Afoilabi Gambari
Being a seasoned politician comes with various responsibilities. Proffering solutions to teething and hefty challenges is one of the responsibilities, and the politician must be ready to rise to the occasion at all times. It should not matter whether the politician is at the centre or periphery of power; what matters is the pursuit of the common good.
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar eminently qualifies as a seasoned politician in Nigeria by any standard of measurement. Aside from joining politics in 1989 when he teamed with the Peoples Front of Nigeria (PFN), he has also pitched his tent with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP), People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the Action Congress (AC) and All Progressives Congress (APC). His ambition has been unmistakable: he seeks to be Nigeria’s president someday. He was quite close to realising his ambition when he served as vice president to former president Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007. But he missed the spot, perhaps out of sheer indiscretion, looking on as the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua literally emerged from nowhere to succeed Obasanjo in office. It is believed that it was Atiku’s best chance at presiding over Nigeria. But, despite everything, he has yet to give up on his ambition, hence he and like minds, or strange bedfellows, if you like, decided to form the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in July 2025 to “serve as the unifying party for a coalition of opposition parties challenging the ruling APC in the 2027 election”.
Nigeria at the moment faces dire challenges, especially on the security front. It has been a dreadful wave of events that tends to put the whole country on edge. It calls for unity of purpose, regardless of party affiliation and, indeed, ethnic or religious differences. In simple terms, the situation demands from Atiku a practicable solution to restore peace across the country. After all, a political resolution is required. But rather than focus more on the solution, Atiku would rather stoke the fire to buoy his political relevance. The release of the 24 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Maga, in Kebbi State, after nearly a week in bandits’ captivity, should have brought relief to parents and citizens. But Atiku apparently differed, saying “their freedom should not be presented as an achievement but a damning reminder that terrorists now operate freely, negotiate openly and dictate terms while this administration issues press statements to save face”. On the surface, it seemed the right thing to say. But Atiku merely elected to make political capital out of the victims’ misfortune. “No responsible government congratulates itself for allowing abductors to walk back into the forests to kidnap again,” the ADC chieftain said. But he offered no solution whatsoever going forward.
National Secretary of the ADC, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has been in the AD, AC and APC from 1998 up till early 2023 when a curious political misstep shoved him out of the APC and very nearly into irrelevance until he, like Atiku, berthed in the ADC in July this year. Otherwise, there are many who still see him as an APC member, considering that it was the party that threw him up. On November 25, however, he let the world know at a gathering in Osogbo, Osun State, that he had dumped the APC for good. While urging his audience to reject the APC in 2027, he also said emphatically: “The APC has failed to hit a high standard in the economy, security and other critical sectors, and its reign will come to an end in the next general election.” Like Atiku, Aregbesola also offered no solution.
Presidential candidate on the banner of Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi, also criticised the Bola Tinubu administration, saying the government “prioritise politics over the welfare of citizens amid rising insecurity, lawlessness and institutional decay in Nigeria”. For effect, he added: “Nigeria is bleeding because those elected to protect the nation have chosen comfort over courage, politics over people and power over purpose.”
Obi went further to highlight what he called a series of tragic and violent incidents that underlined the breadth of insecurity affecting Nigerians. Hear him: “Nigeria’s current challenges are not the result of fate but of collective leadership failures that have allowed insecurity, lawlessness and institutional decay to thrive. Each day, new tragedies highlight the absence of competent, compassionate, responsive and responsible leadership.”
But unlike Atiku and Aregbesola, Obi showed empathy. “Nigerian citizens deserve safety and peace,” he said. He also offered a solution: “Government must demonstrate a renewed commitment to building a Nigeria capable of overcoming insecurity and governance failures.”
In fairness, President Tinubu, as an opposition stalwart in 2014, also ceaselessly lashed at then-President Goodluck Jonathan at every turn, making the latter look like an upstart and getting applause from his large captive audience. He often presented governance as simple and pilloried Jonathan for making it look like rocket science. If he had solutions, he did not present any. All he wanted was for Jonathan to “just pack and go” until he actualised the wish for Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and would wait for eight years to actualise it for himself in 2023.
At any rate, Tinubu responded swiftly to the renewed security challenge by meeting with the country’s defence and intelligence agencies with a view to bolstering national security. He also ordered the withdrawal of police personnel assigned to Very Important Persons, ordering their redeployment to core policing duties in particularly remote areas where security has been scant four years. Furthermore, he approved the recruitment of 30,000 additional police officers while launching a collaboration with various state governments to ensure the upgrading of police training facilities that would guarantee rapid reaction to threats as well as improve frontline security. Whether or not all these measures are perfunctory would remain to be seen. But the president has appeared to draw useful lessons from the latest ugly security incidents to stay wary of politicians who are primed to deploy opposition methods to score voting points.
