When in August 2022, the Speaker of the Adamawa State House of Assembly, Aminu Iya Abbas, asserted that as far as the 2023 presidential election was concerned, the odds favoured thel candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, he was merely restating what many discerning Nigerians already knew and had been echoing in private and public gatherings.
Abbas, speaking on the sidelines of a capacity building workshop for lawmakers from Adamawa State organised by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), said of all the presidential candidates, Atiku Abubakar “is the most experienced as far as party politics is concerned and being a former vice president, presidency will not be new to him, let alone learning the ropes as it would be required for any other person”.
As the campaigns gather momentum, and as the presidential candidates and their political parties lay bare their plans and programmes for Nigeria and Nigerians, it becomes increasingly evident that by whatever paramettres it is measured, Atiku Abubakar towers head and shoulders above all the other candidates seeking to be elected as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria come February 25, 2023.
Without equivocation, no other presidential candidate matches Atiku Abubakar in terms of experience. Atiku’s experience cuts across the civil service as well as the public and private sectors. A veteran politician whose foray into the realms of Nigerian politics began in 1989 when he resigned his Nigeria Customs Service job after 20 years during which he rose to become the Deputy Director, the second highest position in the Service then, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar brings to the table eight years of experience as vice-president of Nigeria that no other candidate can boast of. It was eight during which Abubakar acquitted himself creditably. As Nigeria’s Vice President from 1999 to 2007, Atiku Abubakar proved his mettle as chairman of the National Economic Council and head of the National Council on Privatization (NCP). In those eight years that have been deservedly tagged the most glorious years of the Nigerian economy and national polity since the country’s return to democratic rule in 1999, Abubakar oversaw the privatization of hundreds of loss-making and poorly managed public enterprises. He is also credited for the successful reform of the telecommunications, pensions and banking sectors leading to creation of jobs and an economic boom that enabled Nigeria to pay off much of its debt.
In business, Atiku Abubakar’s sterling success tells of a man who has the ability to turn into gold whatever his hand touches. He is unlike some presidential candidates who lay claim to humongous wealth whose source has remained a subject of controversy. An entrepreneural spirit who built a sizeable portfolio of real estate from a N31,000 loan he received in 1974, Atiku Abubakar has made a success of every business he has ventured into spanning real estate, agriculture, trading, transportation (logistics), and education. For instance, Intels Nigeria Limited, the oilfield logistics firm that he co-founded in 1982, has grown from its original office in a shipping container to a multi-national, multi-billion-naira operation employing more than 10,000 people. The university he established in 2005, the American University of Nigeria (AUN), was the first American-style private university to be established in sub-Saharan Africa. No wonder the BBC described him as “an affable, enterprising figure” who “moves adroitly between the worlds of commerce and politics”.
With Africa’s most populous country facing soaring unemployment, widespread insecurity, high inflation, and a sluggish economy heavily dependent on fluctuating oil revenues, who else among the candidates seeking to occupy Aso Rock on May 29, 2023 is better placed to steer the ship of the country and return the economy on the path of growth than Atiku Abubakar, the man who has done it before, the man who is tested and trusted? Who is better positioned to tackle Nigeria’s numerous economic challenges and pull millions of its citizens out of the depths of poverty into which the ineptitude of the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government has thrown them in the last eight years?
But Nigeria’s woes are beyond the economic crisis inflicted by the Muhammadu Buhari administration since 2015. The country is also fragmented, with self-determination agitators calling for immediate break-up. Many watchers of events in Nigeria say the country has never been more divided, not even during the bloody civil war years. They agree that what the country direly needs now is a president with a pan-Nigerian outlook to douse the tension, heal the wounds of the past and unify the fractious country. Beyond a doubt, Atiku Abubakar is that man.
A detribalised Nigerian by all indices, Atiku Abubakar is the only one among all the presidential candidates who has earned the trust of all of Nigeria’s ethnic groups going by the massive support base he has cutting across the boundaries of ethnicity, region, religion and age. Although born in Adamawa in Nigeria’s North-East, Abubakar has lived and worked most of his adult life outside of his locale. Unlike some regional champions whose only claim to the presidency is that it is their turn, Atiku Abubakar has the broad national spread required of a truly Nigerian president. He is the most recognisable face among the presidential candidates. Atiku Abubakar has built bridges across the country, from East to West and from North to South, through politics, business, friendships and marriage. It is not for nothing that he is called “the unifier”; “the bridge builder”. He has traversed the country, he has felt the pulse of the citizens, and he understands the issues and how to solve them more than any other candidate. To crown it all, his political party, the PDP, is the only truly national party that has emerged in Nigeria since the return to civil rule. The other political parties are a mere agglomeration of strange bedfellows in a contrived marriage of convenience.
Speaking of Atiku Abubakar’s chances at the polls recently, Senator Kola Ogunwale, a PDP chieftain in Osun State, said the PDP presidential candidate had the brightest chance of all the candidates because of his national spread.
“The future of the PDP is very bright in the presidential election because other candidates are relying on sectional votes while Atiku, our presidential candidate, is relying on votes across the country. Atiku will get the Hausa-Fulani votes; he will get his share of votes from Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, Ondo, Ogun states, and he will also get votes from the South-East,” said Ogunwale, a former member of the National Assembly who represented Osun Central in the Senate between 2003 and 2007.
Atiku Abubakar’s campaign for true federalism is another evidence that he is the right man for the job. Many, including political pundits, reckon that devolving powers to the sub-national governments, that is, allowing federating states to have more powers including control over their resources, is the silver bullet that will resolve most of the present challenges threatening to tear the country apart. Abubakar aligns with this school of thought and, since he launched the true federalism campaign in 2017, has continued to preach the gospel of true federalism all over Nigeria, harping on the need to restructure the country.
“True federalism will encourage states to compete, to attract investments and skilled workers rather than merely waiting for monthly revenue allocation from Abuja,” he once said.
So, as Nigerians go to the polls on February 25 to elect their next president, the words of Kola Ologbondiyan, a former national publicity secretary of the PDP, during an interactive session with journalists in September last year come to mind, that of all the candidates vying for the presidency in 2023, Atiku Abubakar stands out as the “presidential candidate who best understands the nuances of our country and who is endowed with the required experience, capacity, presence of mind as well as the national acceptance needed to move the nation forward”.
According to Ologbondiyan, Abubakar is the presidential candidate with the proven capacity and required nationalistic willpower to unite the nation, revamp the national economy, revive infrastructure, and guarantee security of lives and property of Nigerians, especially as the country has been in the throes of ravaging insecurity that has cost uncountable lives.
“Nigerians are convinced that Atiku Abubakar is the only candidate among the rank of presidential candidates who has the practicable solutions for our challenges as a nation, including issues of national unity, reducing high cost of governance, education, health care, revamping of the economy by providing stimulus for the informal sector among others,” he stated.
- Akinwunmi, a commentator on public affairs is based in Lagos, Nigeria.
