Not a few have tagged the current PDP blowout and death-in-slow-motion as Hurricane BAT. Maybe. In politics, there is often no smoke without fire.
But no one needs any smoke to see the clear fire Torpedo Atiku poses to the former federal ruling party. Desperate for personal glory, Torpedo Atiku waits, with bated breath, to blast into smithereens, whatever remains of the unmourned PDP.
It’s the umpteenth mirage of a presidential dream — abortive and aborted since 1993 — calling again, in 2027! For that grand cloud-chasing, Atiku won’t blink an eyelid to further rip the storm-ravaged umbrella.
Which explains why the most excitable Atiku rabble, on X and FB, are already piping Atiku-Obi as a sure-bet new deal for 2027 — a certified failure beaten black-and-blue in 2019; a cross-failure that cleaned out each other, on mutual power greed, in 2023!
Hey, it’s a democracy! Folks are entitled to own democratic delusions!
Still, Atiku and PDP fit each other pat — neither person nor corporate is capable of sober self-x-ray, talk less of galling home truths. Which is why both would likely roil from crisis to crisis, until they mutually self-destroy.
Nigerian politics would be much better for such. Anyone with Atiku’s crass insensitivity to a North-South political balance of 2023, yet seems willy-nilly set for a terrible encore in 2027, is well and truly beyond redemption.
The same goes for a party that, for 16 years, led Nigeria to perdition. Now, it feels by weaponizing the current challenges it would, open sesame, charm its way through as a voter darling, in a national emergency. More deluded than hitherto thought!
But again, it’s the grim PDP tale that hardly ever changes: no thanks to its leaders — coarse and rough power dealers — that crudely over-reach themselves.
As former President Olusegun Obasanjo worked tooth-and-nail to banish PDP into the power Siberia — with his raw and nasty power projections — former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, is working extra-time to be its undertaker-in-chief, with his insensate power manoeuvres.
Even to the obtuse, it is clear that Atiku is the Alpha and Omega of PDP’s present bind — and terminal trauma.
It was he that pushed northern solidarity — euphemism for Arewa clannishness — to rubbish a North/South rotation understanding. By that, he won the PDP presidential ticket. But he also severed PDP from its traditional southern satellites since 1999.
In that, he had a deputy wrecker-in-chief in Peter Obi who, with brilliant foxtrot in the cynical gaming of “Christian” votes and total mop-up of clannish Igbo votes, wiped out the PDP from much of the South East and South-South.
Yet, on the opportunistic platform of the Labour Party (LP), Obi ultimately laboured in vain. It’s that tragically self-neutralizing, mutually destroying, ultra-selfish ticket of 2023, that empty dreamers are dusting up for 2027!
But back to Torpedo Atiku, and his northern agenda for raw personal gains. If a giddy northern — let-the-rest-of-the-country-go-to-blazes — agenda was not clear when wily Aminu Tambuwal, ex-Sokoto governor, stepped down for Atiku to clean out Nyesom Wike from the PDP ticket, the aftermaths left little doubt.
Instead of throwing some fobs to placate the hurt PDP southern wing, by sacrificing Dr. Iyorchia Ayu as national chairman, Atiku decided to ride the storm, insisting that the Ayu issue would be addressed after he had been elected president!
That was Atiku’s sweet dream. But in harsh post-2023 defeat, Atiku has not only become flotsam, and Ayu jetsam, the PDP ship itself is battered by the storm!
Now, aside the huge cost of Atiku’s hubris turned awry, what of the question of Wike as vice-presidential pick, and the resultant G-5 (the five PDP dissenting Governors) rebellion?
Well, in fairness to Atiku, it’s only one stricken by political lunacy that would pick Wike as No. 2! The ever-boisterous Wike is either No. 1 or nothing. He has proved that with stellar performance as Rivers governor and FCT governor-like minister.
So, let no one blame Atiku for looking beyond Wike as No. 2.
Still, how do the Greeks put it: those the gods want to destroy they first make mad? As much as dropping Wike as No. 2 made eminent political sense, it fitted perfectly into the sundry comedy of errors that plagued the Atiku-Ifeanyi Okowa ticket — on which ex-Governor Okowa just shed penetrating light, after the Delta PDP sink into APC.
Even after that, Atiku would unabashedly proceed to brand himself the “northern” candidate, who must vacuum-clean the vote of the “North”. That, from the results, did not work out too well.
Which makes it extremely rich that the unapologetic “northern” candidate of 2023 is now busy coupling a so-called pan-Nigeria coalition, if not dream merger of political forces, for 2027! It’s a Teflon Atiku classic!
What’s more? The same Atiku thought so little about brandishing PDP as the core to gather that coalition and possible merger — the same PDP Atiku had scattered, with insensate power dream and greed?
And for nothing beyond a personal dash for 2027, for which he ruined the same party in 2023? What presumptuousness! Talk again of Torpedo Atiku! Little wonder, the PDP governors gave him the cold shoulder!
It’s clear PDP is considerably more weakened, no thanks to Atiku’s soulless gambits. That’s driving a fresh elite power pacting en route to 2027, the most spectacular of which has been the Delta PDP meltdown, which might yet repeat itself in Akwa Ibom, and maybe shake up LP in Abia — who knows, given the frank, though double-speak, interview Governor Alex Otti just granted Arise TV?
Now, with all of these excitements, is President Bola Tinubu’s re-election a done deal, even with the president not attaining mid-term until May 29? Hardly!
Yes, the elite re-pacting would greatly reshape the election-time dynamics in 2027, radically away from what obtained in 2023. So, those busy misguiding themselves, and thrusting Atiku-Obi, based on 2023 election stats, know they only blow hot gas.
Yet, the Tinubu government would have to account for its tough policies.
Indeed, Governor Tinubu of Lagos (1999-2007), that charmed everyone with his “pragmatic democratic welfarism” (to borrow a Tatalo Alamu coinage) — and started the payment of students’ WAEC fees, later copied and mainstreamed by other states, across party lines — has returned as President Tinubu with hard (many would insist: harsh) neo-liberal policies!
Sign of the tough times that need equally tough remedies? Maybe — and in fairness, the stats from the economic front tend to show the patient is “responding to treatment” to borrow that medical cliche.
Yet, to the masses, it hasn’t quite trickled down — which is why the Atikus, the Obis, the el-Rufais etc, of this polity, would weaponize current anguish and position selves as emergency saviours. They are not.
But it’s the president’s heavy cross to either explain the delayed trickle-down — and good luck on that, with empty pockets and rumbling tummies! — or ensure the trickle-down bursts into a manna-like torrent to sate the hungry and tame the angry!
As for the PDP slow death, blame Torpedo Atiku, and less Hurricane BAT!
