becoming clear to the government. The advisers themselves tend to be moving in that direction. This is a remarkable shift from the fatheaded disposition that has characterized the villa for years. I have noted, with much delight, that the vice president is working hard on this lane too, as exemplified in his recent responses on the BBC Hausa Service series. I am confident that with persistence, it will work, given that the Muslim community is a forgiving one. And we can boast that, unlike others, our hearts are large enough to forgive, once the forgiveness is sincerely sought.
All what we are asking for is fairness, objectivity and respect, not only for us but also for all Nigerians, Hausa or Yoruba, Muslims or Christians.
I believe that we all deserve a good measure of that respect. Belligerence could work in other regions, but never in the North. The home that we will continue to share with the vice-president has a very long history of civilization, tradition and esteem. We should borrow a leaf from the style of our common mentor, the late Shehu Yar’adua (may God have mercy on him abundantly), as a progressive leader and successful politician, who had a lot of differences with the Northern political establishment. Yet, he was never seen going ruthless in public. Once this is taken into consideration, I would not mind signing a cease-fire agreement.
So, Mr. Vice-president, do not listen to the proponents of the ‘mischief theory.’ It is nothing but cheap court propaganda, a very cheap one in fact. It contradicts one of the first poetry I learnt from my Quranic teacher, the late Muhammadu Baba dan-Malam Hassan. It was the poem he composed which started by saying, Mai son ta’ala, ai ba ya ki rasulu ba...
Catch you next week on this column, as usual, Mr. Vice-president.
I have resumed. I will start by expressing my appreciation to the Editor for keeping the column lively, despite the short notice I gave him, by publishing the contributions of others. I enjoyed the presence of these guests because some were educating; others were entertaining.
I was in fact surprised that some of the rejoinders were about the Vice President (V-P), Atiku Abubakar. As a weekly, we have limited space. Courtesy demands that I publish opinions that contradict mine; moreover, by so doing, I will accord both our readers and myself the chance to see issues from other angles. So I deliberately suppressed those who wrote in support of my stand, and do hope that they will forgive me. The intention was not to generate a debate about somebody, no matter how important he may be in government, but to advice him, particularly when he is our brother, whenever doing so becomes necessary. This will continue to be our obligation in Friday Discourse. We shall continue with it, in sha Allah.
Nevertheless, to clear the air I think I need to answer a question. What defense do I have for writing Atiku and His Excess Luggage? It seems that I am a poor communicator, for different people gave that article different interpretations depending on their relationship with the V-P. On the one hand, many people would ordinarily feel that I was against the vice-president. Atiku and his aides must have thought so also. They will think that they have found an additional enemy in Tilde, if they were looking for one. The V-P himself would abandon his favorite column – Friday Discourse – and imagine that I have colluded with ‘enemies of the administration’ to muddle up his personality. On the other hand, his political opponents might have viewed me differently; they would be rejoicing that they have cheaply found an ally against Atiku who has just appeared from the blues.
Both camps are wrong. I am neither an antagonist of the vice-president nor an enemy of this administration. Absolutely not, for three simple reasons. One, if my friends here were to be heard, they would have recounted how I greeted Obasanjo’s candidature with all enthusiasm. The articles that I wrote then in this weekly vindicate me. To charge me now, together with many other northerners like me, with enmity ‘against the administration’ would certainly be incorrect. Two, I am not a politician, aiming at something up there. Politicians are people that have ambition in power; they want to get hold of it, retain it or influence it. I am never bothered with all these. Three, where would I get the muscle to antagonize a whole vice-president? Drop this unfair charge.
However, what should concern the administration and the V-P in particular is why do people like me sometimes appear to be antagonistic to them? To find out an answer to this question, the administration should not listen to courtiers who are just after the acquisition of presidential largesse, those that are quick to expound the ‘mischief theory’ to explain the disposition of innocent people like Tilde. No other group has earned past administrations gross public dissatisfaction and hatred like this coterie of flatterers that leave the master struggling with the horn while they enjoy milking the cow for themselves. This administration must be aware of them. They were there in Aso Rock yesterday; they are also there today. The fate that befell the occupants of the villa yesterday should scare its occupants of today. For us, the citizenry, we know that ba a mugun sarki, sai mugun bafade.
