By Sahid Umar
There is heightened political tension in Nigeria with the polity overheating. All the hue and cry is over 2023 elections as politicians have reactivated their political machineries to participate in congresses for the election of party officials. This is the prelude to party primaries where candidates will emerge for elective posts in 2023.
Already, Nigerians have begun to encounter sinister designs and clandestine moves by politicians and their surrogates to outsmart, outmaneuver and overrun opponents. While some deploy a modicum of guile to conceal their intentions, others do theirs openly and damn the consequences. Dr. Oby Ezekwesili belongs to this latter group, especially when she descended so low and wrote a confounding piece to smear the good name and tarnish the image of the former Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Waziri Adamawa, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
Dr. Oby Ezekwesili is no stranger to Nigerians and the global community having occupied a number of responsible positions both within and outside Nigeria, although she recently exhibited a strange behaviour. I came in contact with her when she was Minister of Education and I was Commissioner of Education under the Boni Haruna Administration in Adamawa State in 2006. As Minister, she chaired many national meetings on education where she exhibited high quality of intellectual and academic leadership.
Throughout the Obasanjo Administration, Dr. Ezekwesili never gave any inkling of disloyalty. So, no one had the slightest premonition that she nursed grievances or had an axe to grind with some of the leaders of the country until her recent outburst and diatribe that exposed her for what she is, an ingrate, having done a hatchet job on Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
She opened her diatribe thus: “I just laugh when I hear some people say our citizen’s movement will split opposition votes. But the PDP is not in opposition to the APC.” As an intellectual, a renowned economist and an international civil servant, she knows better the meaning of opposition. However, her vision and understanding may be different from that of the man on the street. The bottom line is that in both 2015 and 2019, however, the PDP slugged it out with the APC in hotly contested elections. The PDP won substantial positions and lost others and, therefore, emerged as the leading opposition party in Nigeria, not by choice but through demographics. So, today, if the PDP is not an opposition party in Nigeria, Dr. Ezekwesili should tell us what it is!!
In her libelous piece, she said she served in the Obasanjo administration with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and that for six and a half years, she fought the fight that she had to fight from within and left government knowing that if this political order was not changed, the work of good governance done from within government would not last. Her judgement cannot be faulted in this respect only that she pins corruption only on the PDP government while completely shielding and absolving the APC from monstrous atrocities committed almost daily involving corruption and insecurity on a scale never seen or imagined in the annals of Nigerian history.
She added “I have heard some people say it is because the PDP candidate has run successful businesses and therefore will be good for the economy at a time like this.
“That response just makes me shake my head in wonderment. Is it the same person we know or are we speaking of another?” She then quoted a 2005 e-mail on the funding of Atiku’s university which states that the flow of revenue to the university will rise or fall with Atiku’s political fortunes.
Again, she mentioned a report by a US Senate Committee on foreign corruption which allegedly concluded that between 2000 and 2008, Atiku and his wife Jennifer Douglas were able to bring over $40 million in suspect funds into the United States.
She concluded her mischievous piece thus: “If we dive into all the filthy issues involving the PDP candidate – from PTDF saga to $2.8 million Siemens bribery scandal – we may spend the entire day here today and I simply don’t have that time.”
If the objective of her write-up is to impugn, malign, injure or curb Atiku’s massive support across Nigeria, she’s in for a shocker. After feeding and growing fat from the PDP stable, Dr. Ezekwesili now has nothing but scorn and disdain for the party as she bites the finger that fed her.
Dr. Ezekwesili launched a ferocious campaign and made highly incendiary charges against Atiku without conducting any research on both the past and present state of affairs. If she took time to ask only a few questions, she would have jettisoned most of her allegations. In this regard, therefore, she would have discovered that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar went to court 13 times, got a clean bill of health from the judiciary and was cleared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to contest presidential elections for almost two decades.
Besides, Dr. Ezekwesili should understand that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was not a pauper like her before he joined the Federal Government in 1999. Earlier, he contested and won the governorship election in Adamawa State before he became the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from 1999 – 2007. She should also know that the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola, Adamawa State, the institution she tacitly referred to, had numerous sources of funds and was completed and made functional after Atiku left public office. To therefore attribute the funding of AUN or any other funds the former Vice President deployed for business in the United States to corruption is the height of irresponsibility.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has consistently told Nigerians and other interested persons elsewhere with concrete evidence to nail him on corruption charges to approach the anti-graft agencies or the open courts to seek justice. However, since he left public office over 14 years ago, no one has come forward to confront the anti-graft agencies or the courts with such evidence. Yet, now and again, lousy and indolent people like Dr. Ezekwesili raise unnecessary dust or blow hot air just to heat the polity.
The former Vice President has placed a price for whoever that can prove any corruption allegation against him. Since Dr. Oby Ezekwesili has been jobless for far too long and looking for both recognition and stipends to keep body and soul together, she can take this opportunity and prove her allegations. Although His Excellency Atiku Abubakar has no time to join issues with his subordinates, especially people he nurtured in power, his legion of supporters are no longer going to tolerate any loudmouthed politicians or their lackeys who seek to soil his good name for their selfish ends.
Muck-raking and character assassination are the preoccupations of feeble minds and charlatans. People like Dr. Oby Ezekwesili that engage in the travesty against Atiku won’t diminish his Olympian status or scuttle his political ambition; rather, they will increase his popularity and massive support across Nigeria.
PIONEER NEWS 