Atiku's Rebuttal Makes A Complete Nonsense Of The Senate Committee Report

By

Dr. Wunmi Akintide

WUMIONE@aol.com

 

 

Only a crazy person would read the point by point rebuttal of the PTDF Report filed by our embattled  Vice President who is fighting for his political life, would not come to the same conclusion that the Nigerian Senate was fooling itself when it chose to ignore incontrovertible evidence of guilt on the part of our President who wants his V.P. convicted in the Court of Law and Public opinion when he himself is equally as guilty if not more guilty.

    

It is true like I have predicted long time ago that this Vice President cannot survive with all the arrows pointed at him by a desperate President whose only alibi or defense is his presumption that the Senate or the whole nation can ill-afford to humiliate a sitting President and run him out of office, no matter the seriousness of his offense and guilt when compared with those of his Vice President. But the Law which is no respecter of persons would certainly be more deferential to the Vice President because himself and his boss both swore to the same oath of allegiance to the Constitution and they are both equal under the Law, I might add.

  

I am not writing this to hold any brief for this endangered specie of a Vice President. I am doing it because if the Vice President is forced to seek a redress in Court, he is going to win again and win big one more time too many. Why? Because for once and with the new Chief Justice named Kutigi now in charge, it now appears the Nigerian Supreme Court is now absolutely and resolutely committed to interpreting the Law and to let the chips fall where they may, regardless of who is the culprit.

   

I see this development as the only saving grace for the survival of Democracy in our country. The greatest hope of the common man is equality before the Law. It is the right of every Nigerian to expect the Court of Law to speak the truth at all times. I am not a lawyer and I don't have to be one to know that the revelations by the Vice President in his powerful rebuttal cannot and should not be dismissed with the wave of the hand unless Nigeria has now become the proverbial "animal kingdom" that some of us have often believed it used to be.

   

What is good for the goose should also be good for the gander. Yes. I agree that this Vice President and his new Party have been damaged beyond repairs in the court of public opinion. The Vice President will not be allowed to contest for the Presidency because his name is just not going to appear on the ballot papers, and if it does not appear, how could anybody be voting for him? It is not the duty of the courts to print ballot papers. The court can make a ruling but INEC can also ignore the ruling just like the President himself has, too often, ignored all court rulings he does like or welcome without any consequence.

  

The President has served his two consecutive terms as President. He has nothing  to lose but his credibility as a former President. I don't think this President cares a hoot about that, as long as his handpicked successor willy nilly becomes President after him. The whole development remains a win-win for the President and a total loss for his Vice President whose greatest sin for now is because he is Vice President who has no claim to any fundamental power other than his fundamental human rights as we speak.

  

I cannot help but wonder how many Nigerians in their right senses would now want to serve our nation as Vice President, if Obasanjo's "Modus Operandi" becomes the gold standard for democratic governance in our country. This development is not at all good for our country and somebody has to say it loud. The victim, today, is Atiku Abubakar, for sure, the next victim tomorrow could be you or me or a Wenike Briggs, or an Esuene or an Okpara or a Chukwuemeka Nwodo or an Adebayo Odugbesan or a Sangowanwa Gbadegesin.

 

I think all of the points and issues raised by Atiku Abubakar in his rebuttal are very legitimate and powerful in Law and common sense. The Senate members who think they are doing our nation or the President a favor by covering up for him, had better think again. They are certainly doing more damage to our country when all is said and done.

   

A lot of us may not like this Vice President for some of what he is doing today to the corporate image of our country, but this fumbling President is equally as guilty, if not more guilty in my judgment, and should be served notice to that effect in no unmistakable terms in the interest of our country. In a way, I admire Atiku Abubakar for standing up to this President. Why not if not? The President has a gun to his head so to speak. It is natural for him to fight back by saying what he knows. He would be stupid and naive to just keep quiet, and walk to his political grave just like that!

  

It is true that this President has done a lot of good for our country in more than 12 years in office either as a military head of State or as a civilian head of State. Nobody in his right mind can totally ignore that and I want to join millions of our compatriots at home and abroad in acknowledging that for a fact. But the President has also demonstrated his crudeness and dictatorial streaks or tendencies on so many occasions by acting so silly and uncivilized to a point of total embarrassment. Part of his problems, I dare say, is poor communication and articulation of even some of the good things he has done as President.

  

A good example is his choice of Governor Yar'Ardua as the man he has picked to succeed him. Obasanjo has miserably failed to persuade any rational person about why he thinks the Katsina Governor is head and shoulders better than any one he would have picked for the whole country. He has failed to impress it on the whole country that the introvert Governor has always sided with the opposition in the old North before finally joining the octopus called the PDP.