With this single strike, I have rejected their charges as a reflection of their bad intention and personality. This column is a mirror that reflects what stands before it. If you are ugly, you will hate the picture, and even attempt to smash the mirror. But that does not make you look better. If on the other hand you are handsome, just give me a smile, and I will make your face shine and your teeth will appear brighter like fresh pearls, hail-stones, camomile flowers, palm shoot and bubbles – to borrow from the composition of al-Hariri.
But have the proponents of the ‘mischief theory’ not heard about the following verse of Abu al-Tayyib al-Motanabbi in one of his spectacular poetic improvisations before Kafour, the one time ruler of Egypt? “If the actions of a person are bad, his thoughts become bad too; and he believes whatever illusions occur to him. He will fight his friends with the words of his enemies and becomes engulfed in the stark darkness of (his) doubts.”
Some of my guests were deliberate in their condemnation. Take Hassan Umar for example. The Hassan that I know for the past twenty years to be objective and thorough, for whatever reason, started by goofing awfully. He titled his article Hajj 2000-let our heads rule us. But did the head of Hassan rule him, even in that article? Read the first sentence: “Two write-ups by Dr. Tilde appeared in your edition Vol. 3 No. 10 of April 21-27..bla bla.” Foul, Engineer Hassan! If you had used your head a bit, you would have realized that only the first was written by Tilde; our respected brother, Dr. Siraj Abdulkarim, wrote the second.
Then Hassan went to charge me in the most reckless manner, saying: “Only two facts are worthy of consideration as it is full of sarcasm, and it smacks of some mischief against the person of the Vice President. The President should therefore disregard it. As for the Vice President, I am sure the bias against him is because of his pronouncement on Sharia. What has happened has happened, and the continuous bombardment against him is in fact un-Islamic. As he himself has said, it is the price of leadership, and I implore him to continue to look at it that way.”
Foul again, my dear! Both the President and his deputy were not impressed by these cheap appeals. So they have decided that the federal government will henceforth absolve itself of Hajj operations. The vice-president has already announced this resolve, and I believe that he will keep his promise. But it will interest Hassan to know precisely why the government took this decision even before the National Commission on Hajj submitted its report on the last Hajj. It is for no other reason but the very one that I expressed in my article which was cleverly pushed aside by Hassan who dismissed them as ‘not worthy of consideration’ or ‘full of contradictions and sarcasm’. It was simply because of the gross inefficiency and corruption that characterized the operation of the last Hajj. If anybody doubts this he is free to confirm it from the villa.
Hassan may need to learn to give consideration to facts of speech from Dodo na Alkali, an old song that the late Shata recorded for the late Emir of Zazzau, Aminu (may God have mercy on them both), when we were kids. In it, he narrated how his prophecy – that Aminu will one day become the Emir – was dismissed as ‘worthless words of a drunkard.’ But when Aminu became Emir, Shata had this to say: ‘to ga zancen giyan nan ai, na Ahmadu ya zame Sarkin Zazzau.”
The rest of Hassan’s article was just mere theory, nothing more, that ended in dumping the blame for the failure on innocent pilgrims whose hard-earned money was used to fund the ‘charity’ accorded some individuals by our ‘nascent airlines’, as Hassan called them. Well, we are tired of theories. Hajj is over 40 years old; if people entrusted with it can only earn Muslims shame by wasting our personal and public resources, let them go, and go forever. I do not trust the travel agencies either. However, I do still believe that state governments have the competence to handle the affairs of their pilgrims. If any state would like to hire Kabo next year, let it go ahead.
I wonder what heads would rule us better than those of the President, his deputy and that of the minister of state for foreign affairs who, having witnessed the suffering of our pilgrims in Jeddah, declared to the world that it was an embarrassment. Moreover, some members of the Hajj Commission are privately singing a different song from the one Hassan was singing. I wonder why suddenly my Hassan was trying to be more Catholic than the Pope?
Hassan was also wrong in relating my opinion on Hajj to the vice-president’s position on shariah. Men, this is court politics and too skewed to be true. If Hassan were a constant reader of this column, he would have allowed his head to rule him on this matter. In my controversial article on the V-P, I wrote on the shariah saying, “To me, it is time to pardon him for this, especially when we recognize the situation under which the ‘slip of tongue’ was made. The issue is not over, and Atiku has the ample opportunity, if he wishes, to improve his image with the Muslim majority.” A ah! Does Hassan want the V-P to behead me? This is dangerous. Well, Hassan, you will be the first to cry if he does so. Come on, Hassan, be yourself, the role of a courtier does not befit you. Remain the Hassan that I know, thorough and objective.
