To hop from one party to
another for whatever reasons that are within the convictions of the hopper is
no political crime at all and such one is entitled to such an unbridled
migration. After all, it is commonly said that in politics, one has only permanent
interest while other considerations are secondary. Alhaji Abubakar Atiku was
the Vice-President of Nigeria under the government of the former President
Olusegun Obasanjo. He has been a card-carrying member of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP), the party that had ruled the country for sixteen years in the
fourth republic of the democratic experiment of Nigeria. He was also one of the
founding fathers of the party when the party was at the stage of a political
association known as the G-34, before its eventual metamorphosis into a
full-blown political party. Alhaji Atiku is known in Nigerian politics as a
political heavy weight that may not be toiled with in terms of politicking. His
influence and affluence sends trepidation in the political ambience of the
country. He is from Adamawa State, a Northern part of Nigeria.
Abubakar Atiku’s trade
mark in terms of migration from one party to another knows no equal in the contemporary
politicking in Nigeria. He has a robust history of hopping from one party to
another, and that tells a volume of the kind of politicians and political
parties we have in Nigeria. It appeals to commonsense for us to glean some
lessons from his history of his serial defections.
The former Vice-President
has again returned to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the 23rd
of November, 2017, as had been widely speculated by many. This makes the third
time, he is returning to the same party, after defecting to other parties at
every conceivable excuse. The boiling point for every defection is the search
for a platform to realize his presidential ambition. Atiku wants to be the
president of Nigeria on any available platform; being a former Vice-President
of Nigeria, notwithstanding. Truly, like a dream, no one can decipher his true
and mysterious reason for his enviable desperation to become the President of
Nigeria at least once in his lifetime. If Atiku is not eventually given the
presidential ticket in this his current PDP voyage, will he port to any other
available political party?
To underscore his desperation
for power, let us chronicle his history of party hopping. Having been part of
the formation of the PDP from the onset, he won the governorship election in
Adamawa State. But before his swearing in as Governor, he was picked up as
the running mate of the former president Olusegun Obasanjo. He became the
vice-President of Nigeria on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
He left PDP in 2006 and joined the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) from 2006
to 2009. Following the altercation he had with the National leader of the then
ACN, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Atiku returned to the PDP in 2009.
He ran the PDP presidential
ticket in the 2011 election and lost to Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Following the
success of the party in 2011 and the subsequent appointment of Alhaji Bamangar
Tukur as the national chairman, the party was dragged into serious crisis.
Based on the ensuing rancour, Alhaji Abubakar in his characteristic impatience,
alongside with seven Governors eventually staged a walk out of the PDP national
convention in August 2013, accusing the leadership of the party and the then President
Jonathan of impunity. This eventually led to the formation of the ‘new PDP’.
After efforts to
reconcile with the Bamanga Tukur-led PDP failed and their push to stop Dr.
Jonathan from running for election also failed, Abubakar and five of the
Governors and others announced in November 2013 their defection to the All
Progressives Congress (APC). More to the sickness of the PDP in terms of the
defection, was the lack of internal democracy that rated that 17 Governors votes
defeating the results in the elections against the 19 Governors in the Governors Forum Chairmanship election was part of the
factors that led to the defection of the five State Governors.
Rabiu Kwankwaso and Atiku
Abubakar ran for APC presidential ticket and lost to Muhammadu Buhari who
eventually won the 2015 presidential elections. Alhaji Atiku Abuakar had remained
passive in the APC until his recent defection. He had accused the party of
marginalizing him, and lately claimed that the party had not fulfilled its
promises to Nigerians and that the youths are the more vulnerable in the sufferings
inflicted by the ruling APC. He has eventually defected to the Peoples
Democratic Party finally for now.
One may look at Atiku
Abubakar and criticize his characteristic hopping style. Let us not be quick at
that condemnation. From what is trending, many other politicians both at lowest
ebb had ‘bandwagoned’ out of the ruling party to join the PDP in the manner of
Atiku. Political defections in Nigerian politics are not a matter of integrity
or ideological persuasions, while the political parties themselves have no ideology to guide
such aimlessness by the politicians. All political parties in Nigeria are the
same. The fundamental difference in them is just their names and the membership/numerical status. Most of the politicians have no sense of direction other than to grab power for
selfish purpose, and for their cronies. This is why it is very easy for the
politicians to embezzle and milk the nation dry without any recourse to any accountability,
and hop again if there is not enough to steal through their present party. Most of these politicians are a bunch of empty heads hopping aimlessly from one political
party to another but with their deceptive clout for a better platform to assume
a position of authority to serve the people better.
What inform most politicians
decamping to ruling parties is to have access to loot the national treasury, or
to have a platform to realize their personal political ambition or to look for an
ambience to escape prosecution based on their previous political iniquities
they had once committed in the former party. The most potent, yet the most lateral reason adduced in
their self-deception in migrating to some other parties is at the instance of
petty disagreement which they brand as marginalization. The truth is that they
masquerade their intention to the fact that they are as ambitious as Julius Caesar in one of the plays of
William Shakespeare.
The emptiness of most of the
politicians is further emphasized on when they form political parties. The
aggrieved and the over-ambitious ones gather themselves together and just register
the political association with the Electoral Management Body which has no
guidelines as to know or scrutinize the ideology of such political association.
The Electoral body and the politicians via the political parties are an
organized syndicate to perpetually cash on the perceived 'gullibility' of the short-changed electorates. Politics and
politicking in Nigeria is still at its miniature stage.
At present, the politicians are
already scheming for the 2019 general elections. The main opposition party, the
PDP has not objectively appraised itself on how functional or effective it has
been in giving a vital opposition to the ruling APC party. Most of the times, they
were enmeshed in serious internal wrangling that never translated to any
benefits to the nation. For instance, they have eaten up almost half of the tenure of
the ruling party without any reasonable and responsible and effective opposition required in a functional democracy. The PDP was
running from one legal tussle to the other of who would be their national Chairman.
As at present, all that concerns the PDP, is how to wrestle POWER from the
ruling All Progressives Congress. All they need is ONLY power, and power only!
The ruling APC on the
other hand has not appraised themselves on how well they have fared so far in governance.
Their focus now is whether the current President Muhammadu Buhari would run for a second term,
and how to secure his electoral victory come 2019. This is political emptiness
in the highest order. It must be made known to these politicians that the
electorates are the principal determinant of who would win an election or not.
If any political party had effectively delivered the dividends of democracy, a
ruling party needs not panic at the decamping of any politician, whether he is
of the high or the low status, because their works will speak for them among the electorates. But not so in
the Nigerian case. Do the votes of the electorates truly count???
As far as the political
hawkers are concerned it is the noise of the decamping that matters. It is the
number that decamps predicts the victory of the benefiting party. This is the political irony and emptiness per se!
Unfortunately, the votes of the electorates may not even count because Nigerian
elections are usually ravaged in rigging and highly potent electoral fraudulence.
It is a pity that those
who supposed to give political mentorship to the younger generation are
behaving like refined touts looking for political fortunes by all means,
throwing caution and integrity to the winds. Political parties should have
standards and a control of their migrating windows. If political parties have
ideologies, it will restrain the unbridled and aimless migrations because all
politicians had to identify themselves and align with a political ideology via
a political party. This will lead them to take serious considerations before
‘betraying’ their political belief or trading their political convictions on
the platter of baseless party hopping.
I hope Nigerian politicians will grow up!
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