Atiku and Tinubu are unqualified for the CEO of Nigeria. In these disconsolate times, what is needed is an incorruptible, selfless, serious, hands-on, turnaround CEO, with vast, up-to-date, knowledge and the physical, mental and spiritual energy for the tug-of-war with vampires.
By Emma Nwosu
Olusegun Adegoke, in his opinion published at page 13 of The Guardian of January 26, 2023, titled “Who, Between Atiku and Tinubu fits CEO of Nigeria,” raised a few of the germane criteria but gave the answers, wrongly, in favour of Atiku Abubakar – even giving him credit for what is due to the most distinguished President Nigeria has ever had, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, under whom Atiku was only a Vice President.
You have to define the issues to get the job description from which to determine the job specification or profile of the person to be hired – based, primarily, on the person’s character and verifiable track record, from previous employment and referees, evidencing capacity and competence for higher responsibility.
The issues include multi-dimensional injustice, nepotism, insecurity, corruption, profligacy, economic crisis and cabals of vampires on the state. The economy is in tatters and we are at the threshold of the debt trap. We are more divided along ethnic and religious lines, today, than ever before, and so on. Such issues call for a clean, humble, compassionate, selfless person of prudence and grit, with stupendous physical, mental and spiritual energy and records. How, on earth, does Atiku fit the bill?
Atiku Abubakar, Wazirin Adamawa, is as controversial and unqualified as Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be the Chief Executive Officer (President) of Nigeria. Both belong to the clique of predators who – in the toga of the APC and the PDP – have run the country down to the edge of the precipice. Do not mind the deceptive mudslinging, buck passing, and trading of blames which only confirm their mutual culpability. There is nothing to choose between Atiku and Tinubu and between their parties (APC and PDP). Only the gullible and ignorant still root for them.
Atiku, at 76 and with a very large family (half a dozen wives and over 30 children) shares a lot with Tinubu in the frailty of old age and as a vampire on the state. Any of them will be an absentee president, for frequent medical attention – under the weight of office – just like Buhari. Atiku, in the first place, never identifies with the people’s circumstances but lives in opulence in Dubai and Paris, in a world of his own. He only returns to Nigeria to be elected president, each season, in the manner of a predatory overlord.
Among other issues, there is the emerging evidence of his using Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to siphon public funds. The privatization programme he conducted as Vice President is still in question.
Records portray Atiku as a wolf in sheep’s clothing; as a bully and as a cocky, greedy, unreliable politician rather than the unifier his cronies are packaging him to look like. It is just that most Nigerians (particularly, gullible Southern leaders, easily overwhelmed by individual benefit, at the expense of corporate interest) do not read between the lines and he was never paid in his coins until the PDP Integrity Group reacted.
Atiku is the archetypical Fulani supremacist, with the born-to-rule mentality, who has been changing parties like clothing, just for him or another Fulani to be president – in a country of many eminent ethnic groups. Now, he aims to succeed Muhammadu Buhari (a Fulani, whom he helped to power in 2015, against his own party) despite Buhari’s abysmal performance and despite the Constitution of the PDP on rotation of the presidential ticket between the North and the South – which he pretended to defend in 2014 when he destabilized the party for fielding Dr. Jonathan, claiming that it was the turn of the North.
It is the height of treachery and desperation for him to usurp PDP’s 2023 presidential ticket, at the expense of the South, particularly, the South-East which had been the most faithful stronghold of the party, thereby, destabilizing the party again and has lacked the humility to make correction to reunite it.
Without that stronghold and other constituencies sympathetic to it, Atiku will lose the election. Should he be assisted to manipulate and win (as amplified by the conspiracy serialized by Peter Omonua in The Guardian of January 11, 12 and 13, 2023), Southerners would finally realize that the future is irredeemably grim for them in the union and may be forced to unite to de-amalgamate Nigeria as a last resort, in order to fulfil their universally-acclaimed potential. The world is watching.
How could Atiku, who places inordinate ambition above national and party cohesion and is unable to reunite the faithful of the same party, unify multifarious Nigeria? What a confounding fallacy!