This brings us back to where we started. What have I got to gain by destroying vice-president? Have I not heard what Mutawakkil al-Laithi said, “if you humiliate your brother or expose him deliberately, you are the one humiliated and the blameworthy?”
If anybody cares to know why a section of the North is bitter about him, he needs to read the famous moallaqah of the ancient young poet and prince, Tarafeh. In it, he said, “the injustice of the kindred is more painful on a person than a strike of a swift-cutting sword.” If we do not deserve the objectivity, respect and gratitude of Obasanjo and the southern press, we feel that we deserve that of Atiku, whom we consider to be one of us. Unfortunately, this young politician fell victim to the ill advice from those that have his ear. Agreed that he, along with his mentor, Shehu Yar’adua were persecuted during the Abacha era, it was still wrong for a politician to assume the puritanical stand of a cleric on his pulpit.
His political associates seem to be terribly poor in mastering the game of power. Feeling of triumph has daunted their adeptness in handling political arithmetic. Their policy would have avoided turning their friends into enemies, the very friends in the North from whom they solicited for votes and were given generously. In fact, they would have moved quickly after their appointments to assist the administration to consolidate its electoral victory by retaining the support of those who voted for it and even going further to win over its opponents. If the opponents appear stubborn, I expected them to tactfully disarm them of their followers, as Haile Selesie did to Balcha of Sidamo in 1927. Once you do that, unless under a very rare circumstance, the opponent has no choice but to come over and kiss your feet, asking for forgiveness.
Instead, the administration is struggling to apply crude and archaic laws like ‘divide and rule’, thus squandering the greatest opportunity for political reconciliation in the political history of modern Nigeria. Do we need ‘divide and rule’ today? Do we need to divide a people that voted us into power so massively as it happened during the last election before we can rule them? This is injustice and a fallacy in the logic of power.
But for the vice-president in particular, the bitterness from the North comes naturally. It feels cheated because its people, leaders and values are subjected to unjustifiable desecration. If this shower of abuses were coming only from the southern press or its politicians, as usual; or even from Obasanjo, surprisingly; we would not have bothered at all. We have never been in their good books. But to have them coming, and repeatedly for that matter, from a person with whom we share similar humble background and invested a lot of hope in is totally unfortunate. And I blame his political associates for this. They would have cautioned him against this.
I am happy that this fact is gradually becoming clear to the government. The advisers themselves tend to be moving in that direction. This is a remarkable shift from the fatheaded disposition that has characterized the villa for years. I have noted, with much delight, that the vice president is working hard on this lane too, as exemplified in his recent responses on the BBC Hausa Service series. I am confident that with persistence, it will work, given that the Muslim community is a forgiving one. And we can boast that, unlike others, our hearts are large enough to forgive, once the forgiveness is sincerely sought.
All what we are asking for is fairness, objectivity and respect, not only for us but also for all Nigerians, Hausa or Yoruba, Muslims or Christians.
I believe that we all deserve a good measure of that respect. Belligerence could work in other regions, but never in the North. The home that we will continue to share with the vice-president has a very long history of civilization, tradition and esteem. We should borrow a leaf from the style of our common mentor, the late Shehu Yar’adua (may God have mercy on him abundantly), as a progressive leader and successful politician, who had a lot of differences with the Northern political establishment. Yet, he was never seen going ruthless in public. Once this is taken into consideration, I would not mind signing a cease-fire agreement.
So, Mr. Vice-president, do not listen to the proponents of the ‘mischief theory.’ It is nothing but cheap court propaganda, a very cheap one in fact. It contradicts one of the first poetry I learnt from my Quranic teacher, the late Muhammadu Baba dan-Malam Hassan. It was the poem he composed which started by saying, Mai son ta’ala, ai ba ya ki rasulu ba...
Catch you next week on this column, as usual, Mr. Vice-president.
Atiku and His Excess Luggage
Atiku and His Excess Luggage
According to TheNews magazine of 3 April 2000, Atiku “is in trouble”, especially since his shariah suspension announcement. I have set out to rescue him. Since his appointment as a running mate to president Obasanjo, Atiku has fallen into a sort of a hole, not a pit really but perhaps a dry and deep well. What I intend to do is to throw a rope at him and attempt to pull him out. If at the end the rescue fails, believe me, blame Atiku; he might have wished to remain there or refused to leave behind his ‘excess luggage’. But never blame Tilde-the-rescuer.