  

Even though he was a PDP Governor he has not always behaved like a typical or a stereotype PDP Governor. Yes. He was the younger brother of the late General Musa Yar'Ardua, but that was the least of his qualifications for the highest office in our country, if you ask me. He remains a strong believer in the ideology of the late Aminu Kano and he not only preached what he believed in, he actually practiced it to the letter. Yes. He did quietly introduce Sharia Law into his State without doing so in the abrasive manner of his other colleague in Nasarawa. He had done it because he truly believed in it and he knew that Sharia Law was not new to his own neck of the woods in Katsina and he did not make any fuss about it like some of his colleagues in the North who had behaved as if introducing Sharia Law was ever going to bring food to the table for the poorest of the poor in the North.

    

He did it any way even though he knew Mr. President was a born-again Christian who daily communicates with God without fail. He was no pander bear who is willing and ready to please Mr. President at every turn of event. That he does not make too much noise does not make him a weak Governor in my judgment. The Governor, surely, has something going for him. What he lacks is an eloquent President to market him. If he wins, he might yet turn out to be a good President. He could also win because the opposition are today in total disarray from all I am able to see at this moment in time.

  

The young Governor has proved himself to be totally incorruptible unlike most of his peers in the PDP, and is arguably one of the best Governors to totally reshape the Obasanjo's one sided war against Corruption in our country. No other Governor understands better than him how the revenues going to the States from Federal, ought to be spent on investment projects that eyes can see and not like the mirage and white elephant projects like his counterpart in Ondo State, Olusegun Agagu has always pursued. Through a very wise disbursement of Federal revenues, Governor Yar'Ardua has managed to turn one of the poorest states in the North to one of the tigers of the North as he has wisely invested all of the money in a way that would for ever make his State the envy of other states not only in the North but also in the entire country. He has figuratively managed to turn a desert into an oasis.

  

Because Mr. President a southerner could still be ranked among our Heads of State in Nigeria who were never lucky or privileged to see the four walls of a University or to have a University education in their curriculum vitae, this President did not see or emphasize the fact that Governor Yar'Ardua would be the first President, if elected, to have actually graduated from a University in all of our history.

  

I know this observation may be nothing to some of us, but it is an observation or accolade I would not ignore as one of the attributes of the presidential hopeful that our HND President probably need to crow about, if you ask me. I was in the Federal Service when our current President had to fight tooth and nail to make a case that an HND recipient in any of our Polytechnics should be recognized and paid as a University degree holder in our Public Service. Even though the President is as smart and intellectual gifted as any University graduate, he did suffer from some inferiority complex as a non-graduate, and he has struggled to fill in the gap when he had the power so to do.

  

So his handpicking the first graduate President for our country should not be seen as a mere coincidence or an accident. But the President lacks the eloquence to forcefully articulate that qualification as additional feathers for the young ideologically-driven Governor from Katsina.

  

When some Nigerians tried to shoot down his hand-picked choice for President as a "sickler" who is damn too sick to be able to serve two terms, all the President could say is to very weakly deny the insinuation. He completely forgot to remind his critics that the man who may have been bed-ridden in Hospital for months is not necessarily the next man to die. It does not follow at all.

     

Frankline Delano Roosevelt one of the greatest Presidents in America who had held the post four times before presidential tenure in America was amended to two terms, was for many years crippled in his wheelchair with Polio but that did not stop him from going down in history as one of the most benevolent of American Presidents of the last century. Yar'Ardua had served two terms as Governor and could serve his two terms as President without any problem. So what is the big deal? Two terms as Governor have definitely qualified him to serve as President in any democratic setting like America. If it is good for America, why not in Nigeria?

  

Obasanjo would go down in history as one of the least articulate of our Presidents who sometimes acts and talks like a drunken sailor. I could never forget the day he seized a whip from an eye-service police man and he took on the role of the village headmaster by publicly flogging a police man for being overzealous in doing his job. I recall  the day he publicly announced the next election was going to be "a-do-or-die affair  for himself and his Party. It was a most un-presidential statement ever to come from a President, but he said it any way, like he used to, and will repeat again, before the election circle is over.

  

It is most unfortunate that the President continues to ask that Vice President and those indicted should be prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed by the Law, while deliberately playing "god"  and giving the impression that he himself is above the Law. He has every right to want to do that as a person. What is not so kosher is that the country would let him get away with it. He must not. He and Atiku must be subjected to further questioning and be punished, if found guilty.

  

I rest my case.

Dr. Wunmi Akintide