Atiku Abubakar: A Leopard And His Unchanging Spots
“A man must accept his fate or be destroyed by it.”- Steven DeKnight, in his Spartacus: Blood and Sands
Do you know that for a proverbial leopard who never changes its spots like the former Vice President of Nigeria and Turaki Adamawa, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (GCON), everything is based and judged by its appearance, since whatever fails to find its way to the glare of the viewing public will necessarily count for nothing? His effective trick to draw attention, therefore, is to hurt the most visible, most favoured and most powerful people he can find in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) [i.e. President Goodluck Jonathan and Chairman Bamanga Tukur]. Robert Greene cuts this particular image of limelight in his national best seller The 48 Laws of Power:
“The actor who steps into this brilliant light attains a heightened presence. All eyes are on him. There is room for only one actor [Atiku Abubakar; the 7 governors are pawns on his chess board] at a time in the limelight's narrow beam; do whatever it takes to make yourself its focus. Make your gestures so large, amusing, and scandalous that the light stays on you while the other actors are left in the shadows.”
It has been pretty much over flogged that after walking out from the Eagle Square venue of the PDP special Convention in the nation's capital, Abuja, on 31st August, 2013, (and like a sinking man who will hold on to anything to save his life), Abubakar floated a party within a party named the “New PDP” (just next door- Shehu Musa Yar'Adua Centre), where he and his fleeing cohorts (the so-called perceived enemies of the Jonathan presidency and Bamanga Tukur-led PDP) gathered and flourished. Let it be said that the G-7 Governor should refuse the temptation to die for someone else's misery. They may think they are helping the drowning Atiku with the pretence agenda that power MUST revert to the North in 2015, but they are only precipitating their own disaster because the unfortunate not only sometimes draw misfortune on themselves, they also draw it on others. The infecting-character type is spoken of in A Mirror For Princes by Kai Kaus Ibn Iskandar (1020-ca.1083), ruler of Gilan and Mazandaran (in modern-day Iran), a book intended to serve as a guide for young princes on how to conduct affairs of state as well as their private lives:
“Regard no foolish man as cultured, though you may reckon a gifted man as wise; and esteem no ignorant abstainer a true ascetic. Do not consort with fools, especially those who consider themselves wise. And be not self-satisfied with your own ignorance. Let your intercourse be only with men of good repute; for it is by such association that men themselves attain to good repute. Do you not observe how sesame-oil is mingled with roses or violets and how, when it has been for some time in association with roses and violets, it ceases to be sesame-oil and is called oil of roses or oil of violets?”
Abubakar, no doubt, has for some time been recklessly and dangerously struggling against the political tide and has refused to get lost in the crowd. He has, therefore, decided to go for the broke, but while at it, he seems, though, to have stirred up an action he cannot control being the one significant danger inherent in playing on people's weakness, which probably made President Jonathan to defiantly and rightly remark that despite the major disagreement in PDP that led to the formation of the parallel body, the party still remained intact:
“Even those that are aggrieved call themselves the new PDP meaning they know without PDP they are nothing. PDP is intact, that we have some disagreements is normal. We will make sure that the party remains one, those who left will rejoin us. It is only PDP that has not changed name or form. We will do our best to keep PDP one, to keep Nigeria one.”
If President Jonathan truly spoke these words, then he has not been unsettled one bit by the development, for they could only have come from a knowing, calm and relaxed mind. Or, has he succeeded in making his opponent relax? Has he infected the spirit of the new PDP already? For all one knows, the President may have currently drunk from the metal cup of the famed Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, aka Niten Doraku (c. 1584-1645), author of The Book of Five Rings (a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy that is still studied today), who became renowned through stories of his excellent swordsmanship in numerous duels, even from a very young age:
“Many things are said to be infectious. Sleepiness can be infectious, and yawning as well. In large-scale strategy, when the enemy is agitated and shows an inclination to rush, do not mind in the least. Make a show of complete calmness, and the enemy will be taken by this and will become relaxed. You infect their spirit. You can infect them with a carefree, drunklike spirit, with boredom, or even weakness.”
