KWENU: Our Culture, Our Future

The Consensus Decoy: Atiku Abubakar and Nuhu Ribadu as Sideshows

 

ADAEZE Oparanze

 New York City, NY

 

Monday, December 13, 2010

 

In politics, things are rarely what they seem. The legalized game of armed resource control through the ballot box, otherwise known as politics, is war by some other means. This is especially the case in a winner-take-all environment such as Nigeria. In this article, the chief priestess posits that the recent emergence of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the “consensus presidential candidate” of the North is neither accidental nor the ultimate hand of the North.

 

 

The section of Nigeria known as the North is a wounded desert fox at this point in Nigeria’s history. Not even during the eight years of Olusegun Obasanjo civilian presidency has the North felt so challenged to the point of complete demystification. The North tried all manner of machination to hold on to power as Umaru Musa Yar’Adua lay ill (or dead). And when the hide-and-seek could no longer camouflage the tenuous hold on power, they tried negotiating away Goodluck Jonathan’s constitutional rights of ascension in return for a guarantee that Jonathan would continue as Vice President. The man of legendary luck almost fell for it until intelligence reached him that he was bargaining with ghosts with no leverage.

 And so the North watched a man from the backwaters of the creek climb to the Presidency, first as Acting President and later as substantive President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria. As the Igbo would say, the dry twig that was expected to wither away had suddenly sprouted with all the powers of the most imperial presidency on the continent of Africa. The throw-away brick had become the obelisk of the house of Lugard. This would be tolerable until the man from the creek began to sing a song of wanting to get elected President on his own merit. What to do! What to do!

 

Constitutionally, Jonathan can get elected President twice (eight years in all). While his current stint as President counts in the history books, it does not really count against him in terms of tenure. With the Igbo raising the roof about equity in the governance of the country, the North sees years of wandering in a drought-ridden desert before they get to smell the only real industry in Northern Nigeria – power (and I don’t mean electricity).

 

THE PDP OBSTACLE

 With incumbency, the oracle informs me that the North has long calculated that it would be difficult to take the nomination from Jonathan in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).  So they have long given up on the PDP as a platform to wrestle power from Jonathan. But the President has to be hobbled as much as possible coming off the gate into the general elections if the North is to have a chance, hence the consensus arrangement.

 

Let’s get something straight. Atiku Abubakar might be a “political generalissimo,” to borrow a tag from Senator Ben Obi who now heads the combined team of the “consensus candidate’s” campaign, but in the company of masquerades, IBB remains the bigger masquerade. If you believe that IBB was humiliated and “not picked,” you simply don’t understand the game. You will hear it here first: Atiku Abubakar is the Consensus Decoy in the 2011 Presidential Election. His role is to fight the President to the finish as to either take the nomination (which they don’t believe is achievable) or leave Jonathan and the PDP terribly hobbled going into the election proper.

 

THE ANPP AS ALTERNATE PLATFORM

Lately IBB has been sounding like a man bent on upholding a sacrosanct principle: zoning. So much so that he has left the door open about a possible exodus out of PDP by Northern interests and voters, if the PDP essentially abandons zoning and gives the incumbent President the nomination of the party.

 

General Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC would have been an alternate platform for a protest vote from the North except that the General’s disposition is a lot more undiscriminating in its zeal against certain, shall we say “sharp practices” that have enriched many in the North. More than a President Jonathan, the likes of IBB and Atiku Abubakar are more concerned about a President Buhari, the northern kinship notwithstanding.

 

So the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), a party already known to the North and one that had already been used to secure protest votes in the North in 1999, 2003, and 2007, is primed again to be the alternate platform.  With Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, one of the original IBB governors from the Diaspora now the National Chairman of ANPP, the question is when will IBB move to the ANPP? If he does, then this assertion that Atiku was a decoy would have so easily been proven. If he does not, then watch who emerges as the Presidential nominee of the ANPP because that’s where the four horsemen of the “consensus arrangement” would pitch their tent if Atiku loses the nomination to Jonathan.

 

RIBADU AS THE OTHER DECOY

Until Goodluck Jonathan became President, Malam Nuhu Ribadu was shuttling between London and Washington, DC bearing testimonies against his own country in congressional halls of foreign governments. There were criminal charges hanging over his head from the government through one or more of its agencies in Nigeria. President Jonathan brought Ribadu and another Malam, Nasir El-Rufai, back to Nigeria – or at least made the coast for return clearer and safer. Ribadu’s criminal charges disappeared or were dropped (by Jonathan’s Attorney General) and his dismissal from the Police Force was reversed.

 

In appreciation for all of these kind gestures from President Jonathan, Ribadu decides that Jonathan is not good enough to continue as President in 2011? He decides to challenge Jonathan through another party? Don’t believe it! The oracle suggests to me that Ribadu joined Asiwaju Bola Tininbu of all people in Action Congress of Nigeria as a decoy – Jonathan’s decoy.

 

Sooner than later, we shall find out whether the oracle is right.

Simply surprise yourself yonder