How ATIKU Plans To Split BUHARI’s Northern Votes

• City People Reveals Some Shocking Details

In 2015 there was so much talk about the bloc votes that President Muhammadu Buhari won from the 17 Northern States which helped him in the presidential elections.

The general story in town right now is that PDP Presidential aspirant Atiku Abubakar and a few big wigs from the North who are working together are planning to split the Northern Votes, as part of the strategy to defeat Buhari come 2019.

Atiku has done his homework well. He knows the areas he has strong following up North. He is also working with the likes of Ibrahim  Shekarau, former Kano governor for (8 Years) who defeated Kwakwaso as a sitting governor in 2003, is close to Atiku, Kwakwaso himself is a factor. He is in APC, but there are rumous that he is also going to run for Presidency. He has a large Kwakwansiya movement. He win either join forces with Atiku or run for Presidency on the platform of ADC.  So he is most likely to share Buhari’s APC votes in North West Atiku has his traditional votes in the North East, and North Central.

What will also work for Atiku is that although both Atiku and Buhari are Fulani, Atiku has an added advantage. While he is accepted as a Fulani and  a Moslem by the North, the South, does not see him as a fundamentalist the way they perceive Buhari. So, Atiku has a win-win chances and more acceptable in all part of the country.

Source of elites in the North  are unhappy that Buhari has demystified the concept of talakawa and has thrown every one, both the rich and the poor into further penury. So the theory that poor man should rule the country is no longer an attractive narrative.

Who is Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (GCON)? He is the second elected Vice-President of Nigeria. He assumed office from 1999 to 2007, on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) along with President Olusegun Obasanjo. Before he went into Politics,

Abubakar worked at the Nigeria Customs Service for 20 years, rising to become the Deputy Director, as the second highest position in the Service was then known. He retired in April 1989 and took up full-time business and politics. He ran for the office of Governor in the Gongola State (now Adamawa and Taraba States) in 1991, and for the Presidency in 1993, placing 3rd after MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries.

In 1998 he was elected Governor of Adamawa State. While still Governor-Elect he was selected by the PDP as Presidential candidate, Olusegun Obasanjo’s running mate. The duo went on to win the election in February 1999, and Abubakar was sworn-in as Nigeria’s second democratically elected vice president on 29 May 1999.

Abubakar’s second term as Vice President was marked by a stormy relationship with President Obasanjo. His bid to succeed Obasanjo did not receive the latter’s support, and it took a judgment of the Supreme Court to allow Abubakar contest after he was initially disqualified by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on the grounds that he had been indicted for financial misconduct by an investigating panel set up at Obasanjo’s behest. The Supreme Court ordered the electoral commission to restore Abubakar’s name on the presidential ballot. Abubakar ran on the platform of the Action Congress (AC), having quit the PDP on account of his issues with President Obasanjo. Atiku lost the election, placing third after Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP). After graduation in 1969, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was employed by the Nigeria Customs Service.

HIS POLITICS

Atiku’s first foray into politics was in the early 1980s, when he worked behind-the-scenes on the governorship campaign of Bamanga Tukur, who at that time was managing director of the Nigeria Ports Authority. He canvassed for votes on behalf of Tukur, and also donated to the campaign. Towards the end of his Customs career, he met Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, who had been 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 happening regularly in Yar’Adua’s Lagos home. In 1989, Atiku was elected a National Vice-Chairman of the People’s Front of Nigeria, the political association led by Yar’Adua, to participate in the transition programme initiated by Head of State, 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). Atiku, however, found a place within the Social Democratic Party (SDP), 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 carved into two – Adamawa and Taraba States – by the Federal Government. Atiku found himself in the new Adamawa State. After an acrimonious contest, he won the SDP’s Primaries in November 1991, but was soon disqualified by the government from contesting the elections.

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’s 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 PDP. He won the December 1998 elections, but before he could be sworn in, he was tipped by the PDP’s presidential candidate, a former Head of State, Chief 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 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 conference momentarily caused a rift in the PDP. 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 AC.

On 14 March 2007, INEC released the final list of 24 candidates for 21 April presidential election. Abubakar’s name was missing from the ballot. INEC issued a statement, stating 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 courts 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 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 for the Presidency. On 22 November, a Committee of Northern Elders selected him as the Northern Consensus Candidate, over 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 Jonathan and Sarah Jubril, and lost the primary, garnering 805 votes to President Jonathan’s 2,736.

PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT (PDM)

In August 2013, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) registered two new political parties. One of them was the Peoples 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.

ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS

On 2 February, 2014, Atiku left the People’s Democratic Party to join the APC, the platform on which he sought to contest for the Nigerian presidency in 2015, but lost at the primaries. He went back to the PDP  where he plans to realise his ambition.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Abubakar has been active on Twitter since the 2011 elections, but stepped up his engagement in May 2013. In August 2013, he became only the second Nigerian politician to be verified, after Lagos State Governor, Raji Fashola. As at November 2015, he had more than 390,000 followers. He currently has 450,000 Facebook fans. Also in 2013, he launched a blog.

In an August 2013 post he shared his views on the role and relevance of social media to governance and democracy in Nigeria.