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Like A Bull In The China Shop By Mohammed Ibn Bello
And it came to pass that Vice President Atiku Abubakar has deafeningly shouted blue murder. The occasion was the 2007 Forum meeting that held in Abuja on Wednesday April 5, 2006. Coming from no less a personage than the Vice President of Nigeria, this should deservedly warrant our introspection. When a man like Atiku Abubakar damns the consequences and dares to declaim himself persona non grata to a Government he has served for seven unbroken years, something is patently amiss. Or how else do we reconcile the reality that an incumbent deputy would ally with opposition forces against his principal, and in a most brazen manner, assault an administration he is still very part and parcel of. The answer, very simply, lies in the struggle for power-its dialectics and dynamics.
When Nigeria gained democracy in 1999, the mantle of leadership was given to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as President and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as his Vice President. President Obasanjo had nominated Atiku to be his running mate under the banner of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) even when the latter had already clinched the Governor’s seat in his home-state of Adamawa – a position he relinquished to his own running mate in the Adamawa gubernatorial race: Mallam Boni Haruna.
Atiku’s group, known as the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), an offshoot of Yar Adua’s political structure, had a large and influential following in the reputable PDP that had emerged from an amalgam of political galacticos who had opted to root for civilian rule from the military junta days of General Abacha to the succeeding regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Being Obasanjo’s boon companion from their days in the Army, it was only natural that Obasanjo would align with the political associates of his friend Yar Adua, and Atiku, as the arrowhead of this group became a natural choice for the Vice President slot.
Running a country was certainly nothing new to Obasanjo (he had performed this task in his uniform in the bygone years of 1976 – 79), but the art of politics and politicking assuredly was, and this in contradistinction to his deputy who had long cut his political teeth (even emerging third runner up in the Jos Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries that produced Abiola as SDP Presidential flagbearer for the infamous June 12 election of 1993).
And so, May 29, 1999, brought democracy and with it President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Their first term in office, however, was to reveal a perennial absence of Obasanjo as he junketed round the world in search of debt relief – an effort that was to pay off subsequently with the cancellation of about 60% of Nigeria’s debt stock to the Paris Club. Meanwhile, Atiku was busy overseeing the home-turf, networking with relevant political forces and superintending over the economy through his chairmanship of the National Council of Privatisation, the National Economic Council, the National Economic Revitalization Committee and the National Planning Commission. He was the Chief co-ordinator of all public enterprises irrespective of the sectors in which they operate in Nigeria. Correspondingly, he was more in touch with the 36 Governors of the Federation. In fact, it can be posited, with all certitude, that Atiku was more in charge of Government than President Obasanjo during those years. Simply put, Atiku was more of the President than the President himself.
When Obasanjo eventually took over his Government in 2003, following Atiku’s concessionary action of shelving his presidential ambition to 2007 – and upon which Obasanjo coasted to victory – the difference became clear. With a new team, Obasanjo stamped his Presidential authority, leaving Atiku to be … well a deputy, as he embarked with more assertiveness on his reform agenda; the corollary being that he is now prodded for a third term – a most nauseating news for Atiku. As this clashes with Atiku’s own ambition, it has provoked a backlash – the result of which was the inflamed sentiments expressed in his speech at the Forum 2007 meeting in Abuja. Legitimate as it seems under the guise of opposing third term, the gravity of that speech derives chiefly from the identity of its author – a sitting Vice President, and what’s more, one who has a presidential ambition. No doubt he would have swayed many had he performed better than President Obasanjo when he was President Atiku.
Mohammed Ibn Bello, 12, Bama Road, Maiduguri
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