By Ochereome Nnanna
THE title of this article may suggest the topic I am treating is already stale. This is because the result of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primaries, which started yesterday at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere Lagos, will already be known, especially these days of the internet when news circulates across the globe just as it is breaking. But you will soon know why I settled for this title.

Cleared to contest the presidential primaries of the Party were: Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, Mr. Rochas Okorocha and Mr. Sam Nda Isaiah. But we all know that the race is really between the first and second mentioned gents on this list. I am not a card-carrying member of any political party but I do have my political preference, and I do not mind sharing it with you. The question is, between Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who is my preferred candidate for the APC flag? Right off the bat, I give it to Atiku. Some of you who have followed me on this forum these past twenty years will surely be surprised.

ATIKU

I have been a reliable critic of Atiku, and for good reasons. Here was a man who threatened to slap the Chairman of the Adamawa State Electoral Tribunal in 2003, Justice Kassim Zanna, for daring to declare that Atiku’s former protégé, Governor Boni Haruna, did not win the 2003 election. Ironically, it was to the same Judiciary that he ran for protection when the real Nebuchadnezzar of Nigerian politics, President Olusegun Obasanjo, tried to stop him from contesting for president in 2007.

Again, Atiku is a born-to-rule Arewa politician, and this class of politicians I detest without mincing words. Atiku is fond of boasting that once the North decides the rest of the country will follow. This is the mentality that makes some misguided northerners to put their region above Nigeria and dismiss the importance of other regions and their rights to equal share of the Nigerian commonwealth. Atiku went ahead to rally northern presidential aspirants in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2010/2011 into forming the Northern Political Leaders’ Forum (NPLF). They later favoured him as their choice Arewa candidate to flush out President Jonathan. But GEJ roundly trounced him at the PDP presidential primaries and went ahead to win the 2011 presidency by a landslide.

Thirdly, in the wake of his politicking as Arewa’s choice in 2010, it was Atiku that announced at a press conference, that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable, thus boosting another group of Arewa politicians’ threat to make the country ungovernable for Jonathan unless he dropped his presidential ambition for a northerner. Now, if other Nigerians had this mindset when the North dominated the politics of Nigeria for nearly forty years, which country would Atiku and his cohorts rule? Why not just contest for presidency in a civilised and lawful manner, rallying support from all parts of the country, rather than his parochial perception that Nigeria begins and ends in the North? Why not be a true Nigerian and make me more comfortable having you as a presidential candidate?

Well, Atiku seems to have got the message. Since he resumed his quest for president under the APC banner, he has been criss-crossing the country in his private jets, reviving and revving up what remains of the political structure he and the late Major General Shehu Yar’ Adua set up in the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP). Atiku is more youthful, energetic and intellectually connected than Buhari. Atiku understands Nigeria more than Buhari. If he becomes president he has the capacity to build regional coalitions and alliances to give people a sense of belonging as much as possible.

Atiku is also very adept at assembling people of sound professional backgrounds and track records. He is a very organised person, and his campaign organisations are usually second to none in terms of organisational clockwork. Atiku will also be at home with the legislative arm of government, something I have no idea what Buhari will do if he finds himself as the Chief Executive of the Federation.

Now comes the clincher. I prefer Atiku to Buhari in the greater national interest. If Atiku loses the presidential election, Nigeria will be a safer place for all than if Buhari flies the APC to another defeat. Buhari has already told us that the blood of monkeys and baboons will mix. In view of the bloodthirsty track record of his followers in the North, it is no idle threat. Atiku does not have that kind of followership. Besides, the Turaki of Adamawa has the whole world to lose personally if Nigeria goes up in flames since the main source of his stupendous wealth is rooted in the Niger Delta.

Buhari is riding on the calculation that North plus West is bigger than Nigeria. His victory will take the Igbo people where I come from back to 1984 when they had no voice in the system. I kick against any political arrangement that will not take my people or any other group of Nigerians along. I want a truly national leader.

Atiku will run the system hands-on, surrounded by well-picked performers. But all Buhari did as head of state was to leave the work for his Deputy, Tunde Idiagbon. As Executive Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund, he left it in the hands of a galaxy of Fulani professionals who simply shared contracts among themselves and friends and aggrandised the North infrastructurally.

I have yet to hear Buhari articulate his economic agenda and how he will actualise it. In fact, I do not know what Buhari forgot in the State House. All I see is a man who wants to prove that if Obasanjo can be a civilian president after ruling Nigeria as a military head of state, so can Buhari.