The president's statement must have emboldened Chief Olisa Metuh, the national publicity secretary of the Bamanga Tukur led PDP, who must have wondered why the breakaway side had, as yet, neither joined the opposition APC nor their newly registered Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), affirming that the PDP needed a formidable chairman like Tukur, saying among other:
“The present crisis rocking the PDP has shown clearly that we do not have credible opposition party in the country. There's no viable opposition in Nigerian politics. Definitely we have issues and few challenges. The issues have been PDP and about PDP (and) so long as we are able to resolve our differences we will still fight our interest on a common front.”
Even the political carpet of the PDM seems to have been effectively pulled from under Abubakar's feet as the Chairman of PDP's Board of Trustees, Chief Anthony Anenih, disowned the newly registered political party and dismissed it as a mischievous deviation from the original aspirations of the original PDM which he said remained committed to supporting a second term for President Jonathan. In a statement entitled Our PDM is not a Political Party, published in the Vanguard of 26th August, 2013, Chief Anenih, the so-called “big masquerade behind recent attempts to rubbish the image of the new party in the media”, appealed to party members not to panic, but remain steadfast, and work indefatigably and enthusiastically for the party:
“Members of the Peoples Democratic Movement, which is working for the unity and success of the PDP and the Federal Government under the able leadership of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan should not panic. They should instead see it as an attempt to undercut our PDM, which was never intended to be and should not be a registered political party within and against the PDP.”
Although the Turaki would deny backing the PDM, and admitted that some members of the new party were his associates, he just couldn't help but to invite more members of the PDP to come on board with him to purgatory which hostiles say the “new PDP” represents. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), best known for his book, The World As Will And Representation, has words for one who lays claim to what everyone owns as Abubakar's “associates” have allegedly done, registering the PDM, which was meant to be a pressure group within PDP, as a political party behind everyone's back:
“And while I am on the subject there is another fact that deserves mention. It is this. A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles- for then he his off guard. This will often afford a good opportunity of observing the boundless egotism of a man's nature, and his total lack of consideration for others; and if these defects show themselves in small things, or merely in his general demeanour, you will find that they also underlie his actions in matter of importance, although he may disguise the fact. This is an opportunity which should not be missed. In the little affairs of everyday – the trifles of life…- a man is inconsiderate and seeks only what is advantageous or convenient to himself, to the prejudice of others' rights; if he appropriates to himself that which belongs to all alike, you may be sure there is no justice in his heart, and that he would be a scoundrel on a wholesale scale, only that law and compulsion binds his hands. ”
Alhaji Abubakar must have calculated that even notoriety of any kind will bring him power, and that by “appearing larger than life, more colourful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses of “the largest party in Africa”, he would have power gravitate toward him. He was, therefore, ready to be slandered and attacked than ignored. But having recognised that he belongs to the weaker side of the feuding parties, Abubakar needed to have held his own by remaining in the mainstream PDP. Greene tells us:
“The herd shuns the black sheep, uncertain whether or not it belongs with them. So it straggles behind, or wanders away from the herd, where it is cornered by wolves and promptly devoured. Stay with the heard – there is safety in numbers. Keep your differences in your thoughts and not in your fleece.”
Even the winner of the June 12 presidential election Moshood Abiola (1938-1998) is on record to have enjoined that any rape found inevitable should be enjoyed in obvious reference to his wait-and-see-attitude to the annulment of 26th June, 1993 by the military regime of President Ibrahim Babangida. Unless Atiku is not one, a pragmatic person will always, bid his time carefully and opt for the future, which is what 2015 represents, and pragmatic people rarely act against their own interest. In what looks like he was urging the Abubakars of the Baraje-led “new PDP” (representing the weak) to fall under the leadership of Tukur-led PDP (i.e. the strong), as well as quit their holier than thou attitude on matters bordering on “justice”, Athenian general, representative to Sparta and father of “scientific history”, Greek historian, Thucydides (c. 465-395 B.C.), was quoted in the book, The Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC, as saying:
“It has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong; and besides, we consider that we are worthy of our power. Up till the present moment you, too used to think that we were; but now, after calculating your own interest, you are beginning to talk in terms of right and wrong. Considerations of this kind have never yet turned people aside from the opportunities of aggrandizement offered by superior strength.”
