Atiku

Atiku’s Media-Poisoned Chalice

Uchenna Akwiwu

The Christian faith taught me that no man is irredeemable. And for me to believe that and act on it, I have to always identify with God’s interest in a man. I do not know Atiku personally and I have never met him. All I know about the man is through drinking the guttural wine from the poisoned chalice of a cowardly news media. All you constantly glean from the newsprint is that Atiku is all at once licentious, greedy, corrupt and desperate. The only way for you to have pity on the man is only if you have the mind of Christ. I must confess I was poisoned too and I subsequently got around to hating the guy. For me to rid that poison out of my system, I had to go back to the Word of God to renew my mind and remind myself that I can only hate the wrong in a man and not the man himself.

Since the New Year began, I have been reading and chewing on the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans in the Holy Bible. It is with deep reverence that I adapt Chapter 2:1-8 to the current context before me:

¹You may be saying, "What terrible people you have been talking about!" But you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you do these very same things. ²And we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things. ³Do you think that God will judge and condemn others for doing them and not judge you when you do them, too? ⁴Don't you realize how kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Or don't you care? Can't you see how kind he has been in giving you time to turn from your sin?

⁵But no, you won't listen. So you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself because of your stubbornness in refusing to turn from your sin. For there is going to come a day of judgment when God, the just judge of all the world, ⁶will judge all people according to what they have done. ⁷He will give eternal life to those who persist in doing what is good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. ⁸But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and practice evil deeds.

God knows that I am not holding brief for Atiku in any way. However, I do not know anyone who is in government or press who has any moral capacity to tag Atiku negatively when almost everyone in Nigeria is in a feeding frenzy in the long-lasting chop-I-chop party of the national cake. The problem we have in this country is that nobody fears God and nobody honors his Word, especially, when He says He watches over His Word to perform it. And yet again, He says: “The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.” We are always mistaking God’s patience for nonchalance. God knows, sees and hears all that is going on in the country and He has promised in His Word to judge everyone, including Atiku and myself, according to his deeds and in God’s own timing! No exception.

I doubt you can find any politician in Nigeria who has walked in the corridors of power post Aguiyi-Ironsi regime or era who is not tainted by corruption. Hence, we should stop this hypocritical attitude that vindictively and negatively tags a man in order to hang him. It is only the love of Christ that constrains me to dig deep, find out and bring the best out of my fellow man because as St Paul would put it: Love is ever ready to believe the best of every person. In the same press readings one would be really hard pressed to find out that Atiku has three interesting but good qualities: He is a very good leader that commands the respect and loyalty of his followers by consensus and not largesse, intimidation and coercion; he is a good judge and locator of talent; and he enjoys and hence is very confident in the presence of brilliant and beautiful women. If my judgment is wrong then somebody should please correct me. However, these qualities are the dream of any political strategist whose job is to position his candidate on winning issues that would carry an election campaign.

I don’t know whether to call it the Christian virtues of long-suffering and patience or satanic characteristic of timidity, Atiku has refused to come out of his boss’ shadow so as to redefine and reposition himself in readiness for 2007. Rather he has allowed his opponents to cast and manipulate him into a stupefied daze of a chicken-thief who has to endure the shame of being paraded round the streets by his captors with the chicken wire-hung around his neck and to booing and egg-pelting by a crowd with a herd-mentality. What a shame indeed! Till date, Nigerians do not know who the real Atiku is. It is a damn big shame to watch a promising political career in a meltdown state. Atiku, despite his flaws, is the only one among the current crop of presidential aspirants who seems to be a true democrat. I doubt very much that he is a bloodthirsty politician. Hence, you really have to pity the high-wire lynching of Turaki.

