"I think what the average Northerner needs is somebody from the North, and who also understands the other parts of Nigeria and who has been able to build bridges across the rest of the country. This is what the Northerner needs. He doesn't need a Yoruba candidate or an Igbo candidate. This is what the Northerner needs."
~ Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Kaduna, Saturday, October 15, 2022
Long before the demons of arrogance moved Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to utter those scandalous words in Kaduna, I was driven to write this piece primarily to counter the misinformation being peddled by footsoldiers of the Atiku Abubakar Campaign Organization in Northern Nigeria, that an Atiku Presidency in 2023 will benefit the North more, and that his Presidency will reinforce the North's political supremacy in Nigeria's entire political makeup. And on another flank, they are also frantically busy trying to brainwash Northeasterners that it is better to have a President emerge from the region at this material time than to have a Vice President, which is a subtle effort to de-market the possible Vice Presidency of His Excellency Senator Kashim Shettima, so that Atiku could have the largest chunk of the votes in the region to himself.
Given that this kind of divisive campaign is being waged on his behalf, and given that his unedifyingly divisive statement in Kaduna (as quoted above) has erased every doubt as to whether he approved the brainwashing campaign being waged on his behalf in the North or not, it has thus become an essential duty - both for the North and the whole country - to x-ray the political career of the person of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, especially his eight years stretch as Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and then present verifiable reasons on how his powerful office and influence benefitted nothing for the North as well as the whole country, especially given that he is a frontline member and the presidential candidate of the party that has spectacularly wounded, plundered and grounded this country for a stretch of 16 years, which they always hate to be discussed.
The following reasons, therefore, stand indisputably tall to disqualify him as anyone who can ride on the back of the North now or in the future to lead this country:
■ REASON NUMBER ONE: SABOTAGE OF INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE NORTH!
Throughout his political (public service) career, during which he became the Vice President of this country, the North which Atiku Abubakar wants to use as his springboard to the Presidency in 2023 has not benefitted from any infrastructural project or any economic policy initiated or influenced by him. Anyone who cares to know can traverse the lenght and breadth of the North to search for any road, bridge or even culvert built in the region in the name of a project canvassed by him, and will find nothing.
At the risk of overflogging the issue, which needs restating anyway, especially in the context of this discussion, that the contempt Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has for developmental projects that could benefit the wider population, especially the less privileged, is such that he couldn't even have the road to his hometown of Jada constructed when he was Vice President of this country for eight years, and because his party, the PDP also share the same contempt for infrastructure and development, that road remained dilapidated throughout PDP's 16 years reign until President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration came and constructed it in 2018.
Therefore, looking at how even his hometown could not benefit from anything of worth when he was in power, which other part of the North benefitted anything during the period in question? Some of us have even challenged his campaigners to show or point to, at least, even a mere culvert constructed through the influence of his office in any part of the North, but to date no one has come forth with anything. And it is not as if Atiku Abubakar had no influence or power to cause such projects to be done when he was in power; he had ample authority, or wasn't it the same influence and authority he deployed to have an expensive private university built for him in Yola plus other mouthwatering companies in several parts of the country, all while still in office?
As the proverbial bat out of hell, the Obasanjo Presidency seemed to have come with some kind of vengeful, destructive agenda to destroy any developmental project in the North, especially the ones commenced by the administration of General Sani Abacha, perhaps because the late military Head of State who was a Northerner locked him up in jail, and Vice President Atiku Abubakar was a very willing tool and collaborator in the revocation of all such infrastructural contracts. How do I know this? Well, you can search all news archives, and you wouldn't come across any report or anything at all suggesting that Atiku Abubakar protested or frowned at all the vengeful and destructive actions of his boss on the North's infrastructure and economy.
With a straight face, immediately after assuming office in May 1999, the Obasanjo/Atiku Presidency revoked the contracts awarded in 1998 by the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under the leadership of General Muhammadu Buhari for the construction of the Maiduguri to Yola and the Gombe to Yola roads. They revoked the contracts and refused to re-award them even to their preferred firms, which led to the complete collapse of the roads - a situation that persisted till General Muhammadu Buhari became a civilian President in 2015 and re-commenced the projects.
