By Babajide Balogun

A NEW season is gradually approaching and so, the musical chairs are back. As the polity gets heated and political permutations are already in the scheme for the 2023 election cycle, the drums are already beating, unsurprisingly in high decibel, with the melody of scaremongering.

Nigerians have been used to being inundated at every election season with fake news about Atiku and his wealth. It’s a tale that is as old as the current democratic republic, and it consistently seeks to de-market the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, before the electorate each time he makes an attempt to offer himself for election into the number one political office in the country.

It is a familiar gambit that political opponents of Atiku have mastered over the years to paint him black in the eyes of the voting public by ascribing his wealth to be proceeds of corruption.

Whereas this trick has worked in the past and it is not unexpected that the same script would be recast as talks about the 2023 elections are fast renting the air – no thanks to the woeful performance of the incumbent president.

President Muhammadu Buhari’s dismal performance, the rising poverty in the land, the escalation of violence and insecurity across the country, the divisions that have further exacerbated our fault lines and the inaccuracies in the policy options that the current APC-government has foisted on the country are well-noted.

Atiku has stood tall as a remarkable opposition personality, who not only provides suitable policy alternatives, espousing sound and plausible solutions to the myriad of problems confronting the country, but whose presence in the opposition PDP continues to give a potent threat to the ruling party.

It can safely be said that were Atiku not in the PDP, the ruling APC would have been more ruthless on Nigerians and the very idea of Nigeria’s democracy being a multi-party concept would have been devoid of significant meaning.

It is, therefore, not difficult to discern that the former vice president is a formidable stumbling block that any potential presidential hopeful in the race to the 2023 election must surmount.

Like the former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill once said, “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”, Atiku, more than any of his contemporaries, has done his homework more meticulously and it is not in doubt that in spite of the failure in his previous presidential bids, he faces each election season with enthusiasm and pragmatic ideas about moving the country forward.

During the last electioneering campaign for instance, his most criticised remark was about unbundling the NNPC. The ruling party made a mockery of Atiku for suggesting such an idea.

But barely a year after that election which the ruling party won, the reality on ground shows that the only pragmatic thing to do is to restructure the NNPC. That goes to show the depth at which the former vice president goes in planning his policy choices.

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Within the context of democratic politicking, the contestation should be about ideas, in which at the end of the day, a political party with the prevailing idea wins the popular ballot. But, unfortunately, it appears that as far as politics in Nigeria is concerned, the major instrument in political exchanges is blackmail; consequently a political party with the largest toolbox in mischief prevails.

Such notion of politics is toxic and it will never promote any good for the common man. Running down a political opponent with well couched falsehood is destructive. It destroys the image of the personality at the receiving end of it and also deprives the electorate of the opportunity to evaluate political personalities and the ideas that they represent with an open mind.

For far too long, the issue about corruption allegations against Atiku have remained a media circus with no indictment whatsoever from any quarters. But, because it is a tune that has continued to clog Atiku’s politics, his opponents won’t even have to reinvent the wheel when they think of stopping his advances.

Sadly, the primary victim of this machination is not Atiku himself, but the Nigerian people who are perennially being denied of the potential solutions he might offer as the leader of the country.

Before now, the popular refrain is that the former vice president had cases to answer in the United States of America and, because of that, the United States government denied him visa to visit the country. As ridiculous as such explanation could be, some people fell for it.

It is as ridiculous as it is illogical that a country would refuse to receive an individual who is on its wanted list. To cut the long story short: Atiku visited the United States in the build-up to the 2019 election and everyone thought the matter had been laid to rest. But, not so for politicians and some sections of the media, both local and foreign, who they easily recruit for political hit jobs.

Why would any responsible media report of the US government placing a surveillance on an individual without quoting even a source in the US government circle affirming that claim? That is editorial indiscretion, plain and simple!

If, truly, Atiku has any cockroach in his closet, let it be the job of law enforcement – local or foreign – to so pronounce. It is absolutely an abuse of the media mandate to tarnish the reputation of a politically-exposed personality without a shred of evidence to back such claims up.

There are issues facing everyday Nigerians which should be the concern of the media. People are living through the consequences of bad governance  and addressing those concerns should be the primary concern of responsible media platforms, not the media lending itself to the service of self-serving politicians and their foreign collaborators.

Balogun, a political analyst ,wrote from Ibadan

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