MANY months ago, this column beamed the searchlight on former vice president Atiku Abubakar, decrying his political flip-flops and suggesting that had he been more stable in his political loyalties, he would probably have achieved much more in politics. There was nowhere in the searchlight where his person was denigrated, only his politics. In the view of this column at the time, Alhaji Atiku was believed to be inscrutable, brave and indomitable. He had traversed virtually every serious political persuasion in Nigeria, from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where he was a formidable aurochs, to the Action Congress (AC) where he romped as a bird of passage, and then back to the PDP in the classical mould of an opportunist, and finally to the All Progressives Congress (APC) where the brightest and the bravest political gladiators and rebels of the day fomented a political rebellion against the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan. In every situation and everywhere, Alhaji Atiku was present, pertinacious, consummate and indescribably accommodating and wholly without malice.

It was, therefore, not surprising that early this week, the current edition of Zero Tolerance, the quarterly magazine of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), published the former vice president’s damning views on a number of political personalities, chief among whom were ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, Governor Nasir el-Rufai and former EFCC boss Nuhu Ribadu. His incendiary views measure high on the Richter scale. Three years after leaving the PDP after a bruising battle with Chief Obasanjo, Alhaji Atiku had in 2009 visited his former boss in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun State, to seek ways of rejoining the PDP. The cause of the initial disaffection was Chief Obasanjo’s open plot to perpetuate himself in office through the notorious third term agenda. In the Zero Tolerance interview, Alhaji Atiku reiterated his view that even beyond third term, Chief Obasanjo had in fact plotted to rule indefinitely. The interview, not to say the former vice president’s exposition on the real intentions of his former boss, is certain to stir controversy once again. Chief Obasanjo, the country knows, never lets anyone have the last word.

Alhaji Atiku’s account of his relationship with Mallam Ribadu is even less flattering. He suggests in the interview that Mallam Ribadu came privately to apologise for publicly describing the ex-vice president as a corrupt politician. “When he came to ask me for forgiveness, I said if you want me to forgive you, Nuhu, go to the same television stations where you said I was corrupt and say you now (have) realised that I am not corrupt,” the former vice president said. “Then he said ‘sir, you have forgiven so many people who have offended you publicly without them going to TV stations to apologise to you’ and I said, ‘your case is different because first of all, I helped to found the EFCC’. I was instrumental to your appointment, so, I believe I have contributed to your development and this is how you are paying me back. In any case, he kept on apologising, and I said, ‘okay, no problem. That closed the chapter’.” It is not certain that Mallam Ribadu would like to controvert Alhaji Atiku’s account of their private meeting.

The former vice president was even more scathing on the controversial stormy petrel of Kaduna politics, Mallam el-Rufai, who had pointedly accused him of bribing senators and aborting trips to the United States in order to avoid arrest over corruption allegations. “Did he give any evidence or prove where I was corrupt?” snorted Alhaji Atiku. He then goes on to offer more details: “Again, this is the same el-Rufai whom I was instrumental in bringing into government and making him Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, and eventually a minister. You also forgot that it was the same el-Rufai and Nuhu that my boss used in cooking up the indictment that was eventually thrown out. So, where is the evidence of corruption? It’s just not fair for you to say somebody is corrupt without substantiation. This is the same el-Rufai who testified on TV that he worked with me as DG of BPE for four years and there was never a time I asked him or instructed him to do anything unethical in those years. So, how am I a corrupt person? This is the same el-Rufai and others who incorporated Transcorp during my time as Vice President and offered me shares and I declined. I wrote them officially to say it was unethical of me to have accepted those offers. So, where is the corruption toga coming from?”

Unlike Chief Obasanjo who may want to measure his response, particularly the timing and occasion, and Mallam Ribadu whom age and experience have apparently taught the virtues of restraint and taciturnity, the impetuous and intemperate Mallam el-Rufai exhibits no such constraints. Immediately the substance of the Alhaji Atiku interview came out in the EFCC magazine, the Kaduna governor drafted his response, as foul and abusive as ever, and flung it into the public space. He vigorously denied offering Alhaji Atiku any Trasncorp shares, and complained that the former vice president’s media machine was let loose on him to soil his reputation. “Despite the viciousness of the attacks,” croaked Mallam el-Rufai against Alhaji Atiku’s media machine, “they did not contest or explain away his (Atiku’s) shenanigans that were detailed in (my) book, from the Ericsson manoeuvre, to the Abuja water treatment plant contract and his obsession with marabouts and their assurances of the political big prize.”

The Kaduna governor continues: “He (Atiku) might also consider a full reckoning for what he and his acolytes did with public funds in the PTDF imbroglio, rather than indulging the usual bold face of the Nigerian big-man. As a federal public servant, my oath of allegiance appropriately stood with the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not the big men whose conduct I was privileged to witness at close quarters. People like Alhaji Atiku think that loyalty to them should be the goal of a public officer, and that it should trump the oath of allegiance to the country…Alhaji Atiku is already running for 2019, and he thinks that he can make people like us collateral damage in his attempt to rejuvenate his image…This obsession for power inclined him to support the rebellion against the party that manifested in the National Assembly, and is continuing with obvious disrespect for the incumbent president.”

The Alhaji Atiku interview was done in June, but published in November. It is not too clear that he meant the interview and his statements as a precursor of a presidential race. But nothing can be ruled out. However, there are also unverified suggestions that Mallam el-Rufai might be interested in the 2019 presidential race should the president decline to run. Again, this cannot be substantiated. But while Alhaji Atiku does not fawn at anyone’s feet, regardless of his other faults, Mallam el-Rufai is on the other hand reputed to ingratiate himself with those who could advance his ambition while also possessing a spectacular ability to pull the carpet from under the feet of his mentors. He protests his innocence of all the allegations against him, but none among Chief Obasanjo and Alhaji Atiku, nor even Muhammadu Buhari whom he now serenades, has not attracted his bitter lampoon at one time or the other.

Nigerian politicians, as Alhaji Atiku, Chief Obasanjo and President Buhari demonstrate uncannily, do not leave bad enough alone. Chief Obasanjo can never cure himself of the third term (or what his former vice president describes as life presidency ambition) malady; Alhaji Atiku can never live down the corruption label slammed on him irrespective of his most valiant effort; and President Buhari can never erase doubts about his puny democratic credentials. In the same way, Mallam el-Rufai can never disabuse anyone of his fickleness and acerbity. What is most intriguing, however, is Alhaji Atiku’s proclivity for raking controversy and meeting his opponents (he says they are never enemies, a point Mallam el-Rufai will probably dispute) with a combativeness that belies his unquenchable interest in the presidency, an interest allegedly fuelled by marabouts.

If Mallam el-Rufai has interest in the presidency, he shows neither the talent for both the race and the office itself nor the temper and wisdom that inculcate gravitas in presidential aspirants. Chief Obasanjo and President Buhari were lucky to have won the great office, for they also showed neither the democratic principles nor the deep ideological or even pragmatic convictions necessary to hold down the top office. The campaign to vilify Alhaji Atiku as a corrupt politician has stuck. There is hardly any Nigerian of note who thinks the campaign is overdone, despite the absence of evidence or conviction, and despite towering head and shoulders above the last three occupants of that great office. If this inscrutable exemplar is to make a headway in 2019, given the interest he has appeared to indicate, he will need twice, perhaps even thrice, the good fortune Chief Obasanjo, Dr Jonathan and President Buhari had to win the highest office. Nay, he will need more than his iconoclastic combativeness and candour to win, perhaps a miracle even.