The buzz in the
country at the moment is about last Friday’s resignation from the
governing All Progressives Congress (APC) by former Vice President,
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. It is understandably so. Apart from Abubakar
being extraordinarily large politically, the move fits into months of
speculation and calculations.
Though many did not envisage that
he would bade his goodbye to the party on the day he did , it had been
certain to every political watcher that it was only a matter of time
before he signs off from APC and switch to a new political platform in
line with his ambition .
In some recent outings that involved key
leaders of the party, held in Aso Villa, the former Vice President was
clearly missing. His absence did not cause much ripples in the political
circles.
And it is because the frosty relationship between him
and the president’s henchmen and majority of APC officials who are
campaigning for President Muhammadu Buhari to seek re-election in 2019
and who feel Atiku is nursing presidential ambition, is in the public
domain.
Though contestable especially by his critics, his
statement announcing his resignation clearly explained how patchy the
relationship between Abubakar and the presidency on the one hand and APC
on the other have been since after the last election.
In the
statement announcing his resignation, Atiku accused the APC-led
government of instituting “a draconian clampdown on all forms of
democracy within the party and the government it produced.”
He
went on to say: “Only last year, a governor produced by the party wrote a
secret memorandum to the president which ended up being leaked. In that
memo, he admitted that the All Progressives Congress had “not only
failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight
‘change’ but has failed to deliver even mundane matters of governance.
“Of
the party itself, that same governor said ‘Mr. President, Sir Your
relationship with the national leadership of the party, both the formal
(NWC) and informal (Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Musa
Kwankwaso), and former Governors of ANPP, PDP (that joined us) and ACN,
is perceived by most observers to be at best frosty. Many of them are
aggrieved due to what they consider total absence of consultations with
them on your part and those you have assigned such duties.’ Since that
memorandum was written up until today, nothing has been done to reverse
the treatment meted out to those of us invited to join the All
Progressives Congress on the strength of a promise that has proven to be
false. If anything, those behaviours have actually worsened.
But
more importantly, the party we put in place has failed and continues to
fail our people, especially our young people. How can we have a federal
cabinet without even one single youth? “A party that does not take
the youth into account is a dying party. The future belongs to young
people. I admit that I and others who accepted the invitation to join
the APC were eager to make positive changes for our country that we fell
for a mirage.
Can you blame us for wanting to put a speedy end
to the sufferings of the masses of our people? Be that as it may be,
after due consultation with my God, my family, my supporters and the
Nigerian people whom I meet in all walks of life, I, Atiku Abubakar,
Waziri Adamawa, hereby tender my resignation from the All Progressives
Congress while I take time to ponder my future.”
Expectedly the
move by Abubakar has attracted a flurry of reactions. Kaduna and Kano
State Governors, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and Alhaji Abdullahi Ganduje
declared that there was nothing wrong with the former Vice President
quitting the party.
El-Rufai said, “it was good that former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar left the APC early.” The
former FCT minister added that “if given the ticket of the Peoples
Democratic Party, Atiku is not a threat to President Muhammadu Buhari in
the 2019 presidential election.” He further described Atiku as “a
serial defector.”
Ganduje argued in a similar fashion with his
Kaduna counterpart. He described the former Vice President as a serial
defector but conceded that it is within his right to belong to any party
of his choice.
He said “Yes, he has his own freedom to choose
which ever political party he wants to be and he has decamped to PDP. It
is the way of politicians to choose the party they want to belong to.
“He
was in PDP before and he was also in another party, so it was not
surprising when he decided to choose to go back to another party. I
think democracy is like that. People can choose where they want to be
and they are not committing any crime by chosen to go where they want to
be. That is democracy.”
But while El-Rufai and Ganduje took a
slight dig at Atiku, the leadership of APC refused to flay the ex-VP’s
move. It feigned ignorance of his departure from the party.
National
Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi told newsmen at
the party’s secretariat that Atiku has not formally informed the party
of his decision to leave.
When asked of the impact of the
development, Abdullahi said the party was not worried yet until they see
the number of people that would follow the former Vice President before
it would know whether to worry or not.
He said “if the former
Vice President feels that his interest is better served elsewhere, we
can always wish him goodluck. For us, the task of building a political
party is not a day’s job; it’s marathon and it takes many years and we
will continue to improve on our system until we are able to get the kind
of party that we want to really, really build.
