Posted by By KENNY ASHAKA, Kaduna on
The Northern Traditional Council has called on both the Action Congress (AC) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidates in the 2007 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and General Muhammadu Buhari respectively to give up their struggle to claim the presidency from the incumbent, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.
The Northern Traditional Council has called on both the Action Congress (AC) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidates in the 2007 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and General Muhammadu Buhari respectively to give up their struggle to claim the presidency from the incumbent, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.
The traditional ruler said the dogged manner in which the pending case of their election petition before the Supreme Court was being pursued was not in the best interest of the North and Nigeria.
Secretary of the Northern Traditional Council Conflict Resolution Committee and the paramount ruler of the Bachama Kingdom, Asaph Zadok who expressed the mind of the Northern traditional rulers to Daily Sun in an exclusive interview at the weekend said it was high time the hatchet was buried.
Both Buhari and Atiku took their cases against President Yar'Adua to the Presidential Election Tribunal, alleging large scale manipulations and sundry electoral offences during the poll.
The duo lost their petitions at the petition tribunal but again took their case to the Supreme Court, asking it to turn the table against President Yar'Adua by declaring one of them the winner of the poll.
However, speaking on the issue, the Bachama paramount ruler, Asaph Zadok said the pending case could only serve to divert the attention of President Yar'Adua from governance.
'I strongly believe that it is high time the hatchet was buried between Turaki (Atiku) and Yar'Adua because governance is difficult with a pending determination of the status of government in court. Even so, in the interest of the entire common nuclear family and the larger Nigerian family to which both of them belong.
So many commentators have stated in recent past that Atiku has a solution to the Niger Delta problem. That solution cannot be accessed by being distant and aloof, waiting for the outcome of the court processes. At the end, if this solution is not immediately accessed, the Nigeria he is struggling to govern may not be there for him in the future. The fragility of the polity demands from all well-meaning citizens in the calibre of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku to rise above politics and assume statemanship, not only for the purpose of Northern unity, but that Nigeria may move forward. There is no better time for the North to make the best use of a bad situation than now, bearing in mind that when Yar'Adua fails in governance, it would not be Yar'Adua's failure but the North's failure, especially when the Nigerian presidency has become a presidency of zoning.
Zoning was a PDP formula which may not be biding on other parties. Don't you think so?
With respect to the last presidential election, there is no dispute that PDP has the largest structure on ground. It run its domestic politics. It runs the foreign policy. We can be right by extension to say PDP has assumed the place of Nigeria. And the stage we were before the 2007 polls, a PDP presidential primary is already a Nigerian election.
We were in a stage where PDP presidential primaries is tantamount to a Nigerian election. So, we cannot divorce a presidential zoning in the PDP from a Nigerian, presidential zoning, afterall it is the same PDP that zoned the presidency to the South and produced the Obasanjo leadership.
There has been this controversy over Atiku and the PDP BOT chairmanship. What do you think of an Atiku chairmanship?
Atiku. I really would have wished not to comment on issues of political decision of the former vice president. But everybody knows that his movement to AC and even the establishment of the platform called AC was born out of his frustration with the PDP. If the PDP has opted to sanitise itself, despite its postures, and is making effort to reconcile with people it offended in the past, I haven't seen any personal offence committed by Yar'Adua against Buhari or Atiku that they cannot forgive as senior brothers and reconcile in order to give him the needed input that would make him succeed.
There is speculation that Atiku may be offered the BOT chairmanship. Would that help in the reconciliation you are thinking about?
The reconciliation I am thinking about has nothing to do with offer of position or party politics. It is largely a family re-union of Northern sons who happen, in the present, to be the biggest stakeholders in the Nigerian project and who in the failure of this project, would turn out the biggest losers. My appeal is that they should rise beyond the scope of politics and assume their rightful pedestal of statesmen.
There is nothing anybody can take away from Turaki in the struggle for democracy. And his place and memory in Nigerian history would be far bigger than many occupants of the presidential stool. Buhari's place in Nigerian history remains unchallenged as Nigeria's most incorruptible leader. There is nothing anybody can take away from this epithets. When you assume that status as a piece of literature, you are called a classic.