Atiku’s dubious promise

IF you haven’t previously realized how really interesting Nigerian politicians could be, you probably will in this season of fake promises. They have been running the roads in their well-starched babaringas and agbadas telling egregious lies to a lie-loving populace, including the super story that some youths bought them nomination forms. It can be no surprise then that during a meeting with “leaders of over 200 support groups and the leadership of TeeCom across the country in Abuja” this week, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) aspirant crafted this cant: “I will mentor you and hand over power to you. I would like to work more with young people because young people are more agile, creative, and conversant with contemporary opportunities and challenges. Our administration is going to be a transition of power from the senior generation to a younger generation.” According to a press statement signed by one Dr. Victor Moses, “His public and open commitment, the first of its kind in Nigeria’s political history, to transit power to the younger generation, places him head and shoulders above all other aspirants seeking to govern Nigeria in 2023.”

This must be the most outrageously provocative statement I’ve heard in weeks. Atiku’s commitment to “transit power (sic) to the younger generation” places him ahead of everyone else? Wow. For clarity, I did in fact vote for Atiku in 2019, so this is not about hatred for the man. The point is that a wise man should know when to close shop, when the fire has gone out of the singer and all we have is gaudy tenor; when the drummer no longer has a firm grip on the edges of his talking drum. Atiku’s campaign voice has become corrupted by age and disuse: he sounds just like the average guy. He is criminally unimaginative.

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Atiku says that “for decades, the youth, who are paying the ultimate price of the APC-General Muhammadu Buhari-led maladministration of Nigeria have been abandoned in the scheme of things in Nigeria.” Eeyaa. But since “no nation can develop without inclusiveness and productive youth,” why is His Excellency just promising “to change the dynamic by working with more young people to enhance opportunities and productivity”? How is shutting young people out of the 2023 presidency enhancing opportunities and productivity? If young people are so great, why can’t they be president now? Atiku sounds dangerously close to the charlatan Benjamin Benjamin in T.M Aluko’s One man, one Machete, who turns a whole town to a cash cow while promising to help retrieve a lost land. Atiku’s 2027 promise is a kind of won n gbe bo, owo inu ora (They are bringing it, money packaged in nylon) falsehood. It’s a hollow promise. In case you haven’t grasped the point, this is what Atiku is really telling the youth: “You will prosper but wait for four years first. It shall be well with you, but that’s after me.” What a farce!

Atiku should have limited his campaign to seeking young people’s support at the forthcoming PDP presidential primaries, not playing a 2027 stunt. For if they are not guaranteed the 2023 presidency, just how are they going to get it in 2027? Will he impose a youth at the 2027 primaries and at the elections proper? What magic is expected to happen in four years, particularly as Atiku would be entitled to a second term of office if he becomes president in 2023? I have to admit that Atiku’s alter ego, Buhari, was quite honest in shutting the youth out of the 2019 race. In 2018 while signing the ‘Not too Young to Run Bill’ bill at the Presidential Villa in the presence of young dreamers, Buhari said: “You can aspire for president but please postpone your campaign till after the 2019 election.” Buhari only noted that the youth could aspire after him, not that he would hand over to them. In that, he is, like the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, quite honest. Remember Idi Amin’s declaration: ‘There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”

To be sure, this is not an admonition to Atiku or any other presidential aspirant not to lie. Politicians are going to lie till the end of this world. As Ilya Somin, professor of law at George Mason University, says: “Politicians who refuse to lie and exploit public ignorance are systematically disadvantaged relative to those with fewer scruples, and win fewer elections because of it. Ironically, the very same voters who hate dishonest politicians regularly reward deception by doing a terrible job of sifting lies from truth – especially when the lies reinforce their preconceptions.” The snag, though, is that as the Greek dramatist Euripides says: “When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” We saw such honeyed words (“I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody”) buried in an evil mind in 2015. And the tragedy is that we might again in 2023.

It is with a view to avoiding that kind of eventuality that in his October 2021 piece titled “Poll chancers: Politicians who make false promises must be punished”, William Gumede, associate professor at the School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, urged the country’s Independent Electoral Commission to prosecute politicians who knowingly made pie-in-the-sky promises during elections campaigns, for undermining voters’ ability to make informed choices! His thesis: “outrageously false campaign promises undermine the credibility, legitimacy and trust in the country’s electoral system – and also in politics broadly.” Gumede, as if he had Nigeria in mind, deplored “the hunger for power for its own sake,” noting that former ANC and South African President Jacob Zuma promised six million new jobs and five million new houses and during the 2014 national elections campaign, and free higher education for the poor and working class students in the run-up to the ANC’s 2017 national conference, in spite of the national treasury and the 2017 Heher Commission into the Feasibility of Fee-Free Higher Education and Training, which concluded that universal free higher education was unaffordable. Gumede’s suggestion is extreme, but it does point to the severity of the problem.

Restructuring was the fad in 2019 and Atiku articulated it nicely. Now, youthful agility is in vogue and he is making a case for it, howbeit in his own enlightened self-interest. Beyond the 2027 lie, there’s something arrogant about the idea that a national party exists simply to serve Atiku’s presidential aspirations. As former first lady Patience Jonathan would have put it, na only Atiku waka come? How can a political party be all about one candidate? Atiku can be president but let him refrain from 2027 lies, please. Let us reach 2023 before we lie about 2027.