STILL stunned by ex-president Olsuegun Obasanjos flip-flop over the Atiku Abubakar presidential bid, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and many Nigerians wait with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. They are certain that having excoriated the former vice president, Alhaji Atiku, so brutally and mercilessly in August, describing him as an incorrigible leader and a politician unsuited for the post of president, the former president would once again revoke his recent endorsement of his former deputy. Chief Obasanjo had in early October revisited his August denunciation of Alhaji Atiku, describing him this time as fit for the presidency, and indeed should be rightly addressed as president-in-waiting. For both the public and the APC, Chief Obasanjos volte face was too traumatic to be either true or lasting.What began as a battle of endorsements and good-humoured criticisms has now become an open and unremitting war. The APC is determined to press the matter and show the former president as unprincipled and hypocritical. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for which Alhaji Atiku is standard-bearer, is also determined to show that Chief Obasanjo made a u-turn because increasingly, President Muhammadu Buharis unsuitability for the exalted presidential seat was becoming apparent. It is true that Chief Obasanjos description of his former vice president as incorrigible was harsh and shocking, but his walk-back, about two months later, in which he saw his former vice president as president-in-waiting was even more bewildering.As predicted by this column moments after Alhaji Atiku took the PDP nomination early October, the battle for the presidency would become most intense in January. January is around the corner. Not only will the campaigns become fiercely intense, in particular the war (sometimes of words) between Chief Obasanjo and his enemies in the APC will also become horrifyingly sanguinary. President Buhari and his aides know that a loss in 2019 would both bar them access to privilege and constitute personal tragedy to each of them, considering how they have all become accustomed to both the good life and the heady raptures of rosy future and circumstances.Chief Obasanjo is of course entitled to change his mind, regardless of how solidly he made it up earlier. When he first denigrated Alhaji Atiku in early August, few believed the former vice president could clinch the PDP nomination. The former president did not also think it possible, and perhaps had hoped that his throaty deprecation would catalyse his private cause of barring Alhaji Atiku from the presidency permanently. At the time, too, and since the beginning of 2018, Chief Obasanjo had preoccupied himself with the chimerical cause of enthroning a totally new leadership paradigm on the country. Between January 2018 when he indulged his damaging asseveration against President Buhari and the countrys political old guard, all of whom he dismissed as expendables, and August some eight months later, the former president was still hopeful he could help midwife a new national reality and political narrative.This was why on August 3, 2018 Chief Obasanjo found it supremely easy to derogatorily condemn Alahji Atiku in a manner most pernicious and unsparing. Said he: How can I be on the same side with Atiku' To do what' If I support Atiku for anything, God will not forgive me. If I do not know, yes. But once I know, Atiku can never enjoy my support. I do not have personal grudges with anyoneIf you do not do well for Nigeria, you do not do well for all of us. It is not a question of working with or not working with an individual, If you are working But about four days after Alhaji Atiku took the nomination, Chief Obasanjo dramatically and extraordinarily recanted. He was neither coherent nor persuasive, but his endorsement was enthusiastic and fulsome. Said he on October 11, 2018: Let me start by congratulating President-to-be, Atiku Abubakar, on his success at the recent PDP primary, and I took note of his gracious remarks in his acceptance speech that it all started here. Yes, when it started, it was meant for Atiku to succeed Obasanjo. In the presence of these distinguished leaders of goodwill today, let me say it openly that we have reviewed what went wrong on the side of Atiku. And in all honesty, my former vice-president has rediscovered and repositioned himself. As I have repeatedly said, it is not so much what you (Atiku) did against me that was the issue but what you did against the party, the government and the country. I took the stand I had taken based on the character and attributes you exhibited in the position you found yourself. I strongly believe that I was right. It was in the overall interest of everyone and everything to take such a position. From what transpired in the last couple of hours or so, you have shown remorse; you have asked for forgiveness, and you have indicated that you have learnt some good lessons, and you will mend fences and make amends as necessary and as desirable.But when the former presidents zeal seemed to flag sometime last week, as apparently misreported by a section of the media, the combative president vociferously denounced those who thought he had become unprincipled so soon. In responding to the misrepresentation, Chief Obasanjo seized the opportunity, in a press statement issued by his spokesman on December 9, 2018, to again train his guns on his chief enemy, President Buhari, signalling that the 2019 presidential war would be a fight to the finish. Here is how he framed his response, dripping with venom and sarcasm: It is disingenuous, if not malicious, for anyone to suggest that Chief Obasanjo was being neutral when he chose not to use the Owu (his hometown in Ogun State) convention as a platform for political campaign but instead adopted a communal and familial approach in talking to members of his Owu family. For the records, and as accurately reported by some media organisations, what the former President said at the convention in Owu was that while he would not impose any candidates on them, