Nyako’s demonisation of Atiku Abubakar

It is just dawning on him that a hammer is dangling overhead ready to descend on him. He is fighting tooth and nail to extricate himself from a political Siberia that awaits him as the people of Adamawa state mince no words on what they intend to do in a couple of months. The sentiment […]

It is just dawning on him that a hammer is dangling overhead ready to descend on him. He is fighting tooth and nail to extricate himself from a political Siberia that awaits him as the people of Adamawa state mince no words on what they intend to do in a couple of months. The sentiment in the north about the zoning policy has been very strong and Nyako and his fellow co-travellers in Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kaduna, Taraba, Benue and Katsina who interpreted the mood of their people upside down and supported Jonathan have never bargained for the kind of anger their actions was bound to generate. It was like a wild fire devouring everything on its path all across the region.

Now the chickens have come home to roost and the monster the governors have created are set to consume them. Of course, they have successfully handed over the advantage to Jonathan, but I doubt if Jonathan will be there to save them when the time comes for the people to have their pound of flesh. The implication is that while Jonathan is correctly on the driver’s seat of his own voyage, the same governors who worked against the interest and wish of their own people are sure in a very bad mess. The signals that most of them are on their way out are unmistakably emerging and this can be gleaned from the anger that has spread all over the states and the determination of the people to pay them back in their own coins. The protests in the respective states are the signs that all is not well.

Instead of the governors to admit that they have indeed misjudged and misfired, perhaps beclouded by their insatiable lust for power and readiness to do anything, even if it means working at cross purposes against the interest of their people, they are now engaged in making scapegoats out of Atiku Abubakar, the man who was at the receiving end of their mindless and unpatriotic gaffe. The Nyako tantrums and hallucination about Atiku being a security risk is therefore an unintelligent and tactless attempt to hoodwink the people and distract attention from the inevitable shame stalking him.  To aver that Atiku is not relevant in the politics of Adamawa state anymore as Nyako’s spokesman attempted to drive home the other day is to say the least uncharitable, laughable and very far from the truth.

Atiku has paid his dues in the politics of this country. He is younger than Nyako, no doubt, but his record of political activity has dwarfed Nyako’s who, after a colourless stint in the Navy, retired to his farm, only for another colourless Obasanjo to orchestrate a movie like stunt by plucking Nyako out of his wilderness, forcing him on the PDP and smuggling him into the Government House, the same Balderdash he committed in the South Western states where the shenanigan have been dealt fatal blow by the courts leading to the PDP losing out to the ACN in most of the states. Now the man who was very unlikely to become a governor simply because he was not in reckoning for it, is the same man making such uncomplimentary statements about Abubakar Atiku and trying to demonise him, set him against the law on spurious charges of constituting security risk and trying to shift the blame of what is a spontaneous public reaction to what is termed by all as a selfish and condemnable action.

The truth is that Nyako and his friends have committed an ignoble act and the reality is that the people who are the ultimate determinant of who gets their mandate have resolved to kick the traitors out to make a firm statement that those who equate their personal and selfish interest to the larger interest of the society must be told in clear terms that they are on their own. It is only in our kind of clime that leaders would act contrary to the expectations of their people and still look unruffled and unmoved. They move about with an air of arrogance oblivious of the pain their actions could cause the people. In the case of Nyako, who denied that there were protests in Adamawa against the position he took in Abuja, the reverberating and more telling protests that greeted the state two days after the official denied was meant to be a counter statement to send the message home; and it did adequately.

Nyako is at liberty to go on deceiving himself that the people of Adamawa are with him on his pro-Jonathan voyage. The outcome of the 2011 general elections when he will be kicked out and sent back to his farm will however be the conclusive terminator of his playing the Ostrich. The same treatment is what every northerner hopes will be the lot of the other traitors. We would celebrate it with a bang.

Ahmed BK wrote from Kashim Ibrahim Road, Maiduguri and can be reached at [email protected]