Atiku Abubakar’s nunc dimittis, By Peter Claver Oparah

By every measure the parody Atiku Abubakar, the defeated presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and his cohorts put up yesterday, which they flattered with the hyperbole of ‘World Press Conference’ was an anti-climax that worsened the already battered image of Atiku and his sulking PDP fawners that are yet to live down their defeat in the hands of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his All Progressives Congress (APC) in the February 25, 2023 presidential election. That pitiful sombre, listless show was rather Atiku’s political swan song, an unbefitting nunc dimittis that has all the trapping of his unceremonious impending exit from the Nigerian political scene.

Get me right, Atiku is likely to throw his hat to the political ring by 2027, by which time he would be an 81 year-old losing veteran, with a long history of losses that would certainly hunt his future political excursions. In fact, it is a catholic viewpoint that all what Atiku is doing now is to keep an unassailable hold on his party’s 2027 presidential ticket and not the pursuit of a phantom mandate after he was thoroughly shellacked in the 2023 polls even with his frantic hurling of an ethnic flag that did little to save him from yet another devastating loss in the last election

In fact, the belief that Atiku is hedging on 2027 PDP presidential ticket in the circuitous chase of shadows he is doing now, is writ large amongst Nigerians. That Atiku and his supporters knew he had no credible pathway to victory in the 2023 election yet has indulged in an expansive melodrama in pursuit of his phantom mandate points to a futuristic battle to retain the battered soul of PDP. They knew very well that he was thoroughly defeated in that election. The hollow showing of his legal team in the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) further indemnified the fact of his loss.

But in his extensive shadow-chasing that took him on a fruitless journey to Chicago courts to prove that President Tinubu did not attend the Chicago State University, was part of his extensive efforts to hold tight to the ticket of his party and reserve it for yet another shot at the presidency as a nonagenarian in 2027. Atiku, though with a dense faculty, cannot be outrightly dense as to believe that his wild goose chase in Chicago will exhume his dead 2023 ambition and spring him to the presidency by any stroke of good fortune. The game was to fangle some activity and vain hope to keep hold of PDP and invest some hopes in his down-spirited supporters preparatory to 2027.

So he had to call a ‘World Press Conference’ (Atiku so much love that adjective) to further his objective. But it is the considered opinion of this writer that despite Atiku’s expansive adventure and efforts to grab the 2027 presidential ticket, it would not be an easy ride for him. PDP would stretch its naivety notches further if it invests its hope to rule Nigeria on an 81.year- veteran loser in 2027. When the 2023 ambition of Atiku shredded PDP so badly in 2023, it would be foolhardy for the party to invest further hopes on an ageing Atiku to get it to power against an incumbent President Tinubu in 2027. It was not lost on observers that Atiku’s last ‘World Press Conference’ was heavily boycotted by the leadership of PDP which points to the indication that the party is fed up with Atiku and his perennial presidential dreams and may not be eager to field him in 2027. So he was unknowingly singing his nunc dimittis in the strings of ‘World Press Conferences’ he calls every now and then and which always end as empty rituals and inane shows that lead to further political frustrations

But his latest ‘World Press Conference’ turned out to be another huge parody, an empty show of emotions and a hollow, infantile play that was bereft of meaningful agenda and was messageless. In short, the ‘world’ gathered to hear nothing meaningful except a plethora of hastily cooked but penetrable lies, insane fabrications and vacuous rants that bespeak of Atiku’s psychological dread of President Tinubu and his unflagged good political fortune.

What more, Atiku’s ‘World Press Conference’ ended in an abrupt fiasco when the organisers announced they would have to end it due to excessive heat!

Atiku’s ‘World Press Conference’ was a sickly jeremiad. It was a vouyage in tom-foolery and excessive narcissism where the veteran election loser excreted huge volume of hate, bitterness, venom, blackmail and phlegm. It was a miserable display from a sick, humiliated and clearly depressed mind that is violently seeking closure to his humiliating political expedition that is replete with failure and mishap. In making his opponent, President Tinubu the core subject of his ‘World Press Conference’ where he regurgitated a thick cocktail of transparent and infantile lies to garnish his bristling feeling of envy and jealousy against Tinubu’s delectable political history, Atiku demonstrated a shameful show of self-humiliation, which Tinubu’s triumphant political career has inflicted on him. He depicted a hunted and beaten soul; sore, bleeding heart seeking comfort in weaving specious and outlandish narratives against his more illustrious opponent and he exhibited a very obvious depressing symptom that he is walking down history as perhaps Nigeria’s longest contesting presidential aspirant and, at the same time, hugging the negative limelight as Nigeria’s most prolific election loser.

