They call themselves G100. We only know one person in that synonym of a centenary. That person is Salihu Lukman. He is a one-man gang. A one-man one hundred. He is flat, except for the flatulence of his self-importance. He is making a mockery of numbers. That is, exaggeration. The last G with respect was crafted by former vice president, Alex Ekwueme. He gave accountability to the count. He began, in the tempestuous days of Sani Abacha, with what he called G14. Everyone could count and name the members. When it rose by four chieftains, we called it G18, that is a group of eighteen politicians. It ended up as G34 with all of them in public parade. Lukman’s is a G-fiction. A shadowy 100.
Lukman is trucking in the muck, so he gives us a murky number. He has conjured up the number 100. He wants to intimidate. But we cannot catch any scent of fear except from him. He just announced that he had suspended himself from the ADC. The reason? He lost his influence there after peeing in its pond in Kaduna State.
The party, ADC, was taken over by Nasir El Rufai. The little tempest of a man met a wily player in Lukman. In the party primary, Lukman connived with Atiku Abubakar, David Mark and the now Osun State stumbler Rauf Aregbesola to topple the former Kaduna State governor. He succeeded. El Rufai’s 26 followers who wanted an office all fell flat. Only his son Bello secured a seat. Lukman and company conceded an oedipal pity to him. El Rufai now has a family structure instead of a party structure. The often-loud politician is sulking in silence these days. His structure is like ashes in the heat.
Lukman thought he now owned Kaduna ADC. Then came money and a man with it named Shuaibu Mikati. He wants to be the governor. Lukman had pushed Isa Ashiru to win the primary. But the ADC committee has advanced Mikati. ADC has a way of undermining legitimacy. They took over the party the same way, by pooh-poohing due process. Money has outplayed the crafty man. After all that Lukman swagger, the ADC is divided into three in Kaduna. One-part Lukman. One-part Mikati as front for Mark and Atiku. The last part is roasting in the ash. That belongs to El Rufai.
It was out of frustration that Lukman said he has suspended his ADC membership. That means, he has defected to himself. He cannot defect to a party. He would like to return to his APC vomit. He knows Governor Uba Sani would squelch him. A man like Lukman has no regrets going back to his vomit. But this vomit rejects him. He was vice chairman of APC northwest region.
How come he wants to rally the party he has left to fight in 2027? The same Atiku who supports Mikati over his candidate is his backer for the G100. Is that not absurd? Is he doing it to find his way back into ADC? How would an Atiku even trust him when he could not unite his party in the state?
It is the paradox of a divider posing as a uniter. It shows how the opposition has run out of ideas. Even though they had roared about a meeting of the opposition for Tuesday this week, they have put it off to the end of August. Why? They are suffering from what existential philosophers call decision fatigue. They held a meeting in Ibadan the other day, and they could not arrive, as this essayist predicted, on a single candidate. They want to go back to their vomit. Salihu Lukman, as I stated earlier, loves to go back to his vomit. This time, even that vomit, is proving hard to swallow.
The opposition, with Atiku and co, are facing what Jean Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher, calls the tragedy of choice. In his book, Being and Nothingness, he laments how God put man in this vast world and has left him to make decisions in a meaningless universe. Being has become nothingness. If, as he says, existence precedes essence, he is not sure of the nature of that existence. That is how the ADC and opposition operate today. They have no sense of what to make of politics but to thrash about looking for an answer. The so-called G100 is an Atiku project to subdue Obi. He has fantasy of 2019 when Obi was his running mate. Obi and his followers are running alone. Atiku and Lukman want to go back to their vomit. Obi has no appetite. Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian existentialist, does not follow Sartre’s path of decision fatigue. He calls for a leap of faith. Maybe that is what Atiku and Lukman want to do. They want a leap of faith. But they are scared of leaping in the dark, into the abyss. Kierkegaard’s leap was sublime, not supine like these ADC politicians. PoliticalCommentary Analysis
Part of this drama is Atiku’s sojourns of court cases and accusations against the president around the world. The latest is the NYSC certificate, and he is angry with Adekunle. He is grasping at straws. We might even love him to do his airy tirades if he were a modicum free of offence. But this man had discrepancies in his primary school certificate. He went to the U.S. to dig up what is already resolved. Yet, he wants us to forget that he has forgotten fourth wife Jennifer Douglas and the $40 million transferred into 30 U.S. accounts. Maybe he thinks FBI has slipped into amnesia. Also, he has forgotten that he is the number one liquidator of Nigerian agencies. He is the ulmate failure as capitalist. He sells value for loss and he wants to bring prosperity? We remember Aladja Steel. We remember Daily Times. We remember his facility with SPVs.
The thing with Atiku is that he is a man living among vultures, he being one himself. They come in the form of lawyers and political types with creative amenities for ideas. The ideas suck money out of him. They flatter his secret hopes that if he does this or that against Tinubu it will work. They are trying to see what will stick. The hangers-on are taking the last crumbs from the facile old man. He is obliging because he knows it is his last fight. Those around him know it is their last chance. It is political scavenging. They did same to him in the last election cycle. They went up to the Supreme Court twice. O lule twice. He is not crying yet. He is still trying. And his vultures are working. He is naïve and yielding. He is acting as though he is the protagonist in Joseph Conrad’s novel, Nostromo, who wakes up after a vulture buzzes over him. He quips: “I am not dead yet.” He is enjoying the flattery of life, and chasing shadows. Atiku is like the rich old man in a family. Everyone wants their part before he divides his inheritance. In his play, Cat on a hot tin Roof, Tennessee Williams crafts a moment when the family patriarch realises that his folks do not like him. They just want his money. Politics
Of all, Lukman is the most comedic. He is not a party man, and Atiku is accepting him as the point man for his party coalition. Why not tell him to put his Kaduna ADC in order before putting the whole opposition in one room! It is what a historian described as a divinely ordained confusion. A bedlam. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews.
