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Author: YAKUBU HAMZA ABUBAKAR
Posted to the web: 9/5/2005 1:02:21 PM

IF Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is widely perceived as a doormat by several people could now start turning like an unbearably oppressed worm, then it means there is something fundamentally wrong in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s leadership style. It is strange that a vice president widely regarded as loyal to a fault can now be openly accused of questionable fealty to his boss. In fact, despite the fact that Atiku Abubakar bore one humiliation after another with dignity and equanimity at the hands of the president, his loyalty to President Obasanjo has remained firm. As a matter of fact, Atiku Abubakar is seen by many as the dog that loves its master more than it loves itself! Although he has publicly stood by his boss and defended every policy of the administration, however unpopular, Atiku Abubakar is still curiously treated as disloyal. For example, Senator Femi Okurounmu has accused Atiku Abubakar of exceeding his bounds (whatever that means). According to the senator, 'the President has given him (Atiku) too much powers that he doesn’t deserve in a presidential system of government. Yet this man has not been loyal.' (Daily Sun, Tuesday Aug. 30, 2005, P.4). This accusation is utter hogwash because it does not dovetail with existing evidence of the sacrifices the vice president has made for his boss out of steadfast loyalty. As argued by Thomas Henry Huxley, 'Veracity is the heart of morality.' In this regard, can Okurounmu’s allegations withstand the rigours of critical inquiry or the truth? The 2003 PDP convention for the nomination of President Obasanjo’s re-election bid provides a concrete example of Atiku’s genuine loyalty to his boss. When President Obasanjo lost his good will from his main military sponsors such as Generals Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Aliyu Gusau and others, they offered Vice president Atiku Abubakar a decisive chance to achieve his ambition without Obasanjo. And with some governors largely in support of Atiku’s bid to replace his boss in 2003, President Obasanjo himself had realized that the political red light was unmistakable. The president consequently swallowed his pride and pleaded with Atiku to save his political future. Realizing that the goodwill of Nigerian political leaders across the board which brought him to office in 1999 had deserted him, the president had to embrace Atiku Abubakar. Steadfast loyalty The vice president, influenced by his steadfast loyalty, ignored the offer to overthrow his boss through that political coup, which would have made Obasanjo a first-tern president. Atiku stood by Obasanjo and downgraded his own presidential ambition and instead chose to remain a running mate, even as he had a golden opportunity to ditch his boss. Instead of appreciation, as soon as President Obasanjo got his second term firmly in his hands, he started scheming to disgrace a man who had earlier saved his political skin. The vice president lost his goodwill from Gen. Babangida and others for refusing to play ball to teach President Obasanjo a political lesson in treachery. Despite the ordeals of humiliation to which the president subjected his vice president, Atiku has remained loyal to the president, sometimes leading to suspicions that the vee-pee is spineless. Who is more disloyal in these circumstances? Is it a man who saved his boss from political debacle or the boss who forgot a debt of gratitude to those who stood by him at critical moment? Is rewarding your friends with humiliation and ingratitude an act of loyalty or what? Despite the fact that President Obasanjo appears to be pursuing vengeance, since his second-term re-election, Atiku’s loyalty has never wavered. One resounding example of such loyalty was the critical role Atiku had played in exposing a coup plot, which would have resulted in the president’s helicopter being shot down when it flew from Ota to Lagos. Most of those standing trial as suspects in the alleged plot are Atiku’s fellow northern military officers. Yet his loyalty to the president, the nation and the constitution counted far above such sentiments in his calculation to preserve our hard-earned democracy. During a visit to the PDP national headquarters at the time, President Obasanjo openly and effusively acknowledged Atiku’s patriotic intervention to save the nation from a disaster that could have befallen our democracy. Did Femi Okurounmu and like-minded loquacious bashers of Atiku go to sleep when the vice president was proving his loyalty over the security breach incident? Righteous protestation of unjust treatment from a boss whom you have served so submissively is not synonymous with disloyalty contrary to the warped interpretation of Senator Okurounmu. The ordeals of humiliation Atiku has been going through, despite his loyalty, is an open secret and his recent utterances are a direct appeal to the conscience of those who take loyalty for granted. If in the end the vice president summons some courage to publicly protest the injustice being meted out to him by his boss, Nigerians must blame the excesses of the boss in his pursuit of vengeance, even against a deputy who had saved him from political debacle and a violent intent against his life. Why should anyone ignore these issues and instead seek to put the saddle on the wrong horse? Atiku is rapidly gaining public sympathy because he is widely perceived as a victim of his own loyalty. The recent new-found courage of Atiku in the face of deliberate policy of provocation and humiliation, including the systematic destruction of his perceived sources of political strengths and the firing of his political aides without his prior knowledge or consultation, was like the case of dog that can no longer run away from its deadly pursuers. As this hounded dog can run no more, but to turn round to face its pursuers, the quarry has to face a choice between death or liberty! The vice president’s open loyalty, instead of being appreciated, has brought for him more kicks than half pence. In fact, his loyalty is misperceived for fear or weakness, stupidity or both. And the sycophants behind this strategy of scorched earth policy of bringing down a vice president, who has been 'obsequiously' loyal to his boss, are not helping the president’s reputation as a statesman from whom fellow citizens expect examples of magnanimity and sincere forgiveness of perceived 'wrongs.' Going through history books, it is easy to discover that Vice president Atiku Abubakr shares a similar melancholy experience as Hubert Humphrey, who was President Lyndon Johnson’s vice president. According to Richard Rovere’s account, Hubert Humphrey was, 'for four years a slave to a master who destroys his slaves.' In their book, The Palace Guard, Dan Rather and Gary Paul Gates, noted: 'More than any other President of recent memory, Johnson needed sycophants, adoring courtiers, to keep his batteries charged. In his constant, fury-driven demands for loyalty and still more loyalty, he also so devoured those around him that many of them reached the point where they just couldn’t take it any longer.' (P.20). But for the crawlers in the corridors of power in the Aso Rock Villa, the Obasanjo/Atiku relationship would not have come to this sorry state of deterioration, involving mutual public recrimination between the two leaders. If the President Obasanjo has to persecute Atiku over the 2003 presidential convention of the PDP, at which he was confronted with a haemorrhage of good will from his sponsors, why is he also not punishing some closest allies who had collaborated with his military tormentors to execute him for alleged coup plot in 1995? Some of the bootlickers around him today even went as far as defending his conviction under the Abacha regime. But as soon as Obasanjo became the new man of the moment in 1999, these unabashed sycophants crawled back to the feet of the very man whose death sentence they were celebrating and defending! Who is then a worst enemy of the President between those shameless and disreputable sycophants that wanted Obasani0 viciously executed for alleged coup plotting in 1995 and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, who despite his misgivings, decided to back President Obasanjo for his 2003 second term bid, a move that crucially saved the President’s palpably uncertain political future at the time. The uncommon passion of vengeance against the Vice-President remains a mystery, but the President may ultimately come to discover that the crawlers at his feet are his real enemies. Abubakar lives in Kaduna