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  • Atiku rallies voters for PDP candidates in Kogi, Imo, Bayelsa

    Atiku rallies voters for PDP candidates in Kogi, Imo, Bayelsa

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has appealed to voters in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa states to vote candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in governorship elections coming up in the three states on Saturday.

    Atiku, in a statement on Wednesday, noted that although there was a groundswell of dissatisfaction and resentment about how the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) “walked back on the promise of transparency in the last general elections”, such shortcoming should not be enough reason to give up on democracy.

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    The candidate of the PDP in the last presidential election urged the electorate in the three states to derive wisdom in the immortal saying of a former US President, James Monroe that; “the best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.”

    Continuing, Atiku said: “Our objective of defeating anti-democratic elements in our polity cannot be successful if we refuse to go out en-mass to cast our ballot on Election Day.

    “And, that is why I am appealing to the good people of Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states to come out in large numbers this Saturday to vote for the candidates of the PDP in those respective elections.

  • Atiku appeals to voters in Kogi, Imo, Bayelsa to vote PDP candidates

    Atiku appeals to voters in Kogi, Imo, Bayelsa to vote PDP candidates

    Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has appealed to voters in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa states to vote candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in governorship elections coming up in the three states on Saturday.

    Atiku, in a statement on Wednesday, November 8, noted that although there was dissatisfaction and resentment about how the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) “walked back on the promise of transparency in the last general elections”, such shortcoming should not be enough reason to give up on democracy.

    The candidate of the PDP in the last presidential election urged the electorate in the three states to derive wisdom in the immortal saying of a former US President, James Monroe that, “the best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.”

    Atiku said: “Our objective of defeating anti-democratic elements in our polity cannot be successful if we refuse to go out en-mass to cast our ballot on Election Day.

    “And, that is why, I am appealing to the good people of Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states to come out in large numbers this Saturday to vote for the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party in those respective elections.

    Read Also: Tinubu launches digital population database system

    “In Bayelsa State, Governor Duoye Diri has given a good account of himself as a leader who is directly responsible to the people. His giant strides in the areas of infrastructure and social development speak volumes about how his government has been able to touch the lives of the people positively.

    “In Kogi, Senator Dino Melaye has shown great capacity to stand on the side of the people and, by so doing, using every opportunity available to him to drive speedy development to his constituents. Electing him governor will afford him a bigger platform to do even more.

    “In Imo State, too, Senator Samuel Nnaemeka Anyanwu has a rich profile of a political leader who is not only in touch with the grassroots, but is committed to protecting the interests of his constituents. Senator Anyanwu is a political leader who I believe has what it takes to take Imo State to higher pedestal in good governance.

    “While our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party, has put forth visionary leaders whose main objective is to serve the people, it is a different story altogether with our main rival, the APC”.

    Taking a swipe at the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku described the APC candidates in the three states as “stooges of some godfathers within or outside of those states”.

    “The elections this Saturday are absolutely about the people. It is absolutely not about any political godfather.

    “That is why it is important for the people of Imo, Bayelsa, and Kogi state to come out in large numbers to vote for the PDP and to reject the APC that has brought us untold hardship and misery.

    “These elections are more about the fortunes of the common people, and it is my firm belief that when the people vote and stand to protect their votes, democracy wins. When democracy wins, the people invariably win.”

  • Group threatens legal action against Atiku, Obi over comments against Supreme Court

    Group threatens legal action against Atiku, Obi over comments against Supreme Court

    One of the frontline Tinubu support groups, Disciples of Jagaban (DOJ), has threatened to take legal action against the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi over comments discrediting Supreme Court.

    The group said the ‘grumbling’ by the due of Atiku and Obi after the Supreme Court verdict was aimed at discrediting the judiciary and setting the country on fire, therefore, the DOJ will sue them for treason if they don’t desist.

    The national coordinator of DOJ, Comrade Abdulhakeem Alawuje in a statement on Wednesday categorically asked Atiku and Obi to prepare themselves for another round of legal battle with the Disciples of Jagaban across the world for “this ignoble journey you have embarked upon.”

    He sdaid: “Our initial thoughts was that you would pretend to be reliable and responsible after the landslide and much applauded Supreme Court Judgment by feigning some civility at the least. But now, you have climbed the trees beyond the leaves.

    “You seem to have declared war against the very nation you called yourself a citizen of and you so much love to rule by all means however diabolical. You called the wind, you will have to deal with a whirlwind.

    “The Supreme Court is not related to a clan, religion or political party. Everyone is equal before it. When you disrespect the apex court, you have offended the entire nation and you have committed a very serious crime.

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    “If anything, by your unguarded statements and unpatriotic actions, it is clear that none of you is capable of ruling this nation. You don’t have the character and the capabilities.

    “Tinubu will not take you seriously. The court has ruled. You may go and hug a transformer. As a political figure, it behoves a person of Obi’s standing to guide their statement in public. You will be held responsible for whatever you say. Control your political emotions or prepare to face legal battles with us.”

    The group, however, called on Nigerians to disregard the statement that Tinubu would have any confrontation with either Obi or Atiku supporters, distracting him from tackling the economic and security crisis confronting the nation.

    “We personally warned the Vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party, who failed to understand the limit of public statements. He thought he could make outbursts as comments. We have some respect and regard for your family. Any other further criminal agitation will make us respond to you accordingly. The other time you wept profusely in public for political insult on your family. That has shown us the level of your maturity in politics and your life experience.

