And Yet Again, Atiku Goofed

By Emameh Gabriel

I watched Atiku Abubakar on Arise TV’s Prime Time interview on Wednesday evening and found myself giggling like a schoolboy who had just witnessed this village fellow stumble into a gutter for the hundredth time. It was not a chuckle born of malice, I assure you. It was the helpless laughter of a man who has finally accepted that some people are simply incapable of learning.

The former Vice President did not disappoint me; he only confirmed everything that those of us who have been paying attention have said all along. Most of these men have nothing of substance to offer. Like I wrote in my article yesterday, the only thing they will keep telling Nigerians is a catalogue of problems — even the very problems they used their own hands to create for this country.

Atiku Abubakar is a man who has been chasing the presidency like a hunter pursuing a deer that has long since crossed into another forest. He has run and lost. He has run and lost again. He has knocked on the door of Aso Rock so many times that his knuckles have turned to dust. And yet, each time he returns to the public square, he comes bearing the same empty basket, offering the same stale bread, and expecting Nigerians to feast.

What struck me most forcibly about the interview was the casual manner in which Atiku threw his coalition partners under the wheels of a moving lorry. Here was a man who has spent the better part of two years parading himself as the conductor of a grand opposition orchestra, a coalition of strange bedfellows supposedly united by a common melody. And yet, on national television, with all the grace of a hippopotamus attempting ballet, he suggested that members of this coalition lack the requisite experience to lead.

Let us pause and savour the irony of that remark, for it is a fruit that ripens the longer you hold it. Consider how he spoke of former President Goodluck Jonathan. Atiku described Jonathan as inexperienced. But inexperienced in what theatre of governance? Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was a Deputy Governor, learning the ropes of state administration from the inside. He was a Governor, steering the ship of a state through turbulent waters. He was Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for nearly three years, sitting in the very cockpit of national power. And then he became President. Atiku Abubakar was Vice President for eight years — a full two terms — and never crossed the final bridge. If Jonathan was a novice, what then do we call a man who has spent eight years as second fiddle and four subsequent attempts still searching for the conductor’s baton?

The English novelist George Orwell observed that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” In Atiku’s hands, political language has become a worn-out tool, its teeth broken and its handle cracked. He cannot claim that his coalition partners are qualified to help him unseat a sitting president while simultaneously suggesting that they lack the experience to lead. That is like saying a carpenter is skilled enough to help you build a house but not skilled enough to own it once the construction is complete. You cannot drink from a cup and spit into it at the same time. Either these men are fit to govern, in which case you should be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them, or they are not, in which case you have been leading Nigerians down a dusty, winding road to nowhere.

Perhaps the most alarming revelation from the interview was Atiku’s promise to jettison virtually every policy introduced by the Tinubu administration. The student loan scheme? He would toss it into the river. The removal of fuel subsidy? He would drag it back from the grave. The unification of foreign exchange rates? He would untie that knot and retie it in the old, familiar shape. The tax reforms that benefit the poor? He would sweep them off the table like crumbs from a feast.

Now, I am no apologist for every decision made by this administration. A wise man does not praise every rain simply because it waters his farm. But one does not need to be a card-carrying member of the All Progressives Congress to recognise that some of these policies have roots that run deeper than the current political season. The student loan scheme, whatever its implementation challenges may be, represents a genuine effort to ensure that no Nigerian child is denied access to tertiary education because their father’s pocket is empty. To promise to scrap it without offering a superior alternative is not leadership; it is the behaviour of a man who sets fire to his neighbour’s barn simply because he cannot afford to build his own.

Atiku approached the Arise TV studio with his mouth opened. He was ready to swallow every policy in sight and regurgitate the same old slogans that have been circulating since the days of military rule. But where is the substance? Where is the plan? Where is the costed, credible alternative that addresses the fiscal crisis, the security challenges, and the infrastructure deficit that plague this nation like a stubborn rash that will not heal?

Atiku also spoke about his relationship with Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, suggesting that the former Kano State Governor’s political influence is now a river that has shrunk to a stream, flowing only within the banks of Kano State. And even that stream, he hinted, is drying up now that Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has returned to the All Progressives Congress.

The point is this: Atiku is already sharpening his excuses for why his coalition is collapsing before it has even been properly erected. He is building a house on the sand and complaining that the tide is coming in. The great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe told us that “a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.” Atiku seems to have forgotten where the rain of political misfortune first began to soak his garments. It began the moment he decided that ambition was a sufficient substitute for ideology, that alliances could replace grassroots organisation, and that complaining about the government of the day was enough to earn him the keys to the nation’s villa.

Let me conclude with this. For all his years in public life — and they are many, stretching back to a Nigeria that no longer exists except in old photographs — for all his wealth, which is considerable enough to buy the silence of many tongues, for all his connections, which reach into every corner of the political forest, Atiku Abubakar still offers Nigerians what the Yoruba call “talo ni ticket” — who owns the ticket? He presents himself as the answer, as if his name alone is a magic key that will unlock the doors of prosperity. He is a man who offers himself as the medicine without first diagnosing the disease.

The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, “O wad some Power the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us.” Atiku lacks that gift. He cannot see himself as others see him: a man who has been overtaken by history, a river that has been bypassed by a newer, faster current. He is like an old boxing champion who steps into the ring wearing the tattered remnants of his former glory, throwing punches at shadows while the real fight happens behind him. The younger generation of Nigerians are hungry for ideas, not names; for solutions, not slogans; for leaders who can see over the horizon, not those who are still squinting at the ground beneath their feet.

The interview was poor by all standards. No new ideas emerged from the television screen. Just blanket statements and recycled grievances, like old records playing the same scratchy tune. And yet again, Atiku goofed.