Atikulated? By Lanre Adewole

Election cycles are now coming with distinct buzzwords. 2015 poll was all about Sai Baba. 2011 was for Fresh Breath. And since Abubakar Atiku picked PDP’s presidential ticket, Atikulated has been loading. Catchy phrases sell everywhere. In 2011, Herman Cain, seeking the Republican ticket for White House, became an overnight sensation with his 999 Plan, in an election cycle he had, not even an outside chance. With black Barack on the Democrats’ bill, there was no chance in a billion, two black candidates would mount the two major platforms. However, early-day Republican polling had him in the lead because his buzzword caught plenty fancy, before he gradually fizzled out with his idealism.


Just as Sai Baba/FeBuhari in 2015, Atikulated and its variants are trending. Everything is pointing at what his now-pacified former boss Olusegun Obasanjo called him at the peace parley, “president-to-be,” the same prefix the bellicose Ota Ajantala pinned on Candidate Buhari when the now-president paid Atiku’s kind of visit to Baba Iyabo’s Abeokuta shrine.


The president is now also reacting to peace-libation in Obasanjo’s abode, the same way then-President Goodluck Jonathan excoriated the anointer when Buhari was the anointed. Isn’t everything new the same of old with the political class? Is there anything happening now that didn’t in 2015? Maybe, what will be different this time is the party in power not absolutely ready to leave power and will do everything to stay in it, even when not obviously wanted. Its conviction on power sustenance even when it would cost sleep, honour and immeasurable financial commitment has been demonstrated in Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, with the latter drawing even our international friends into the fray.

But DNAs are different. Buhari isn’t Jonathan and the APC of the president’s dream isn’t one that will watch victory being taken away, if it could snatch it. While Atiku has a realistic chance of winning next year, Buhari has a realistic chance of not making that happen. Something will have to give in-between.

But what exactly is the Atikulated frenzy about? Adamawa golden-boy (more like grandpa) didn’t just happen. Apart from having always desiring the seat (his first run was as a 46 year old, which should be the ideal presidency age), which gives the impression of a long-prepared candidate, the rest of Atiku should not be the best we should be rolling out for celebration. No, he isn’t a felon of any kind. Call him a victim of wicked conjectures and unofficial guilt. But why him and all the stories he permitted around him by his acts and inactions? Atiku is trending maybe because the election focus is shifting from corruption mantra of 2015 to job creation this time around. And boy, he has made a good job, positioning himself as the job president. Who would not go for his kind? In 2016 US elections, as Democrats tried to paint Donald Trump as amoral, he kept mouthing jobs, jobs, jobs, in an economy that looks an Eldorado compared to ours.  He shocked the world on election night.

Maybe, it is that perceived power to determine political fate, but considering how disappointing such “before-party” gyrations in the past, turned out, we should be having a solemn assembly now and not a repeat of statements of affliction of 2015. I wasn’t stunned with a trending expression that even if Atiku was caught robbing the CBN, he would still be voted. How is that different from the unfortunate academic Certificate and NEPA bill proclamation of last election cycle? Even the under-pressure president still has a running buzz-line; “put Buhari inside wheelbarrow (as an invalid), he will still win.” That is the quality of following in the land and expectedly the voting mentality. Imagine in a race of minimum of 10 candidates, we have limited ourselves to the two, who should ordinarily not be part of “all the above” option. But that is who we have chosen to be for now, though it won’t take the Almighty anything to side-step the electorate’s blubbering idiosyncrasy and enthrone a new order through a new kind of leadership. But wait, is Atiku by any chance that foolish thing God always uses to confound the wise? If there is divine hand in it, then we can take him as Atikulate and the rest of those wishing Nigeria well, Atikulated.