“It takes many
years to build a strong political party. In a new party, you find some
people are happy, some people are not so happy and everybody would have
to take their decisions at some point. So, we don’t have anything to say
rather than to wish the former Vice President goodluck.
“A loss
of fortune is in numbers. So, if we are able to see the number of people
that followed the former Vice President to his new party that is when
we will begin to worry. So, when we see we will know whether we need to
worry or not. It is about number,” the APC’s spokesman, added. However, Femi Fani-Kayode, former Minister of Aviation, hailed Abubakar for dumping APC.
Fani-Kayode,
a chieftain of the PDP, also welcomed the former Vice President back to
the fold of the PDP. In a tweet via his handle, Fani-Kayode wrote:
“Congrats to @atiku for dumping the plague called APC and coming back
home to the PDP family. It took courage to take that bold step and I
commend him for it.”
How it all started
The
undercurrents in the APC that culminated in the exit of Atiku are
clearly deeper that many thought. Though the former Vice President
contested against President Buhari for the ticket of APC, he played key
role in the eventual victory of the party in the 2015 presidential
election.
Atiku got thumbs up from Buhari and his men. But that
was for a while. His move to play huge role in the shape the APC’s
structure would take by being handed the chairmanship of the Board of
Trustees (BoT) of the party was thwarted. That was to mark off his angst
with the party.
The President’s men did not leave anybody in
doubt that they would not brood any force contesting the control of the
structure of the party with President Buhari. Atiku saw the handwriting
on the wall clearly. But he did not bow to their antics.
Buhari’s
men felt that the former Vice President still had his eyes fixed on the
presidency and started early to decimate him and his structures.
Apart
from denying him the position of BoT helmsman, they tried to clip his
wings from his state and zone. People who were not loyal to him were
handed top appointments in government in what some analysts argue was a
strategy to prune his influence or even wrest the structure from him in
Adamawa and North East.
Though he managed the situation in the
public, things continued to get foggy for him on a daily basis. At a
point El-Rufai stepped out to openly criticise him and accuse him of
nursing presidential ambition. The hallmark was the onslaught on Intels,
a company Atiku has substantial stake in. Though the government
repeatedly explained that the move against the company had no political
undercurrent, many Nigerians are yet to accept the claim.
Government
says the contract with Intels, a leading integrated logistics and
facilities services provider in the maritime and oil and gas logistics
sectors of the country, was void ab initio.
Attorney General of
the Federation (AGF) and minister of Justice, Mallam Abubakar Malami
SAN, in a letter dated September 27, 2017 to the Managing Director of
the NPA, Ms. Hadiza Bala-Usman, said that the agreement, which has
allowed Intels to receive revenue on behalf of NPA for 17 years,
violates the country’s constitution, especially in view of the
implementation of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy of
government.
The matter was made worse by the fact that, weeks
before the federal government’s action, Atiku had cried out how he had
become an outsider in the government he played key role in bringing
about.
Presidential ambition
That the former Vice
President has been nursing presidential ambition is a fact at the
doorstep of most Nigerians. He probably had thought that the much
publicised claim that President Buhari will hold sway for a term will be
kept. This feeling was further strengthened by the ill-health that kept
the President away for a long time.
Owing to all that, many had
calculated that the president may not be in a good shape to seek
re-election in 2019. Apart from Atiku, some APC stalwarts who had their
eyes on the top seat made moves to build foothold and networks to
actualise their ambitions.
But even when Buhari was still ill and
there was doubt about him seeking re-election, there were strong
attempts to fend Atiku off. A governor from the North West and a few
others led the charge. And that was how Atiku kick started a romance
with PDP, it was gathered.
Buhari’s return in a much more stable
condition totally blighted the remaining hope of Atiku contesting on the
APC platform. His situation was worsened by the coming out of minister
of Women Affairs, Hajia Aisha Alhassan to declare support for him. This
was not taken lightly by Buhari’s men. Though the move did not earn
Alhassan a sack, a battle line was visibly drawn by Buhari’s henchmen.
Atiku’s next move
A
hail of predictions have followed Atiku’s exit from APC. The commonest
of all is that he is moving to PDP. Those who make such prediction are
not wrong going by the body language of the former Vice President in the
last couple of months. He has been fingered in virtually all the
happenings in the opposition party including those who are vying for the
chairmanship of the party. Sure, a clearer picture on his next
political move will unfold in the next few days.
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