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Opinion

Musings on Atiku’s “Aluta” Career

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By Tunde Olusunle

Permit me to commence by recommending the publication titled: Atiku: The Story of Atiku Abubakar to those with peripheral understanding of Nigeria’s charismatic former Vice President who was deputy to Olusegun Obasanjo. There’s been quantum misrepresentation underscored by plain political mischief, debauchery and chicanery in the public sphere, about the man. The book under reference was authored by Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, one of Nigeria’s finest journalists and writers in his time, who, very sadly and tragically departed in year 2017. Onukaba had the distinction of having authored full length, painstakingly researched and brilliantly rendered biographies on Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s former military Head of State and later, democratically elected President, and Atiku. The 338-page book on Atiku was published in 2006. It remains a key reference document on Atiku whose name has been a recurring decimal in national politics in the last four decades.

We are generally cognisant of developments in our most recent political experience. The phenomenal failure of the preceding administration of Muhammadu Buhari could only have negatively impacted the fortunes of his aspiring successor flying the flag of his party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC), at the presidential poll. A rehash of the failings and faltering of Buhari who contested twice on the springboard of the APC, evokes palpable sighs, teary emotions, even gnashing of teeth. Those years of the locusts are best shifted to the depths of distant memory. The song and slogan on the streets encapsulated mass discontent and a steely determination to excoriate that regime which typified hunger, anger, poverty, insensitivity, insecurity and gloom in totality. Nigerians were poised to speak, loud and very clear with their voter’s cards at the polls.

The APC superstructure, however, resorted to what the unforgettable Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, revered as precursor of Afrobeat, described as “government magic,” in one of his trademark political compositions. “White was turned into blue, red transformed into green,” as Fela’s song continues. Technological innovations acquired by INEC for humongous sums at the collective expense of taxpayers to facilitate seamsless electoral processes, were summarily dumped in the sewers. Returning officers of opposition parties were bludgeoned, ballot boxes grabbed, tallying sheets mutilated and voter figures presumably fiddled with. INEC in the wee hours of Wednesday March 1, 2023, announced a presidential result when votes were still being added together. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of INEC, proclaimed results which didn’t send Nigerians to the streets in freestyle jubilation. Conversely, Nigeria was swaddled by cemetery-type quiet and has remained so ever since.

In his continuing quest to ensure strict adherence to the rule of law in a democracy, Atiku immediately approached the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, to take another look at the suspect and hazy pronouncements of the PEPT. Side by side with this, Atiku, a veteran and hero of many struggles, stretched the net of his fishing expedition. The question of document adulteration, forgery and scamming has recurred in instances over time since the early months of the running republic. The very first Speaker of the House of Representatives back in 1999, Salisu Buhari, was forced to resign over allegations of certificate forgery. He had tendered a fake certificate from the “University of Toronto” in his quest for a seat in the lower parliament.

The first finance minister under Buhari, Kemi Adeosun, voluntarily resigned from office in 2018. Questions were raised about the authenticity of the certificate issued to her upon the completion of the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC). A quintessential Omoluabi, the well groomed and well mannered within the Yoruba context, she quietly exited and moved on. She refused to be sucked in by the razzmatazz of Nigerian-style public office, where aides fall over themselves handling all manner of chores for the “oga at the top,” a phrase which became familiar years back. Adeosun demonstrated un-Nigerian grit to have chosen the path she did, despite serving under a President, Buhari, who himself could not present his “ordinary level school certificate” usually issued by the West African Examinations Council, (WAEC).

News out of Chicago State University, (CSU) in the United States, in the inquest into the matter of alleged forgery instituted by Atiku against Tinubu, seems to validate previous presumptions. The President might just have manufactured his certificate. Following from documents submitted to INEC ahead of the presidential election, Tinubu made no entries for his primary and secondary schools, got admitted into the Chicago-based citadel for his tertiary institution and posted a blank section for his NYSC certificate. There is also the controversy about his gender during his studentship in CSU. Was he male or female? It has been virtually confirmed that Tinubu plausibly appropriated the social security number and sex of a female Nigerian student with that identity. The photograph of a lady by the name: “Adenike Abimbola Tinubu” has been trending on the internet in recent days. Tinubu’s frequently used first name, “Bola” is without a prefix or suffix. This is inconsistent with known Yoruba christening patterns. Atiku’s pakute, the Yoruba expression for “trap,” seems to have clapsed Tinubu’s ankle.

