Atiku

Atiku’s Compassion

Tizhe Yame Dzangri

With the recent re-engagement of the eight sacked personal aides of Vice President Abubakar, it has virtually shown that, not only is he a man with milk of kindness; but he never forgets those that have worked for him one way or the other. If it is true that before joining politics, he was into banking, insurance, publishing, oil lifting, farming and has being an employer of labour, then many Nigerians would miss the vision and enterprising capabilities of a focused Nigerian, if this regime doesn’t allow him to become President next year.

If he were to be one individual who is callous and careless, then several weeks after he might have come back from his long vacation in the United States; many of his Personal Aides would have been licking their wounds and yawning desperately for where to eke out a living.

Their families would have been still in reverie and imagining what a tragedy had befallen them. The victims themselves could have been thinking what a disaster to have teamed up with this type of man from the beginning. Their friends and associates could have been telling them; we told you so. And the story of suffering which is a continuous process in Nigeria would have reached Chapter ii, Act ii Scene iv and so on.

But then, some citizens are different. Some Nigerians are unique. Some politicians are spectacularly rare.

That reminds me when in the brief remarks the Vice President made when a collection of one hundred and twenty experts gathered in June at Peniel Apartment, Abuja to brainstorm and formulate issues that would thrive when he becomes President, Commander-in-Chief next year.

That he would create 2.5 million jobs. That cannot be further than the truth.

In the authorized biography of Statesman Atiku Abubakar which an extraction was released to the Press recently-he said he made his money by entrepreneurship, hard work, commitment to his work, trading and farming. What an unprecedented managerial cum administrative acumen, startling intelligence and brilliance. I recall reading somewhere in one of the papers too that as a Youngman he built a house for his widowed mother, as a secondary school student, with vacation job money in his Adamawa Native Authority Office in shorts ferrying files from one office to the other.

Now, if is it true also that he promised that he would carry on with the reforms of this government that has been chastising him endlessly then, his job creation would centre on the Small Scale and Medium Enterprises as an entrepreneur. Agriculture certainly would expand its bounds through Nigerian Agricultural and Insurance Corporation; Nigerian Agricultural and Rural Development Bank, Nigerian Industrial Development Bank and others to absorb many Nigerians into gainful employment.

He would never see Nigerians roaming the streets and opportunities would be created for investors. As an economic juggernaut, who is foremost known as a trader, a cattle rearer, a rice farmer as revealed in the book, as a maize farmer; as told by himself in the excerpts: How I made my money, as owner of a public liability company like the Platinum-Habib Bank that was ignominiously raided, defiled and ransacked by agents of destruction recently.

He would employ like he has continued to employ in ABTI-American University of Nigeria. (AAUN) in Yola, whereby hundreds of Professors and Doctorate Degree holders and Professionals have been engaged. Management and middle-class staff are engaged profitably and productively. The lay labourers have work to do rather than breaking into people’s houses; as they are the masons, the carpenters, the gardeners, the cooks, the gatemen, the drivers, the security and the environment is always a beehive of activity.

This is why Vice President Atiku Abubakar is extra-ordinarily unique and sets the difference all the time. He gives others pace. He would never see you suffer and when he becomes aware, with some extra-divine strength, he sets out to assist. He does as much as he can to comfort. He shares the little he has with the less-privileged. He does all he can in his God-given might to be kind and soften the pinching man-made suffering where a cabal in the form of privatization can buy off or a sell off our NITEL at a give away price.

The fear of Atiku Abubakar’s God-given-gifts have become the worries of the powers that be in this country, that once given the chance he would create a magnificent, magnanimous difference and a feat never ever seen in the history of this nation. All they can do is to demoralize him, to castigate and stain him with all sorts of lies and fabrications that he is incapable of becoming the President of Nigeria. But no one can stop Atiku Abubakar from becoming President with the massive support at the grass root because of the persecution.

But in real sense, is the reading public of Nigeria not aware of the dirty deals at the corridors of power and the connivance to throw thirty more thousands of Nigerians into the labour market if not for NLC? The skyrocketed prices of services and food stuff have not been caged. Transportation fares are galloping. In fact, the national economy is in shambles since the beginning of this administration I do not think a thousand persons have been employed after they left their National Youth Service Corps Scheme. Either the Personal Assistants of the Vice President are sacked, nineteen out of twenty-two have been dismissed, and remaining only three and he is left with virtually an empty office to contend with or due to so-called privatization a hundred of thousand Nigerians are laid off from various ministries, parastatals, inter-ministerial establishments and other government set-ups to the streets.

Just tell me which bank in Nigeria today would give a new graduate from a Nigerian University a N50,000.00 loan to start off? Give us an example of an industry or a Federal Ministry that has advertised for employment on the pages of Newspapers. Even for the compulsory National Youth Service Corps Scheme, most of the anxious excited Corps Members are rejected in banks, and other agencies. Sometimes the Corps Members dejectedly had to lobby for placements to primary assignments for a supposedly free selfless service to a nation, just a trial and discipline induced scheme, which is an eye-owner to the real world of entrepreneurship.

But contrarily, contradictedly, some Nigerians are against Atiku Abubakar becoming the President of Nigeria because of his self-acclaimed generosity, compassion, kindness, his acuity and alertness to the suffering of the masses.

What do they do? They go on rampage-cowing him from every angle. If it is not sacking of his workers today, it is invading his home tomorrow, if it is not in far away USA, then it is his expulsion from the party, he has provided structures for its formation and victory. If it is not denial of his own privileges as number two citizen taking away his own immunity and humiliated any how, then his rights to privacy are open to “big rats” and loud mouthed garrison officers. Those who have lost credibility and do not have anything to say, can always say he is ambitious, but it started long time ago-as an orphan working stridently, strenuously, steadily, persistently, perseveringly, enduringly not losing hope for one moment with focus-with all these harassment and intimidations. In the midst of the storm-Atiku Abubakar has something to offer. He has compassion and he can offer comfort to the bereaved and those persecuted. And so would he continue from here, if Nigerians can rally round him. He would be President, indeed, and Nigerians would see the difference.