Atiku

“An elephant never fails to carry its tusk.” South African Proverb. 

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar just turned 67. Naturally, friends and well-wishers, employees and political associates rolled out the drums and took volumes of pages in newspapers to remind the nation that he is still in the market, calling on Nigerians to come forward for service. The nation will take note, in the same manner it will note the rather abject prayers for forgiveness from chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from former governor of Sokoto State Attahiru Batarawa for a seeming slight. The same nation will note that a huge crowd of assorted elite had attended the installation of General T.Y. Danjuma as the Gam Gbaro Douga a few days in his native Taraba State. It will be the same nation which is watching the unfolding drama over the prospects of a Jonathan candidature in 2015; the possibility that General Muhammadu Buhari may fly APC’s flag in 2015, and the alarming lessons being drawn from the furore in the elections in Anambra State. 

Atiku deserves his day in the sun. He is, by any standard, a veteran with the deep scars to show for it. He never really left the trenches, and it is quite possible that he wouldn’t know where to go outside it. He is not the last man standing, but he is standing with the best of them. At 67, with an enviable warchest to deploy and an ambition burning as hot as ever, Atiku is not easy to ignore. He represents the best and the worst faces of Nigerian politics, but he has many people who will contest this.

Here is a man that has earned his stripes by taking huge risks, often coming unstuck. He cut his teeth playing the awesome game orchestrated by late Shehu Yar’Adua which was designed to show that Nigerians can emerge as leaders enjoying nation-wide support if they deploy intelligence and resources all over the place in equal measure. His boss paid the supreme sacrifice when he dared too far, and left behind a veritable machine that showed all the promises of providing a solid pan-Nigeria leadership. Come 1999, it made the fatal mistake of succumbing to the temptations to submit to a resurgent PDP, a party made up of people the late Yar’Adua barely tolerated. Elected as Governor in Adamawa State, he was tempted to play second fiddle to Obasanjo rather than stay and build a model state in Adamawa. As Vice President, he started with the image of the man who pulled Obasanjo’s strings; the politician who brought politics into governance in a presidency of an ex-military leader who was initially unsure over how deep he can go. The more Obasanjo gained confidence and space, the more Atiku lost that grip. By the end of his first term, Obasanjo had come to the realization that he needed to build his own political base and his own warchest to create autonomy from Atiku, PDM, PDP and Northern politicians. The botched attempt to abandon Obasanjo and his ambitions to run again in 2003 was visited on Atiku, and while many attempts were made to reconcile the two, there was too much suspicion and bitterness on all sides to engineer a real and lasting reconciliation.

Obasanjo started his second term with a Vice President he did not trust, a realization that real power cannot be shared, and a worrying perception that he alone represented the key to building a nation that will meet the minimum standards of Nigerians and the global community. The routine business of governance was basically run without Atiku. New Ministers with technocratic backgrounds ignored him. There was more than a word around town that he was out of favour. He began to have state anti-corruption agencies sniffing around him and his business affairs. Any association with Atiku by businessmen was guarantee that they will not receive any more patronage from federal government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I) poured over evidence of links between him and an indicted congressman. Banks with known associations with him were raided for evidence. A sitting Vice President had everything thrown at him, and you just wondered how much he could take. To leave the Vice Presidency would have been suicidal. To stay was to make himself available for more humiliation. He stayed.

Atiku says he tried to warn Obasanjo against attempting to engineer a third term for himself, for which he invoked all the wrath. Since Obasanjo has not given his own version of the third term fiasco, we should believe Atiku, although it is difficult to accept that the falling out over Obasanjo’s ambition was the trigger to the spectacular collapse of a relationship that began as if it was made in heaven. 

In any case, Obasanjo completed his second term without Atiku even as a spare tyre. You will think a man who went through the type of experience Atiku went through will think many times over before seeking another elective office. You will be wrong. Atiku dusted himself up and went to the Action Congress looking for a ticket. He had to run against a virtual younger brother, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, with substantial push from many former PDM allies such as Tinubu. He lost to Obasanjo’s hand-picked man, and went through another search for entry points.

This was where Atiku made one of his many questionable decisions. Abandoning the ACN and returning to the PDP suggested that he was merely looking for opportunities to become president and realize a desperate, personal ambition. The ACN had nothing to lose, but the PDP saw the opportunity to close the door in the face of a politician whose personal desire to be president, driven by huge wealth was likely to be disruptive and a threat to others. Atiku spent a considerable amount of time fighting for space in his state with minions who wouldn’t pick his shoes at a wedding ceremony in his home state, and leaders of the PDP in Abuja who had deep-rooted issues to settle with him.

When in 2010 leading PDP politicians from the North saw an opportunity to challenge Jonathan’s insistence at violating the party’s zoning policy by agreeing on a Northern candidate to run against him, Atiku saw his chance once again. The conclave picked him out as the best Northerner to take on Jonathan. By the time it made that decision, the damage had been done. Jonathan was portrayed as an underdog; a victim of a Northern gang-up who needed every ounce of sympathy from all non-Northerners and Christians to defeat Atiku. The North also had another candidate in General Muhammadu Buhari, so the space available to Atiku in a region he could lay claim to was extremely tight. Most people in the North knew that it was going to be a Buhari – Jonathan fight. Atiku was taken to the cleaners at the Convention, and retreated into potential oblivion again.

Since then, he had expanded his business empire. He has one of the best private universities in the country. He is quite possibly the wealthiest of all the prospective presidential candidates from the North. He started hobnobbing with the rebel PDP governors, but between his deep animosity with Governor Nyako and Obasano’s nightmare over an Atiku ascendancy, he appears to have been dropped along the way. When the PDM was registered, people thought Atiku was building a plan B. PDP field commanders therefore turned their sights on demolition it as a party. It is still there as a party, fighting to stay afloat in the face of massive assaults at its foundations. Atiku is still in the PDP, a party we says he founded, and will not leave.

Perhaps Atiku sees himself again as the best PDP Northern response to Jonathan’s provocations, and waiting in the wings in the event that all the nPDP governors would have been too badly-damaged to take on Jonathan in 2015. Perhaps he has plans to run on another platform in the event that he and the nPDP would have damaged PDP beyond repairs in the North by 2015. Perhaps he has plans to convince APC to give him a chance, in case General Buhari chooses not to run. Perhaps he has deeper knowledge of the terrain, the type that lets you hedge your bets, keep your head visible above water, and strike at the right moment.

Whatever his plans are, Atiku represents the best and worst of Nigerian politics. The best because few people have remained in the bruising arena showing faith that the democratic process is worth fighting for. The worst because he stands essentially to realize a personal ambition, in a nation desperate to have a new generation of leaders with fresh vision to give it a new lease of life.