I will do a report on Atiku’s obsession with Tinubu later on but why should Atiku call a ‘World Press Conference’ just to regal us with a lie-ridden, pejorative narrative of what he did for Tinubu and what he did not do for Tinubu? What has that porous tittle-tattle of lies got to do with Atiku’s sorry political fate? What has that show of shame he flattered as ‘World Press Conference’, which crashed to an inglorious end and became inconclusive, had to do with Atiku’s unenviable political trajectory that has effectively ended with the crushing defeat Tinubu handed him last February?

In Atiku’s ill-fated ‘World Press Conference’ the sullen and crestfallen Atiku tried to hazard his impending luck at the Supreme Court, where he has taken his miserable appeal against the unassailable judgment of the PEPT to, but what could make a man who boasts that he has all it takes to get the presidency in the courts to commit the obviously punishable offence of Contempt by calling a “World Press Conference’ to boast of his chances at the Supreme Court? Did Atiku convoke the ‘World Press Conference’ to announce that he was not going back on his resolve to go to the Supreme Court when he had already gone to the Supreme Court?

When Atiku was defeated in February, he called a ‘World Press Conference’ to announce to the world that he was going to PEPT to ‘reclaim’ his ‘stolen mandate’. He went to PEPT but in a landmark judgment on September 6, 2023, PEPT not only unanimously dismissed Atiku and his political godson, Peter Obi’s petitions, it went further to thoroughly lampoon and excoriate both politicians for the shallowness of their cases and their prosecution. Atiku was to call another ‘World Press Conference’ days later to announce he was appealing to the Supreme Court. Thereafter, he proceeded to what has become known as a fruitless fishing expedition to Chicago where he instituted cases demanding to be availed of the academic credentials of his vanquisher, President Tinubu from Tinubu’s alma mater, Chicago State University. The court granted his request and the school handed him the requested documents and backed same with an affidavit where it strongly affirmed that President Tinubu was its student who graduated with sterling records from the school.

It was curious that the day after the Chicago court granted his request, Atiku called yet another ‘World Press Conference’. less than a month after his last ‘World Press Conference’ and you wonder what else a clearly beleaguered Atiku and his waning cult of lickspittle wanted to call yet another ‘World Press Conference’ for since the court granted his prayers to release Tinubu’s documents for him to proceed to the Supreme Court, which he had already done. Was it that Atiku indeed realised he had wasted his time and efforts in a wild fishing expedition such that he believes his case is doomed at the Supreme Court, hence he needed another hollow act like his ‘World Press Conference’ to argue the case he had already taken to the Supreme Court?

Coming to his latest ‘World Press Conference’, it was a mere empty parody where Atiku merely exhaled the hefty volume of lies, hubris and hot airs that had accumulated in his mouth. It was just an exhibit of mega frustration, anger and vanity that obtains from Atiku’s resignation to the fact that he chased wild geese to Chicago and at the end,. still has his hopeless, empty and vacuous petition on his laps to prove. If Atiku believes he has built a provable case at the Supreme Court, would he need to call a ‘World Press Conference’ to tell his equally-depressed supporters that he is proceeding with his case at the Supreme Court when he had already filed the case? Would he make a mockery of himself by calling up his lawyer at the disastrous press conference to assure they have a solid case? Would he be running his tired and frustration-stuffed mouth on a case he has taken to the Supreme Court?

The answer to the above is that Atiku knows that his empty case is dead on arrival and indeed has accepted defeat just that he needed such show of shame as his last ‘World Press Conference’ to keep his withering followership on his side and tame the widespread schism that is ravaging his support base. He is desperately fighting to keep his flailing, ageing hands on the remnants of a fast dying PDP and warehouse its 2027 presidential ticket. This is the main crux of his unending strings of ‘World Press Conferences’ that are mere valueless, empty shows: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In his ‘World Press Conference’, yesterday, Atiku was lonely, dejected and orphaned. His PDP deserted him in full. None of his PDP serving governors honoured his parody with his presence. None of PDP National Assembly members attended. None of the serving national officers was present. Even Atiku’s vice presidential candidate, Okowa, refused to join Atiku’s nunc dimmittis tagged ‘World Press Conference’. Only a handful of Atiku’s beneficiaries, made up of ageing disappearing subalterns like Ikimi, Ben Obi, Iyorchia Ayu. Secondus, Chidoka, Achike Udenwa, and other coterie of disappearing lackeys of Atiku flanked him in his miserable show of shame and profound emptiness. These are displaced basket of deplorable that has no hold even on PDP’s throttle presently and would prove ineffective to Atiku’s 2027 presidential dream.

At the end of the day, Atiku’s ‘World Press Conference’ ended abruptly and unceremoniously to underscore its shameful intents, contents and outcome. The moderator of the ‘World Press Conference’ was reported to have suddenly ended the empty show on the claim that heat was seriously affecting ‘our leaders’! What an anti climatic end to yet another show in the nunc dimittis series of Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s most prolific presidential contestant and ingloriously Nigeria’s redoubtable most prolific serial loser!

-Oparah, a Public Affairs Analyst wrote from Ikeja, Lagos.