Atiku’s Street Protest

As a sixth-timer in the contest for Nigeria’s presidency, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has qualified as an extraordinary power-seeker whose credentials as a participant in the political process are almost unrivalled. His clear monopoly of a significant portion of the political space has made him a figure to which Nigerians look up in terms of the kind of activism that enriches democracy.

Although he is a serial loser, the defeat he suffered during the last presidential election which took place on the 25th of last month must have been the most painful to him because, in any case, it looks like his last contest. Yes, the last and the one that came along with a huge possibility for victory considering such factors as the completion of an eight-year tenure by President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), increased dissatisfaction of Nigerians over the performance of the government and the internal crisis in the ruling APC.

Even before the conduct of the primaries of his party which produced him as presidential flag bearer, Atiku intimidated almost every group of stakeholders within and outside the PDP into accepting his indispensability as a contender. He manipulated the party leadership to discard the zoning formula by which the presidential ticket might have been picked by a contender from any other section of the country than the North.

At several critical points in the course of the contest, it appeared that almost everything just fell in place for him to emerge as the presidential candidate of the PDP and later president of Nigeria. He was widely, on account of his antecedent as the most influential vice president the country has ever had, immense wealth and vast support base, considered as a president whose time had come; a particular conclusion or assumption that made many other politicians of tremendous substance to defer to him.

The personality of Atiku as a leader and politician has consistently been a subject of interrogation by various groups of Nigerians to whom he owes explanation about his past, present endeavors and vision for the country. It was, arguably, during the last contest that almost everything about him was pushed onto the public domain and most thoroughly probed as a result of which some facts that were either favourable to him or otherwise were found.

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Atiku was a candidate who put into use his well-acknowledged war chest and financial muscle in the course of the contest. It was a combination of fear of his intimidating personality, love for his money and anticipation of victory that made a lot of Nigerians to go for him, thereby making his campaign team sufficiently thick.

A fair knowledge of Atiku and the conceptual framework of his political project must have made people to pre-conceive  that, at every particular stage in the contest, he would not give up easily. Those who knew how he, as a vice president, resisted a victimization attempt against him by his principal at the time, President Olusegun Obasanjo, must have known that Atiku would be even more resistant and persistent this time.

Therefore, his rejection of the result of the election as announced by the National Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INE), Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, is a confirmation of the suspicion that a ‘defeat’ is not something he would ordinarily accept. This means that his decision to challenge, in the tribunal, the declaration of the APC’s Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election was something that was long foreseen.

But that is where he was expected to stop because that is the measure that is most compliant with the provisions of the law. Having been a victor in most of the legal battles he had with Obasanjo, the PDP candidate was strongly expected to have a full confidence in the tribunal and, by extension, the judiciary to which he has taken his complaint.

The widely publicized street protest over the declaration of Tinubu as winner which he physically led last Monday was, therefore, a totally unexpected action. Who would have thought that Atiku who is always boastful about his capacity for the pursuit of matters in court would easily succumb to the temptation for indulgence in an act that is, at least at this stage, anything but decent, considering the fact that the complaint he lodged with the tribunal has already started receiving the required attention.

The former vice president is only, as a matter of right, a politician with a natural ambition to grab power, but certainly not the kind of advocate or struggler that is particularly known for a street protest. This is even the basis of the significant public curiosity over the combat-readiness he, along with the National Chairman of the PDP, Dr Iyorchia Ayu, and the Director General of the party’s Campaign Council, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of Sokoto State, showed on the street in the name of protest over the election result.

Although the protest climaxed with the submission of a petition containing a demand for the cancellation of the presidential election to the INEC’s headquarters, which is a usual attitude of election losers, the action is being despised on account of the fact that it is the same complaint that has been taken to a tribunal by the PDP. Is the protest, therefore, not a contradiction of the party’s resolve to pursue the matter in court?

Obviously, there are complaints over the election in some quarters, which the protest by Atiku must have now re-enforced. It has, in fact, been observed that everything of this nature is being done just to sustain the atmosphere of rancour as part of the grand design to discredit the process to such an extent that the cancellation of the outcome will become absolutely unavoidable.

But there is a counter to every action of the Atikus that are equally, if not more, forceful. Apart from the condemnation of the protest because of the possibility of its escalation, a lot of facts are being churned out to show the validity of the election and therefore the need to uphold its outcome.

What has started happening in the tribunal with regards to the petition of both the PDP and the Labour Party is an extension of the electoral process to which all stakeholders should endeavor to pay maximum attention.  Street protests, show of disobedience to established laws or even insult of people who are alleged to be involved in what the petitioners have considered to be unlawful or even a combination of all of them can not be a substitute for a display of utmost diligence in the pursuit of the matter in the tribunal.

As Nigerians have begun monitoring the proceedings of the tribunal, they will duly expect to see a lot more diligence on the part of the petitioners so that when judgement is finally delivered it will be taken as a full product of the active participation of all the parties involved in the case. This is a fundamental expectation of the citizens that the PDP Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, should try to meet through due diligence, not street protest.