    It stated: “Tinubu is a focused president that none of your ranting and childish grumbling can distract. He has won all the battles you guys set up to discourage him from contesting. He won all the traps you set against him during the campaign, he beat you silly during your legal action right from the Tribunal to the Supreme Court.

    “DOJ however urged the presidency to concentrate on governance and allow us to handle them legally. The last day of Supreme Court judgment was the time Tinubu has no case with any one of them.”

  • Atiku undermines his own ambition

    Atiku undermines his own ambition

    On October 30, former vice president and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, finally spoke on his loss at the Supreme Court in the case he filed against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its victorious candidate in that election, President Bola Tinubu. The speech was undoubtedly written for him, for everything in the text stands in direct and scornful refutation of his life and ideas. He blames the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Supreme Court for his loss. As far as he is concerned, he presented all the evidence necessary to get the case decided in his favour, but his valiant and noble attempt was thwarted by the incompetence and deviousness of the two institutions. He did not have an impressive school leaving certificate, but he brandishes a diploma in law (1969) and a master’s in international relations (2021). His speech, however, displays nothing of the higher learning or political virtue his education confers on him. He misreads the electoral law, misapplies the constitution, and far more embarrassingly, especially for someone who passes himself off as a statesman and patriotic political titan, misjudges both his personal accomplishment and the mood of the country.

    In the first four paragraphs of his speech, he tells audacious lies about the role he played in Nigerian politics, including what he has stood for all his life, and insinuations about what he may yet accomplish on a hypothetical tomorrow. In those prefatory statements, where he speaks with absolute cocksureness of what he supposed was the malfeasance of the two institutions in question, he avers that history will vindicate him. He knows nothing about history. Then he pontificates about democracy and the rule of law, of which he was both an avatar and a palladium. He does not say what qualifies him for the robes he wore in the speech, for the robes were ponderous and ungainly over the thin and spectral frame of his self-confessed qualities. But because some bright and dreamy hack writer composed his diatribe against the court and INEC, he believes that by merely making those self-adulatory claims, he was invariably entitled to wear those grand and noble robes.

    He repeatedly hammers on his years of litigations, which he assumes must be noble because they exuded a long and profound history of political activism and agitation, and he thus proudly wears that hat. It escapes him that his litigiousness, much of it anchored on flimsy and self-gratifying evidence, could in fact be baleful pointers to his disputatiousness, a grumbler eternally griping about minor hurts and chasing chimeras. He then zeroes in on his last Supreme Court case, speaks fondly about United States (US) courts from which he says he had procured unassailable evidence, and damns everybody else from APC to INEC, and from the Nigerian courts to Nigerians themselves whom he dismisses as complicit. For someone who claims to have a diploma in law, it is bewildering that he neither says anything about the sanctity of laws nor talks of estimating the evidentiary worth of his foreign evidence. He then proceeds to cast aspersion on legal technicalities as if they are distinguishable from the law, and feigning dismay, pronounces glibly on how the courts should have proceeded. The lower court that adjudicated his case, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), gave its judgement on September 6, while the Supreme Court affirmed the judgement on October 26. Neither he nor his speechwriters had obviously read and digested the judgements, though they had enough time. Had he read the two documents, his law diploma should have impelled him to a better and deeper understanding of the inviolability of the justices’ reasoning and conclusions.

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    A final year law student, confronted with the arguments and evidence of the Atiku legal team, could not but come to the conclusion that the former vice president had no case, regardless of whether the student or any other person for that matter loathed the winner, President Tinubu. Worse, it did not need the same final year law student, after perusing the final address of the Atiku team, to come to the safe conclusion that the Supreme Court would unanimously dismiss his case and affirm the president’s victory in the election. Alhaji Atiku in his more than 2,700-worded speech paid no heed to the legal arguments adumbrated in the two judgements before coming to his conclusion that both the Supreme Court and INEC acted disloyally to the national cause and the cause of democracy. Instead, he focused cheerfully on the moral insinuation of a forgery he neither argued before the lower court nor tendered procedurally before the Supreme Court. He hoped his casuistry and the menace he and others had stirred in the wider and gullible public would be sufficient to intimidate the court. Six times, Alhaji Atiku tried to be president; he nearly could have become president in any of those times. For a man who trifles with facts, pays lip service to the concepts of democracy and the rule of law, speaks loftily about the future of Nigeria without discussing or propounding anchors for such a future, and wails apocalyptically about the failure of others while glossing blithely over his own abysmal moral and business failings, winning the presidency in any of those six times would have had tragic and lasting consequences for the country.

    There have been suggestions that his insistence on staying put in the country to help Nigeria in its struggle for democracy are designed to pave the way for a future run at the presidency. Despite his boastings, and notwithstanding his litigious propensity, Alhaji Atiku is not a democrat nor does he care a hoot about democracy. He never fought for it, and may even harbour contempt for the idea. Fighting for democracy implies having a deep understanding of the concept. Alhaji Atiku is decidedly and roundly superficial. His court forays, particularly weaponised to damage the credibility and reputation of President Tinubu, have also been imbued with sacredness as a way of preparing him for a future presidential race. Those who advance such arguments exaggerate Alhaji Atiku’s mental and physical capacity. Apart from his rudimentary grasp of running a modern and complex economy and society, not to say his failing strength, it will take a miracle at 81 years old in 2027 to run for president, and much bigger altruism to make him support a younger and capable candidate. He is too selfish to care. Alhaji Atiku has reached the end of his tether. He will not run for president in 2027, nor support anyone for the position; instead, he will fade away well before the next elections. 

