Over-Desperate Atiku By Tosin Akande

Over-Desperate Atiku By Tosin Akande

“I stand before you as a Pan-Nigerian of Northern origin.”

Following the news blog site of respected journalist and friend Sulaiman Aledeh, the above inflammatory statement made before a Hausa/Fulani audience in Kaduna is credited to Atiku- the PDP presidential flag bearer.

Atiku should tell such lies and deceit to the marines! Very laughable…Pan-Nigerian of Northern origin before a Northern audience? Nasty political correctness! But beyond political correctness, it is what some of us expected.

It’s beyond ‘Gbe Wón Mó’ra’- a street jargon in this part of Nigeria…’e pass am’ and I promise to write more on it in subsequent series. Hmmm…I wonder what he’ll come to tell us in the South as campaign content.

Though the ‘When’ element of the report itself is missing, it still should not stop the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, from investigating its timeliness in calling Atiku out on such ethnocentric statements.

And in fact, beyond calling out, he should be prosecuted as laid down in the relevant law- the Electoral Act of 2022 as an effective deterrent to the other candidates at various levels of political aspirations across the land.

These incendiary words of Titi and others’ husband can potentially reduce our already fragmented and heavily divided nation to rubbles along parochial, tribal lines.

Specifically, Section 92 of the Electoral Act provides that it is an offence to make any such statements and is punishable by the payment of a One million Naira fine or 12-month imprisonment.

Needless to say that the latter punitive measure is better; how much is One million Naira to politicians that they will not pay? In fact, they can afford to pay and keep repaying ten times for each day of the campaign window till it lapses next year.

Since Atiku made that statement in a confirmed report, barring the timeliness factor, I had expected that by now, he should have been apprehended by the police at the behest of INEC to start prosecution against him as the law provides but for where?! …

That’s one of our major problems here. We pay lip service to issues of high-end importance, first to our collective survival and then our collective development. Our legal system is there but very weak, and the punishments available are also lame-duck and never a deterrent.

That much said, abeg. As we say in the streets, “I can’t come and kee myself!” If INEC refuses to sanction Atiku, If his party- the PDP, refuses to do the same (They can’t even. Where lie their democratic norms and examples? A party infested and incapacitated- no thanks to ‘Wike-laria’… is not expected to show much sanity and…ultimately, if Atiku refuses to self-cleanse and eat up his words of ethnic hate, maybe…

Just maybe Nigerians are watching. TATA expects that they are well-guided enough to cancel out any semblance of myopic judgment, owing to ethnic or tribal issues from whichever side of the country because what’s sauce or not-sauce for Atiku should, reasonably be sauce or not-sauce for any other.

Ordinarily, Atiku or any other fellow fanning or seen as fanning the embers of tribal division should be denounced. Still, I don’t expect too much from the political judgment of our people. Therefore, I rest my case with fate on Nigeria…Providence!

Tosin Akande Thinking Aloud…TATA 406