Atiku As A Model For All Democrats

The aftermath of the 27th December 2007 elections in Kenya ought to teach all African politicians a great lesson. This is because of the art of rigging elections and the sit-tight gesture, which African leaders have solemnly embraced dearly. Over one thousand people were reportedly to have died and over thirty thousand others displaced in the ethnic civil war that cropped-up in Kenya, which Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga were the arrowheads.

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In Nigeria, the opposition rather welcomed the alleged rigging of the April 21st 2007 elections by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with repose on the court. They believed so much in the judiciary following the judiciary’s mettle in standing up to the occasion nearly at the expiration of the despot Olusegun Obasanjo regime, when Obasanjo was after his political disloyalists. An old man like Obasanjo who was supposed to be planning on how to leave a better Nigeria for posterity was rather busy as president then fighting a battle he knew he could not win, his political foes. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, then the vice president, was one of the Obasanjo’s political foes who gasped for breathe in the 2007 presidential elections which equivocally favoured Alhaji Umar Yar’Adua.

While Atiku and co. took their case to the court, unlike Kenyas who took theirs to the abattoir, challenging the legitimacy of the PDP-Yar’Adua’s presidency, social democrats looked on with optimism to seeing one of the most difficult challenges any nascent democracy must face. There was optimism that the judiciary, which once celebrated accolades for its untainted proceedings, would not haul the line of injustice but the obverse was seen as the news.

After the 26th Tuesday 2008 ruling by the presidential election tribunal upholding the election of Yar’Adua, many Nigerians have not commented on the ruling without mentioning fraud. And Nigerians are today enveloped in fear that the outcome of any courts Atiku and co. might proceed to would determine the future of the country. And Nigerians are not ready for any unfolding tragedy in Kenya and in many African countries swimming in the pool of violence to repeat itself.

Imagine a crippled Kibaki who won an election first in a wheelchair is today standing erect and bending justice to mean corruption, or Obasanjo who was released from the gulag and he became president began to fight corruption but ended up being the most corrupt leader, if not in the whole world. Not only Nigerians, but also the whole world, knew that the April 21st 2007 election in Nigeria was massively rigged than Kenyas.

Before that election, Obasanjo whom Atiku was elected as his vice in the 1999 elections and 2003 used every means or methodology at the end of the second term to tarnish the years built name of Atiku. Obasanjo didn’t stop only on name assassination or tainting Atiku, he prevented Atiku from running the 2007 presidential election.

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Obasanjo did this so that Atiku would not stop him from changing the national constitution to allow him a third term. But because Atiku was not a traitor, he had the interest of Nigeria at heart, he opposed the Obasanjo’s heinous third term plot with the support of the national Houses and the Supreme Court also stood against Obasanjo’s falsehood against Atiku. It was then that Atiku’s name was ordered by the court to be put in the ballot by the INEC, headed by the only tortoise called Professor (pharmacist) Maurice Iwu. This happened on the eve of the election. Obasanjo himself once an army general commandeered pharmacist Iwu to toy with the election like a medical student in a one year houseman ship practicing with an infra-creature because to Obasanjo the election was do-or-die affair. By this time Atiku’s name was put in the ballot, his party, the Action Congress (AC) were scattered to win election because AC was not hoping that Atiku would contest.

What else can a true patriot of a nation do to sustain his country other than what Atiku did? Did virtually all the international and local observer not denounce the election as fraud? But instead of conflagrating the country just like Odinga’s supporters did, Turaki Adamawa encouraged his supporters to be calm and took to the court. But not all Nigerians understood that Atiku and Buhari saved this country from doom that was why they were name calling them.

Atiku has really shown that he stands for democracy. While Obasanjo is called the PDP’s father of modern Nigeria, Atiku is the father of Nigeria’s modern democracy. His name is written on gold for posterity. Though he did not win his case in the Tribunal. But Yar’Adua won. Bu has Yar’Adua he won the peace? According to a saying, “Conscience is an open wound which only truth can heal.”

 

By Odimegwu Onwumere,

Rivers State. (08032552855)