The Slip
The trouble of Atiku started with his ‘jump’ at Obasanjo’s offer. First, in so doing, he disregarded the yearnings of the people who had just elected him as a their state governor. If service was desired, the office of the governor is certainly more crucial than that of the vice-president to the people of Adamawa State. The office of the governor has an executive capacity and therefore creates more avenues and liberty for activity than that of the vice-president. While as a vice-president, Atiku has nothing but working hard to actualise the wishes of the president, good or bad, the executive capacity of the governor would have accorded him the opportunity to build a strong foundation for a future political career. Politics at a point, especially in the future North, will cease to be all about money, but about performance.
Secondly, tossing the office of the governor at a person from the other side of the political divide in the state has shown Atiku’s insensitivity to the feelings of his people and the desire to maintain the balance of the political equation in Adamawa State. If his deputy-governor elect had contested the governorship election, certainly he would not have scaled through the primaries. The whole thing looks like a ‘political 419.’
Fourthly, by jumping to the second highest office in the hierarchy of political power, Atiku has short-circuited his political carrier. Wise people always move up steadily. By the time they reach the top, they would be matured enough to stabilize themselves easily. Thereafter, they would retire at the most appropriate age, with the feeling of accomplishment, rather than a baggage of untenable ambitions. Atiku can now only dream of being a president, something that is daily appearing far-fetched. An ‘Al Gore’ of this administration is unlikely to succeed.
One wonders why Atiku overlooked these and other considerations and jumped at Obasanjo’s offer. The big name, the flamboyance and the ‘fringe benefits’ are not worth the gamble that the whole thing has turned out to be right now. It was a high-vault, because, according to his narration, the whole thing was impromptu. That is exactly the problem with haste. He forgot that he had an electorate, friends, family and even enemies to consult before taking it. Now, it is clear that the jump has turned into a slip, down to the bottom of the dry well.
The offensive
The second luggage of problems has to do with the poor sculpture he has carved to represent his personality on the political landscape since becoming a vice-president. We expected him to be the ‘Aaron’ that would assist our ‘Moses’ towards national reconciliation especially now that the southwest is ready to cross the ‘Nile’ with him.
Perhaps the first problem was that Obasanjo did not see himself as Moses. He did not see Nigerians as the Jews in Egypt; there was no staff, no Nile. Rather he saw himself as the ‘Messiah’ and Nigerians as the lost sheep. Whatever Nile was there, it was Galilee. So the ‘messiah’ did not need an Aaron or a Joshua, but disciples willing to carry out his orders. And Atiku did promise him exactly that when the President offered him the position of a running mate. According to Atiku, the president asked him: “Turaki, are you ready to take orders from me?” Atiku replied, “I have always been willing to carry out your orders, General.”
Yet when it was clear that Obasanjo’s appointments, retirements and relocation orders raised some dust in the camp of ‘the lost sheep’, Atiku the disciple, who, versed in reasons behind the actions of his messiah, would have helped in settling such dust. However, he chose to be offensive than persuasive. He unfairly charged the North with the responsibility of failure in the past twenty years. In his famous Arewa House speech, TheNews quoted him saying:
“It is too early to forget that a lot of the mess this administration is trying to address is a cumulative misrule and bad governance of the last 15, some say 20 years, during which the leadership has been held by the North.”
Certainly, this outburst exemplifies the shallow judgement that attempts to hang the rope of Babangida and Abacha’s failure on the neck of the entire North. If this had come from the editor of a southern magazine, it would not have bothered us. But to come out from the mouth of the vice-president, who was honoured to chair an occasion regarding our dear Malam Sa’adu Zungur, was unfortunate. Come again, was Atiku not part of that mess? Was he not a customs officer, a participant in option A4, a UNCP chieftain and its gubernatorial candidate in Adamawa State? Meanwhile, to prove that he is a saint, has he declared his assets and told us the source of his wealth?
If Atiku has a problem with anybody in the North, and it glaring that he has, he should call their names and address them. But to condemn the whole North due to a grudge or complex that he has is too recalcitrant for a vice-president. This is another baggage that Atiku must leave behind in the pit to benefit from my rescue.