  • Join hands with Tinubu to build Nigeria, OPC urges Atiku, Obi

    Join hands with Tinubu to build Nigeria, OPC urges Atiku, Obi

    Oodua People’s Congress (reformed) has encouraged the presidential candidates of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi to join hands with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to build the country.

    Reacting to President Tinubu’s electoral victory at the Supreme Court in Abuja last week, the National President of the group, Chief Oludare Adesope said Atiku and Obi should stay back in the country and contribute resourcefully to the progress of Nigeria.

    The advice came from reports that Atiku may be jetting out of the country following his defeat again at the apex court in Abuja.

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    Adesope, while addressing the jubilant Nigerians in his Lagos office, immediately after the Supreme Court pronouncement, advised the duo to accept the outcome of their appeal and contribute meaningfully to the country’s development.

     Adeope urged President Tinubu to be more committed to the cause of making Nigeria great again. He said: ‘ I want to advise President Bola Tinubu to take security seriously, kidnapping, robbery, attacks by herdsmen, and pipeline vandalisation among others can be prevented.

  • Atiku’s lullaby

    Atiku’s lullaby

    Lullabies are soft songs to lull into sleep a screeching baby.  Alhaji Atiku Abubakar screeches with undignified pain after the Supreme Court quashed his appeal, 7:0. 

    But he invents a lullaby, of self-heroism and “democratic proposals”, to blunt a decidedly ugly swan song.  He can tell all that to the marines!

    Indeed, only the political Gen. Z, too brainwashed to know their country’s history, will regard as “democratic”, Sani Abacha’s National Constitutional Conference (NCC: 1996), “with full constituent powers”; and Atiku’s latter-day glamourization of the six-year rotatory presidency, among the six geo-political zones, which NCC proposed.

    The one was devised to bury the golden June 12, 1993 mandate of Chief MKO Abiola.  The other was invented to impose Gen. Abacha’s own tragic transmutation to horrid civilian president, with the sweet dummy that it would only last a “single” term.  

    Both blew up in Abacha’s face — and just as well!

    Neither is anything but democratic.  Indeed, any claim by Atiku to justify his grave obsession to be president is a tragic claw at the straws — straws that starkly expose his hollow claims as a democrat.

    To refresh: the true leaders of the South West boycotted Abacha’s NCC.  Heroes of that age included the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, who turned his back on the NCC — which was a clever ploy to bury MKO Abiola’s mandate and “move on”.  So did other genuine democrats nationwide, who saw through Abacha’s trick.

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    But political careerists, among whom Atiku proudly counted, trooped to NCC to seek rank, if fresh opportunism, after conspiring against June 12, the true foundation of the 4th Republic, which dawned in 1999.  

    Major-Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua — whose faction of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) traded off Abiola’s mandate for Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING) — headed this phalanx, with Atiku, his mentee, in tow.  But Abacha outsmarted them all.

    So, both Abacha’s NCC and its proposed six-year, single-term rotational presidency, were failed coups against Abiola and his sacred mandate.  So, it’s rich for Atiku to flash a collapsed coup, as democratic “solution”, after his crash at the Supreme Court.  

    Karma is so, so sweet: those who fought for June 12 are fairly and firmly in power today!  It is what it is!  Let Atiku and co live with it!

    But again, the Wazirin Adamawa can sing his lullaby of self-praise to the marines.  For all his anti-democracy plots, he got more than his due to become Nigeria’s No. 2 — just as Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who became president by foxy Army Arrangement.

    Karma laughs last though, as both are still alive to endure the sorry collapse of their machinations.  May God grant them more years yet to endure their political purgatory!

  • Atiku, Obi and fellow election deniers

    Atiku, Obi and fellow election deniers

    Resorting to the judiciary for election disputes as enshrined in the 1999 constitution, section six and part VIII of the Electoral Act 2022, has become part of our electoral process. Although the ideal as many have argued is that INEC remains the final arbiter in all elections matters but as many others have also argued, any provision that offers relief to the aggrieved and prevents a loser from appealing to the mob is unarguably healthy for the democratization process.

    The problem with Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi however was that they are sore losers who having failed to win the popular votes or meet the twelve-two-third of 36 states and Abuja constitutional spread threshold, tried to use the judiciary to upturn the result of the election through technicalities.

    While that option was being half-heartedly pursued, they resorted to lies, misinformation  and propaganda using the social media, all designed to assassinate the character of the winner of the election even as they moved from one TV platform to another issuing incendiary statements aimed at undermining the integrity of the judiciary. Many believed it was all part of an elaborate sinister plan to create social dislocation through their disruptive behaviour during the eight months the nation was held hostage, if they could not have it.

    Some of the unintended consequences of their unpatriotic act of trying to undermine the legitimacy of a free and fair election won round and square by their opponent however was the unveiling of themselves as sore losers driven not by consideration for the stability of our nation but by their own naked ambitions. That it was all about them and not about us, the facts stare us all on the face.

     Atiku had contested for the presidency six times jumping from one political platform to the other until 2023 when he, in breach of PDP constitution and by appealing to ethnic sentiments, secured the party’s presidential ticket which immediately led to the fragmentation of the party into four. Similarly, Obi had jumped from APGA, the platform that gave him an opportunity to serve as a two term Anambra governor to PDP where he was rewarded with VP slot to Atiku in the 2019 election.