Sadly, very tragically sadly, sections of the Nigerian elite are hailing, supporting and serenading Tinubu as the “actor” or “bad guy” in an action movie. He seems to have outwitted his adversaries in the plot of the screenplay, deploying a combination of street smartness and crookedness. He is adulated as the baba’sale, the don of the backwaters, in the storyline. And because the mythical Tinubu is involved in this mire, identity theft and certificate plagiarism are admissible and proper. Some of us have indeed been repeatedly vilified by Tinubu apologists and “e-rats” on the social media. I’ve serially maintained though that he doesn’t equate the values, qualities and standards of archetypal Yoruba forerunners.

The Obafemi Awolowos, Samuel Akintolas, Abraham Adesanyas, Adeniran Ogunsanyas, Lateef Jakandes, Adekunle Ajasins, Bisi Adebanjos, Bola Iges, Reuben Fasorantis, Ayo Adebanjos, Olu Falaes, authentic Yoruba frontiersmen, were substantially transparent and respected. The contemporary Asiwaju, however, might just have been found to be something of a perjurer. His hero-worshippers and cult followers, however, want him profiled simply as a lesser cheat! Reminds of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s uncanny distinction between “stealing” and “corruption!” Tinubu’s choristers are totally blinded to the spiral effects of this national and global embarrassment. The Nigerian President should be largely overboard in many ways.

Like my brother journalist and scholar Tivlumun Nyitse said at a forum, “those who made us believe that they were champions in the pursuit of truth, justice and fair play have suddenly lost their moral compass.” They have turned a blind eye to the discovery of a career impostor who has conned his way to the marketplace as lead performer in the community orchestra. They have spontaneously become the cheerleaders of a certified trickster. They are oblivious of how grievously this development can impact the worldview of the younger generation. Those our generation is frantically attempting to wean off fatalistic subscriptions to cultism, truancy, alcoholism, drugs, and so on, now have a ready-made model. They now know they can get to the very top irrespective of the crookedness of the route they ply.

Social media reports are already proffering that the qualifications and certifications of some Nigerian professionals abroad will be re-evaluated. Previously, Nigerians across the world, especially in the United States and United Kingdom, always headlined the classifications of the most educated and most qualified professionals, amongst immigrants. As deliberate government policy, Nigeria indeed once exported excess human capacity to needy African and Caribbean countries under the “Technical Aids Corps,” (TAC), initiated by the government of former military President Ibrahim Babangida, three decades ago. We are now susceptible to hurtful taunts by cheeky immigration clerks in Johannesburg and Dubai, asking us for updates about the certificate forgery saga involving our President.

The prescription of popular revisit to the book Atiku: The Story of Atiku Abubakar, stems largely from the need to appreciate the beginnings of Atiku’s activist engagements. His triumph in forensically busting the compounded falsification, forgeries and frauds related to the President’s credentials, is product of longstanding, albeit subtle involvement in popular causes. He served his apprenticeship during his days as a student at the “School of Hygiene” (now known as the School of Health Technology), Kano, and the Institute of Administration of the Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU), Zaria, respectively. He was a student of both institutions between 1966 and 1969. In the former, Atiku’s deft handling of a brewing students’ disquiet earned him election as “President Emeritus!” He was just 20 at the time. While studying for a diploma in law in ABU, he contested for the positions of Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Speaker of the Students’ Union Parliament, concurrently. He won resoundingly. He was targeted for elimination by executioners loyal to former military Head of State, General Sani Abacha in his Kaduna home for his pro-democracy endeavours. These experiences, sharpened his dentition for his modern day enterprise.

Atiku’s battles and travails to salvage the Office of the Vice President from immolation by an overbearing President, and the political process from crass impunity by the political class, are properly documented. He pursued many of his misgivings all the way to the Supreme Court and succeeded. Osita Chidoka, a former aviation minister and Farooq Kperogi, a respected US-based Nigerian professor and public scholar have in recent treatises correctly canvassed acclamation for Atiku. His perspiration in helping Nigerians and the global community unravel the “masked man,” (not Lagbaja the masked artiste in this case), who has been our President since May 29, 2023 has paid off handsomely. Atiku invested uncommon ruggedness and peerless activism in the eventual unearthing of the fossils of Nigeria’s Number One Citizen’s cloudy, dodgy, even greasy credentials. Not too many previously knew the aluta component of the overall makeup of the typically calm and calculating Atiku.

