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Atiku: A marooned leaders missing in action

AtikuHE was last seen leading the group of seven aggrieved governors out of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) mini-convention on August 31, 2013. Later he was heard explaining how he and those stakeholders plotted to decapitate PDP. Shortly after he was also heard admonishing certain leaders to whom his former boss and ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo copied his infamous letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, to speak out. He was known to have followed those public interventions up with a summation that Nigeria’s problems could be traced to its low education and poverty. But the whereabouts of former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Turaki Adamawa, is yet to be known in the emerging political configurations in the country.

Not long after the great quake at the Eagle Square venue of PDP mini convention last year, the former Vice President revealed in an interview how he and the G. 7 governors met severally to plan on how to unscramble their party, the PDP. Atiku disclosed that the embarrassing walk out from Eagle Square that fateful August 31, 2013 was the product of four months’ organisation. As always, Atiku used the opportunity of the interview to talk of his exploits in aborting Obasanjo’s third term plot. He disclosed Obasanjo’s frustration about his premature exit from office in 1979. According to the Turaki, Obasanjo complained: “I left power 20 years ago, I left Mubarak in office, I left Mugabe in office, I left Eyadema in office, I left Umar Bongo, and even Paul Biya and I came back and they are still in power; and I just did eight years and you are asking me to go; why?”

To an extent there was a tinge of exultation in Atiku’s expose of the exchange between him and his former boss. Yet he unwittingly revealed his joy in playing the role of a spoiler: “And I responded to him by telling him that Nigeria is not Libya, not Egypt, not Cameroun, and not Togo; I said you must leave; even if it means both of us lose out, but you cannot stay.” Since none of the renegade PDP governors has refuted Atiku’s claims, his accounts about the processes that led to the mini-convention debacle should be taken as the true reflection of what went on behind the scene. “We have been planning for some time because we have spent almost four months planning how to split the PDP. At first I didn’t know the arrowhead, but they eventually came and met me and I joined them because their reasons are the same with the ones I have been fighting against within the party; lack of fairness, honesty and tyranny. If I can fight the military to restore democracy, why can’t I fight fellow politicians?” he stated. And as at the time he granted the interview, the new PDP, which served as the immediate umbrella for the breakaway governors and Atiku had just appealed against the court ruling denouncing the group. Atiku alluded to the appeal and invited Nigerians to wait and see what would happen.

Many commentators on the Nigeria political scene, after analyzing the fractionalization of behemoth PDP, which Atiku and the G.7 governors pulled through, concluded that the former Vice President has rediscovered his bearing in Nigeria politics once again. Atiku is credited with good reading of political trends and tendencies. He is also adjudged as a keen political tactician. From 1999 through 2007 when he served as Vice President to Obasanjo, Atiku was generally seen as the silky covering on the calloused Obasanjo regime. Turaki also presented himself as the meek and gentle democrat behind a grotesque and baroque leader. To many a visitor to the Aso Villa, the Vice President was the clearing-house of real politick as a lot of politicians congregated around him. That was in the first term of the Obasanjo presidency. Buoyed by the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), which adopted Obasanjo as its candidate, Atiku, unlike Obasanjo built a wide network of loyal allies across the country. But no thanks to the second term politics of President Obasanjo, the seamless flow between President and Vice President suffered a great breach. Given Obasanjo’s low public acceptance, the President’s real headache was what to do with Atiku. At the end of the day, good political thinking prevailed and Obasanjo decided on retaining Atiku as his running mate, if for nothing else, to ensure that the accommodation removed the possibility of Atiku unleashing his enormous political machine against him.  During his spat with Obasanjo, it was evident that Atiku was also up in arms with political heavyweights from North West geopolitical zone. Having produced some of the nation’s leaders in the past, the North West geopolitical zone wields tremendous power and influence in Nigeria politics.

But somehow, numbering in the majority of the G.7 governors that formed the bulwark of the revolt on August 31, 2013 were governors from the North West, especially Ibrahim Kwankwaso, (Kano); Sule Lamido, (Jigawa); Magatakarda Wamako, (Sokoto). It was with these astute political actors that Atiku formed a coalition against President Jonathan’s PDP. After emerging as the consensus Presidential candidate of the north and losing the PDP ticket in 2011, Atiku must have decided to fight within the party than from the outside. Looking back, it could be seen that the surprising outcome of PDP Special National Convention was part of Atiku’s strategic planning. But having executed that ‘civilian coup’, where has it left the man from Gada in Adamawa State? It could also be seen, that it was perhaps, on the progress of the planning to divide PDP within the four months the promoters of nPDP invested their thoughts that Atiku okayed the registration of PDM as political party. The three parties floated by his acolytes namely, PDM, Voice of the People and the Independents; may have been readied as a getaway vehicle after the destruction of PDP.

 

Haunted by yesterday?

THE decision of five of the G. 7 governors to defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC) must have come as an unexpected pathway for Atiku. Or does it mean that yesterday has arisen to haunt Atiku? Did Obasanjo inspire the G.5 to draw his former Vice President and nemesis out of PDP and maroon him so as to keep him out of contention for the 2015 Presidential contest? There is the possibility that the G.5 governors, especially the North West governor, knowing Atiku’s capacity for intrigue and strategic planning did not want to end up in his PDM and ultimately work for his presidential ambition. This is so because even though the Niger and Jigawa governors stayed behind in PDP, it is left to conjecture how Atiku could be in contention for the PDP ticket after his second desertion. Are you still in PDP? That is one question only Atiku could answer. The whole scenario points to an inexorable possibility that Atiku may be missing in action as calculations for 2015 gains momentum. Those who may have led the former Vice President ‘astray’ must have known that though blessed with deep pockets, Atiku shies away from allowing his prodigious wealth serve as the rallying point of political collaboration. That was the same reason the Turaki abandoned the Action Congress (AC) after contesting the 2007 presidency on that platform. Indeed when at the build up to the 2011 election Obasanjo was told of Atiku’s aspiration to contest on PDP, the former President dropped his famous ‘I dey laugh’ comment. Has Atiku made himself a political laughing stock? It may be too early to think in that direction, but all routes for political action seem to be narrowing for the great tactician. A long-term ally of the former Vice President when asked whether Turaki would end up in APC after his past experience in AC, said Atiku would definitely invest heavily in the success of APC but deny the party his membership.

Against that background, could it be said that Atiku, having found that the game is up for his presidential chase, may have decided on surrogating power. And given his role in the abortion of Obasanjo’s third term gambit, would Atiku play the spoiler for Buhari and Tinubu in APC to ensure that one of the PDP governors clinches the APC ticket? It is however, left to be seen how the new power shift to Minna would play out in the PDP since from all indications Obasanjo has bee strategically (destroyed?) deployed away from Aso Rock.

One other way to deconstruct Atiku’s next game plan is to find out whose game, former military President, Ibrahim Badamosi, is playing. Being a cool and calculated political player blessed with network of loyal allies, is IBB paying Atiku back in his currency for snatching the consensus ticket away from him in 2011? There is quiet thinking that knowing the power of incumbency and the trajectories of presidential power, IBB may choose to identify with a second term for President Jonathan and within the next four years groom capable hands to run the North’s quest for return to presidential power. Where does this leave Atiku? And if the plans by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to hold the 2015 election in January 2015 stays, is there much time left for the former Vice President to stage a comeback? All options remain feasible for Turaki, but the fact that his name does not feature in computations of presidential hopefuls does not bring cheer to his admirers. All the same, 2014 has just arrived and not until the end of the first quarter could all hopes be said to be lost or found!

-Guardian

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Posted by on Jan 12 2014. Filed under Latest Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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