    With PDP constitution which zoned its presidential ticket to the south, Obi was convinced 2023 was his turn until Atiku, driven by his own inordinate ambition manipulated the outcome of PDP primaries with the help of Tambuwal. Obi resigned from PDP, joined Labour Party, the all-purpose vehicle for distressed politicians. He decided to pay Atiku back in his own coins by returning to the east to equally exploit the ethnic and religious sentiments of his marginalized Igbo people that had served PDP faithfully for 22 years. Although polls after polls conducted by his supporters among urban immigrant youths placed him ahead of other contestants, he came a distant third having lost woefully in nearly all the 19 northern states.

    And if you are still in doubt that it was all about these two sore losers with a common world view and not about Nigeria, let us interrogate their activities since they discovered from election results from their polling agents across the country by February 27, two days after the election, that the election was lost and won.

     Unlike President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, both sore losers, despite not meeting any of the constitutional requirements to become president claimed victory and headed to the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) alleging massive rigging and INEC’s failure to deploy the IREV for the simultaneous transmission of results. With a unanimous ruling of the five judges, their case was dismissed. The ruling aired live was hailed as ‘sound in law’ by leading lights of the legal profession.

    Both headed for the Supreme Court without any new evidence beyond Atiku’s attempt to hang on to a straw in form of the president’s faulty Chicago University records that has been in the public space since 1999 when he ran for governor in Lagos State.  Once again, the seven Supreme Court judges in a unanimous decision dismissed Atiku’s case and spent less than five minutes in dismissing the case of Obi whose lawyers the judges insinuated were on a safari.

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    For leaders and true democrats who care about our crisis of nation-building, that was an opportunity to end all forms of disruptive behaviours and join the winner of the election in addressing some of our self-inflicted  problems by the likes of Atiku and Obi who because of the Nigerian factor, are multi billionaires without owning any industry.

    Instead, the two sore losers and their parties once again roundly rejected a judgment hailed by legal giants including Prof Itse Sagay, Robert Clarke, Chief Mike Ahamba, Koyinsola Ajayi, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, Sylva Ogwemoh, Babatunde Fashanu and Wahab Shittu, all Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), as ‘unassailable’. PDP without proof claimed that “the majority of Nigerians are alarmed and disappointed and gravely concerned with the reasoning of the Supreme Court” while Atiku accused INEC and the judiciary of “being trapped in an evil web of political machination”.

    But they are not alone.  There are other elections deniers who, because their only reality is the picture in their heads, believe Nigeria is a zoo as long as Nigerians refuse to swallow their warped prejudices. We have Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former minister of education and solid minerals, who described the Supreme Court’s verdict affirming President Bola Tinubu’s victory as a ‘judicial enthronement of criminality’.

    We also have in the group, our New York based Adichie Chimamanda , a world acclaimed fiction writer and one of the best thinkers of the century,  who from the hearsay reports of her cousins back home, was persuaded the result of the election was “ so unacceptably and unforgivably flawed”. She went on to query US President Joe Biden for “endorsing a president-elect who according to her “has emerged from an unlawful process”. Finally, she accused The Washington Post of intellectual laziness” for accepting INEC’s “officials claim that non-simultaneous transmission of the result’ by IREV was due to technical glitches and not sabotage”.

    We also have Professor Pat Utomi, a political economist reputed for working closely with eminent Nigerian politicians since the collapse of the second republic but today says ‘democracy must be brought down because it is not working for us’. For him, “his problem is not whether the Nigerian revolution is imminent; it is knocking on the door. The burden on my soul is that it could be the dawning of Robert Kaplan’s Coming Anarchy that may be a chauffeur-driven passage on the road to Somalia.”

    We can add to the list Charles Oputa, a veteran singer and social activist, who with alleged prodding of Obasanjo took the youths out on the street of Abuja after Tinubu’s victory demanding for an inauguration of an interim national government or the take-over by the military.

    Finally since history often repeats itself, let us draw a parallel between election deniers of 1993 and 2023. In 1993, we had as key players Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Bashir Tofa, Arthur Nzeribe, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Walter Ofonagoro, Clement Apamgbo and Tom Ikimi etc. Today we have Obasanjo, Obi, Atiku, Ezeife, Utomi, Ezekwesili, Adichie and Charles Oputa among others.

    But we know it is more about them and less about us.  And that is why the Nigeria these election deniers cannot control is a Lugard’s zoo or a failed state. Atiku accused INEC and the judiciary of “being trapped in an evil web of political machination”.

  • Atiku’s miscalculations

    Atiku’s miscalculations

    Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the February 2023 general elections, fancies himself a democrat. Unfortunately, he lacks the qualities of those who can be so described. 

    The 19th century American philosopher Williams James described the ‘democratic temperament’ as comprising ‘a willingness to act, the placing of public good ahead of private comfort, generosity toward one’s opponents, and mutual respect among citizens of different viewpoints, races, genders, classes, and religions.’

    I would add that a democrat accepts that electoral contests can only have two outcomes – win or lose. They respect rules, conventions and don’t set out to destroy institutions which are constitutionally mandated to manage these contests or adjudicate when disputes break out. They also know there’s time for everything; a time for electioneering and a time to move on.

    Atiku’s post-election conduct over the years shows he lacks the democratic temperament. This deadly deficiency has led him, time and again, to make costly miscalculations that have blighted what could have been a stellar political career with recurring cycles of defeat. 

    On Monday, the former VP formally reacted to his latest loss at the Supreme Court. It was a bilious outing that diminished him. He didn’t congratulate the winner – Bola Tinubu; not that it mattered. In this, he’s queuing behind the likes of Donald Trump in the column of graceless losers.

