As he prepares to run for the fifth time in about 20 years, former presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has revealed he doesn’t mind being Nigeria’s last president.
Abubakar on Thursday said it makes him laugh when some Nigerian leaders say the nation’s unity is not negotiable.
Former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, and incumbent Muhammadu Buhari are among those that campaign for an indivisible Nigeria.
But Atiku, who has been seeking to rule Nigeria since 2007, noted a marriage cannot be declared as non-negotiable while partners do everything to break it.
“Nothing in the relationships among peoples is fixed for eternity,” he said.
“You cannot declare your marriage as non-negotiable while doing everything to sow seeds of discord in that same marriage,’ he said.
The former V.P was speaking at the national dialogue and public presentation of a book, ‘Remaking Nigeria: Sixty years, sixty voices,’ in Abuja on August 19.
“You can whip groups of people into forming a country but you cannot whip them into forming a nation.
“Nations are built through conscious or even unconscious agreement by peoples who believe that being together is, on balance, more beneficial than being apart.”
He accused the APC, his former party, of doing nothing about nation building.
“Over the past six years, the leadership of this country at the federal level hardly embarked on nation-building. They may have been making (utterly confusing and unproductive) efforts at economic development,” he said.
“However, it can be rightly argued that they have been un-building the nation by taking conscious and deliberate actions that not only make nation-building more difficult but also undo the achievements made in that regard by previous administrations.”
While preparing for his last presidential contest in 2029, Atiku appealed with his campaign to the reigning demand then: restructuring.
And cultural groups like Afenifere, Ohaneze, PANDEF, were among leading group that wanted Nigeria to change the current unitary system.
However, as a result of escalating insecurity and economic hardship, more Nigerians are demanding dissolution.
IPOB, Oodua Nation BNL, and others are heating the polity with their violent secessionist demands.
Atiku’s stand—that breaking up Nigeria is not out of this world—can as well appeal to many more looking for a leader with enough political will to undertake Nigeria break-up.