In addition to the character issues, Atiku has never been the chief executive officer of a state, which is the microcosm and most reliable test for the Presidency, contrary to Adegoke’s argument anchored on his role as vice president. Although he won the governorship of Adamawa State, in 1999, he preferred the vice presidency that was simultaneously offered to him.
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As for Tinubu, his celebrated internal revenue generation in Lagos State, as governor, is outweighed by the downside of greed and dictatorship by which he takes with the left what he gives with the right and under which you must be servile to survive. His severance package is scandalous and has become the evil template for other retiring governors. Almost 20 years after leaving office, he still dictates who governs the state, has the longest finger on the revenues and remains the biggest landlord. There are also allegations of drug dealing and money laundering against him, among other issues.
The public debt and annual budgets of Lagos State are greater than those of the rest of South-West states combined – without commensurate output. Lagos is ranked the second worst city to live in the world, with dismal human development indices. Not even pipe borne water is available. Most of the infrastructure and utilities to boast of were left by the Federal Government and Alhaji Lateef Jakande, who governed the state from 1979 to 1983 and demonstrated (in just four years) what an El Dorado Lagos State could truly become if resources were prudently and consistently deployed. Remarkable developments in the state since the Fourth Republic can be counted on the fingers and would seem ridiculous in cost.
As Adewole Adebayo, SDP presidential candidate, would say: “money is not scarce, what is scarce is compassion.” Revenue generation can only be celebrated by visible benefits to the people and not in nominal terms. Many see Tinubu’s legacy as one of greed and rascality bordering on tyranny, which must be done away with for Lagos State, in particular and Nigeria, in general, to prosper!
Perhaps, the worst impending doom is that, if Tinubu (given the tell tales of very poor health) should deteriorate into the same extreme disability Buhari suffered under the weight of office, he would be promptly impeached by the same forces which shielded the latter, given the skewed parliament and the implacability of Northern leadership when it comes to power. Those egging him on are very wicked.
Atiku and Tinubu share in controversial, fragmented and limited formal education. It is largely for this shortage – coupled with senility – that they are over-dependent on aides, just like Buhari. Atiku only managed to earn a diploma in law and Tinubu a degree in accounting, a very long time ago, without any follow-up or progression. If, truly, Atiku has earned a master’s degree, Nigerians would like to assess the substance – in terms of institution, discipline and how he made it.
Neither Atiku – who lightly recanted his condemnation of Deborah Samuel’s killers – nor Tinubu, who succumbed to all-Moslem ticket, can descend on terrorist Boko Haram, bandits, herdsmen, kidnapers and other Islamists ravaging the country. None of them will restructure the federation. Tinubu no longer counts it as a major issue. Atiku will be hindered by the unfounded fear of Northern leadership losing control of Nigeria.
Both Atiku and Tinubu have been rejected by the large majority of the awakened youths, who constitute the largest segment of the population to be presided over as well as the largest segment of the electorate that can swing the election. They have chosen Mr. Peter Obi of the Labour Party, whose life, physical, mental and spiritual energy as well as record of prudence and selfless service, both as governor of Anambra State and as a businessman, have found unequalled favour with all well-meaning Nigerians.
The youths are the true majority shareholders and backbone of the Nigerian enterprise and should be calling the shots. Yet, they are the butt of injustice. Nobody bothers about them. Not even their education is cared for. Now that they have reached the yield point and have awakened, many Nigerians are standing with them to chase out the old guard for a new lease of life.
It is the youths who are at the vanguard of the raving tech revolution. They are the ones brimming with ideas and energy and breaking new grounds in science and technology, commerce and industry, arts and culture, entertainment and sports and in elections and appointments around the world. They are the ones still giving Nigeria some positive mention on the global stage. They are the ones to defend the country and lay down their lives in the event of aggression and are the ones facing insurgents – from Boko Haram to bandits to Unknown Gunmen.
