When I listened to Atiku’s speech at the just concluded NBA Conference in Lagos, I began to wonder how the former vice president lost touch with common sensibilities. How do you define yourself with words and phrases that directly contradict your actions? In fact, he ended up insulting collective sensibilities of Nigerians in that hall, especially southerners.
Atiku began his highfalutin speech by pontificating as a “unifier” who wants to unite Nigerians and give every part of the country a “sense of belonging”. I laughed really hard. Unifier my foot! Atiku Abubakar is running against the zoning principle of the PDP. To him, zoning is just a mere word that should not be honoured and power should not shift to the south.
Atiku is a Fulani man like Buhari. Buhari’s catastrophic eight years will soon end. Atiku, a Fulani, is gunning to succeed another Fulani man, yet he prides himself as a “unifier” that intends to “give all Nigerians a sense of belonging.” For Atiku, there is nothing wrong with power not only remaining in the north but also in the custody of the Fulani dynasty.
Atiku Abubakar is fighting to enthrone uninterrupted sixteen years of Fulani presidency in a deeply polarized country with over 250 ethnic groups, yet he sanctimoniously throws spanner in the works of Nigeria’s fragile unity with his unbridled ambition. Atiku, like every Nigerian has constitutional right to vote and be voted for but sloganeering “unifier’ when he is running against zoning and federal character portrays him as an insufferable hypocrite deficit in ideology and morals.
I do not blame Atiku. It is not his fault. I blame his southern supporters who do not know that they are playing with fire. Atiku’s perfidious ambition is a trap of political enslavement for southerners. If Atiku succeeds with it, power will perpetually remain in the north. Southerners will become second citizens in their own country. But to southern supporters as long as they get crumbs from the table of their Dubai master, they are willing to enslave themselves and their descendants—up to fourth generation.
Those close to Atiku should tell him to change his campaign slogan. That word “unifier” should not be mentioned in the same sentence with his name. He is an embodiment of everything opposite it. If Atiku does not see anything wrong with a Fulani succeeding Buhari—another Fulani, he not a unifier but ethno-religious supremacist who believes in the born-to-rule mentality. To Atiku’s southern supporters, hear this: while collecting your dollars, please remember the biblical Esau who sold his birthright for a pot of porridge. It is not yet late to retrace your steps as everything is not about money.
