Yoruba people have a saying, “Eni maa da aso fun ni, ti orun re la nwo”. It means you should take a careful look at the dress worn by the person promising to clothe you.
Atiku Abubakar of the PDP has promised to be a better president than Buhari. He has promised jobs, restructuring, a national government, and generally to make Nigeria work again. These are good promises but should we not ask ourselves if he’s indeed capable of delivering on those wonderful promises? Who is Atiku Abubakar? What are his antecedents? These are salient questions.
In 2015 Nigerians elected Buhari president. The man had made three broad promises. To fight insecurity, wage war on corruption, and to revamp the economy. Why did Nigerians believe he could deliver? A variety of reasons based on his background and track records. He was known within the military and in the government he once led from 31st December 1983 to August 27, 1985 as a man of integrity with zero tolerance for corruption. So, he not only made a promise to fight corruption, his reputation reassured us he could. He was a seasoned military officer who had dealt with the Maitatsine extremist and so-called Islamic sect.
Boko Haram was afraid of his possible emergence as president and it tried to assassinate him through bombing in broad daylight in Kaduna. We had a basis to trust him. In terms of his promise to revive the economy, we recalled how he had refused an IMF loan option or World Bank’s SAP and had resorted to counter-trade, essential commodities’ price control among other homegrown solutions as a Military Head of State. Our hope in him was kindled.
But what are Atiku’s credentials? A retired Customs Officer and a billionaire who made great fortunes by cornering government businesses privatised under his watch as Chairman of the National Privatisation Council in the exalted office of Vice President of Nigeria. Both his boss at the time, former President Obasanjo, and his aide at the Bureau of Public Enterprises, Nasir El-Rufai, two persons who dislike each other, have found a common ground in agreeing that Atiku is one of the most corrupt persons ever to pass through the corridor of power. So much is their respective bewilderment that they found it necessary to document Atiku’s perfidy for posterity in book form. El-Rufai has his in “Accidental Public Servant” and Obasanjo has his in “My Watch”. That is aside the well documented account of no less an authority than the US Government on this same Atiku’s dirty deals in the US and Nigeria for which he’s been on the run from justice in the US.
To those who are rooting for Atiku to be president, our question is: on what grounds? Can a leopard change its spots? Buhari may have his faults but certainly Atiku is no alternative to him. Atiku is a bad product in a bad wrap: the PDP.
Buhari remains our best bet for 2019. He’s indeed fighting corruption. If you’re in doubt, tell us who’s done better than him in our entire history as a country. He’s indeed fighting insecurity. If you’re in doubt, why did over a million IDPs return to their homes in Borno, Yobe etc? Why is Gwoza, Bama, Konduga, and Madagali no longer run by so-called Caliph of Boko Haram? Why are children returning to schools and farmers are tilling the ground in the Northeast? You talk of the economy, who has reflated it by giving bailouts to states to pay months upon months arrears of civil servants’ salaries, by paying billions upon billions of naira of over 20-years of accumulated pension to Nigeria Airways’ staff and the rest, by voting N500 billion for social investment, empowering traders through MarketMoni and TraderMoni and unemployed graduate through N-Power, and by cutting waste through Efficiency Unit of the Finance Ministry, as well as the one Atiku’s cronies in the banking industry are promoting him to reverse: the Treasury Single Account (TSA)?
President Buhari isn’t perfect. He has his faults. But we should give him four more years to consolidate on his reform. Atiku has no pedigree to give us hope. His past stinks and offers no hope for our future. When South Africans ignored all the terrible allegations of corruption against Jacob Zuma as Vice President and got him elected as president, what did they get? More corruption. The man put $20 million of state funds into renovating and expanding his country home. He dug deeper into dirty deals with his Indian cronies: the Guptas. Interestingly, Atiku and Zuma are great friends. Atiku too has his Indian dirty dealers. You know them! He’s returning to continue from where Obasanjo stopped him from looting us. We may not be able to get rid of him as the ANC did with Zuma. Atiku’s party, the PDP, is a den of the corrupt. Caveat emptor!
#Brooooom#Copied
Merry Christmas 🎄
Prof. Femi Olufunmilade
