Atiku’s Rolling Stone – By Sam Omatseye
The United States University where I taught relied on my journalistic pedigree for nine years before asking for my degree but the Authorities did not seek my Certificate.They wanted my transcript.
So Abubakar Atiku should accept my sympathy for his ignorance.
As Jesus pleaded, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Asking for forgiveness does not always move God. Only repentance.
In the Book of Revelation, John prophesied against Christ’s unrepentant Foes at Golgotha. “They that pierced him shall wail because of him.”
Atiku, still unrepentant, is already wailing. He wailed all the way to Chicago.
Before then, he wailed at the Court of Appeal. He said President Bola Tinubu did not attend Chicago. He and his fellow Traveller in a different Bus, Peter G. Obi. Obi just told him he is not his Gee when the Adamawa Chieftain wanted to recruit him into a coalition of the aggrieved.
So, both keep pining and rumbling forward, grumbling and looking askance at each other across Bus windows.
They will keep looking askance until such a grudge match will roll the Buses into a supreme curse. Like a rolling stone with no moss.
When the PEPC exposed the apology of his Lawyers’ logic, they changed the complaint. They trundled to Chicago State University and an American Court. The Court said to release the transcript.
The transcript said one thing, they saw another. It’s like the Bible quote that they have eyes but they see not.
Suddenly, the worry is not that Tinubu was a genuine Student. The Student passed but with a fake Certificate ?
If it is not blaming the Student for going to School, it is also blaming him for being a honour’s Student. Blaming him for being brilliant.
I have heard SANs, Party Racoons and self-appointed Commentators walk that mendacious path.
I have called such Lawyers SANS “sans honour”. Jesus poured woe on Lawyers for hiding the Key of knowledge.
For them and other so-called Pundits, I invoke Author of War and Peace Leo Tolstoy’s call to “Educate the educated.” They squeak rather than speak and pine rather than opine. They emote and elope from reason.
It is the contusion of the cerebellum. They are serfs in Atiku’s orbit. We call for their freedom from his fiefdom of lies and desperate malignancy.
It is, at bottom, an opportunism of the Paymaster. The Payees are willing. Feuding on behalf of a Feudalist.
For about 48 hours, they kept mum and combed for mischief. Then voila ! They saw Female instead of Male. A gender change in tribute to the LGBTQ World.
They even donned the President with Gele. They acted like cultural Pariahs.
In torturing reality, they shuffled papers, mistaking Certificate for Transcript.
With mischief, they turned fact without tact. They would not even applaud our first President to graduate with high honours, a parade of As.
The so-called SANs say it was a forgery because the deposition said CSU did not issue the Certificate.
They saw blood. Television and Social Media buzzed. But they were deluded. It was like Tantalus in Homer’s Odyssey where a fruit hung and no one could touch it. It is the root of the word tantalise.
They reflected ignorance. They conflated Nigerian system with that of the US.
In Nigeria, we ask for Certificates. In the US, like in my own case, they ask for Transcript.
In Warri, we say in pidgin English, “who no go no know.” They are Locals with a yokel mentality.
Atiku may be a Billionaire, but he still knows nothing. Hence, he was allegedly involved in a case with Congressman William Jefferson now in Jail over fraud.
Because he was alleged to have a hand in funneling $40 million into the US, Congress passed a law on money laundering.
And the Adamawa man whose Nigerianness is still in dispute, even in Cameroun, ran from his American Home. He was luckier than his Wife who got caught and wailed into Jail.
He and his Lawyers know nothing about third party Agents. It is capitalism.
Middlemen now play in the service industry. Not a few things are outsourced today.
Atiku and his Lawyers have travelled. “Nothing develops intelligence like travel,” wrote novelist Emile Zola. Immanuel Kant never saw the World but became known as the Father of modern philosophy with his idea of teleology that gave us Hegel, Max, 20th century revolutions and restraint.
It is not about their lack of travel. They left their minds at the Airport. Psychologists call it arrested development.
They accept CSU when it suits them. They toss it when it doesn’t. CSU said, Tinubu was Male. His admission letter said same. From the campaigns, they have made him into many incarnations. A Woman in Chicago.
An 80-plus-year-old. A sick and dying Man. A Guinean before an African American. A spirit booed in Europe when he was in Nigeria. An African American, just because he filled a form.
All African Immigrants were forced to fill African American in forms because there was no African box to tick. It’s better now.
Atiku would do well to show us his own Certificates. His PTDF Certificate under OBJ. His Customs Tax Certificate. Certificate for selling Nigerian companies like Aladja Steel.
He said he did not betray Tinubu. This is the Man he openly called “my Brother” at a Book launch in 2006.
He ran to Tinubu for help from OBJ’s Koboko. How could he have become AC’s Flagbearer without Tinubu ? Who knew him in the Party ?
He lied that he did not want Tinubu as his Running Mate because he was a Muslim ? Was he not behind Abiola and Kingibe ?
Where is the tape of that assertion that it was because of the Muslim-Muslim Ticket he rejected him ?
When did Atiku care about such things ? Didn’t he tell Arewa that the North should vote for him because he is Fulani, and shun others, including his Gee and Tinubu, who were not Northerners ?
If not for Tambuwal, he was dud as Candidate ? Is it not the sort of bigotry we are condemning ? He is just afraid of Tinubu.
But fear has now turned into hate. As Shakespeare wrote, “In time we hate that which we often fear.”
People who believe him deserve our pity. Truth intimidates them. They are Mob Morons. No one is saying Atiku had the votes.
They call themselves Moralists. They were Trumpeters of 25 percent.
That’s outdated. Certificate is new. They are not ashamed to evangelise a Man who did not get the votes.
They think they are majority because they make high-decibel noise with lies and delusions.
They are like the words of T.S. Eliot: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”
Since they would not accept the truth, wrote Paul in the Bible, God has given them over to a reprobate mind.
He reminds me of a School Principal in Delta State whose Team kept yielding goal after goal in a football match.
He picked a sheet of Paper in fury to write a protest for poor officiating.
Just as he wrote the first sentence, he heard an uproar, and asked, “is it a goal again ?” Indeed !
That is the story of Atiku’s serial failures, an Actor of pirouettes and turnabouts, moving headlong to his last and final fall.
He knows there is no way open for him. He knows, at 80 plus, no Party would look his way in 2027.
The last gasp of a drowning Man. Like Okonkwo and Oedipus, Atiku sees the end, but he cannot help himself as he cascades downwards.
Following how the scales fell in Tinubu’s favour, he should have seen destiny’s hands.
Ebenezer Obey’s line should jolt him.Ayanmo mi latowo Oluwa ni … – My destiny is in God’s hands.
