Atiku Abubakar: is it now time to call it a day?
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has become a veteran in the contest for the top job of the country. He has been on the ballot or in the primary election since 1993. Thirty years later, the ex vice president contested for the same job. Is it now time to call it a day?
Atiku Abubakar scored less than 7 million votes to trail behind the president-elect Bola Tinubu. The ex Lagos state governor scored up to 9 million votes to clinch victory and win the coveted seat in the country.
In 1993 Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was on the ballot paper for the primary election of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He slugged it out with the late MKO Abiola in the Jos convention of the party. He didn’t flinch because of the loss as he still had more than enough time to prepare for the dream.
MKO Abiola won the election, but the then military president Ibrahim Babangida truncated the exercise and eventually annulled the election. Atiku Abubakar moved on with the dream.
Fortune smiled at him in 1999 when ex president Olusegun Obasanjo picked him as his running mate of the People’s Democratic Party. The ex president chose him without any hiccup and it all looked like Atiku Abubakar was some inches closer to his ambition to rule the country.
Out of desperation, as some critics and analysts said, Atiku Abubakar dumped the PDP for the newly formed All Progressives Congress. He wanted to pick up the ticket of the party so as to face the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 presidential election.
But the odds didn’t favour him as the party would prefer a better name to confront the ruling party, PDP, in that 2015 general elections. Hence, the All Progressives Congress chose Muhammadu Buhari. The story didn’t end that way as Atiku Abubakar still believed he could make it.
He traveled to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to prepare for the 2019 general elections. He lobbied the People’s Democratic Party’s leadership and spent millions of dollars to win the party’s ticket. Atiku Abubakar beat Aminu, Bukola Saraki in Port Harcourt.
Yet he lost the 2019 presidential election. It looked that would be the end of the struggle as age is no longer by his side. He kept quiet and returned to his base in Dubai. Meanwhile, he was attending few of the party’s matters while away.
When the buildup of the 2023 general elections started, rumours began to fly that the ex vice president would be on the ballot once again. At that time, there are agitations and called within the party that it’s the turn of the southern region to produce the president for the country. That didn’t move the Adamawa politician.
Atiku Abubakar obtained the nomination form of the party and started his movement calling himself the “unifier”. The primary election actually held in Abuja though the Rivers State governor seemed a serious obstacle. Aminu Tambuwal stepped down for his northern brother and the Rivers State governor lost the ticket.
The former vice president talked directly to the northern leaders. He invoked the spirit of conservative north in them so they could look away from the sides of Bola Tinubu, who has done so much for the Arewa. As the main and viable northern candidate, it appeared Atiku would win the election.
The ex governor of Lagos State had around 37% of the total valid votes to outshine Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. The green horn in the race, Tinubu narrowly beat the veteran, Atiku to the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
A president has lost reelection, likewise courts have sacked governors and other elected officers. But it has never happened that a court sacked an incumbent president. Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi have decided to approach the Court to “reclaim the stolen mandate”.
If the PDP candidates fails at the court (as expected though), will that be the end? Will he eventually call it a day and accept his fate that he’s a president Nigerians will never have?
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