ATIKU’S SERIAL DEFECTIONS: A REFLECTION OF THE EMPTINESS OF NIGERIAN POLITICAL CLASS by SHABA Mafu.

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 23^rd 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 an 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 to 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 was part of the factors that led to the defection of the five 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 ideology 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 status. 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 from their current party. The 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 political ambition or to look for an ambience to escape prosecution based on their previous political iniquities they had once committed. The most potent, yet the most stupid 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 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 steal the gullible electorates. Politics and politicking in Nigeria is still at its miniature stage.

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 party. Most of the times, they were enmeshed in serious internal wrangling that have translated to any benefits to the nation. For instance, it took them almost half of the tenure of the ruling party without any reasonable and responsible opposition. 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!

The ruling APC on the other hand has not appraised themselves on how well they have fared so far. Their focus now is whether President Muhammadu Buhari would run 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. But not so in the Nigerian case.

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 benefitting party.  This is 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 fraudulences.  

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 allign 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 hopping.

May Nigerian politicians grow up!