- The Story Of Their 20yr Relationship
If a list of top politicians in Nigeria is drawn up, one name that will feature prominently on it is that of former Vice-President Alhaji Abubakar Atiku. Its Not only because he has been the No. 2 man in Nigeria before, but because he has been able to build a formidable political structure that is big, strong and reliable. He was once the governor of Adamawa. And he has considerable influence across the North.
He has been actively involved in politics for about 28yrs.
Atiku’s first foray into politics was in the early 1980s, when he worked behind-the-scenes on the governorship campaign funds of Bamanga Tukur, who at that time, was the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority. He canvassed votes on behalf of Tukur, and also donated to the campaign. Towards the end of his Customs career, he met Alhaji Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who had been the second-in-command of the military government that ruled Nigeria between 1976 and 1979. Atiku was drawn by Yar’Adua into the political meetings that were then taking place regularly in Yar’Adua’s Lagos home. In 1989, Atiku was elected a National Vice-Chairman of the People’s Front of Nigeria, a political association led by Yar’Adua, to participate in the transition programme initiated by the then Head of State, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.
Atiku won a seat to represent his constituency at the 1989 Constituent Assembly, set up to decide a new constitution for Nigeria. The People’s Front was eventually denied registration by the government (none of the groups that applied was registered), and Atiku found a place within the Social Democratic Party, one of the two parties decreed into existence by the regime.
FIRST GOVERNORSHIP RUN (1990)
On 1 September, 1990, Atiku announced his Gongola State gubernatorial bid. A year later, before the election could hold, Gongola State was broken up into 2 – Adamawa and Taraba States – by the Federal Government. Atiku fell into the new Adamawa State. After an acrimonious contest, he won the SDP Primaries in November 1991, but was soon disqualified by government from contesting the election.
FIRST PRESIDENTIAL RUN (1992)
A similar fate – disqualification by the military – would befall Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Atiku’s friend and political mentor, in his 1992 bid for the presidential primary of the SDP. With no chance of contesting for the presidency, Yar’Adua decided to push Atiku forward as the focal point of SDP’s ambitions. Atiku came third in the convention primary. But because MKO Abiola, the winner, had won by only about 400 votes a run-off was due. Atiku stepped down for Abiola, asking his supporters to cast their votes for him, with an unwritten agreement that Abiola would announce Atiku as his running mate. Abiola won the SDP ticket, and announced Babagana Kingibe, the runner-up, as his running mate.
SECOND GOVERNORSHIP RUN (1998)
In 1998 Atiku launched a bid for the governorship of Adamawa State on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party. He won the December 1998 election, but before he could be sworn in, he was tipped by the PDP’s presidential candidate, a former Head of State, Olusegun Obasanjo, as his vice-presidential candidate. The Obasanjo-Atiku ticket won the 27 February 1999 presidential election with 62.78 percent of the vote.
VICE PRESIDENCY (1999–2007)
Atiku Abubakar was sworn in as Vice-President of Nigeria on 29 May, 1999. He presided over the National Council on Privatisation, overseeing the sale of hundreds of loss-making and poorly managed public enterprises.
In 1999, he, alongside South African Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, launched the South Africa Nigeria Binational Commission.
In 2006, Atiku was involved in a bitter public battle with his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, ostensibly arising from the latter’s bid to amend certain provisions of the constitution to take another shot at the presidency (for the third consecutive time).
In a November 2013 interview Atiku was quoted as saying, regarding Obasanjo’s alleged attempts to justify his third term bid: “[He] informed me that ‘I left power twenty years ago, I left Mubarak in office, I left Mugabe in office, I left Eyadema in office, I left Umar Bongo, and even Paul Biya and I came back and they are still in power; and I just did eight years and you are asking me to go; why?’ And I responded to him by telling him that Nigeria is not Libya, not Egypt, not Cameroun, and not Togo; I said you must leave; even if it means both of us losing out, but you cannot stay.”
The debate and acrimony generated by the failed constitutional amendment momentarily caused a rift in the People’s Democratic Party. The Nigerian National Assembly eventually voted against any amendments, allowing Obasanjo to run for another term.
The Atiku-Obasanjo face-off damaged the personal relationship between both men.
SECOND PRESIDENTIAL RUN (2006–2007)
On 25 November, 2006, Abubakar announced that he would run for president. On 20 December, 2006, he was chosen as the presidential candidate of the Action Congress (AC).
On 14 March 2007, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released the final list of 24 candidates for 21 April, presidential election. Abubakar’s name was missing on the ballot. INEC issued a statement saying that Abubakar’s name was missing because he was on a list of persons indicted for corruption by a panel set up by the government. Abubakar headed for the court on 16 March, to have his disqualification overturned. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on 16 April, that INEC had no power to disqualify candidates.
The ruling allowed Abubakar to contest the election, although there were concerns that it might not be possible to provide ballots with Abubakar’s name by 21 April, the date of the election. On 17 April, a spokesman for the INEC said that Abubakar would be on the ballot.
According to official results, Abubakar took third place, behind PDP’s candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua and ANPP’s candidate Muhammadu Buhari, with approximately 7% of the vote (2.6 million votes). Abubakar rejected the election results and called for its cancellation, describing it as Nigeria’s “worst election ever.”
He stated that he would not attend Umaru Yar’Adua’s inauguration on 29 May, owing to his view that the election was not credible, saying that he did not want to “dignify such a hollow ritual with my presence.”
POST VICE-PRESIDENCY, THIRD PRESIDENTIAL RUN (2011)
Following the 2007 elections, Atiku returned to the People’s Democratic Party. In October 2010, he announced his intention to contest the Presidency. On 22 November, a Committee of Northern Elders selected him as the Northern Consensus Candidate, over the former Military President, Ibrahim Babangida, former National Security Adviser Aliyu Gusau and Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State.
In January 2011, Atiku contested for the Presidential ticket of his party alongside President Goodluck Jonathan and Sarah Jubril, and lost the primary, garnering 805 votes to President Jonathan’s 2,736.
RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT OBASANJO
On 30 March, 2014, Nigerian media reported that a delegation from the Northern Youth Leaders Forum visited Obasanjo at his home in Abeokuta and pleaded with him to “forgive your former Vice-President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, of whatever political sin or offence he might have committed against you.” In response, Obasanjo was quoted as saying that “as a leader and father, I bear no grudge against anybody and if there is, I have forgiven them all.”
“Towards the end of his Customs career, he met Alhaji Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who had been the second-in-command of the military government that ruled Nigeria between 1976 and 1979. Atiku was drawn by Yar’Adua into the political meetings that were then taking place regularly in Yar’Adua’s Lagos home”
PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT (PDM)
In August 2013, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) registered 2 new political parties. One of them was the People’s Democratic Movement. Media reports suggested that the party was formed by Atiku as a back-up plan in case he was unable to fulfill his rumoured presidential ambitions on the PDP’s platform. In a statement, Atiku acknowledged that the PDM was founded by his “political associates”, but that he remained a member of the PDP.
FROM APC BACK TO PDP
On 2 February, 2014, Atiku left the People’s Democratic Party to join All Progressives’ Congress (APC), a platform on which he sought to contest for the presidency in 2015, but lost at the primaries. He recently returned back to the PDP.
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