Why Atiku’s Candidature is Becoming Appealing By Chidiebere Nwobodo

Hitherto, many of my friends on social media and beyond, who understood me as a veteran political pundit had been inundating my inbox and phone lines, with the request to know my stand on 2019 presidential election, especially as it relates to choice of candidate. My sincere answer had been that I would make up my mind after major political parties must have conducted and concluded their primaries. I never gave it a second thought.
But few days ago, I had a paradigm shift. After a painstaking, meditative thought process, I decided to take a stand; even before presidential primaries of major political parties. I did a brief research on the presidential aspirants and came out with this conclusion: Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is the path way to victory in 2019!
The million-dollar questions that will be racing through the minds of my readers at this juncture are: why Atiku? Is he not too old to run? Why not a younger candidate? Is Atiku not corrupt? Why this “desperate” man? Can Atiku even travel to United States? Why???
Before I marshall out mind-illuminating and unbiased answers to the above questions, without running the risk of prejudice, I will like to provide a background understanding to the political monster & dilemma Nigerians are going to confront in 2019.
Next year’s presidential election will be a different ballgame all together from what was obtained in 2015. Nigerians will deal with a government that has exacerbated the woes of this nation for the last three years, yet keep blaming the past for its gross incompetence and cluelessness. Nigerians, desirous of drastic change, will confront a President Buhari who has demonstrated through his actions and inactions that his only purpose of being in power, is just for the sake of it and lures of office. He has removed every doubt whether he has what it takes to rework Nigeria.
Opposition candidates will run against President Buhari who had made up his mind to re-contest in the face of contrary advice from prominent Nigerians, and will be ready to muscle any voice of dissent using the instrumentality of state institutions, just to cling to power at all cost. The PDP and other opposition parties have to go into this electoral battle with an APC—a ruling political party whose oxygen of survival is share propaganda and witch-hurting of opposition elements. And the list goes on.
Why Atiku? From my investigations and profiling of intending presidential aspirants in the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, former vice president of Nigeria, is the only candidate that President Buhari’s handlers dread like sheep fear lion. His emergence as the PDP presidential candidate will herald the fiercest political royal rumble in the contemporary history of Nigerian politics. He is the only presidential hopeful (amongst already declared aspirants) that will give President Buhari a good run for his money. He has been in the political trenches battling titans for decades.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is the only aspirant that has formidable political machinery across the six geo-political zones of the country. He is a political veteran par colossus with huge financial war-chest. He has enormous political goodwill among the political class, though misunderstood as “corrupt” and “desperate” by a section of the masses, who fell under the strong windstorm of propaganda ignited by those who detest Atiku’s cult-like fellowship among the political elites.
Is Atiku corrupt? Like most Nigerians, Atiku Abubakar is not without blemish; he is not a saint either. One thing that is still counting for him is that, he has not been charged, indicted let alone convicted on any known corruption case both in Nigeria and outside the shores of the country. Atiku was a victim of jungle justice in the court of public opinion; of which was instigated by former president Olusegun Obasanjo, whose inglorious Third Term bid was scuttled by group of democrats led by Atiku Abubakar. Waziri of Adamawa was not given fair hearing in the court of public opinion. I think his epic political battle with his ex-boss Obasanjo, colored his perception and masqueraded his real personality.
If Atiku is as corrupt as most of us were meant to swallow hook, line and sinker, he would have been enmeshed in a lot of corruption trials with EFCC long before now, especially when juxtaposed with his age-long presidential ambition, which cut across several administrations. Atiku is a victim of oligopolistic tendencies of Nigerian post-civil war Military Establishment who has monopolized the nation’s presidency. An Atiku Abubakar presidency is a nightmare to the cartel of retired military generals who sees him as too “powerful” to be teleguided.

Comments

comments