The complex
From his outburst at Arewa house and many other utterances, it is widely held here that Atiku has a personality problem, a ‘complex’ sort of. The guy is running away from anything northern. This may be wrong, but I have realized that it is a general perception that no honest person will deny. Some of these things may look trivial, but identities do tell a lot about our mindset. You can imagine a Muslim getting disenchanted to be called Alhaji when even some Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem are happy to add it as a title. Also the issue of being termed a Hausa-Fulani, and so on.
If he says he is a Chamba, or he should be called Mr., that is good. But that does not make him a saint today when being called Alhaji or Hausa-Fulani is a crime. After all, Hausa-Fulani is a Biafran coinage used politically to refer to people like Atiku and Tilde. I only pray that someone will not soon take the pains of excavating the records of Atiku to find out whether he never called himself Alhaji or Hausa-Fulani.
If he does not like Hausa or Fulani, he needs to do more to convince his strange bedfellows among the southern press and northern minorities. Let him return our daughter to whom he is married; disclaim our title of Turakin Adamawa; abandon our accent and pronounce ‘she’ as ‘see’ and vice-versa, in accordance with Chamba accent.
Opportunity
If it is not a complex, then would it be something more tarnishing? As reported in the coverage of TheNews, Atiku’s opponents are accusing him of being a mere opportunist. We have mentioned how he earlier abandoned the election he won to clinch the vice-president’s seat. Now he is claiming, to the dismay of all and in line of ongoing baptism from anything northern, that he was against the Abacha regime, that he belonged to the class of ‘saints’ that once called for sanctions to be imposed on Nigeria!
Here, even the writer of the cover story could not help but reproduce the valid arguments canvassed to prove the contrary. He said, “it cannot be controverted that the vice-president was a top-notcher in the defunct United Nigeria Congress Party, UNCP, the same party that adopted the despotic General as its presidential candidate. It is also a fact that Atiku had emerged the UNCP’s choice for the Adamawa governorship election and would have won but for the death of Gen. Sani Abacha.”
I must be honest with Atiku that this ‘chameleon’ attitude will not help his political future. Why does he feel that he owes the southwest an apology to the extent of attempting to wipe out his history or identity? History will only be on his side if he remains himself, consistent and constant.
The shariah
Now we come to the shariah issue. It is clear from various reports that Atiku was not comfortable during the last pilgrimage as a result of his “misunderstood” stand on the shariah. Here, I would like to say that he tried to dribble in a very tight position. No one in position of authority would dismiss the horror visited on Kaduna a week before then and its spread to some southeastern cities where Muslims were the sole victims. His announcement, inaccurate though, was done in good faith to calm the destructive atmosphere.
Unfortunately and as usual, there was a great gap between the masses and government, more so with the refutations from stronger personalities like Buhari, Shagari and Ahmed Sani of Zamfara. To me, it is time to pardon him for this, especially when we recognize the situation under which the ‘slip of tongue’ was made. The issue is not over, and Atiku has the ample opportunity, if he wishes, to improve his image with the Muslim majority.
The unholy romance
Finally, the last luggage that Atiku need to leave behind in the dry well is his unholy romance with the southern press. Their magazines and newspapers will destroy him if he does not check his utterances. He is regarded to be personally associated with one of them, Theweek, from where he picked his running mate, now the Governor of Adamawa State. I think he will serve his political future a good purpose if he will check the lies the magazine publishes about anybody northern.
So far, the southern press is rewarding him with the promise that they will support him in any future presidential bid after Obasanjo. But two things are important for him to note. The press has never made a president in Nigeria; they have only brought many down. Two, all our past leaders got to the presidency by accident, except for ‘maradona’. With his poor dribbles however, Atiku is unlikely to be another exception.
Conclusion
I would like Atiku to be pardoned on his pronouncements on the shariah issue. However, his excess luggage will prevent me, as his admirer, from coming out and declare my total support for his candidature for the presidency come 2003 or 2007. He still has some time to decide and improve. If on the other hand he remains unrepentant, then I am ready to throw in the towel.
I am only afraid that Atiku will painfully realize that when the market of this regime closes, everyone will return to his house. What a pity, he is presently helping others to set his own ablaze!