    What shocked me the most, however, was his blithe tarring of the Supreme Court as ‘compromised.’ As usual, he didn’t provide particulars of this ‘compromise’, just as he didn’t table one shred of evidence to back claims that he won the February election. But in a moment of extreme recklessness he put a question mark on the integrity of the seven justices who sat over his appeal, as well as the three others who were not on the panel. That is not fair, reasonable or rational.

    I know that losing politicians picking on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the courts is national sport in Nigeria. But savaging important institutions of a country you aspire to govern just because you lost an election, fairly or unfairly, is despicable.

    His scorched earth personal attacks against Tinubu, his erstwhile comrade-in-arms were all too revealing of an individual for whom nothing matters – not the past, not the present, not the future. His only reason for living is being installed president of this nation. For thirty years he has invested his all pursuing this one goal without success. It’s not because of a gang-up of the cosmos against him: he must have been doing something wrong.

    Back in 1999 when then PDP presidential candidate, Olusegun Obasanjo, was prospecting for a running mate, legend has it he was totally sold on picking the charismatic former Kano State Governor, Abubakar Rimi, until one-time Minister of Works, Tony Anenih, intervened.

    He reportedly warned Obasanjo that if he went ahead with Rimi, he should make sure there was a policeman always standing outside the door as they would fight regularly. But if he wanted someone who would be one hundred percent loyal he should appoint Atiku who had just been elected governor of Adamawa State. His counsel was accepted but as we would soon see, even the famed wheeler-dealer was mistaken. The even-tempered image of the man he was promoting would turn out to be a mere veneer.

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    Many have said that in Atiku Obasanjo saw someone he could groom to take over as president. But his VP was a man in a hurry. In no time his associates started marketing a poisonous political concoction called the ‘Mandela Option.’ It was so named because the veteran South African leader had elected to stand down after just one term on account of advanced age. It was his choice.

    Obasanjo didn’t see himself in similar circumstances. He was still vigorous, mentally alert and determined to serve two terms if the voters agreed. While has dreaming, his scheming deputy was quietly taking over the PDP. By the time the 2003 electoral season rolled over the president found himself going on bended knees to beg Atiku for support. It was a humiliation he never forgot. It was a miscalculation that the man he once thought of installing as successor paid for dearly, as he was reduced to just drinking tea in office and finally driven out of the ruling party.

    In 2011, after Goodluck Jonathan, had taken over following the death of Umaru Yar’Adua, the mood within PDP was that the incumbent should be allowed to take the presidential ticket. Atiku disagreed and rallied three other Northern aspirants – Aliyu Gusau, Bukola Saraki and Ibrahim Babangida – to offer a regional challenge to the emerging consensus. The ex-VP was chosen as the Northern consensus candidate and took his challenge to the convention floor on Eagle Square, Abuja. 

    Despite his best efforts, he was resoundingly defeated. Clearly sensing the fate that awaited him at the convention ballot, his speech to delegates was classic Atiku. It was a bitter and explosive attack on his rival and the party leadership who he insinuated had already rigged the outcome against him. He would sulk for the next four years, biding his time.

    In 2015, he was planning another run for president. Again, Jonathan who wanted a second term stood in the way. He had the option of waiting patiently for another four years, preserving PDP as the potent platform that had bragged it would rule for 60 years. Instead, the impatient Atiku joined the revolt of five governors and others who defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). That critical move empowered the nascent opposition, emasculated the ruling party and led to its downfall. 

    It was another Atiku miscalculation. He had overconfidently assumed he would walk in and pick up the ticket. He underrated the level of support that the APC legacy groups had committed to Muhammadu Buhari. After he was worsted at the Teslim Balogun Stadium late in 2014, he went into another massive sulk – retreating from virtually all party activities.

    Sensing that Buhari would seek a second term in 2019 and APC with its commitment to power rotation would not hand the ticket to another Northerner in 2023, Atiku staged a predictable return to his PDP vomit. After losing handily four years ago, he rehashed his usual post-defeat chorus. 

    But the ex-VP’s defining miscalculation happened in this electoral cycle. His decision to run against the power rotation principle that argued it was only fair that after eight years of Buhari, the next president should come from the South, broke his party. It was partly why Peter Obi left and took the Southeast with him. It was the reason Nyesom Wike fought him till the bitter end. When he had the option of sacrificing then party chair, Iyorchia Ayu, to appease aggrieved members, he chose to thumb his nose at his opponents. The upshot was that a divided house lost to a more cohesive one.

    Atiku believes a coalition of the judiciary and INEC felled him. He is free to live wherever he chooses: in Dubai or in denial. The historical fact is that a presidential election was held in which the traditional PDP vote fractured three ways because of the Turaki Adamawa’s grand miscalculation.

    He is now compounding his error by attacking the Supreme Court over an irreversible election outcome. If Atiku didn’t believe in the integrity of our courts, why subject himself to their adjudication at tribunal and apex court levels. If judgment had gone in his favour would he have made the same assessments? 

    He has hinted he might join the race come 2027. Again, he is assuming that the PDP was created only for the actualisation of his presidential dreams. He thinks the party would be ever ready to hand its ticket to a man who has lost again and again. I dare say if the party declines him the ticket, he will look for another platform on which to run.

    A true democrat has an understanding of the times. A few days ago, former US Vice President Mike Pence dropped out of the race for the Republican Party ticket in the face of the robust bid by his former boss Trump. He said after quiet contemplation he came to the conclusion that ‘this is not my time.’ A true democrat is realistic. They know when to call it a day. Fake ones don’t, they are driven only by their primary obsession. Nothing else matters. 

