AN OPEN LETTER TO ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR

His Excellency
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar GCON (Turakin Adamawa)
Yola, Adamawa State.

Dear Sir,
THE CAT, THE DOG AND THE PIECE OF FRIED MEAT

I send my most esteemed regards to your honoured personality. I do not pay obeisance because you have ever done me any direct favour, but I send my respects because you are elderly to me in every regard of defining the word. You are an elder statesman, a very rich personality, a political thought leader and most of all a respected traditional title holder, Turakin Adamawa. It would be unethical for me to attempt to address you without attaching such respect as your status commands. I salute you sir and I send my highest regards with most humble considerations.
One of such era that brings to fore your status as an elder statesman in the country is the 1999 transition from Military to Democratic rule. It was an open secret that your support and involvement was inestimable towards the success of the presidential bid of Chief Olusegun Okikiola Obasanjo. Keen watchers of the Nigerian political landscape knew you played a very vital role in ensuring that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo GCFR became the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a democratically elected President.
It is well known among politicians that such favours especially of such huge proportions often get accompanied by certain promises of future favours. It will not surprise any Nigerian to hear that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo GCFR promised to support you to become President after he might have completed his eight year tenure. I was not there when such promises were made, but I am of a strong belief that such promises of a return of favour is not uncommon in the league of political gladiators. So, it is not surprising that you accepted to deputize him despite your status; at least he would have had to help you become President after his tenure...if he had kept his word!
However, as God would have the destiny of Nigeria managed, President Olusegun Obasanjo GCFR became drunk with power or maybe he suddenly repented of whatever bonds might have joined you to him at the time and he changed his mind. Instead of supporting you to become President, he began assassinating your character and his actions and inactions were beginning to paint you in bad light towards the end of his eight year stay in office. Although one good turn deserves another as the English adage would have us believe, yet he repaid your good turn with a bad one and things fell apart between you both.
You will wonder why I chose to remind you of this bitter tale of events. I do not intend to embitter you or make you sad, rather I intend to make this past bitter experience of yours, the very foundation of the kind of advice I intend to pass across to you. Because I read of your travails and your disappointments and I have come to realize the enormity of the hurt those disappointments would have brought you, I am writing this letter to offer some timely advice to your person. In what capacity you may begin to ask? I am writing in my capacity as a keen political watcher, an admirer of business prowess and a loyal Nigerian who believes in fairness, equity and mutual respect.
In 2008, I was privileged to be at a seminar delivered by Prof. Wesley Harris of MIT, United States of America. At the start of his talk, he played a documentary of the trickery-filled relationship between the cat and the dog. The documentary revealed how the cat stole a piece of meat and cunningly made it look like the dog did it. It would be easy to believe that the dog stole meat; we all know he loves meat, but in the reality of this situation, the cat was the culprit. How on earth does this analogy relate to this letter? I urge you to read on sir and you will find out how exactly it relates to you.
During the third-term saga of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, you were in the news for many wrong reasons. Some of your news headlines were due to allegations of corruption; some were due to the alleged move by the Senate at the time to impeach you as Vice-President while most of the headlines you made were centred on the imbroglio that was going on between you and the President, Olusegun Obasanjo GCFR. Some news articles painted you as being obsessed with the office of the Presidency and that you are desperate to get to the exalted position. Whether or not this is true, we were left to find out later.
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo successfully terminated your bid to succeed him as President which led to the election of late President Yar’adua GCFR. As most inexperienced politicians will do, you angrily left to pitch your tent with the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and you left the PDP with their ‘wahala’. I humbly refer to that defection at this time sir, so I can point out to you the mistake in that single action. Your defection, that single act of impatience, robbed you of the respect you had earned in the hearts of many Nigerians. A political gladiator stands his ground, he waits for the perfect opportunity to take his revenge, he does not run, he only hides, he does not fear, he only hesitates. Prior to the 1999 elections, you had a firm grip on the PDP through the Peoples’ Democratic Movement (PDM). I only wonder why you did not decide to wait for the perfect opportunity to re-affirm that control that you lost in the course of time.
