THE NATION
On October 30, former vice president and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, finally spoke on his loss at the Supreme Court in the case he filed against the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its victorious candidate in that election, President Bola Tinubu. The speech was undoubtedly written for him, for everything in the text stands in direct and scornful refutation of his life and ideas. He blames the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Supreme Court for his loss. As far as he is concerned, he presented all the evidence necessary to get the case decided in his favour, but his valiant and noble attempt was thwarted by the incompetence and deviousness of the two institutions. He did not have an impressive school leaving certificate, but he brandishes a diploma in law (1969) and a master’s in international relations (2021). His speech, however, displays nothing of the higher learning or political virtue his education confers on him. He misreads the electoral law, misapplies the constitution, and far more embarrassingly, especially for someone who passes himself off as a statesman and patriotic political titan, misjudges both his personal accomplishment and the mood of the country.
In the first four paragraphs of his speech, he tells audacious lies about the role he played in Nigerian politics, including what he has stood for all his life, and insinuations about what he may yet accomplish on a hypothetical tomorrow. In those prefatory statements, where he speaks with absolute cocksureness of what he supposed was the malfeasance of the two institutions in question, he avers that history will vindicate him. He knows nothing about history. Then he pontificates about democracy and the rule of law, of which he was both an avatar and a palladium. He does not say what qualifies him for the robes he wore in the speech, for the robes were ponderous and ungainly over the thin and spectral frame of his self-confessed qualities. But because some bright and dreamy hack writer composed his diatribe against the court and INEC, he believes that by merely making those self-adulatory claims, he was invariably entitled to wear those grand and noble robes.
He repeatedly hammers on his years of litigations, which he assumes must be noble because they exuded a long and profound history of political activism and agitation, and he thus proudly wears that hat. It escapes him that his litigiousness, much of it anchored on flimsy and self-gratifying evidence, could in fact be baleful pointers to his disputatiousness, a grumbler eternally griping about minor hurts and chasing chimeras. He then zeroes in on his last Supreme Court case, speaks fondly about United States (US) courts from which he says he had procured unassailable evidence, and damns everybody else from APC to INEC, and from the Nigerian courts to Nigerians themselves whom he dismisses as complicit. For someone who claims to have a diploma in law, it is bewildering that he neither says anything about the sanctity of laws nor talks of estimating the evidentiary worth of his foreign evidence. He then proceeds to cast aspersion on legal technicalities as if they are distinguishable from the law, and feigning dismay, pronounces glibly on how the courts should have proceeded. The lower court that adjudicated his case, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), gave its judgement on September 6, while the Supreme Court affirmed the judgement on October 26. Neither he nor his speechwriters had obviously read and digested the judgements, though they had enough time. Had he read the two documents, his law diploma should have impelled him to a better and deeper understanding of the inviolability of the justices’ reasoning and conclusions.
A final year law student, confronted with the arguments and evidence of the Atiku legal team, could not but come to the conclusion that the former vice president had no case, regardless of whether the student or any other person for that matter loathed the winner, President Tinubu. Worse, it did not need the same final year law student, after perusing the final address of the Atiku team, to come to the safe conclusion that the Supreme Court would unanimously dismiss his case and affirm the president’s victory in the election. Alhaji Atiku in his more than 2,700-worded speech paid no heed to the legal arguments adumbrated in the two judgements before coming to his conclusion that both the Supreme Court and INEC acted disloyally to the national cause and the cause of democracy. Instead, he focused cheerfully on the moral insinuation of a forgery he neither argued before the lower court nor tendered procedurally before the Supreme Court. He hoped his casuistry and the menace he and others had stirred in the wider and gullible public would be sufficient to intimidate the court. Six times, Alhaji Atiku tried to be president; he nearly could have become president in any of those times. For a man who trifles with facts, pays lip service to the concepts of democracy and the rule of law, speaks loftily about the future of Nigeria without discussing or propounding anchors for such a future, and wails apocalyptically about the failure of others while glossing blithely over his own abysmal moral and business failings, winning the presidency in any of those six times would have had tragic and lasting consequences for the country.
There have been suggestions that his insistence on staying put in the country to help Nigeria in its struggle for democracy are designed to pave the way for a future run at the presidency. Despite his boastings, and notwithstanding his litigious propensity, Alhaji Atiku is not a democrat nor does he care a hoot about democracy. He never fought for it, and may even harbour contempt for the idea. Fighting for democracy implies having a deep understanding of the concept. Alhaji Atiku is decidedly and roundly superficial. His court forays, particularly weaponised to damage the credibility and reputation of President Tinubu, have also been imbued with sacredness as a way of preparing him for a future presidential race. Those who advance such arguments exaggerate Alhaji Atiku’s mental and physical capacity. Apart from his rudimentary grasp of running a modern and complex economy and society, not to say his failing strength, it will take a miracle at 81 years old in 2027 to run for president, and much bigger altruism to make him support a younger and capable candidate. He is too selfish to care. Alhaji Atiku has reached the end of his tether. He will not run for president in 2027, nor support anyone for the position; instead, he will fade away well before the next elections.