  • Atiku slams Supreme Court over election verdict

    Atiku slams Supreme Court over election verdict

    • APC: he is delusional

    Atiku Abubakar, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the February 25 election, yesterday faulted last Thursday’s judgment of the Supreme Court that put an end to his quest to upturn the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    At a news conference in Abuja at the PDP national secretariat, he suggested an amendment to the Constitution to ensure that election petitions are decided before swearing-in.

     He accused the Supreme Court of taking sides with the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    The highest court dismissed the appeals filed by Atiku and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart Peter Obi as unmeritorious.

    The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) described Atiku’s tirade against the Supreme Court and his claims as “delusional” and “unstatesmanly”.

    It added that the former vice president should be a sportsman, rather than behaving like a sore loser.

     Presidential adviser  Bayo Ononuga said contrary to the ex-VP’s claim, Nigeria is not doomed. It is only Atiku’s inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed. Nigeria is moving forward and set to achieve its manifest destiny.

     A senior lawyer Wahab Shittu (SAN) chided Atiku for his disparaging remarks of the Supreme Court, which he described as defamatory and uncharitable.

     Atiku said: “If the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, implies by its judgment that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost and the country is doomed irrespective of who occupies the presidential seat.

      “If the Supreme Court decides that the electoral umpire, INEC, can tell the public one thing and then do something else in order to reach a corruptly predetermined outcome, then there is really no hope for the country’s democracy and electoral politics.

      “When two critical institutions like the court and the electoral commission are trapped in an evil web of political machination, it becomes next to impossible for democracy to thrive.

      “Obviously, the consequences of those decisions for the country will not end at the expiration of the current government. They will last for decades. I am absolutely sure that history will vindicate me.

      “The position of the Supreme Court, even though final, leaves so much unanswered. The court and indeed the judiciary must never lend itself to politicisation as it is currently the norm with nearly every institution in Nigeria.”

     Atiku believes the judgments of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) and the Supreme Court have eroded trust in the electoral system and democracy.

      According to him, the courts took sides with the electoral umpire to undermine the use of technology during the voting and collation process.

      The former Vice President said it would be difficult to convince Nigerians to vote in future elections, as their votes in the last election were “stolen and given to someone they did not vote for”.

      Continuing, he said: “When people lose trust and confidence in elections, democracy is practically on life support.

      “And by affirming and legitimising the continued lack of transparency in our electoral system, the courts are continuing to usurp the rights of voters to elect their leaders.

     “The other grave implication is that contestants in Nigeria’s elections should do whatever is necessary to be declared the winner.

      “Only lawlessness and anarchy will result from such, with violence, destruction and implosion and loss of our country likely to follow. I believe that we still have a small window to prevent these from happening.

      “I still believe that we can rescue this country from the strange imposters that have seized it illegally and are holding it by the jugular.”

      Atiku, 76, hinted he was not in any hurry to quit partisan politics.

      He said: “As for me and my party, this phase of our work is done. However, I am not going away.

      “For as long as I breathe, I will continue to struggle with other Nigerians to deepen our democracy and rule of law and for the kind of political and economic restructuring the country needs to reach its true potential.”

      Insisting that he won the election, the PDP candidate said: “What the Supreme Court did by its judgment, was to say that crime is good and should be rewarded.

    “Let me caution that the leaders of those African countries that have completely collapsed into chaos never came together one day and agreed to collapse their countries.

    “Rather their countries collapsed because of the incremental and compounding individual and collective utterances and actions of those leaders.”

     Constitution

    amendment proposals

     Atiku proposed further amendments to the Constitution that would prevent the courts or tribunals from deciding winners of elections in the future.

    He said: “Firstly, we must make electronic voting and collation of results mandatory. This is the 21st century and countries less advanced than Nigeria are doing so already. It is only bold initiatives that transform societies.

      “Secondly, we must provide that all litigation arising from a disputed election must be concluded before the inauguration of a winner. This was the case in 1979.

      “The current time frame between elections and inauguration of winners is inadequate to dispense with election litigations.

      “Thirdly, in order to ensure popular mandate and real representation, we must move to require a candidate for president to earn 50% +1 of the valid votes cast, failing which a run-off between the top two candidates will be held.

      “Most countries that elect their presidents use this Two-Round System (with slight variations) rather than our current First-Past-the-Post system.

      “Examples include France, Finland, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, Poland, Turkey and Russia, Argentina, Brazil, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Mozambique, Madagascar and even Liberia where a run-off is expected to hold in the coming days.

      “Fourthly, in order to reduce the desperation of incumbents and distractions from governing and also to promote equity and national unity, we need to move to a single six-year term for President to be rotated among the six geo-political zones.

      “This will prevent the ganging up of two or more geo-political zones to alternate the presidency among themselves to the exclusion of other zones.

      “INEC should be mandated to verify the credentials submitted to it by candidates and their parties and where it is unable to do so – perhaps because the institutions involved did not respond in time – it must publicly state so and have it on record.

      “By improving the transparency of the electoral process and reducing the incentives to cheat, in addition to transparency in the appointment of judges and other judicial reforms, the number of election petitions as well as corruption in the judiciary will be significantly reduced.

      “More importantly, we would have succeeded in taking away the right to elect leaders from the courts and return it to the voters to whom it truly belongs.”

        APC to Atiku: be a

    sportsman, accept defeat

     The faulted Atiku Abubakar’s comments on the Supreme Court.

