In the APC outing last week, the partisans could not forget loyalty. It was about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But underneath the theatre of songs, dance, rhetoric, banter and dances, everyone thought of one man: Atiku Abubakar.
No one articulated it better that afternoon than Vice President Kashim Shettima. He adopted a literary tone, and his favourite weapon of the day was satire. He bit off the Adamawa man with irony. The power of such a sardonic swipe is that you can at once praise and bait. So, he quipped that he was not going to call Atiku Kachalla and the honours had belonged to tempestuous Babachir Lawal.
Shettima called him Kachalla without being guilty of saying so. Then he threw in Kachalla’s Kenyan counterpart. Odinga Odinga. He is a man of infinite quest, and he has looked for the top office of his country, like Atiku. He has not gone beyond looking. It has hung like the Greek myth of Tantalus, from which the verb tantalise comes. The fruit dangles but out of touch. VP Shettima reminded all that Atiku is no Abraham Lincoln, the longsuffering American statesman who took over the reins at the twilight of his life.
What Shettima said reminds one of Ronald Reagan’s jibe at Bill Clinton during the Republican Convention. The former US president jested: ‘We know Thomas Jefferson. And believe me, you are no Thomas Jefferson.’ For good measure, Atiku is also not Bill Clinton.
What has made many wonder has been the malice of Atiku Abubakar. The use of the word Bola has offended many. He probably said so because President Tinubu never addresses him by name. He only addressed the issues about him, and his tainted biography. He is the man who must answer questions about his $40 million scandal to the U.S. Senate and he must to the Nigerian people. He must address the Mambilla Plateau revelations about his role and his ex-wife. He must address his auction of Nigeria’s vitals, like Daily Times and Aladja Steel, et al. He must undo his role as a wordsmith of corruption by introducing SPV to our word count. He has now opened a portal he has daubed Ask AA. It must be the populist ruse of this campaign season. It is a portal of bravado.
After all that we know, he wants us to dare him. But he is the one daring the public. He is living in denial. He is posting a false persona of probity, as though he is so pure he can withstand any probe. His second, Peter Obi, also has that pharisaic exterior. Look at the audacity of a man who spends a loan but claims he never took it. Or who claims he posted N2.1 billion of Anambra State money into an account, and he could not even humour us by saying a snake swallowed it! Where is the money?
We say ‘chop and clean mouth.’ But he is ‘chopping’ and never cleaning his mouth and yet claiming he never ‘chopped,’ with drools and smudges all over his lips and jaws. And his followers, including PHDs and pundits of impeccable credentials, cannot see anything but white teeth and luminous skin around the lips of their hero. In his private hut, he must be mocking his many followers. As for the Kachalla or Ibn Dubai, he does not care about wrongdoing. It is only wrong when others err.
All of these are betrayals of a nation. What of the betrayal of a friend? That is what concerns this essayist. To be a traitor is no different from being a pharisee. When Christ was on earth, he condemned sin. But he condemned hypocrisy more.
The use of Bola is a familiar insult. He wanted to draw the president out. He wanted President Tinubu to pay him back in his scurrility. He did not get it. He must be fuming. ‘Why would Bola neglect me so? Why is he not addressing me back? Why? After all I have done? I just went to court to say he is not Adekunle. I have paid a man who has become a woman wrapper in America and bears his wife’s name to embarrass him. I have done everything to make him angry in public. Certificate, Chicago, drugs. He ignores me.’
At the bottom of it is a guilt complex. No one should be closer to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu today than Atiku Abubakar. The gulf between them rankles the Adamawa man in his closet. When they were close friends, the word Bola was a term of endearment. Calling him the same name now was an act of defiance as it was of contempt. He wants to deny that he is doing the wrong thing. He wants to console himself that he has the right to upbraid the president. He is fighting a Freudian battle of repressing a conscience. In The Great Expectation, the motif of guilt runs rampant. Charles Dickens writes, ‘Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses a boy or man.’ He says further that when it is compounded, it is a ‘great punishment.’
Why is it a great punishment? It is because both men had been in the same alliance before, and for a long time. Both of them were associates of Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. It was in the days of the army. They worked together in the same party known as the People’s Front of Nigeria (PFN). It was a formidable party. But Yar’Adua was not in the bosom of the Babangida government. They did not trust a former boss and chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters, to herald the country into democracy. They disenfranchised him. Tinubu and Atiku suffered with their leader then. Friendship is not about good times alone. It is often more potent when they cry together.
