Atiku’s victory and the Tinubu quandary

Atiku Abubakar’s victory at the PDP primary has excited Bola Tinubu and his supporters in a rather weird manner; so much so that Tinubu was the first to congratulate the former Vice President, even before the delegates left the stadium early Sunday morning.

Since then, Tinubu’s supporters have been all over the place, celebrating Atiku’s emergence, and generally insinuating that it is only Tinubu that can possibly defeat Atiku at the general election. But it’s not true. Tinubu is a severely damaged brand, a defective candidate burdened with a huge baggage of problems that has become a quandary to his ambition.

The undue enthusiasm in the Tinubu camp is because his supporters see Tinubu in Atiku. For them, the former VP is Tinubu’s alter ego; another version of Tinubu; his alternate personality or persona. The striking similarities between the two men: their character, their kind of politics, their sources of wealth and desperation for power and control have created the weird fascination Tinubu and his supporters have for Atiku.

Because Tinubu sees Atiku as a second identity; his own second self or, if you like, a different version of himself, the Atiku win over the weekend has rekindled in Tinubu that age-old sense of entitlement to power.

In other words, the APC chieftain has suddenly suffered a recrudescence of an old illness. It is akin to a recovering drug addict in a rehabilitation clinic who suddenly longs for the stuff if he sees someone taking it, even if in a movie. This is a very dangerous medical and psychological condition, and I’m surprised that nobody has raised alarm.

The first problem with Tinubu is that he would have to pair with a Northern Muslim as a running mate, but that would pose a serious religious imbalance, trigger tensions and disenchantments in a country already deeply polarised and afflicted by many problems.

Are you not surprised that his supporters have never broached this issue as a major drawback of his candidacy? Many senior leaders in APC, including governors like Nasir el-Rufai, are very resentful of Tinubu’s insatiable appetite for power, in addition to his total control of Lagos. They won’t support him.

Atiku has also been embroiled in several scandalous cases, even when he was Vice President. The PTDF and the Jefferson cases easily come to mind. As VP, Atiku took on his boss, President Obasanjo, in 2003 and allegedly made a bid to overthrow him during that year’s primary election. Obasanjo has written the most damning assessment of him in his memoir, My Watch. Atiku has not changed.

The international community and many of Nigeria’s development partners are peeved at the probability of a Tinubu candidacy and they have expressly said so to the authorities in Abuja. Our foreign friends are tired of a giant of Africa that has been indolent largely due to incompetence and graft.

A failed Nigeria would be a major problem to the world. It would trigger waves unprecedentedly massive migrations into Europe, Asia and the Americas. The international community thus wants to see a prosperous and stable Nigeria strong enough to pull the other 53 African countries along.

This is why the thought of returning power to another corrupt and dodgy politician rankles the West. They understand the ruinous impacts of corruption and they have a good understanding of the quantum of our resources stashed away in foreign banks and tax havens by some of our ‘’big men.’’

Tinubu and Atiku’s unbridled quests for the presidency are alarming. What do they want? While this is Atiku’s seventh attempt, this contest is part of Asiwaju’s ‘’lifelong ambition.’’ But Nigerians are not convinced about the nobility of their intentions.

Atiku has well-known problems. The corruption halo, his unstable character (Atiku has no loyalty to anybody or political party) will come up soon in discussions across the country. But for now, his choice by the PDP offends the nation’s endless search for stability, cohesion and harmony. There’s no doubt that the fragility of our nation and nationhood would be further degraded if another Northerner succeeds Buhari.

Read also: We are in the process of rescuing and rebuilding Nigeria – Atiku

As a country, we must work hard to sustain the alternation of the Presidency between North and South in a regular rhythm for a very long time in order to enhance inclusiveness and nation-building. Atiku’s emergence, therefore, is an insult to our past heroes. They fought hard to hand us a united and relatively stable country. We cannot afford to toy with it. Unknown to many, some advanced countries have adopted this practice of rotation to safeguard their plurality.

In Switzerland, the position of the President of Swiss confederation rotates among the seven Councillors (regional heads) on a yearly basis, with one year’s Vice President of Switzerland becoming the next year’s President of the country.

Atiku’s desperation to flout this sequence and seize power without consideration to the stability of the country is at the very heart of his intentions. Nigerians will reject him.

To defeat the PDP, APC must field a candidate that is starkly different in everything from Atiku, and the difference must be clear. The APC candidate should be younger, more educated, urbane and reputedly honest and transparent. The next President should be spick and span, without a whiff of any form of dishonour or scandal, just like Buhari himself, and the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo.

Any surprise that neither Tinubu nor Atiku has ever bragged about their credentials in this area? Our next President should be a man of character, capacity and competence who commands the respect, trust and confidence of the citizens and the rest of the world. We need a leader who appears at ease at global platforms like WEF, UNGA, G7, G20, CHOGM, etc, to make us proud. APC must choose Osinbajo as its flag bearer. He will easily beat Atiku.