Atiku’s victory and the Tinubu quandary

Atiku Abubakar’s victory at the PDP primary has excited Bola Tinubu and his supporters 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. 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 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.

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 polarized and afflicted by many problems. Are you not surprised that his supporters have never broached this issue as a major drawback of the Tinubu candidacy?

The international community and many of Nigeria’s development partners are peeved 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 of 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. Tinubu and Atiku’s unbridled quests for the presidency are alarming. What do they want? While this is Atiku’s seventh attempt, it’s part of Asiwaju’s ‘’lifelong ambition’’.

Atiku’s 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. 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 to come 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. 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 dishonor or scandal, just like Buhari himself, and the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo.

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 and makes us proud. APC must choose Osinbajo as its flag bearer. He will easily beat Atiku.