     National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, said Atiku’s statement was a “long, windy, incoherent and preposterous speech unbefitting of a former Vice President.”

    He added the allegations made by Atiku “were roundly dismissed by the Presidential Election Petitions Court and the Supreme Court as unsubstantiated and unproven”.

      The spokesman added: “Strikingly, nowhere in his long epistle of a press statement did Atiku state that he won the election, corroborating the courts’ finding and decision that he did not win the election.

      “It is delusional for Atiku, and his degenerate PDP, to have expected the courts to rely on their bogus, flimsy, unverifiable, uncorroborated, illogical and hearsay evidence to upturn an election that was conducted in substantial compliance with the Constitution and electoral laws of our land.

      “Thankfully, it does not lie in Atiku’s mouth to declare what constitutes ‘incontrovertible evidence’. That is the constitutional duty of the courts which they have discharged honorably and creditably.

     “For a serial election loser whose life ambition is to rule the country, we understand how pained and utterly distraught Atiku must be.

      “However, to continue to deny and disrespect the collective will of Nigerians, disparage the judiciary, incite rage and call our democratic institutions into question is beyond the pale.

     “Why is it so hard for Atiku to accept the popular choice of the electorate and the valid decisions of the courts?

    “How is it that a man of his stature can be so befuddled by this disturbing level of election and judicial denialism?

    “Would Atiku vilify the judiciary as he is doing had he won the election and upheld by the courts as the winner?

    Read Also: Accept defeat, be a statesman, APC counsels Atiku

    “Atiku, you are right that this is not and cannot be all about you. Yes, it is about the country Nigeria. Nigeria is greater than your unrealised ambition to be president. Nigeria must move and has moved on.

    “Regrettably, you missed the opportunity of your press conference to redeem your prestige as an elder and statesman by rising above political pettiness and offering befitting congratulations to President Tinubu on his electoral victory.

    Rather than vindicate you, history will not forget your unwillingness to put the country first and above your political ambition.”

    Ex-VP’s statement defamatory, says SAN

    A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Wahab Shittu, urged Atiku to retract his defamatory statement against the Supreme Court.

      He noted that while Atiku has the right to agree or disagree with the verdict in the context of his constitutional right of freedom of expression, such right must satisfy the element of justification on the index of legal reasoning.

     “It does not permit the former Vice President the latitude of accusing the apex court of legitimising forgery, identify theft and perjury as portrayed in his press conference,” the SAN said.

      The senior lawyer stressed that no matter how big anyone is, the law is bigger.

     Shittu added: “In a democracy, there are certain recognised fundamentals, including the democratic exercise of the gift of expression.

      “Constructive criticism is also an integral part of the right of democratic expression. However, this ought not to be deployed as a license or a vehicle/tool of blackmail and deliberate destruction of democratic institutions.

      “Did Alhaji Atiku Abubakar make the ground of forgery, identity theft and perjury part of his case in his petition before the Presidential Election Tribunal?

      “Did he also make these allegations part of his grounds of appeal to the Supreme Court?”

      He wondered whether Atiku was aware that allegations of identity theft, forgery and perjury are criminal offences that can only be established by proof beyond reasonable doubt.

      “The period of election is over. Now is the time for governance and all stakeholders, including Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, are expected to respect the judgment of the Supreme Court and the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which now rests constitutionally on the shoulders of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” Shittu added.

     ‘Power belongs to God’

      An APC chieftain in Lagos, Dr Kazeem Adeyanju, reminded Atiku that power belongs to God.

      He noted that the Islamic faith to which Atiku subscribes states that “power belongs to God and He gives it to whosoever he pleases”.

      Adeyanju, one of the party’s leading lights in Agege and a long-standing Tinubu follower since 1993, knocked the PDP strongman for acting like “a sore loser”.

      He wondered why a statesman like Atiku, a former Vice President, would fritter away the last of his goodwill and dump the sportsmanship spirit of politics.

      He said: “I least expected Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a longtime political associate of the President and one who had benefited from Tinubu’s large heart, when he once offered him the Action Congress (AC) platform in 2007, to be blowing such hot airs over the 2023 election.

      “Nigerians are beginning to suspect Atiku Abubakar. Why is he crying more than the bereaved? Is it by force to rule Nigeria?

      “His hostility even after the Supreme Court’s verdict is unbecoming of a statesman. While Atiku has the right to air his opinion, as a statesman, he ought to accept the verdict by the highest court in the land, congratulate the winner and move on.”

  • Options before Atiku

    Options before Atiku

    Those who think that Waziri Atiku  Abubakar’s craven bid to wrest the Presidency from Asiwaju Bola Tinubu ended with last week’s dismissal of Atiku’s appeal from the PEPTC where it had fared no better  cannot have reckoned with  his personal history as a candidate of habit nor with the capacity of his attorneys for frightful inventiveness.

    As the Supreme Court was getting ready to deliver its verdict on Atiku’s appeal,  Atiku’s attorneys were urging a federal court in the United States to compel the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the FDA and other agencies to release information in their archives that would help the Nigerian court arrive at a definitive ruling on whether Tinubu  was a proper candidate for the presidential election  in the first instance , and if not, whether he could lawfully continue to exercise the powers of president.

    For weeks, trawlers of the vast sewer that occupies much of the so-called social media space had been abuzz with reports that the imminent release of archives, said  to run into more than 20, 000 pages, would finally spell the doom of the Tinubu presidency they  regard as misbegotten.

