After many months of holidaying in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate, former Vice-president of Nigeria and 2019 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar returned to Nigeria in a somewhat grand style.
What was grand about his arrival? He was received at the airport (whether it was Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport or MMA Lagos, it could not be confirmed) by a grand old political warhorse, master of the political game , political associate, personal friend and national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
And why should this generate some interest? Both men are believed to be eyeing the 2023 presidency. This could well be a significant trigger of the much ado that has greeted the airport courtesies between Atiku and Tinubu.
Atiku and Tinubu were instrumental to the formation of Action Congress (AC) which later experienced a slight name modification to Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
Atiku had moved quite a number of times to realise his age-long ambition of becoming president. He left the legacy APC after he had taken a shot at the party’s presidential ticket for the 2015 election. He lost the ticket to President Buhari.
He did not wait in APC to try to clinch the party ticket in 2019, knowing how futile that would be. He jumped back to the PDP he formed in 1998 along with other founding leaders, where he picked the ticket and contested in the 2019 presidential poll. He gave Buhari a run for his Presidency’s money.
There are views in some quarters that Atiku won the 2019 presidential poll, but government machinery and institutions were purportedly deployed in upending what would have been an upstage of another sitting President in Nigeria.
Recall that Buhari had in 2015 upstaged Goodluck Jonathan in that year’s election.
Fast forward to 2021 ahead of 2023, political alignment, realignment and reconfiguration have been taken up a notch with moves that indicate that 2023 presidential poll will be down to the wire, a fight-to-the-finish for the soul of Nigeria as typified by the presidency.
Anything can therefore happen- from a transformation to a transmogrification- depending on the trajectory that political class and its leaders decide to chart in the burgeoning presidential power politics.
Perhaps, referenced in this context, meetings of political associates across platforms should raise eyebrows. Perhaps, it is against this backdrop that the airport “reception” by Tinubu of Atiku appears quite significant and instructive.
But then, there are people who relate with it for what it was- maybe a providential meeting and therefore should not have elicited the much ado that has trailed the video of the meeting in the social media.
Regardless, it is game on….
Stay ahead with the latest updates! Join The ConclaveNG on WhatsApp and Telegram for real-time news alerts, breaking stories, and exclusive content delivered straight to your phone. Don’t miss a headline — subscribe now!
