PDP power tussle and politics of dragging Atiku into Modu Sheriff’s travails

NO doubt, we have been victims of elite conspiracy bug and until we diffuse our minds of that bug, we may never be able to make a wholesome appreciation of the electoral choices that we may make in future election circle.

Until recently, the impression out there was that former vice president Atiku Abubakar was indeed the puppeteer of Sheriff’s shenanigan in PDP’s power tussle, and now the same Atiku is being purportedly fingered as the “big masquerade” behind his travails. The puzzle is now how to figure out, which narrative to believe. A story built on falsehood will surely collapse like a pack of cards.

With the Buhari administration barely midway into the course of its term, it is incredulous that some political merchants are already out behind masks with daggers drawn thinking of 2019 and, for them, the best way to make themselves relevant, is by doing the usual: demonize all credible oppositions real or/and imaginary. When is the politics of this nation going to move beyond this level of pettiness?

It is understandable that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is in the throes of intra-party squabbles and it is also not objectionable that Senator Ali Modu Sheriff is in a quandary as he struggles to lay his hands on the control levers of the erstwhile ruling party. But, what doesn’t fit into the mix is the attempt to bridge former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to Sheriff’s travails.

Let’s even look at it: why is Sherriff and the smear machine behind him looking the way of Atiku rather than facing the real issues of his qualification or more aptly suitability for the PDP chairmanship position? There are more than enough issues raised by Senator Ahmed Makarfi, the PDP factional chairman against Sherriff that he is yet to clear. So why dissipate your energy on what could best be described as perceived or rather proxy opponents?

For instance, it has been alleged that Sheriff was sent on a definite mission of deliberately causing confusion in the opposition PDP. As alleged, Sheriff who hitherto this era was a well known APC chieftain and an in-law of the incumbent president, Mohhamadu Buhari was trumpeted to be the founder and financier of the Boko Haram terrorist group. He needs to actually clear himself of such weighty allegations before even thinking of holding a sensitive political office as the chairman of one of the major parties in Nigeria.

Since the defeat of Obasanjo’s third term bid in the National Assembly, Atiku’s political opponents have repeatedly devised a conspiracy to blackmail him on the notion of corruption. It was a conspiracy that was initiated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, which is continuously being sustained by political opposing minds to vilify Atiku before the electorate.

Of course, corruption is enough reason to reject any presidential hopeful. But that is when there is iota of truth and evidence to back up such claim. In the Atiku situation, nobody has been able to establish any case of corruption against him or an evidence of his corruptibility.

After almost ten years of his being out of government, and with different administrations in succession, nobody has pinned Atiku to any case of corruption, nor has any anti-corruption agency made a claim of investigation or culpability against Atiku.

This is 2016 and it is obvious Atiku has moved on from answering questions on phantom corruption allegations. He has busied himself trying to reconstruct the national dialogue along the line of restructuring, helping out-of-school children get back to classrooms for learning, providing employment opportunities that create jobs and creating jobs as well for the adults and young and also mentoring young entrepreneurs to help create more jobs. The distribution of seedlings to farmers in the North-Eastern region to help them get back to farming after the destruction of their means of livelihood by the Boko Haram insurgents is just a thing amongst numerous tasks he has engaged himself in. These are the ideals that the decade demands and these are ideals that the elite of this country must key into.

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To those who know, the obvious renewal of attacks on the former vice president and Turaki of Adamawa, show every attribute of a focused mischief and a smear campaign, not from outside as some people believed but from within the family, by those who feel threatened by his present disposition in the scheme of things in the current political dispensation.

The smear campaigners should be more scientific in their frantic efforts to brush Atiku with corruption tar. Can someone be scientific enough to provide a clear case against this man that served as a vice president of Nigeria from 2003 to 2007 instead of just setting out to smear him in his political ambitions real or imaginary? This is what we really need to work on as a respect to the intelligence of the discerning Nigerian electorate.