2023: Atiku’s Victory and the Need for Osinbajo’s Candidacy in APC by Etim Etim

Editor's note: Veteran journalist, Etim Etim, writes on the need for the All Progressives Congress (APC) delegates to elect Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo as their presidential candidate after the recent emergence of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as the presidential flagbearer of the main opposition party - Peoples Democratic Party.

Atiku Abubakar’s victory at the PDP primary has excited Bola Tinubu and his supporters in a rather weird manner; so much so that Tinubu was the first to congratulate the former vice president, even before the delegates left the stadium early Sunday morning, May 29.

Since then, Tinubu’s supporters have been all over the place, celebrating Atiku’s emergence, and generally insinuating that it is only Tinubu that can possibly defeat Atiku at the general election. But it’s not true. The undue enthusiasm in the Tinubu camp is because his supporters see Tinubu in Atiku. For them, the former VP is Tinubu’s alter ego; another version of Tinubu; his alternate personality or persona.

Because Tinubu sees Atiku as a second identity; his own second self or, if you like, a different version of himself, the Atiku win over the weekend has rekindled in Tinubu that age-old sense of entitlement to power.

The first problem with Tinubu is that he would have to pair with a northern Muslim as a running mate, but that would pose a serious religious imbalance, and trigger tensions and disenchantments in a country already deeply polarized and afflicted by many problems. Are you not surprised that his supporters have never broached this issue as a major drawback of the Tinubu candidacy?

Tinubu and Atiku’s unbridled quests for the presidency are alarming. What do they want? While this is Atiku’s seventh attempt, it’s part of Asiwaju’s ‘’lifelong ambition’’. But Nigerians are not convinced about the nobility of their intentions.

Atiku has well-known problems. The corruption halo, and his unstable character (Atiku has no loyalty to anybody) will come up soon in discussions across the country. But for now, his choice by the PDP offends the nation’s endless search for stability, cohesion, and harmony. There’s no doubt that the fragility of our nation and nationhood would be further degraded if another northerner succeeds Buhari. As a country, we must work hard to sustain the alternation of the presidency between north and south in a regular rhythm for a very long time to come in order to enhance inclusiveness and nation-building. Atiku’s emergence, therefore, is an insult to our past heroes. They fought hard to hand us a united and relatively stable country. We cannot afford to toy with it.

Unknown to many, some advanced countries have adopted this practice of rotation. In Switzerland, the position of the president of Swiss confederation rotates among the seven councillors (regional heads) on a yearly basis, with one year’s vice president of Switzerland becoming the next year’s president of the country. Atiku’s desperation to flout this sequence and seize power without consideration for the stability of the country is at the very heart of his dubious intentions. Nigerians will reject him.

To defeat the PDP, APC must field a candidate that is starkly different in everything from Atiku, and the difference must be clear. The APC candidate should be younger, more educated, urbane, and reputedly honest and transparent. The next president should be spick and span, without a whiff of any form of dishonor or scandal, just like Buhari himself, and the vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo. Our next president should be a man of character, capacity, and competence who commands the respect, trust, and confidence of the citizens and the rest of the world. We need a leader who appears at ease at global platforms like WEF, UNGA, G7, G20, CHOGM, etc, and makes us proud. APC must choose Osinbajo as its flag bearer. He will easily beat Atiku.

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