IBB dissolved PFN, and made Yar’Adua a pariah in the political transition rigmarole. Both Tinubu and Atiku moved to the Social Democratic Party (SDP). On that platform, M.K.O. Abiola ran for the primary ticket and won. Atiku sulked in defeat. Tinubu was on the side of Abiola. He did not resent Atiku, if the Adamawa man saw himself as deserving.
It was the beginning of his delusion of grandeur, or its first manifestation. The wole wole man – apologies to VP Shettima – was eyeing the big prize. His party men looked elsewhere. But he and Tinubu remained friends. A battle was ahead, though. IBB annulled M.K.O’s victory. The nation crawled into turmoil. Tinubu enlisted with the civil society to fight for democracy. Atiku Abubakar was ‘awol’ in the turbulent hour. When IBB and later Abacha hounded, gaoled and killed men like Tinubu, the Kachalla chose the sidelines and fattened on his business afterglow from the Customs.
After Abacha’s death and ouster of the army, he materialised. He continued his quest to be president. He kept losing. He betrayed the Owu chief as his vice president. The Owu chief ripped him of his immunity. Who came to his rescue? Of course, it was Tinubu. President Obasanjo had set up a panel with Bayo Ojo, our great Oby Ezekwesili and another stormy fellow Nasir El Rufai to nail the vice president. They did. But they met casus belli. The panel had nailed Oyewole Fasawe, a former Obj crony. Eminent lawyer Wole Olanipekun (SAN of SANs) saw it as a faultline and launched a legal salvo. Bull’s eye! By setting Fasawe free, Atiku became free. The panel of the three OBJ tools was ill-timed, ill-willed and ill-informed. Tinubu had again shown loyalty and saved a friend.
The atmosphere in the OBJ government was not propitious. As Femi Fani-Kayode revealed recently, he challenged Atiku why he attended the federal executive council when he was a traitor in the house. He apologised and never showed again in council. He was now a reject in the house.
As will be revealed in my upcoming book this week, Atiku played coy when some governors plotted with him to replace OBJ. He had the best opportunity of his life to be president. It was dangled and within reach. He was afraid to lift his hand. Juicy story.
Well, with his status as pariah, Tinubu gave him an opportunity with the formation of the Action Congress (AC) to be president. He was the party’s flagbearer. He neglected the mainstays of the party to pick Ben Obi as his running mate. Of course, he lost. Since then, he has been thrashing about in a futile quest.
What he relies on now, as he did in 2023, is to play the northern card. They played up the irridentist chant, na mu na mu ne’ meaning ‘our own is our own.’ Now, they have changed it in pockets of the north to be ‘Tinubu must go.’ It is the same lame routine.
It is Atiku fighting his own conscience. He is not having a good time of it. He knows that it is hard to persuade governors of the north because a whole generation of them see an Atiku presidency as depriving them of their opportunity in 2031. It is about self-interest. They also know that if Atiku defies regional balancing, it is in their interest as the northern elite to care. It is regional realism against Atiku’s hubris, a collective quest mowing down a personal score.
What Atiku is doing is nothing new. And fighting the conscience also is nothing new. We saw that in Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré. Also between Akintola and Awolowo. Greek tragedies have showered us with its psychological powers. In his play, Philoctetes, the main character and warrior is abandoned on an island for no clear cause. Principles, ambition and friendships are important. Shall we abandon one for another? Atiku must contend with this for the rest of his life. Even when principles fight with persons, it is not often an easy choice, especially if the person is a longtime friend, brother or ally. Jonathan in scriptures sticks to friend David over father. He dies with father when his blood-tie beckons. He is not consistent. Antigone in the Greek play sticks to brother instead of king, and dies fulfilled.
Nothing shows the pang of betrayal more than Macbeth after failing King Duncan. Banquo’s ghost torments him. Macbeth expresses the pang of conscience in the following words, ‘avaunt and quit my sight. Let the earth hide thee; thy bones are marrowless and thy blood is cold.’
Kachalla cannot be a happy man today. His quest to be president is in spite of himself. No punishment is harsher.