Similarly, the Obasanjo/Atiku Presidency revoked the contracts for the reconstruction of Balanga Dam in Gombe State, Kiri Dam in Adamawa State, and Manbisha Dam on River Suntai in Taraba State, all of which negatively impacted both regular and irrigation farming in those areas. And these are just a few examples in Atiku Abubakar’s home region of the Northeast without mentioning other such contracts gleefully revoked by the duo in other regions of the North.
And, again, please, bear in mind that the celebrated conflict between Atiku and his boss Obasanjo had nothing to do with the revocation of those projects, rather it was about the control of their party, the PDP. Not once did Atiku Abubakar complain or show remorse that projects for the construction of even the roads leading to his own homestate have been revoked by the administration he served as its Number 2.
So, how could such a man who added nothing infrastructurally to the North when he had the power to do so now want to ride on the back of the same North to get back to power? With his well-known penchant for selling any public facility or infrastructure cheaply, how much will he sell the North and thereafter escape to his Dubai palace?
■ REASON NUMBER TWO: ECONOMY!
If anything, it was during the era when Atiku Abubakar was Vice President that the North suffered its worst economic losses. As a region whose economic lifeline was mainly agriculture and commerce, one of the first major economic policies that the Obasanjo/Atiku administration promulgated was the liberalization of trade and commerce, which saw to the "liberalization" of our borders to all manner of agricultural goods and other products from outside the country, including textile materials.
As soon as foreign rice and foreign textile materials flooded the country, our local alternatives lost their appeal and value, and before you know it, local food production began to decline heavily and cotton farming also began to wane until it finally stopped completely. This consequently caused a shortage of raw material (cotton) to all the textile factories in the North as well as in other parts of the country, which resulted in total closure of the factories, thereby causing job losses in the realm of millions. The entire agricultural value chain broke down, thereby entrenching poverty in the North.
My hometown of Cham in Gombe State is a practical example of what I am talking about here. As a well-known cotton farming community, it used to host one of the biggest cotton markets in the country, with several cotton pyramids rising at the market every harvest season, and it also used to be a hub for cotton farmers in neighbouring towns, stretching as far as Adamawa State, to bring their own harvests to our market and sell them there. It was always a beehive of commercial activities, with the value chain spanning from the farmers themselves to the young men who stuff all the sold cotton into huge sacks, to the ones who carry the sacks of cotton and arrange them in tall, beautiful pyramids, and then to the trailer-trucks that carry hundreds of sacks each to the cotton gineries in Kumo and Gombe towns, where they are ginned and then taken to textile factories in Kaduna or Kano.
You can imagine the chain of opportunities for jobs and wealth in that value chain, and, of course, the people of Cham were living commensurately comfortable lives from that chain. Sales from cotton and other cash crops as well as jobs in the cotton market ensured that all bills in the families were paid and much more saved. But when the Obasanjo/Atiku administration flooded our markets with foreign textile materials and our textile factories began to suffer sales, leading to their closures, our farmers lost the market for their cotton. As such, the cotton market closed shop in 2001. The cotton ginneries in Kumo and Gombe then folded up, with the entire workers losing their jobs.
Till today, the cotton ginnery in Kumo stands as a mere carcass of what it used to be. If you are travelling from Gombe towards Yola, you will see its dilapidated buildings, which include its staff quarters, by your left hand just before entering the town, and if you are moving towards Gombe on the same road, you will see it by your right hand as you are leaving the town. The structures are unmistakably still there in shambles and empty, as evidence of our mismanaged past and as evidence against those who killed our productivity and multiplied pain and penury in the North and the entire country.
■ REASON NUMBER THREE: NATIONAL ISSUES!
When I say 'National Issues' in this context, I mean to say, there are always issues of national debates, which often lean towards all the six geopolitical zones aligning themselves to certain opinions, which often differ from the ones held by the others. During such times, at what point has Atiku Abubakar ever believed in and championed any stance of the North on any issue?
If his opportunistic silence or antagonizm against the North's points of arguments during national debates was to present himself as a Pan-Nigerian and then curry political favours for himself from other regions, then why should the North even trust such a character with its interests when he cannot even stand with it in times of national disputes or debates? If he had no qualms conniving with his boss, President Obasanjo, in 1999 to revoke all the contracts for major road projects, dams and other infrastructure in the North, then how can he champion any development for the North, when his only interest is his pocket? If he can betray his own State by agreeing to the revocation of the construction of major roads to the place, then who will he not betray?