The ball at this point, is squarely and effectively in the court of the man so openly disrobed, of Nigerians at large and the judiciary.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE)

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Opinion

The End of a Political Party

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By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

It is deeply alarming and shameful to witness an elected official of an opposition party openly calling for the continuation of President Tinubu’s administration. This blatant betrayal goes against the very essence of democratic opposition and makes a mockery of the values the PDP is supposed to stand for.

Even more concerning is the deafening silence from North Central leadership. This silence comes at a price—For the funneled $3 million to buy off the courts for one of their Leaders’, the NC has compromised integrity, ensuring that any potential challenge is conveniently quashed. Such actions reveal a deeply compromised leadership, one that no longer stands for the people but for personal gain.

When a member of a political party publicly supports the ruling party, it raises the critical question: Who is truly standing for the PDP? When a Minister publicly insulted PDP and said that he is standing with the President, and you did nothing; why won’t others blatantly insult the party? Only under the Watch of this NWC has PDP been so ridiculed to the gutters. Where is the opposition we so desperately need in this time of political crisis? It is a betrayal of trust, of principles and of the party’s very foundation.

The leadership of this party has failed woefully. You have turned the PDP into a laughing stock, a hollow shell of what it once was. No political party with any credibility or integrity will even consider aligning or merging with the PDP at this rate. The decay runs deep and the shame is monumental.

WHAT A DISGRACE!

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Opinion

Day Dele Momodu Made Me Live Above My Means

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By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

These are dangerous days of gross shamelessness in totalitarian Nigeria.
Pathetic flaunting of clannish power is all the rage, and a good number of supposedly modern-day Nigerians have thrown their brains into the primordial ring.

One pathetic character came to me the other day stressing that the only way I can prove to him that I am not an ethnic bigot is to write an article attacking Dele Momodu!

I could not make any head or tail of the bloke’s proposition because I did not understand how ethnic bigotry can come up in an issue concerning Dele Momodu and my poor self.

The dotty guy made the further elaboration that I stand accused of turning into a “philosopher of the right” instead of supporting the government of the day which belongs to the left!

A toast to Karl Marx in presidential jet and presidential yacht!

I nearly expired with laughter as I remembered how one fat kept man who spells his surname as “San” (for Senior Advocate of Nigeria – SAN) wrote a wretched piece on me as an ethnic bigot and compelled one boozy rascal that dubiously studied law in my time at Great Ife to put it on my Facebook wall!

The excited tribesmen of Nigerian democracy and their giddy slaves have been greased to use attack as the first aspect of defence by calling all dissenting voices “ethnic bigots” as balm on their rotted consciences.

The bloke urging me to attack Dele Momodu was saddened when he learnt that I regarded the Ovation publisher as “my brother”!

Even amid the strange doings in Nigeria of the moment I can still count on some famous brothers who have not denied me such as Senator Babafemi Ojudu who privileged me to read his soon-to-be-published memoir as a fellow Guerrilla Journalist, and the lionized actor Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD) who while on a recent film project in faraway Canada made my professor cousin over there to know that “Uzor is my brother!”

It is now incumbent on me to tell the world of the day that Dele Momodu made me live above my means.

All the court jesters, toadies, fawners, bootlickers and ill-assorted jobbers and hirelings put together can never be renewed with enough palliatives to countermand my respect for Dele Momodu who once told our friend in London who was boasting that he was chased out of Nigeria by General Babangida because of his activism: “Babangida did not chase you out of Nigeria. You found love with an oyinbo woman and followed her to London. Leave Babangida out of the matter!”

Dele Momodu takes his writing seriously, and does let me have a look at his manuscripts – even the one written on his presidential campaign by his campaign manager.

Unlike most Nigerians who are given to half measures, Dele Momodu writes so well and insists on having different fresh eyes to look at his works.

It was a sunny day in Lagos that I got a call from the Ovation publisher that I should stand by to do some work on a biography he was about to publish.

