Atiku’s illegal candidacy, By Jesutega Onokpasa

I do not believe that People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Presidential Candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar, is a Nigerian but this is not by any means because of the grounds upon which certain persons went to court, and lost, seeking to stop him from vying for the presidency of Nigeria. As such, I am not at all insinuating that our beloved people from the Adamawa and Taraba axis are, in any way, different, not to talk of being inferior, to any of their compatriots from absolutely any other part of our country.

This is because when a territory, be it a sovereign nation, part of one, or, some other geographic area of whatever political status, becomes one with any other, what has happened is a merger of both political entities rather than one of them becoming part of the other. This is the position in law regardless of the name of the resultant political entity. In some cases, such as happened between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, the resultant country, Tanzania, took on a new name distilled from those of the two merged entities.

Thus, it is entirely immaterial in law that the resultant country from the merger of what was then Nigeria and Northern Cameroons still retained the name, “Nigeria”. As far as the law is concerned, a brand new country had emerged with each and every citizen of the new country being equal and the same in rights, duties, privileges, obligations and absolutely every other particular of citizenship in the resultant country with absolutely every single provision of the Constitution applying to them in the exact same way. As such, absolutely everyone, who, at the time of the merger, was, hitherto, of the Northern Cameroons became as much a Nigerian as anyone originally from the protectorates of Southern or Northern Nigeria.

Unfortunately, the case against Atiku Abubarkar was decided mainly on grounds of locus standi rather than on the deeper jurisprudence of the legal implications of two, hitherto, separate political entities coming together and becoming one and the same. So all of our dear citizens from Taraba and Adamawa are absolutely just as authentically Nigerian as anyone from Delta, Ondo, Anambra, Kogi, Bauchi or Kano and absolutely no aspersions should be cast on the originality or authenticity of their Nigerianness.

Nevertheless, Alhaji Atiku, who claims to be from Jada in Adamawa, a town that is deemed in law as just as originally Nigerian as either Sapele, Ileife, Nri, Nok, Bama or Daura, behaves in a manner that suggests he cannot even really be from Jada or anywhere else in Nigeria, for that matter, and, most probably just sneaked across the border from what is today still the Republic of Cameroon to masquerade himself as one of us.

Thanks to revelations by President Olusegun Obasanjo, we are reliably informed that Atiku Abubarkar’s presidential ambition is entirely predicated on the dictates of marabouts, soothsayers and babalawos. Now, thanks to the stupendously garrulous and rather irritatingly loquacious Dino Melaye, we now know that Atiku is an indigene of the United Arab Emirates, UAE, whose actual village or hometown is Dubai, of all places!

I would suppose all of us who might have country homes have them in our ancestral communities. If his agent for his stolen primaries and now mouthpiece for his presidential ambition to absolutely nowhere says Atiku’s country home is in the UAE, we must now square up to the danger of our country falling into the hands of an alien enemy.

Most certainly as a proud black man I am not going to be ruled over by any Arab. Needless to say, the Nigerian in me cannot possibly succumb to Cameroonian rule. Of course, we cannot expect to have one united country if one Northerner hands over to another Northerner, more especially so when that Northerner stole the turn of the South to produce a President for our country.

Simply put, Atiku Abubarkar’s presidential ambition is unconstitutional. It is a violation of our national political ethos and an assault on national cohesion. It is a direct challenge to national unity and therefore a threat to national security. Indeed, Atiku’s obscurantist and esoteric fixation on the presidency of our country is an existential threat to absolutely all of us who are authentic Nigerians for it is the very survival of our country that is presently at stake!

I heard Rivers Governor, Nyesom Wike, say that he couldn’t have been the one that went to court to stop Atiku’s candidacy because it is now statute barred, being more than two weeks after the PDP presidential primary. That is beside the point and Wike, of all people, being a senior lawyer, himself, should know that.

The way the law works, indeed, regardless of its purport, courts always have jurisdiction and aggrieved parties or, just even anyone involved or, at any rate, any justifiably concerned person would have locus depending on the nature, context and circumstances of the case. If a presidential candidate turns out to be a foreign agent, a spy or an enemy alien, for instance, it becomes entirely of no moment that the law prescribed two weeks after primaries to institute legal action to invalidate their candidature.

Where the candidate of a political party had emerged in clear and flagrant violation of that party’s constitution, his candidacy is void ab initio and the court can be approached at absolutely any point in time for the remediation of the violation. In Atiku’s case, his ongoing attempt to steal the turn of the South to produce the President of Nigeria is additionally repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience, quite apart from being most alarmingly contrary to public policy which has historically stipulated the fostering of national unity and oneness between North and South.

Indeed, the Attorney General of the Federation or, indeed, the Attorney General of absolutely any state – given that the entire country is one constituency for the purpose of a presidential election – is not just entitled, but obligated to go to court to invalidate Atiku’s unconscionably illegitimate and patently illegal candidacy.

The northern part of our country is already destabilized enough as it is. Restoring the North back to peace, security, development and progress is our collective obligation as one united nation. If Atiku were to become president, the resentment of Southerners would immediately render the entire South just as unwieldy as the North. This is a clear, present, looming and overhanging danger that Nigerians, as usual, seem to be completely oblivious of.

If the South is denied the presidency of Nigeria in 2023, we may not even have a country anymore. But, of course Atiku does not care, apparently because he is actually a foreigner and not even one of us in the first place! Well, the rest of us, genuine, authentic and true Nigerians from North to South cannot afford not to care. This is our country and it is our obligation to defend, protect and preserve it against all enemies, foreign or domestic.

Onokpasa, a lawyer, writes from Warri.