Buhari Must Let Atiku Cry His Tears

 

 

Much as I try to think of something different for today, the fallout from the Presidential elections won by President Muhammadu Buhari will simply not leave my mind.

 

The first weight I want to get off my chest is to join millions of people in the world to congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari for having won the elections and to wish him the best of times ahead. It was a keenly contested struggle and I agree with the President that we should not gloat over the announced victory but rather to be kind to those who fulfilled their constitutional duty to contest against him – and lost.

 

That is why I am not happy with the predicament of the main challenger Atiku Abubakar. You cannot beat a man and deny him the right to cry his tears of pain. Atiku’s empire appears targeted. His personal staff and associates are currently the focus of fault finding scrutiny by the EFCC and other security agencies, and I worry that even if there is a valid reason for doing this, the timing is inexpedient.

 

To have Atiku Abubakar’s lawyer, his son-in-law and accountant Abdullahi Babalele arrested at this time could easily be misunderstood, no matter the charges made. Even though as they say, in politics as in war, all is fair, I think it unwise not to let the “defeated” Atiku cry his tears. Buhari must resist the temptation to unleash the system on his opponent. The system that went after Atiku’s associates allegedly found with $2m dollars, also let go APC Leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who admitted on TV the right to move money the capacity of several bullion vans into his home, the same system that let go of a plane load of cash salvaged at an airport, so much cash that the plane undercarriage crashed into its underbelly.

 

A part of me must encourage former Vice President to proceed to the courts to test the validity of the Buhari victory, in fulfilment of all righteousness. All considered, and truth be told, Atiku Abubakar gave a good account of himself. That part of me is unable to understand the clamour and pressure on him not to seek legal means. After all, this is a road well-travelled by President Muhammadu Buhari, who for all three times that he lost elections, sought justice all the way to the apex Supreme Court. It was not his time, and when his time came, God’s time, Goodluck Jonathan shocked the world by making that early morning phone call that conceded power on a platter of peace. Yet, Goodluck Jonathan believed he won that election but lost to the system.

 

So, another part of me reverses the other with different thoughts for Atiku Abubakar. The more you scrutinise those figures, the more convinced you are that Atiku Abubakar did not lose the election, to the election. He lost the election but to the system. To contest the outcome of that election in court is to take on the system at the risk of triggering the kind of backlash that is beginning to manifest. Will the system let up? Is there confidence in the judiciary that already looks set to have its arms tied as in the case of the Treasonable Felony of the First Republic when the judge sent Chief Obafemi Awolowo to prison admitting ruefully that his hands were tied? This is a system that swallowed up the thriving businesses of the mogul and the acclaimed winner of the famous June 12 elections Chief MKO Abiola, and eventually even his life! President Buhari could afford to take on the system and survive because he had nothing to lose and everything to gain on his integrity. He was never a beneficiary of the system as much as Atiku Abubakar has been and has admitted openly so. For this reason, Atiku must weigh his options the way a gambler does, “knowing when to throw away, and knowing when to ride and run”.

 

A look at the current political map of Nigeria as aptly captured by this newspaper sends shivers down the spine of any true nationalist. To imagine 59 years after independence, that Nigerians voted en bloc along primordial sentiments should be a source of worry. Much of the vast North is blue (APC) with the exception of the Federal Capital Territory, while the PDP took the red covering  the entire South East, the South South and the so called Middle Belt States of Benue, Taraba and Adamawa. This political divide is a recipe for chaos in a nation that is already tearing up at the seams to communal conflict, banditry and an unending insurgency in the North East.

 

My desired political map is one with blues and reds scattered in states across the nation, a reflection of unity in diversity as opposed to this that reflects the gaping fault lines of our divided nation. No one needs to tell me that we are living in a tinder box with gruesome flash-points in Benue, Kaduna and Zamfara and Adamawa States where communities have lost all confidence in government and have already made mass murders the order of the day, to settle their differences. We appear set to go the way of Somalia quickly, and when anarchy takes over the land, there will be no country to govern.

 

It is against this background that I would lend my voice to a call on the People’s Democratic Party and its Presidential Candidate Atiku Abubakar to consider the current precarious predicament of Nigeria and adopt a more reconciliatory approach. The plan to seek a retrieval of the mandate through our courts, especially given the predictable outcome should be shelved for a dialogue on a national government.

 

The destiny of Nigeria and its entire people is now tied inextricable to any action that Atiku Abubakar and the PDP may take. Having been in power for 16 years before losing it, a four year wait on God and opportunity does not seem a bad idea at all. But President Buhari must be magnanimous in victory and take all fervent steps to heal wounds and unite the country, for as he has said famously, we have no other country than Nigeria, we must salvage it together.