According to TheNews magazine of 3 April 2000, Atiku “is in trouble”, especially since his shariah suspension announcement. I have set out to rescue him. Since his appointment as a running mate to president Obasanjo, Atiku has fallen into a sort of a hole, not a pit really but perhaps a dry and deep well. What I intend to do is to throw a rope at him and attempt to pull him out. If at the end the rescue fails, believe me, blame Atiku; he might have wished to remain there or refused to leave behind his ‘excess luggage’. But never blame Tilde-the-rescuer.
The Slip
The trouble of Atiku started with his ‘jump’ at Obasanjo’s offer. First, in so doing, he disregarded the yearnings of the people who had just elected him as a their state governor. If service was desired, the office of the governor is certainly more crucial than that of the vice-president to the people of Adamawa State. The office of the governor has an executive capacity and therefore creates more avenues and liberty for activity than that of the vice-president. While as a vice-president, Atiku has nothing but working hard to actualise the wishes of the president, good or bad, the executive capacity of the governor would have accorded him the opportunity to build a strong foundation for a future political career. Politics at a point, especially in the future North, will cease to be all about money, but about performance.
Secondly, tossing the office of the governor at a person from the other side of the political divide in the state has shown Atiku’s insensitivity to the feelings of his people and the desire to maintain the balance of the political equation in Adamawa State. If his deputy-governor elect had contested the governorship election, certainly he would not have scaled through the primaries. The whole thing looks like a ‘political 419.’
Fourthly, by jumping to the second highest office in the hierarchy of political power, Atiku has short-circuited his political carrier. Wise people always move up steadily. By the time they reach the top, they would be matured enough to stabilize themselves easily. Thereafter, they would retire at the most appropriate age, with the feeling of accomplishment, rather than a baggage of untenable ambitions. Atiku can now only dream of being a president, something that is daily appearing far-fetched. An ‘Al Gore’ of this administration is unlikely to succeed.
One wonders why Atiku overlooked these and other considerations and jumped at Obasanjo’s offer. The big name, the flamboyance and the ‘fringe benefits’ are not worth the gamble that the whole thing has turned out to be right now. It was a high-vault, because, according to his narration, the whole thing was impromptu. That is exactly the problem with haste. He forgot that he had an electorate, friends, family and even enemies to consult before taking it. Now, it is clear that the jump has turned into a slip, down to the bottom of the dry well.
The offensive
The second luggage of problems has to do with the poor sculpture he has carved to represent his personality on the political landscape since becoming a vice-president. We expected him to be the ‘Aaron’ that would assist our ‘Moses’ towards national reconciliation especially now that the southwest is ready to cross the ‘Nile’ with him.
Perhaps the first problem was that Obasanjo did not see himself as Moses. He did not see Nigerians as the Jews in Egypt; there was no staff, no Nile. Rather he saw himself as the ‘Messiah’ and Nigerians as the lost sheep. Whatever Nile was there, it was Galilee. So the ‘messiah’ did not need an Aaron or a Joshua, but disciples willing to carry out his orders. And Atiku did promise him exactly that when the President offered him the position of a running mate. According to Atiku, the president asked him: “Turaki, are you ready to take orders from me?” Atiku replied, “I have always been willing to carry out your orders, General.”
Yet when it was clear that Obasanjo’s appointments, retirements and relocation orders raised some dust in the camp of ‘the lost sheep’, Atiku the disciple, who, versed in reasons behind the actions of his messiah, would have helped in settling such dust. However, he chose to be offensive than persuasive. He unfairly charged the North with the responsibility of failure in the past twenty years. In his famous Arewa House speech, TheNews quoted him saying:
“It is too early to forget that a lot of the mess this administration is trying to address is a cumulative misrule and bad governance of the last 15, some say 20 years, during which the leadership has been held by the North.”
Certainly, this outburst exemplifies the shallow judgement that attempts to hang the rope of Babangida and Abacha’s failure on the neck of the entire North. If this had come from the editor of a southern magazine, it would not have bothered us. But to come out from the mouth of the vice-president, who was honoured to chair an occasion regarding our dear Malam Sa’adu Zungur, was unfortunate. Come again, was Atiku not part of that mess? Was he not a customs officer, a participant in option A4, a UNCP chieftain and its gubernatorial candidate in Adamawa State? Meanwhile, to prove that he is a saint, has he declared his assets and told us the source of his wealth?