I blessed God the day I heard of your return to PDP sometimes before 2011. My thought was, ‘at last, he has gone back to where he belongs’. I believe what you saw at the time that made you run from ACN was a clear difference in ideology, a near-total absence of internal democracy and all manner of political abracadabra alien to our present world. Your voyage to that party was somewhat marred with bitter experiences as it became clear to you that it was a particular cult-like Jagaban-led cabal that determined all happenings in the ACN. That voyage I humbly point out to you sir, was ill-fated from the start and dead on arrival.
Consequent upon your return to the PDP, you entered into the race for Presidency, against Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, one that qualifies only to be called your ‘political son’. In all honesty and with due regards to the person of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, he was no where compared to your status in the Nigerian political scene. I believe, that when a tussle becomes one between a father and a son, the father should for the sake of dignity and his pride, let go for the son. Where the father refuses to let go, disgrace might just be lurking around the corner. At the end of the tussle at the PDP primaries, you lost out and was almost relegated to the background in PDP politics. I am sorry to be reminding you of those things that have hurt your pride, but those memories are important to the advice I intend to offer you sir.
As if you went home to lick your wounds, you became ominously silent on almost all political issues and could just but wonder if you were still present in the Nigerian political stage, at least until further unfortunate news filtered out. The unfortunate news was your defection to the APC. I will go back to the analogy of the cat, dog and the piece of fried meat now. You see, in that analogy, you represent the dog; the PDP represents the cat while the office of President is the piece of fried meat. The reality of the situation is, the PDP has robbed you of the Presidency several times, even at those times when your chances were bright. Yet, it is hard for Nigerians to believe you were being robbed because the way you went about contesting for President, reeked of desperation. You wanted the seat, the PDP wanted the seat for some other persons, and they robbed you but the desperate look on your face made Nigerians think you lost because you were too greedy to plan well. Pardon my choice of words sir.
Before you defected to the APC, you should have asked yourself a simple question: that at what time has Bola Ahmed Tinubu ever considered defecting to the PDP in all his years of playing the dirty game of politics? The answer you get is that at no time have the likes of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Adebisi Akande, Olusegun Osoba and their cohorts considered defecting to another political party. Rather, they have bonded themselves together in their cult-like manner, and changed name severally (AD-AC-ACN-APC). It is not because the PDP does not look tempting, but because as the saying goes, ‘uneasy lays the head that wears the crown’. They have been rewarded with juicy leadership positions in the largest opposition party in Nigeria....hard work pays.
I believe and very strongly, that if you had stayed back in the PDP and continued a steady recuperation from the losses that the party had inflicted on your personality in the past, politics being a game of rotation would still have afforded you the opportunity to re-affirm your status in the party....soldier go, soldier come. What is my advice for you sir?
I advice that you make a strong resolve to stay put in the APC for the remainder of your political career. I want you to decide, that you will sink with that party if it sinks, or be glorified with it if it eventually becomes glorified somehow. Only stability can establish you yet again as a force to reckon with in the Nigerian political landscape. I advice that you resist all temptations to lend credence to the words of Labaran Maku that, “Atiku is behaving like a typical Fulani nomad”. Until you stay put and make home in one place, all Nigerians are going to see you as being unserious and of a volatile nature given your ‘nomadic’ antecedent. I humbly implore you sir, do not allow overblown ego to inhibit you from exerting your role as a National leader.
To face the reality, you have gone to the APC to face the same problem that you ran from in the PDP. The continued efforts of the likes of Murtala Nyako to establish themselves as the political leaders in Adamawa State was what nearly relegated you to the background at first. Now, you have gone to the APC to face the same set of challenges and that also will not be easy. I urge you to man up this time sir, and face all the challenges that may come your way. Only those who strive, ever attain the throne. Resolve in your heart, that the Presidency may never be yours, just like the dog never ate the meat, but hold as sacred the unity of our fatherland and the sanctity of our sovereignty. I so implore you sir.
On a last note sir, I want to advise you to erase all feelings of bitterness against your past political opponents, the like of OBJ and GEJ. No elder can truly be called an elder until he can forget the past and embrace all around the table of brotherhood. If you can forgive, and offer timely and constructive advice to the process of governance, then will you be truly treated as an elder statesman in the mix of Shehu Shagari, Ernest Shonekan etc. It is high time you joined that league.
While I have sent this pieces of advice in good faith, I do hope it gets onto your table and you give the lessons therein the highest considerations not minding the lowly direction from which the advice came.
Again, receive the assurances of my best considerations and warmest regards.
Thank you.

ODERINU ADEDAYO T.
ibuckresources@gmail.com
08039655168