    Early reports said the damning documents would be released 50 pages per day, or per week, depending on whichever fake source you tumbled on.  Later accounts raised the projected output to 100 pages a day or a week.  Neither projection satisfied the trollers.

    Much more gladdening to their attentive audience was the reporting by sources citing unidentified but unfailingly dependable sources that the entire archives would be dumped online in one fell swoop.  Let the parties concerned worry about the consequences

    In Nigeria, the opposition parties and Tinubu’s implacable adversaries could hardly wait for the release of the trove.  Many in Team Tinubu on the other hand were fretting that some investigative and regulatory agencies, particularly the FBI and the CIA whom they vest with omnipotence and omnicompetence, might deliver the coup de grace to the Tinubu presidency that the Chicago State University and a federal court had declined to grant.

    Atiku’s move was a transparent stunt.  The court dismissed it as meritless.

    And it was, indeed. Even at its most availing, the U. S. Freedom of Information Act FOIA that Atiku and his cohorts were invoking is not, contrary to what is generally supposed, a talisman.  It operates under the penumbra of the Fourteenth Amendment, which recognizes, albeit, narrowly, privacy as a constitutional right affording individuals protection from unwarranted intrusions by the government or police agencies.

    Complementarily, the law of privacy as enunciated by judges and enacted by  legislatures, deals with invasions of personal privacy by individual and businesses.  Atiku and his team were in effect seeking the authority of the court to invade Tinubu’s privacy.

    The court could have denied the request under an array of general practices as well as  statutory exemptions to invoking the FOIA in that manner.  To start with, information that is not in the public domain cannot be obtained using the FOIA.  Such information would for all practical purposes  be held in any of the government’s classification systems  and therefore unavailable on demand. 

    The classification system is almost omnivorous in its inclusiveness.  Government can classify any piece of information it chooses to classify.  A newspaper in the UK once tested this propensity to classify  when it deliberately published the menu at an Officers Mess  catering to the British General Staff.  The menu was classified as an official secret, and its unauthorized disclosure carried a stiff fine or a year’s imprisonment.

    In the event that your quest succeeds, the document you end up with is more often a cause of disappointment than fulfillment.  It is  heavily redacted, line after line and page after page blacked out in such a way that no artificial intelligence expert can reconstruct.  Only two lines per page on a 10-page document may survive redaction, and the information therein could could be bland as white bread.

    Generally, information relating to national defence, foreign policy,  the CIA’s operational methods and  materials in relation to the National Security Agency,  trade secrets, investigations in progress, and  inter-agency or intra-agency communications, cannot be obtained by invoking the FOIA.

    In rejecting the plaintiff’s application, the court cited Exemptions 6 and 7 under which the FOIA cannot be invoked to obtain information not in the public domain.

    Read Also: If Atiku, Obi contest again in 2027, they will lose – Reno Omokri

    Exemption 6  protects personnel, medical and similar files . These could not be furnished without a “clearly unwarranted invasion,” of someone’s privacy.

    Exemption 7 has a broader sweep.  It relates to investigatory files compiled for law-enforcement purposes if the production of such records could interfere with law enforcement, deprive one a fair trial, constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, disclose the identity of a confidential source, disclose investigative techniques, or endanger the life or safety of law enforcement personnel,

    It came as no surprise that Atiku’s request was denied.  It seems as if the plaintiff and his team were embarked on another fishing expedition.  Their trans-Atlantic endeavours having collapsed, it might seem that they have reached a dead end.   But they are nothing if not tenacious.  I will therefore not be surprised if  they henceforth  seek relief in jurisdictions nearer home.

    The forum that immediately  comes to mind comes to mind is the ECOWAS Court of Justice, by way of an application for relief for violation of  Atiku’s rights as enshrined in the African Charter of People’s and Human Rights, a right they claim was brusquely abridged by the Nigeria’s Independent  National Electoral Commission, the  Nigerian courts, and their American affiliates.

    They could relitigate before this supra-national court all the issues they had been litigating since to no avail since last February’s election and even make a persuasive case for stripping Tinubu of the post of President of the ECOWAS Commission, the body’s  Executive Authority.

    As readers will recall,  one of Tinubu’s first acts in the ECOWAS chair was to push through a resolution condemning the coup in Niger and ordering that country’s mutinous army to return to the barracks or  be dislodged by the ECOWAS  armies.  Four  members countries ruled by the military had made  it clear that they would not support such a move. 

    According to political observers, those countries and many more could be counted on to mobilize ECOWAS opinion against Tinubu’s tenure as president of its Executive Authority.

    Atiku’s case before the ECOWAS court might go thus: Tinubu was not  qualified to run for President of Nigeria.  He did  so in flagrant breach  of the Nigeria’s laws.  This being the case, he could not have won the presidential election, and should have no place in the Assembly of ECOWAS Heads of State.  All decisions taken by ECOWAS  since Tinubu became president of its Executive Council are therefore null and void and of no consequence whatsoever. 

    Failure to render that verdict and render it unambiguously,  it will be argued, would make the Ecowas Court of Justice an accessory in the betrayal of the fondest hopes and aspirations of peoples of African Descent worldwide who look to Nigeria for global leadership. Besides, it would call the continued existence of the Court and its parent body into question.

    If that fails, Atiku could to take his case all the way to the African Courts of Justice and Human Rights, the primary judicial agency of the African Union.

    If that fails, he could petition the United Nations to set up the civil equivalent of the International Criminal Court.  Nor does failure to realize that goal exhaust Atiku’s options.

    Just don’t count him out yet.