President Buhari by INEC returns defeated Atiku Abubakar, his PDP opponent round and square in the February 23 presidential election. He scored 15,191,847 (55.6o %) to Atiku’s 11,191,847 (41.22%) leading with a margin of 3,918,870. The election was adjudged free and fair across the nation by local and international observers save for Rivers where unruly armed militants met their match in a well-equipped security personnel including the military whose conduct international observers also adjudged as ‘highly professional’.
However, perhaps arising from his false sense of entitlement, Atiku, having been in search of the plum job since 1992 when he first took part in SDP primaries which he lost to MKO Abiola; 2003 when he, with the aid of South-south governors led by James Ibori, attempted to deny Obasanjo a second term and as he changed party at every approach of election,( 2007 AC 2011, PDP 2014 APC, and 2019 PDP) rejected the result claiming he has never “in his democratic struggles for the past three decade, seen our democracy so debased as it was on Saturday, February 23, 2019”. He has opted to challenge what he described as “result of the February 23, 2019 sham election” in court.
It is perhaps only Atiku Abubakar, whose every action in office as vice president(1999-2007)was according to Obasanjo, dictated by his reliance on marabouts and sorcerers who would downplay Buhari’s cult-like support among the poor in the north and his above average performance in the last four years to assume he would be a push-over. And it must have been the height of arrogance for Atiku who was bringing nothing beyond the scars of his 13 years duel with Obasanjo over who of the duo was more corrupt to assume he could defeat President Buhari known only for his integrity.
Except for the sane voice of Olisa Agbakoba who has counselled Atiku to “to move into the position of a statesman” others, including some elders as ethnic irredentists who from the outcome of the election are unarguably out of tune with those they claim to speak for are urging him on. They include Chief John Nwodo and his Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ango Abdullahi and his Northern Elders Forum, Ayo Adebanjo and his Afenifere as well as Chief Edwin Clark and his Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) who had while endorsing him before the election, told Nigerians Atiku was “the only candidate among many good candidates we interacted with who can retool Nigeria to move on the path of development as a true federal entity”. Urging Atiku to go to court, ‘they claimed without proof, that “The outcome of the elections was clearly premeditated in the refusal of the president to sign the Electoral Act and the orchestrated suspension of Justice Walter Onnoghen as the CJN shortly before the composition of electoral tribunals.”
Other prominent leaders who urged Atiku to go to court include former Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar, Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, Winners Chapel’s Bishop David Oyedepo and, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, all members of Abubakar peace committee. We can add, Prophet Udoka Daniel Okechukwu, an Anambra-based pastor who had predicted Atiku’s victory. He has urged Atiku to reject the result because “the outcome was not the will of God”.
I share the sentiments of those who are urging Atiku to also take the battle to the next level. Such a move will provide a healing balm for injured egos of mischievous elders, prosperity prophets, Christians without the spirit of Christ, IPOB that had a last minute change of mind to allow voting in southeast allegedly on the promise of referendum, Atiku’s western sympathisers and business friends waiting to buy NNPC and Iran who allegedly chipped in some support for Atiku candidacy in the hope that Atiku presidency would grant amnesty to embattled Ibrahim Yaqoub El Zakzaky, leader of Shi’a Muslim Islamic Movement in Nigeria, IMN.
But while Atiku is weighed down by the burden of taking the battle to the next level to please his disappointed supporters and betrayed sponsors at home and abroad, President Buhari by far faces a greater challenge by the nature of the clear message contained in the voting pattern of Nigerians in the February 23 election.
Atiku might have lost the election but his outing was no less remarkable. Here was a man damaged beyond repairs through PDP intra-party struggle over the sharing of our confiscated assets, flying the flag of a totally discredited PDP that pillaged the country for 16 years, going on to secure over 11 million votes in “an election that was in many ways a referendum on honesty” according to New York Times editorial.
The bulk of the 11million votes came from south-south and southeast where the impact of Buhari’s administration has been felt more in four years than during the previous 16 years of PDP. The only plausible explanation for this voting behaviour therefore can only be attributed to the nation’s unresolved national question or our crisis of nationality. It is instructive to note that what the two restive geo-political zones share in common is quest and struggle for self-actualisation. IPOB which has continued to hold the five south-eastern states and their governors’ hostage is agitating for independent state of Biafra. The south-south has since independence starting with Isaac Boro’s insurrection taken up arms against the state over the control of oil resources in their region. Poverty and lack of opportunity arising from destruction of rivers and land by multinational oil companies has led to renewed intensification of the struggle since the beginning of the fourth republic.
The middle belt region notably Taraba, Plateau Benue and Adamawa that equally supported PDP and Atiku have long before the current mindless killing and confiscation of their land by migrating herdsmen, fought for self-actualization within the greater Nigerian nation state. The Tiv uprising was suppressed by the military power shortly after independence.
The demands of the two northern geopolitical zones that massively voted Buhari are not necessary antithetical to those of the aforesaid three geopolitical zones. As the poorest areas of the country with the greatest number of unemployed youths and children out of school, they need development which cannot come from the current feeding-bottle federal arrangement but by organizing the area into viable geopolitical-zones with regional and local police to protect themselves and their territories from migrating herdsmen across the borders.
Of course, the southwest is by nature federalists and has engaged in the struggle for restructuring of Nigeria along viable federal states since the collapse of the first republic.
If President Buhari in his first term failed to take a cue from other heterogeneous and multicultural societies that adopted the federal arrangement to liberate individuals and groups in their societies from the tyranny of the state, the voting pattern during his second coming last week compels him to do so in order to end military imposed ‘mainstreaming” experiment consolidated by Obasanjo who embarked on forceful take-over of regional institutions including universities that are todays shadows of what they used to be.
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