Atiku Abubakar has always behaved like a deprived child. His obsession with all the external badges of presidential power had always been his consuming passion.
By Taju Tijani
Two weeks ago, former Vice President Abubakar Atiku received a steady stream of congratulatory bromides from other political gladiators for nicking the presidential ticket for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Atiku won the PDP primary and is now set, barring death and mishap, to contest for the office of the President of Nigeria come 2023. For the record, Atiku did not win the primary. His dollar won!!! I will not froth over the dollarisation eco system built around our democracy and the political network of feeding frenzy bankrolling it. What is of grave concern is the fact that the ongoing party convention and its primary have brought younger Nigerians to a redpilling phase that seems to suggest that our democracy is heavily defiled, and it needs a revolutionary awakening.
The monetisation of the delegates is stirring up rebellious passion among younger generation in such a way that a significant sector of the populace is ready for martyrdom. Each day our politicians are widening the boundaries of their audacity of hubris. The lunacy of the ongoing delegate arrangement has informed younger Nigerians that we are on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast, either to rebellion, rigged election, or fragmentation before 2023.
The shenanigan going on among our political elite reflects the quotidian nature of Nigerian primordial form of democracy that is exerting a stranglehold on the nation as unrelenting as any python throatlock. The Nigerian democratic space has become a vital site of struggle where power brokers and power-driven politicians will soon confront the ship sinking desire of our younger generation who are determined to seize their destiny with barbarian strength.
They are tired of the persuasive toxic positivity of Bola Tinubu or the optic persona of Yemi Osinbajo and his online curation as a personality of sinless virtue. They are set to resist the gushing hagiographies of our politicians by Nigeria’s homologated social media. Cyber surgeons have been able to reconstruct most of our politicians as normal, benign, and patriots who want the best for everyone. I yawn!!! The younger generation are getting ready to set themselves against that which the old generation of politicians hold dear – massive corruption! The aggrieved are ready for a historical rewrite of their vision for the future; of a more just, equitable and fairer order of things.
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The younger generation are saying that they will no longer be mere voices yapping at the failures and abuses of successive administrations. The good news is that younger generation of Nigerians are refusing to have their future cancelled out and are prepared to fight back, duly recognizing that without a struggle there is no future for them. Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. So, when it comes to capturing the generational energy of our youth, older politicians must not be allowed to spin revisionist myth.
The PDP/APC twin evil might want to call for “genuine reconciliation” and we should expect this call to overflow till the election in 2023, if there will be any. We have watched a connivance of convenience between the ruling elites to a point of absurdity. Atiku Abubakar embodies this connivance of convenience throughout his political harlotry.
And like most selfish alliances, they are built purely on crony capitalism, money sharing, and a furtherance of elite and hegemonic brotherhood – all designed to further bastardise our democracy. As Nigeria slides into a volatile scenario, the younger generation must not provide the slightest legitimacy to APC/PDP gangs that had rigged, bribed, cheated, stolen and lied their way to power.
This is the time to organise for an alternative universe and it is hoped that the younger generation will capture the centre ground and seize their destiny or die trying. In Nigeria, exit strategies from the current contraption is gaining momentum. The younger Nigerians have seen a country where protection of life and property, educational system, job creation, equity, fairness, and power supply have collapsed. They believe that fragmentation into colony of autonomous regions will usher a future of social progress where a weak centre paradigm will encourage regional competitions, progressive politics, better resource management, security, peace, and prosperity among competing regions. There is now a profound disdain for anything called federalism. Rather, faith is being anchored on autonomous regional utopianism that encourages freedom among the tribes that made up Nigeria.
The younger generation have concluded that election in Nigeria is determined by wealthy politicians with a twisted understanding that majority of people will sell their birth right at the smell of almighty dollar. They believe that the emancipation and liberation of the brutalising condition of the present Nigerian cannot come from older generation of politicians but by themselves. It may take great personal cost – they are ready! Death before unending dishonour, they are crying! They are tired of the patronising glibness of politicians. The older Nigerian politicians are interested in nothing, but self-perpetuation and power, and mostly at the expense of destroying their country. Before 2023, the Gen-Z advocates of change will be abandoning their vlogs, YouTube channels, blogs, and TikTok for a more nihilistic tendencies that may consume us all.
Yes, of course, one can argue that there are aspects of libertarian delusion in the idea of younger Nigerians for utopia. However, one lesson is this: the idea of state itself had always been a murderous construct. In Nigeria, the cold fact is that the state has abandoned Nigerians to the murderous tyrannies ravaging this country – from terrorism to Fulani exceptionalism in all areas of life. The younger Nigerians have no future in the updated model of our dollarized democracy. In fact, they have become non-existent as viable long-term investment and resource for the future. Federal and State monies meant for their future, their security, technological innovations, schools, hospitals, job, power, and good roads are routinely looted rather than make them available. It will take collective martyrdom and sacrifice to change this orthodoxy of merciless elite looting going on between the two parties.
In ending, Atiku Abubakar has always behaved like a deprived child. His obsession with all the external badges of presidential power had always been his consuming passion after his ignominious disgrace by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. After the hive of noise, dissonance, filth, and dollar pandemonium of the primary contest in Abuja, Abubakar remains a dangerous and egocentric demagogue for the presidency. Abubakar does not look like a benign actor on our democratic stage. He may cover himself with a cloying, pretentious display of a man-of-the people, but beneath the gloss, he is a hardcore Fulani hegemonist who believes in their core mythology: perpetual power to the North.