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To The Atikus Amongsts Us By Babayola Toungo
My heart bleeds (apologies to Nnia Nwodo) for Atiku Abubakar, the Vice President. I weep for him and truly feel pity for the man who once thought he was untouchable. I weep for him because of the way his principal, Olusegun Obasanjo presents him as an ordinary thief and a felon to Nigerians and the international community. Though we all know they are both thieves, with Obasanjo being the bigger thief, I sympathise with him all the same. I had always held the belief that the day of reckoning will come for the whole lot, but I had this picture in my mind that the Atikus of this world will be brought to justice with sirens blazing and a full compliment of gun-totting mobile police men a la Balogun. But alas, Atiku is presented to us in his nakedness as a common felon not beyond stealing some “meagre” amount to finance his business deals; the same Atiku, who at the height of his powers had only disdain and scorn for intellectuals, patriots, the ulama, statesmen and anyone opposed to Obasanjo’s style of dictatorial leadership, or those that advise the Vice President to tread with caution in his zealousness to rubbish his constituents. As Obasanjo and his hirelings begin to circle for the kill and the vultures wait patiently for his carcass, Atiku is reduced to a man only heard through his indefatigable media consultant, Mallam Garba Shehu. Gone are the swagger and the trademark sneer permanently etched on his rotund face. The same man that Obasanjo used as a hit man against northern interests has now being punched silly by presidential bouncers.
My pity for him transcends him as an individual, but to all the other Atikus in our midst, be they blatant or potential. The same Atiku, who once described himself as Obasanjo’s handbag, is now no more than a footmat to be trampled upon by the presidential foot soldiers. While he remained the ‘handbag’, he was busy burning and dynamiting the bridges built by his late political mentor, ‘Yar Adua, on behalf of Obasanjo, while the latter was rebuilding the bridges he burnt in his first incarnation as Head of State. The ‘handbag’ is now finding the price of loyalty to a troll at the expense of his constituents. The Vice President traversed the whole nation carrying out Obasanjo’s dirty war against perceived enemies of the administration in a manner not unlike the unrefined thugs used by them to intimidate their political opponents, not minding the damage he was doing to his political career. He willingly lent himself to be used as Obasanjo’s battering ram, and was “hailed” as the PDP rigging machine in 2003.
The cumulative effects of Atiku’s war on behalf of Obasanjo, is the complete alienation of those that may have stood up for him today. Knowing him to be a political orphan by his own hands, Obasanjo is now moving in for the kill after a sustained period of sniping morsels out of Atiku’s political flesh. To all intents and purposes, the President want to confine Atiku to the trash can of political history. So like I earlier said, my pity goes more to the other Atikus that are today at the vanguard of Obasanjo’s systematic decimation of opposition politicians. Obasanjo, being the coward that he is has never taken any fight to anyone frontally. What he normally does is to send in hara-kiri politicians and foolish young men to soften the target before moving in to finish the job. Most opposition political parties were destroyed in this manner beginning with the leading opposition party, the ANPP, which has never been the same since Etiebet moved from the PDP and became the National Chairman overnight. After doing the undertaker’s job for Obasanjo, he smoothly moved back to the PDP where he may be rewarded with the gubernatorial ticket of Akwa Ibom state, if he is lucky to escape Obasanjo’s betrayal.
During the third term brouhaha, all the principal promoters happened to come from the northern part of Nigeria and they have been thrown aside by Obasanjo. Same goes for those that asked the nation in 1999 to “trust” Obasanjo. Where are they today? It is Obasanjo’s character trait to betray those that have the misfortune of assisting him in his life. Check out: T. Y. Danjuma made him Head of State and President. They are in court today over the confiscation of TY’s oil bloc. Sunday Awoniyi, the man who superintended the 1999 Jos Convention and ensured free and fair elections were carried out in which the recently pardoned prisoner Obasanjo emerged victorious, was himself rigged out of the PDP Chairmanship. The AD governors who thought they could go into an alliance with Obasanjo to defeat General Buhari are also victims.
The northern governors who are jostling to replace Atiku in the event he is impeached should take note. As to his so-called Economic Team, they should do well to remember how Okonjo-Iweala was thrown out from the team while she was away to London negotiating for a debt cancellation. If Atiku could not be spared the humiliation he is going through at the moment, what guarantees do the other ‘Atikus’ in the Obasanjo government have that once he is through with Atiku, it wouldn’t be their turn.
But come to think of it, what is the sum total of the accusations against Atiku? The whole investigation is centred on the financial activities of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), just one parastatal in the petroleum sector. It will be interesting if Obasanjo will ask Nuhu Ribadu to investigate the activities of the whole petroleum industry, not just one parastatal in the industry. Obasanjo may be the only person who knows everything in the sector. Anyway, for whatever it is worth, the president and his vice are in the process of washing their dirty linings in public. Nigerians now know of an account called Marine Float where dirty money was laundered on behalf of Atiku and Obasanjo.
But we would like to know more. Things like the N8million voted for Obasanjo's eye glasses. I have been using prescription since 1991 and I have used almost 27 pairs but am yet to spend N100,000.00, so am very much interested to know the kind of glasses that will attract this much. Also Ndidi Okereke-Onyuike, the Director of the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the Chairman Transcorp, admitted before the House of Representative that Obasanjo is a major shareholder in Transcorp. There is this little matter of the government bending backwards to ensure that Transcorp took over NITEL. Is there any case of abuse of office from the presidency? Because abuse of office happens to be one of the charges against Atiku. With the current trend, the EFCC and the Bayo Ojo panel could do well to investigate the launching of Obasanjo’s Library appeal fund to see whether the president took undue advantage of his office to arm-twist donors.
The only good thing that comes out of this is that the poor masses, most of who go to bed on empty stomach, now get to know who gets what and when. Who is an armed robber and who is a pick-pocket. We have seen the muck in the PTDF; now we wait to see other sectors like the petroleum industry, aviation, defence, debt cancellation and such other “mundane” things. Privatisation of government enterprises will be a scandal on its own. We will get to know who bought what and at what price. We may even be lucky to know who did what during the 2003 elections.
I will be presumptuous enough to advise our young ‘Atikus’ that we once had Major Al-Mustafa and Zakari Biu. Today one is languishing in jail for the past eight years and the other is just a footnote of history. So for anyone within the Obasanjo palace to assume he will be treated different by Obasanjo or history is deluding himself. Our national legislators, traditional rulers , elder statesmen and politicians, who believe Obasanjo can make or unmake them should be well advised to take a cue from the travails of Atiku. He it was that was instrumental to stopping impeachment proceedings against Obasanjo twice, and now he is at the receiving end. Obasanjo is well aware that the charges against Atiku may not stand scrutiny, but are weighty enough to humiliate his ‘handbag’.
All said and done, I would only add that indeed Shakespeare spoke the truth: “the evil that men do lives after them”. These interesting times, the evil do indeed live with them. Surely we have not heard the last of this drama and I have this gut feeling that the best is yet to come. Stay tuned, fellow Nigerians!
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