NIGERIANS know it was President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who famously said he had nursed a lifelong ambition to be the president of Nigeria. It was Tinubu who lent voice to his ambition and for some Nigerians that statement displayed all the signs of hubris, a sense of entitlement that they find insufferable.
Before that time, he was only a background player who supported the ambition of his political leaders like Bamanga Tukur who wanted to be governor of his state. As the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Tukur could not have been unknown to Atiku. But in 1989 he left the Customs and immediately went into politics as a member of the Peoples Front, led by Shehu Yar’Adua.
It has to be acknowledged that Atiku gave Abiola and Kingibe a run for their money and was to have become his running mate before the SDP governors who had had their own election insisted on Kingibe being Abiola’s running mate. While new-age Nigerian politicians don’t waste time in staking their claims for high office, it is not always the best move for everyone and Atiku would appear to be one of such persons.
Obasanjo ate the humble pie until they won re-election in 2003 and from them on the falcon could no longer hear the falconer. Things fell irretrievably apart between these men. By 2006 Atiku had left the PDP even as a sitting VP. OBJ ensured he didn’t win the 2007 election. Atiku lost his best chance to be president after he failed to do so as VP in a governing party. Since falling out with Obasanjo, Atiku has contested for the presidency for at least five times and failed.
By 1990, Atiku had his first shot at elective office by contesting to be the governor of Gongola State from where Adamawa State was carved. Atiku at this time had been moving in the political orbit of Shehu Musa Yar’ Adua, a former Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters, next in rank to Olusegun Obasanjo, head of the junta that succeeded the regime of Murtala Muhamed. Yar’Adua was also the older brother of Umaru Yar’Adua who would succeed Obasanjo in office as an elected president in 2007.
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