Agreed, politics is about permanent interests, and not permanent friends; but then most of our politicians carry on looking out for their interests and all, forgetting that narcissism will lead us to become self-absorbed or chronic show-offs. Schopenhauer stated concerning such:
“Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves. They always think of their own case as soon as ever any remark is made, and their whole attention is engrossed and absorbed by the merest chance reference to anything which affects them personally, be it never so remote.”
By walking out at the August mini-Convention, Abubakar and his ilk had hoped to push President Jonathan, whom they perceived as timid, into bold action, expecting him to go too far. But the President is treading cautiously, patiently too, having realised that once he grants their demands, which are at best ridiculous and laughable, he would be succumbing to blackmail and may be laying a dangerous precedent. He has, as a result, beaten Obasanjo's quarrelsome deputy to his games of power once more, and shown himself capable of such foresights as equally looking several steps ahead and planning accordingly. Thus, Abubakar's “helpless, childish element” has finally caught up with him. Ask the former Minister of Works, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe, who feels nothing but naked pity over Turaki's numerous miscalculations.
By walking out on the party that prepared his way to become the country's Vice President (1999-2003), Abubakar, has employed two classic ways of controlling the options. He has arrogantly given the Bamanga Tukur-led PDP a sense of how things are sure to disintegrate in his absence, and provided them a “choice” so to say: “It is either I stay away and you suffer the consequences, or I return under circumstances that I dictate” - (Ala Tukur Must Go and Jonathan Must Forget 2015). By forcing the hands of his former colleagues in this way and indirectly making them feel they have a choice, Atiku Abubakar has calculated wrongly that they would be better disposed to supporting his own ambition much more easily knowing or feeling they have a choice. By so doing, he is wallowing in delusion because it is obvious that he has a false idea about how things presently stand in the party; more so that he had once cried wolf and dumped the party preparatory to the 2007 elections for the ACN, which handed him its Presidential ticket on a platter to no avail, only to return to the PDP fold like a prodigal son, and to find out that his former colleagues in the Party were more than glad to have place than his company, while he was away. Indeed, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), an English naturalist, whose scientific discovery became the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life, said survival is a matter of how one responds to change. But no, a leopard cannot and do not change its spots (this originates from the Bible, Jeremiah 13:23 - King James Version), and it seems the same goes for the former Vice-President, for if given another chance, he will still choose to isolate himself with complainers, grumblers and misfortunates.
Matter-of-factly, our entire help and sympathy should go to those misfortunates among us whom circumstances have dealt a destructive blow. But, more often than not, we find those like Atiku Abubakar, who are not born into misfortune and unhappiness, but who by their own destructive actions and unsettling effect on others, draw it upon themselves. Like the American Democratic politician, John Nance Garner (1868-1967), who became the 32nd U.S. Vice-President (1933-1941) and presumed that his boss, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), whom he had disagreed sharply with on a wide range of important issues, would defer to the longstanding two-term tradition and not run for a third term. Garner hastily declared his candidacy, but Roosevelt who had kept mum about whether he would run again or not, finally arranged a “spontaneous” call for his re-nomination at the Democratic National Convention. FDR won on the first ballot, leaving for Garner only 61 votes out of 1,093. Trust Roosevelt to drop Garner and his negative character, and instead, he picked the 11th U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (1933-1940) Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965), an unreconstructed liberal reformer and New Dealer, qualities that endeared him to FDR, as his running mate in the Vice Presidential slot on the 1940 presidential ticket. Despite the distrust which the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, many of them Southerners, had for Wallace, the duo still won convincingly (yet again for Roosevelt), and they were inaugurated on 20th January, 1941, for the term closing 20th January, 1945. This ended Garner's forty-six years career in public life. For a man who lived for 98 years and 350 days, dying barely two weeks before his 99th birthday, making him the longest-living Vice President in U.S. history, a record previously held by Benjamin Harrison's Vice President, Levi P. Morton (1824-1920), who later served as the 31st Governor of New York (1895-1896) and died on his 96th birthday, Garner would easily have succeeded Roosevelt as the 33rd U.S. president (1945-1953) – in place of the man who eventually did, Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), if only he had carefully bid his time, had not rushed things, and had not seen himself as the champion of the traditional Democratic Party establishment, which often clashed with supporters of President Roosevelt's New Deal (a series of domestic economic programmes enacted in the U.S. between 1933 and 1936, which involved presidential executive orders or laws passed by Congress during FDR's first term). But then, since leopards do not change their spots, Wallace, too, eventually toed the path of his immediate predecessor, Garner, falling out with FDR in the end, who had him replaced with Harry Truman. FDR won his Fourth Term election, but died in office on 12th April, 1945, with Truman succeeding to the Presidency. Henry Wallace had missed being the 33rd U.S. President by just 82 days.