■ REASON NUMBER FOUR: NIGERIA'S UNITY AND PROGRESS!
Isn't it strange, or rather, isn't it fraudulent and grossly dishonest that Atiku Abubakar who themed himself as "The Unifier" of Nigeria in this campaign season is the very same person who spared no effort to subvert his party's zoning arrangement, which should have guaranteed the presidential ticket of the same party to Southern Nigeria in the 2023 general elections, especially coming on the heels of the fact that the North - through President Muhammadu Buhari - is about serving out 8 years in power, and also coming on the heels of very loud and oftentimes cantankerous agitations from all the political blocks in Southern Nigeria for power to shift to their region in 2023?
If the dominant power blocks in the All Progressives Congress (APC), led by all its Northern Governors, saw the need to preserve the peace, stability and unity of Nigeria by allowing a southerner to pick their party's presidential ticket for the 2023 elections, then isn't it distasteful, dishonest and morally reprehensible that a major politician like Atiku Abubakar from one of Nigeria's dominant political parties will seek to actively undermine this noble quest for justice, peace and stability in the country's polity by waging a morbidly insane campaign for power to remain in the North with him at its helm?
And even while sardonically touting himself as "The Unifier", his ambition, which is not even for public service, has torn his party to shreds with the aggrieved blocs citing his breach of their zoning arrangements. In other words, he is simply aggravating the country's disunity while claiming that he is on a mission to unite it, and with his party so divided like that, how can he even unite the country when his selfish ambition has put him in total conflict with the nobility of reconciliation? And if he can't even unite his party, which should ordinarily be a simpler task than uniting a whole country, then how can he engage in the more complex and more tasking job of uniting the country? If it's by magic, then why hasn't he waved the magic wand on his party's crisis to still the storms?
■ REASON NUMBER FIVE: ASSAULT ON THE NORTH'S PROGRESSIVE IDENTITY!
If anything, the North has a very sterling quality that sets it aside as truly progressive. Most of its population does not celebrate corruption and shifty politicians. Hence, you can sack or dismiss a northern politician or public office holder from office over any form of misdemeanour, and you wouldn't see or hear northerners screaming, wailing and lamenting that the official was being witch-hunted or that they were removed from office because they came from the North. There are countless examples of this.
With such well-known pedigree of revolting against corrupt public officials, which bears true witness to their moral and conservative values, it is therefore a contradiction of sorts to have Atiku Abubakar, whose pro-corruption baggage is sufficient to fill a chain of cargo aircraft lined up on any tarmac whose lenght could stretch from Yola to Dubai being presented as a political representative of the North. In Nigeria and abroad, no one has ever referred to him as a person of integrity or a person with unimpeachable moral rectitude or a man who can be trusted with even a basket of onions. From his boss Obasanjo, who literally shredded him as a thief in a book and some foreign media that described him as "an established thief", even his followers don't lavish him with the adjectives of integrity and honesty. They only praise him for his carefree attitude with money towards them, which some of them conflate with signs of good leadership.
As a person who supervised the wanton bonanza of some of Nigeria's lucrative public enterprises, leading to their death and the resultant loss of millions of jobs, which laid the foundation for the country's endemic poverty coupled with his untrustworthyness and documented penchant for sleaze, it will therefore be grievously injurious to the North's reputation and credibility as a progressive entity to have Atiku Abubakar strutting the length and breadth of the country masquerading as the candidate of the North.
The North did not join other progressive regions and compatriots to fight a civil war to keep Nigeria united decades ago, and then end up at this crucial time having a selfish politician subverting a political arrangement that can cement that unity as its candidate. This is not what the North is known for, and both the character and public record of Atiku Abubakar are a complete repudiation of the North's ideals and beliefs. His subversion of his party's zoning arrangement is enough evidence of his dislike and contempt for other regions of the country as much as his collusion with Obasanjo, his boss, to cripple the North's agriculture and economy was also enough evidence of his dislike and contempt for the North.
Simply put, Atiku Abubakar’s ambition is for himself and his family. He doesn't like anyone, much less the North for which he couldn't even build a single culvert when he was Vice President for eight straight years.
Cham Faliya Sharon is a member of the Public Affairs Committee of the Presidential Campaign Council of the APC. Follow him on Twitter @ChamSharon
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