If Atiku has a problem with anybody in the North, and it glaring that he has, he should call their names and address them. But to condemn the whole North due to a grudge or complex that he has is too recalcitrant for a vice-president. This is another baggage that Atiku must leave behind in the pit to benefit from my rescue.
The complex
From his outburst at Arewa house and many other utterances, it is widely held here that Atiku has a personality problem, a ‘complex’ sort of. The guy is running away from anything northern. This may be wrong, but I have realized that it is a general perception that no honest person will deny. Some of these things may look trivial, but identities do tell a lot about our mindset. You can imagine a Muslim getting disenchanted to be called Alhaji when even some Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem are happy to add it as a title. Also the issue of being termed a Hausa-Fulani, and so on.
If he says he is a Chamba, or he should be called Mr., that is good. But that does not make him a saint today when being called Alhaji or Hausa-Fulani is a crime. After all, Hausa-Fulani is a Biafran coinage used politically to refer to people like Atiku and Tilde. I only pray that someone will not soon take the pains of excavating the records of Atiku to find out whether he never called himself Alhaji or Hausa-Fulani.
If he does not like Hausa or Fulani, he needs to do more to convince his strange bedfellows among the southern press and northern minorities. Let him return our daughter to whom he is married; disclaim our title of Turakin Adamawa; abandon our accent and pronounce ‘she’ as ‘see’ and vice-versa, in accordance with Chamba accent.
Opportunity
If it is not a complex, then would it be something more tarnishing? As reported in the coverage of TheNews, Atiku’s opponents are accusing him of being a mere opportunist. We have mentioned how he earlier abandoned the election he won to clinch the vice-president’s seat. Now he is claiming, to the dismay of all and in line of ongoing baptism from anything northern, that he was against the Abacha regime, that he belonged to the class of ‘saints’ that once called for sanctions to be imposed on Nigeria!
Here, even the writer of the cover story could not help but reproduce the valid arguments canvassed to prove the contrary. He said, “it cannot be controverted that the vice-president was a top-notcher in the defunct United Nigeria Congress Party, UNCP, the same party that adopted the despotic General as its presidential candidate. It is also a fact that Atiku had emerged the UNCP’s choice for the Adamawa governorship election and would have won but for the death of Gen. Sani Abacha.”
I must be honest with Atiku that this ‘chameleon’ attitude will not help his political future. Why does he feel that he owes the southwest an apology to the extent of attempting to wipe out his history or identity? History will only be on his side if he remains himself, consistent and constant.
The shariah
Now we come to the shariah issue. It is clear from various reports that Atiku was not comfortable during the last pilgrimage as a result of his “misunderstood” stand on the shariah. Here, I would like to say that he tried to dribble in a very tight position. No one in position of authority would dismiss the horror visited on Kaduna a week before then and its spread to some southeastern cities where Muslims were the sole victims. His announcement, inaccurate though, was done in good faith to calm the destructive atmosphere.
Unfortunately and as usual, there was a great gap between the masses and government, more so with the refutations from stronger personalities like Buhari, Shagari and Ahmed Sani of Zamfara. To me, it is time to pardon him for this, especially when we recognize the situation under which the ‘slip of tongue’ was made. The issue is not over, and Atiku has the ample opportunity, if he wishes, to improve his image with the Muslim majority.
The unholy romance
Finally, the last luggage that Atiku need to leave behind in the dry well is his unholy romance with the southern press. Their magazines and newspapers will destroy him if he does not check his utterances. He is regarded to be personally associated with one of them, Theweek, from where he picked his running mate, now the Governor of Adamawa State. I think he will serve his political future a good purpose if he will check the lies the magazine publishes about anybody northern.
So far, the southern press is rewarding him with the promise that they will support him in any future presidential bid after Obasanjo. But two things are important for him to note. The press has never made a president in Nigeria; they have only brought many down. Two, all our past leaders got to the presidency by accident, except for ‘maradona’. With his poor dribbles however, Atiku is unlikely to be another exception.
Conclusion
I would like Atiku to be pardoned on his pronouncements on the shariah issue. However, his excess luggage will prevent me, as his admirer, from coming out and declare my total support for his candidature for the presidency come 2003 or 2007. He still has some time to decide and improve. If on the other hand he remains unrepentant, then I am ready to throw in the towel.
I am only afraid that Atiku will painfully realize that when the market of this regime closes, everyone will return to his house. What a pity, he is presently helping others to set his own ablaze!
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