So, as we can see, the incurably unhappy and unstable often presents themselves as victims, making it difficult, at first, to see their miseries as self-inflicted. Again, for instance, in 2003, after breaking with his principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Atiku Abubakar joined the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), a journey that led him no where but, interestingly, back to the PDP in the end. In 2013, he is again busy repeating past mistakes as he hobnobs with the “new PDP”, or is it PDM. Our man keeps getting it wrong by distancing himself from positive affinities (even if, for now, they abound more in PDP for that matter) that can give him power as well as good fortune, and associating with those who share his defects, who will only reinforce everything that holds him back. That is why, today, contrary to their public posturing, nobody in PDP is taking his present threats seriously, because they can almost wager how it will all end once more. “People”, after all, “feel superior to the person whose actions they can predict.” Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer, Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658), advises:
“Recognize the fortunate so that you may choose their company, and the unfortunate so that you may avoid them. Misfortune is usually the crime of folly; and among those who suffer from it there is no malady more contagious: Never open your door to the least of misfortunes, for, if you do, many others will follow in its train….Do not die of another's misery.”
Finally, the Turaki, an unrepentant sufferer from chronic dissatisfaction, needs to understand that in the game of power, like Gracian advises above, the people he associates with are very critical. Just like he found in the ACN of yore, flocking with people like Tom Ikimi, Audu Ogbe, Iyorcha Ayu, Ghali Umar Na'aba and co, so he has found in the “new PDP”…Abubakar Baraje, Murtala Nyako, Sule Lamido, Babangida Aliyu, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, Rotimi Amechi and co – all disgruntled and grumbling elements, from top to bottom, who have not only fallen out of favour with the powers that be in the PDP, but are also setting others to complain, and also bonding themselves together to fight and bring down a house they joined others to build. Truly, there is absolutely nothing to be gained by associating with those who infect us with their misery. In advising the Atiku Abubakar and his ilk of this clime against underestimating the dangers of infection, Greene posits that:
“The risk of associating with infectors is that you will waste valuable time and energy [even money] trying to free yourself. Through a kind of guilt by association, you will also suffer in the eyes of others.”
As a near closing bid, however, Turaki is eminently entitled to these few lines also from Gracian for him to grow up and learn to keep his effort and tricks to himself to have the grace and ease of a god because, no matter what, he can never see the source of a god's power revealed; he can only see its effects:
“Keep the extent of your abilities unknown. The wise man does not allow his knowledge and abilities to be sounded to the bottom, if he desires to be honoured by all. He allows you to know them but not to comprehend them. No one must know the extent of his abilities, lest he be disappointed. No one ever has an opportunity of fathoming him entirely. For guesses and doubts about the extent of his talents arouse more veneration than accurate knowledge of them, be they ever so great.”
Alhaji Abubakar should, therefore, desist from further heating up the polity, accept his fate and, at once, retrace his steps to the PDP fold, where fate seems to have rightly or wrongly decreed for him. He should keep hope alive and continue to be a good party man until... In the alternative, like any ambitious former Vice President like him, who still wants to command all the benefits of power without the thorns that come from being a President, Turaki must follow the example of iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who allied himself with the king, Frederick William IV of Prussia (1795-1861), called the “romanticist on the throne”. He must quickly set forth to forge a relationship of dependency with the incumbent President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whom he already perceives as weak, becoming “his strength, his intelligence, his spine.” The power, which he holds there from should make it impossible for anyone to want to get rid of him easily for fear that the whole PDP edifice, and even government, do not collapse. The reason PDP members are presently on the jumps to do away with him is because he has created no such need for himself. Wrote Niccolo di Bernardo del Machiavelli, popularly called Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), an Italian historian, politician and philosopher, who, “for many years was an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs”:
“Thus a prince will think of ways to keep his citizens of every sort and under every circumstance dependent on the state and on him; and then they will always be trustworthy.”