Atiku Abubakar; FOR THE LOVE OF NIGERIA

The Man,  Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, GCON, is one of  Nigerian most respected politician,cum businessman, who served as the second elected Vice-President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007, on the platform of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), with President Olusegun Obasanjo. Born in 1946, Abubakar  worked in the Nigeria Customs Service for  twenty years, rising to become the Deputy Director, as the second highest position in the Service was then known. He retired in April 1989 and took up full-time business and politics.

Abubakar's father was opposed to the idea of Western education, and tried to keep Abubakar out of the Western school system. When the government discovered that Abubakar was not attending mandatory schooling, his father spent a few days in jail until Aisha Kande's his mother paid the fine. At the age of eight Abubakar enrolled in the Jada Primary School. In 1960, he was admitted to Adamawa Provincial Secondary School in Yola where he did well in English Language and Literature, struggled with Physics and Chemistry and Mathematics. He graduated with a Grade Three WASC/GCE Certificate in 1965.

Following secondary school, Abubakar studied a short while at the Nigeria Police College in Kaduna . He left the College when he was unable to present an O-Level Mathematics result. He worked briefly as a Tax Officer in the regional Ministry of Finance, from where he gained admission to the school of Hygiene in Kano in 1966. 

He graduated with a Diploma in 1967, having served as Interim Student Union President at the school. In 1967 he enrolled for a Law Diploma at the Ahmadu Bello University Institute of Administration, on a scholarship from regional government. After graduation in 1969, he was employed by the Nigeria Customs Service.

Abubakar's first foray into politics was in the early 1980s, when he worked behind-the-scenes on the governorship campaign of Bamanga Tukur, who at that time was managing director of the Nigeria Ports Authority. He canvassed for votes on behalf of Tukur, and also donated to the campaign. Towards the end of his Customs career, he met the Late Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, who had been second-in-command of the military government that ruled Nigeria between 1976 and 1979. Abubakar was drawn by Yar'Adua into the political meetings that were now happening regularly in Yar'Adua's Lagos home. In 1989 Abubakar was elected a National Vice-Chairman of the Peoples Front of Nigeria, the political association led by Yar'Adua, to participate in the transition programme initiated by Head of State Ibrahim Babangida. His great relationship with Yar Adua indeed set the path for Atiku’s greatness as a politician.

According to Atiku, he and other likeminded individuals were invited by Yar’Adua with the view of getting the military out of power. He said “Look I think you are going to be a good politician,why can’t you join me and drive  the Military Government  out of this country because we need to restore democracy in this country because that is the only way we can bring about development and accountability in this country.”

He won a seat to represent his constituency at the 1989 Constituent Assembly, set up to decide a new constitution for Nigeria. The People's Front which was the political party set up by Shehu Musa Yar'Adua  with Atiku Abubakar, was eventually denied registration by the government and Yar’Adua and his followers including Abubakar found a place within the Social Democratic Party, one of the two parties decreed into existence by the regime.

On 1 September 1990, Abubakar announced his Gongola State gubernatorial bid. A year later, before the elections could hold, Gongola State was broken up into two, “Adamawa and Taraba States” by the Federal Government. Abubakar fell into the new Adamawa State. After the contest he won the SDP Primaries in November 1991, but was soon disqualified by government from contesting the elections.

A similar fate of disqualification by the military soon fell Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, Abubakar's friend and political mentor, in his 1992 bid for the presidential primary of the SDP. With no chance of contesting for the presidency, Yar'Adua decided to push Abubakar forward as the focal point of SDP's ambitions. Abubakar came third in the convention primary. But because Chief MKO Abiola, the winner, had won by only about 400 votes a run-off, Abubakar stepped down for Abiola, asking his supporters to cast their votes for him, with an unwritten agreement that Abiola would announce Abubakar as his running mate. Abiola won the SDP ticket, and in a twist, announced Babagana Kingibe, the runner-up, as his running mate.

In 1998 Abubakar launched a bid for the governorship of Adamawa State on the platform of the People's Democratic Party. He won the December 1998 elections, but before he could be sworn in he was tapped by the PDP's presidential candidate, former Head of State Olusegun Obasanjo, as his vice-presidential candidate. The Obasanjo-Abubakar ticket won the 27 February 1999 presidential election with 62.78 percent of the vote.

Having taken over office as Vice-President of Nigeria, he presided over the National Council on Privatization, overseeing the sale of hundreds of loss-making and poorly managed public enterprises.

In 1999, he, alongside South African’s former Deputy President Jacob Zuma, launched the South Africa Nigeria Binational Commission. According to Abubakar. “For the first time, Nigeria and South Africa; two countries with the largest market and economy were coming together. We were even almost integrating the two countries economically, if they had continued at the pace we started”.

In 2006, Abubakar was involved in a bitter public battle with his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, ostensibly arising from the latter's bid to amend certain provisions of the constitution to take another shot at the presidency for the third consecutive time.

In an interview Abubakar granted, he was quoted as saying,” Regarding Obasanjo's alleged attempts to justify his third term bid: He informed me that 'I left power twenty years ago, I left Mubarak in office, I left Mugabe in office, I left Eyadema in office, I left Umar Bongo, and even Paul Biya and I came back and they are still in power; and I just did eight years and you are asking me to go; why?' And I responded to him by telling him that Nigeria is not Libya, not Egypt, not Cameroun, and not Togo; I said you must leave; even if it means both of us lose out, but you cannot stay." The debate and acrimony generated by the failed constitutional amendment momentarily caused a rift in the People's Democratic Party. The Nigerian National Assembly eventually voted against any amendments allowing Obasanjo to run for another term.

The impact of that war was huge on Atiku, with both political and financial losses to show for it. Atiku Abubakar contested and ran for the nation’s highest of office on three occasions 2006- 2007 under Action Congress of Nigeria, 2011 he lost PDP’s Presidential ticket to former President Goodluck Jonathan , and in 2015 having crossed over to All Progressives Congress ,he lost the party’s ticket to President Mohammadu Buhari.

On the reason behind his continuous quest for the office of the President, Abubakar said, “God has blessed me and with what I have in my hand I can afford to take care of my family and loved ones well. But l have this flair for the welfare of the people. l come from a very poor background, struggling to look after my surviving mother and sister with no relatives  or anybody to help, then you will know that you have to develop the passion help because somebody unknown to you did help you too. l weep when l visit public schools or universities, when l was vice president , my boss asked me to go and represent him at the convocation of University of Lagos. I was in tears when l saw student living in hostels like jail houses, it was crazy, and I told the then VC to please do something about it. My desire to serve this country was born out of these things.  These were part of the things I and Yar’adua discussed when he was still alive and the fire is still with me”.

However,with the PDP presidential  ticket firmly in his hands, Atiku seem to determine to finish the struggle that Yar’adua , himself and other likeminded brother started over 20years ago. In his reaction Atiku on his official Twitter page, the Turakin Adamawa thanked PDP for believing in him. He also wrote, ”@OfficialPDPNig, “thank you for choosing me. This is a victory for all of us. The task to get Nigeria working again starts now”. #NigeriaWillWork#LetsGetNigeriaWorkingAgain”.

All political observers opine that Atiku is indeed a formidable opponent for presidential seat, regardless of past misdeeds and history. Nigerians and indeed the world is watching as the battle for the soul of Nigeria pans out again.