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Letter To Atiku Abubakar: You Were Too Naďve. (1) By Mahdi Shehu
Dear Mr. Abubakar.
If I do not address you as your Excellency, it is out of compelling reasons. Reasons that are by now very clear and known to even the most uninformed observer of unfolding events in Nigeria from particularly May 2003 to date. You are parading a doubtful political mandate known, acknowledged and documented by all local and international election observers. Perhaps fully aware of that and believing same to be true, you issued an official statement in 2004 wherein you directed all and sundry to desist from addressing you as your Excellency. I gave the same reason in addressing Obasanjo as Mr.Obasanjo when I wrote an open letter to him in January this year under the title “Go Obasanjo Go” in which I urged him to depart our political scene having been presiding over the destruction of all the essential fabrics of democracy in Nigeria as evidenced by his numerous disastrous outings, coupled with lying to the public, deception of electorates and absolute disregard to the laws of the land.
You also do not like being addressed as Alhaji as you officially directed again in 2004, may be as part of your” secular understanding” of the Nigerian society, scenery and scenarios or may be as part of your complex. You were never in your life addressed as Mallam because you are not one and luckily you have never pretended to be one. Perhaps out of pity (Kaicho), I may be compelled at the end of this letter to address you with the salutations of Allahrene (May Allah protect you) and Allahsabbinane (May Allah shield you) and it will be the pleasures of Allah himself to either answer or reject. But in the vulnerable, pitiable and di sturbing predicament you find yourself today, you will of necessity require a lot of Allah‘s intervention if you are to jump out of the trouble waters surrounding you, where in dangerous, vicious and sadistic reptiles are waiting to eat you as a prey. Left with no better option, I will have to address you as Mr. Abubakar throughout this letter.
Mr. Abubakar, every individual have a past, good or bad it is his own past. And it is in that his past that he situates articulates and prepare for the present. Just like he synchronizes the past and the present in anticipating a future that he has no control over.
Some of the experiences you were expected to automatically bring forward and indeed deploy as constant guides and reminders are those circumstances, situations and instances in which you were either directly involved or personally aware of in your long sojourn and career with the Nigerian custom services where you gradually rose to the level of Deputy Controller general. Many such instances abound but for the purpose of my today’s letter I will remind you of two.
As an Assistant controller general (ACG) you were given the mandate of presiding over a large scale operation with a three month time frame. Swiftly you had a close door meeting with other members of your squad wherein you mapped out your strategies. You may recall how a Judas among you compromised and leaked your plans to your targets mostly made up of people of his tribe. You may also recall how you recorded and reported dismal performances, not on account of incompetence but because you were betrayed by somebody who you believed in so much and preferred over even people who come from your geographical zone. Anyway when the position of Controller general become vacant at a time when you were a Deputy Controller general,&nb sp; a strong contender, that your dismal documented performance become very handy and was deployed to your total disadvantage in easing you out of public service.
You may also recall how as a Deputy Controller general (DCG) you became involved in a mass transfer, retirement and dismissal exercise of men and women of the custom services. While you treated all cases purely on their merits (as widely believed), other senior officers renegade and introduced certain other parameters other than those laid down before the exercise. The result was that more officers and other ranks from a particular geopolitical zone become more negatively affected. By the time it downed on you what exactly happened after the totality of the exercise, the damage had been done on a very large scale to a point of no return. I could have gone ahead to remind you of two more other instances but enough for the purpose at hand.
Mr. Abubakar, going by your age in public service with associated experiences and exposures, occasioned by your multiple personal and official interactions with the larger society you ought to have made it part of your routine and instincts to examine and internalize both the short and long term risks, benefits and consequences of keeping a relationship with anybody either on business, political or social spheres. From the above incidences you ought to have learnt that there are more temptations to betray reposed trust than to keep one and that wherever one shares collective responsibilities, he is duty bound and common sense demands that he watches out very keenly the movement of other parties so that he is neither taken unawares nor for granted. In other words being extra vigilant. Enough evidences abound that instead of becoming vigilant, cautious, and calculative particularly in your political relationship and arithmetic with Mr. Obasanjo, you misdirected yourself, by assuming too much about him, thereby believing him to be a man with consistency of thought and actions which translates you into a highly naďve person. If you were never told by any body in the past, then you should know that substantial part of your present predicament is rooted in your absolute naivety, laxity, and fluid assumptions in all of your dealings, silently or loudly with Mr. Obasanjo which further saw you sharing all his guilt’s, inadequacies and failures even if by contagious effects theory.
When you were reported to have won the Adamawa state gubernatorial seat in 1999, many thought you would have remained contented to assume that duty for the benefit of those people whom you claimed have always been giving you support. Rather than do just that, you abandoned your votes to somebody who would never have dreamt of becoming the governor of Adamawa state. A man who has been holding the jagular veins of Adamawa people since then which saw must of them asphyxiated while others in irreversible coma. You so easily forgot that no man ever wins judgment against his own people.
When you were hand picked by Mr. Obasanjo as running mate, you were so carried away to remember the number of people he promised the vice president chair in his usual (pathologic?) divide and rule tactics. It is record that he confided in Abubakar Rimi, Prof. Jibril Aminu, Ibrahim Arzika and three more others as those who would be his running mate. You became so carried away by your choice and forgot to do the most elementary in all political games-negotiate terms with Mr. Obasanjo after having presented you as his running mate.
In the circumstances Mr. Obasanjo found himself he had no option other than to prefer you because of your enormous resources and most importantly the solid late Yar’aduwa PDM structure under your direct influence. With your inherited structure and bridges around, an Obasanjo who had no home base, no fame and no experience in politics would simply have a smooth ride to power with infinite dimensions. Literally, Mr. Obasanjo came to power riding your back and that of other minor Northern cabal, clique and cartel. And you naively thought you were dealing with a gentleman Obasanjo forgetting the simple fact that by his training and background, he is nurtured to plan ambushes, maim, incapacitate, vanquish or even kill using any weapon at his disposal. And that is part of his pathology.
Mahdi Shehu
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