Atiku and Tinubu should also be discounted for vote-buying and manipulation in securing the presidential ticket. If they and their party leaders and delegates were patriotic, the 2023 presidential contest should have been an epic between His Excellency, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (Vice President) and His Excellency, Mr. Peter Obi (two-term distinguished governor of Anambra State) any of who enjoys a clean perception and would change Nigeria’s narratives.
Above all, notwithstanding other shortcomings, Nigerians have never elected anybody with a criminal allegation as Head of Government since independence, yet we are in the ditch. Electing Tinubu or Atiku would amount to crossing the red line to perdition. As Professor Yemi Osinbajo (Vice President) said recently, Nigeria will fail without an ethical revolution.
One could go on and on as to why Atiku and Tinubu are unqualified for the CEO of Nigeria. In these disconsolate times, what is needed is an incorruptible, selfless, serious, hands-on, turnaround CEO, with vast, up-to-date, knowledge and the physical, mental and spiritual energy for the tug-of-war with vampires in navigating the country out of murky waters, at whose table the buck must stop – not the run of the mill, permissivepolitician, like Atiku or Tinubu. It should no longer be business as usual or a matter of ethnic, religious or party affiliation at the polls of February 25, 2023.
Everything considered, of the frontrunners for the 2023 Nigerian presidency, it is only Peter Obi (distinguished former governor of Anambra State) who meets the job specification (desired profile) for the 2023 presidency. He is rugged and well-known for winning tough battles from Ground Zero, against all odds and has set unequalled record in all the areas of concern.
Obi is a man of exceptional prudence and compassion for the people. He dislodged the vampires of Anambra State and drastically cut the cost of government (in many instances, by more than 80 percent), ran a corruption-free government and repositioned the battered state to the top position in the country, on all parameters – from security to education, infrastructure and utilities and health and social welfare – without borrowing a kobo but, instead, left huge investments and reserves (in both Naira and U. S. Dollars) for his successors.
That feat amply demonstrates the character, capacity and competence to dislodge vampires of the Nigerian state and to arrest resource waste and misallocation and all forms of hemorrhage in public resources and cash flow, to get the country out of the debt trap and socio-economic crisis. Neither Atiku nor Tinubu can boast of such strength of character.
Peter Obi is a man of Spartan and frugal lifestyle, who refused to corner any public asset, did not take a retirement benefit from the state and did not immerse nor enrich his wife, children, friends, kit and kin or clan, in government, unlike his greedy competitors.
His education is from the best institutions in Nigeria and the world (including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, London Business School, London School of Economics, Columbia and Northwestern universities) for progressively selected, up-to-date courses in leadership, governance, finance, economics, public and global affairs, e. t. c. – in addition to the Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy degree of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. In contrast, the education of his competitors remains steeped in controversy.
He is committed to the transformation of Nigeria from a consumption economy to one of production and export, to quickly restore macro-economic stability and growth, pull people out of poverty and suck the unemployed and miscreants off the bush and the street, in a fundamental way and not just by conscription into the Armed Forces, as one of his ‘analogue’ competitors proposes.
Obi has a multi-dimensional and dispassionate approach for curbing ravaging insecurity. He will engage everybody, including rebels (knowing that “violence is the language of the unheard”, according to Martin Luther King, Jr) and yet not shy to wield the big stick, where dialogue fails and wherever necessary.
Here is a man with the Midas touch and the knack for assembling the best team of men, women and youths (evident in his government of Anambra State and in his choice of Vice President and campaign team) capable of negotiating the country out of socio-economic abyss in this techno-economic age.
One could go on and on. The point is that Peter Obi seems specially prepared by God for the paradigm shift needed to salvage Nigeria at this time. He is pan-Nigerian and does not campaign on the grounds that the 2023 presidency is the turn of the South, even though that also matters, as already highlighted.
Opportunity calls but once. Put on the thinking cap, put sentiment aside, resist pecuniary considerations, read between the lines, and let us leverage on Peter Obi to retrieve Nigeria from the vampires!
- Nwosu, a public affairs analyst, wrote in from Lagos Island