The only way he can be saved is for him to run a Clintonian style campaign. I say Clintonian with a meaning that is quite mysterious and deep. I hope he can find the meaning by asking the former US President to help him out. Luckily for Atiku, he has a smart wife in Jennifer who can help him build a good campaign. With his very deep pocket, it would not be difficult to assemble a think-tank to come up with a serious, aggressive, ambitious and realistic vision and strategy on how he wants to move Nigeria come 2007. If he was that serious about 2007 he should have had a vision in hand and meeting with leaders of G8 countries who have a very vested interest in making sure Nigeria is stable, prosperous and democratic for the sake of a new black Africa in a post Al-Queida era. He might think it is too early to do that but it takes time to come up with a new vision and strategy that can best NEEDS. Grassroots support, of course, is important and he definitely cannot overlook it. However, he has to articulate this vision for a New Nigeria before all in order to get the very powerful nations behind him. Even if he cannot do much because of an unfair gag order on him, Jennifer can.

There is a test on ground and it remains to be seen how nimble, flexible and resilient Atiku is. His PDM apparatus is in a meltdown state and his loyal supporters are being hounded out of the political space. I suppose that casual political acquaintances who are carefully watching the scene are no longer taking his phone calls for fear of being ostracized. Atiku, simply stated, is laboring under a very serious and heavy disadvantage. The only way out is to simply and quickly recast and reposition the candidate Atiku. Time is fast running out on him. He needs a killer awesome vision that would take the heart out of the visionless NEEDS that is slowly becoming a colossal failure and disaster, galvanize his supporters that are slowly dispersing and bring in new people that could form a new base for his campaign. Nigerians are not going to be fooled anymore. People want a cause they would stand by and die for. All NEEDS has been able to achieve within its macroeconomic framework is to improve governance and reform institutions. Atiku should move quickly to exploit the weaknesses in NEEDS by considering how it does not adequately address a lot of issues that challenge the growth and stability of the nation and use all he can get to come up with his own vision for a New Nigeria. Nigeria needs a highly efficient economy and NEEDS would never give us that.

The following is a sample of plans Atiku could adopt in his vision and strategy for a New Nigeria. All of this could be implemented within the next eight years after 2007:

A. A Specific Industrial and Technology Production Export-Led Plan.

B. A Creative and Ambitious Infrastructure Development Plan – At least, extra 4000km multiple carriageway with only 25% FG share in cost, 90% power efficiency.

C. An Aggressive Social and Moral Charter Plan that would define A New Nigeria where there is equal opportunity for all regardless of race, tribe, nation, creed or sex; respect for law and decency and good taste.

D. An Imaginative Plan to eliminate North-South Education imbalance and improve the productivity of all nations of Nigeria.

E. An Urgent Plan for an e-SMART Government on a Broadband Infrastructure – With minimum, a nationwide IFMS for real-time budgeting, debt management, Revenue tracking and collection, economic planning and statistical data.

F. A Depopulation, Industrial De-concentration and Reconfiguration Plan for Lagos and FCT. Both of these cities have become unmanageable.

G. A Serious Ethnic Integration Plan to foster national unity at the grassroots level. NYSC has not helped.

H. A Plan that would eliminate all ethnic and religious conflicts. How can that be? All things are possible!

I. An Innovative Plan to correct the deficiencies in and convert the National ID to a one-stop National ID. The last exercise was a complete waste.

J. A True and Implementable Gender Equality Plan – target 50% quota in public workforce for women by 2010.

K. A Conservation Plan to start a Land Bank – This is going to be hottest and most controversial if it is not handled carefully and with good communication.

L. A Credible External Financing and Fund-Mobilization and specific FDI competition and attraction Plan.

M. A Plan to instantaneously have high capital efficiency.

N. A Plan to increase public and national savings.

O. A Plan for a brand new political structure and system unique to Nigerian history, culture and institutions.

Atiku should stop wasting his time whining about rotten fish. Everybody is corrupt in this game. He has been challenged to it that he thinks the Presidency is his birthright. Let him show Nigerians that at least he has a good vision and he truly cares about them and not his pocket. He has himself alone to blame if he looses the Presidency 2007 because he could not perform that one simple magic that would change the media-poisoned chalice from which most Nigerians drink.