He warned me that I have only one day to do the work, and I replied him that I was raring to go because I love impossible challenges.

The manuscript of the biography hit my email in fast seconds, and before I could say Bob Dee a fat alert burst my spare bank account!

Being a ragged-trousered philanthropist, a la the title of Robert Tressel’s proletarian novel, I protested to Dele that it’s only beer money I needed but, kind and ever rendering soul that he is, he would not hear of it.

I went to Lagos Country Club, Ikeja and sacked my young brother, Vitus Akudinobi, from his office in the club so that I can concentrate fully on the work.

Many phone calls came my way, and I told my friends to go to my divine watering-hole to wait for me there and eat and drink all that they wanted because “money is not my problem!”

More calls came from my guys and their groupies asking for all makes of booze, isiewu, nkwobi and the assorted lots, and I asked them to continue to have a ball in my absence, that I would join them later to pick up the bill!

The many friends of the poor poet were astonished at the new-fangled wealth and confidence of the new member of the idle rich class!

It was a beautiful read that Dele Momodu had on offer, and by late evening I had read the entire book, and done some minor editing here and there.

It was then up to me to conclude the task by doing routine editing – or adding “style” as Tom Sawyer would tell his buddy Huckleberry Finn in the eponymous adventure books of Mark Twain.

I chose the style option, and I was indeed in my elements, enjoying all aspects of the book until it was getting to ten in the night, and my partying friends were frantically calling for my appearance.

I was totally satisfied with my effort such that I felt proud pressing the “Send” button on my laptop for onward transmission to Dele Momodu’s email.

I then rushed to the restaurant where my friends were waiting for me, and I had hardly settled down when one of Dele’s assistants called to say that there were some issues with the script I sent!

I had to perforce reopen up my computer in the bar, and I could not immediately fathom which of the saved copies happened to be the real deal.

One then remembered that there were tell-tale signs when the computer kept warning that I was putting too much on the clipboard or whatever.

It’s such a downer that after feeling so high that one had done the best possible work only to be left with the words of James Hadley Chase in The Sucker Punch: “It’s only when a guy gets full of confidence that he’s wide open for the sucker punch.”
Lesson learnt: keep it simple – even if you have been made to live above your means by Dele Momodu!

To end, how can a wannabe state agent and government apologist, a hired askari, hope to get me to write an article against a brother who has done me no harm whatsoever? Mba!

I admire Dele Momodu immensely for his courage of conviction to tell truth to power.

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Opinion

PDP at 26, A Time for Reflection not Celebration

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By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

At 26 years, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should have been a pillar of strength, a beacon of hope and a testament to the enduring promise of democracy in Nigeria.*

Yet, as we stand at this milestone, it is clear that we have little, if anything, to celebrate. Instead, this anniversary marks a sobering moment of reflection, a time to confront the hard truths that have plagued our journey and to acknowledge the gap between our potential and our reality.

Twenty-six years should have seen us mature into a force for good, a party that consistently upholds the values of integrity, unity and progress for all Nigerians.

But the reality is far from this ideal. Instead of celebrating, we must face the uncomfortable truth: *at 26, the PDP has failed to live up to the promise that once inspired millions.*

We cannot celebrate when our internal divisions have weakened our ability to lead. We cannot celebrate when the very principles that should guide us: justice, fairness and accountability,have been sidelined in favor of personal ambition and short-term gains. We cannot celebrate when the Nigerian people, who once looked to the PDP for leadership, now question our relevance and our commitment to their welfare.

This is not a time for self-congratulation. It is a time for deep introspection and honest assessment. What have we truly achieved? Where did we go wrong? And most importantly, how do we rebuild the trust that has been lost? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, not just as a party, but as individuals who believe in the ideals that the PDP was founded upon.

At 26, we should be at the height of our powers, but instead, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The path forward is not easy, but it is necessary. We must return to our roots, to the values that once made the PDP a symbol of hope and possibility. We must rebuild from within, embracing transparency, unity and a renewed commitment to serving the people of Nigeria.

There is no celebration today, only the recognition that we have a long road ahead. But if we use this moment wisely, if we truly learn from our past mistakes, there is still hope for a future where the PDP can once again stand tall, not just in name, but in action and impact. The journey begins now, not with *fanfare but with resolve.

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