2023 Presidency  : Why Atiku will win (I)-Abdul-Rasheeth Shehu

By Abdul-Rasheeth Shehu

By the time I joined Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s train, I realized that Nigeria has found a great son that has the temerity and where-withal to take the country to a greater height.

Most of the times, Nigerians are very wonderful people who are always in search of a leader that will turn the country into a competitive world like Asian Tigers and the rest of Europe.

When we were kids, we read about how Nigeria’s former Number two man has carved a niche for himself right from the time he joined Nigerian politics to the day he was picked by Former President Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to be his Vice-Presidential candidate in 1999 General elections.

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This philanthropist politician has been part of the elder statesmen that believes in the unity of Nigeria which is now fragile due to ethnicity and religious bias fueled by some political elites and the gullible masses were lured to believe.

One does not need to tell Who is Atiku Abubakar in the murky waters of Nigerian politics, he is practising it and has been practising politics with political sage’s of Nigeria, like Major General Shehu Musa Yar’dua of blessed memory.

If you ask me who is suppose to be Nigeria’s president in 2023 elections, the answer is Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, at a time our country has been polarized along ethnic and religious line, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s ideas go in tandem with our Present realities.

One, at his age, when some of his contemporaries are analogue, Alhaji Atiku has since embraced the digital world, this is what is required of 21st-century leaders because no one will Govern a complex nation like Nigeria without E-Governance, our Presidential material has superseded and is now a wizard in that aspect.

Another gain of Atiku Abubakar is how he believes in the oneness of Nigeria as one entity when he presented himself for election in 2019 and clinched the people’s Democratic party ticket Vice President Atiku become an advocate of restructuring, he knew very well as a former number two man that without restructuring a heterogeneous country like Nigeria, developmental indices will continue to elude us.

There is one misconception which Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s opponent used during the 2019 election by mounting serious propaganda to tarnish his image and draw the gullible to their side.

This propaganda was nothing except saying the former Vice President is going to sale the NNPC, now the question is between Nigerians and God who is really benefitting from the NNPC? Or the children of the elites who hardly go out to vote or the Nigerian masses?

At the formation of APC government, informed Nigerians are very aware of how the closest ally of President Muhammadu Buhari and now a prominent APC governor advised President Muhammadu Buhari to sale the NNPC, the governor said the NNPC has made a number of negligible Nigerians very rich to the detriment of millions of Nigerians, what an irony.

On the eligibility of Atiku Abubakar to win the Presidential elections in 2023, students of political history will attest to that, first, he is a symbol of Nigerian Unity right from his family, a Northerner by birth and had his first wife from the south, the second reason is Atiku Abubakar will have an edge over the perceived presidential ambition of APC godfather, Bola Ahmad Tinubu, Tinubus ticket will be very difficult to balance considering the ethnic and religious configuration of Nigeria.

To be continued.

Abdurrasheeth Shehu, Atiku Loyalist writes from Kano.