The 2027 election is heating up across the country, and major political actors are scheming and strategising on how to not only achieve their political goals but thwart the plots of their opponents who could upend their own plans. One of these actors is former vice president, Atiku Abubakar. He is a veteran war horse and is seen by many as a member of Nigeria’s old order who has held the country down for decades. The story of Nigeria’s democracy, especially in the third and fourth republics, will not be complete without the honourable mention of Atiku, as he has featured prominently in every presidential election. He has been trying to become Nigeria’s president since 2007 after serving for two terms as the vice president to former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. However, the plum and coveted highest public office in the land has continued to elude him for many reasons, no less so than his lack of foresight and strategic decision-making.
He is in the news again. Over the weekend, reports emerged claiming Atiku said he was not desperate to be Nigeria’s president. The reports further claimed that Atiku promised to back anyone who emerges as the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the political party the opposition coalition has adopted for the 2027 general election. One Ola Olateju, who represented Atiku at an event in Lagos, was said to have made the remark. Some were taken aback by the statement as such class act and sportsmanship is not what many know Atiku for. This newfound reasonableness, levelheadedness and tact are not traits many deem Atiku of being capable of imbibing. And those who cast doubts on the veracity of the statement were soon proven right.
No sooner had the report emerged than it was quickly debunked by Atiku’s team. The views of Olateju do not in any way reflect the former vice president’s position on the 2027 presidential election. They affirmed that Atiku will definitely be on the ballot in 2027. “Prof. Olateju was not speaking for me. I will run in 2027. Nigeria needs to be decisively rescued from the intensive care unit it has been consigned. The degeneration in our country, the level of poverty and pain, the anguish, is unacceptable,” Atiku’s spokesperson during the 2023 presidential election, Tunde Olusunle, told newsmen.
Even if Olateju’s statement was not quickly debunked by Atiku, it is hard to see how Atiku will shelve his uncoordinated presidential ambition even when the odds are overwhelming against him. Remember, there are already murmurs that the ADC coalition is his brainchild, and it is set up for tiy enable him to vie for the presidency in 2027. Atiku, like the incumbent president, Bola Tinubu, sees the Nigerian presidency as a lifetime aspiration that must be realised by any means necessary. The problem here is that unlike Tinubu, Atiku is incapable of playing the long game, bidding his time and striking when the iron is hot. He has not shown the needed astuteness, clever manoeuvring and political gamesmanship of a veteran politician which is needed to achieve his presidential ambition and the fact that he is gearing up to contest again in 2027 underscores these character deficiencies.
Ideally, Atiku should not have contested the 2023 presidential election due to the peculiar socio-political dynamics. It is believed that it was the turn of the South. But Atiku, a Fulani man from the north thought it was a wise decision to succeed another Fulani man in the person of former president Muhammadu Buhari. That avoidable political own goal and misstep contributed to his loss at the polls. It, however, appears that he learnt nothing from his previous electoral outing. It is now beginning to look like Atiku is the biggest obstacle to the actualisation of his own dreams.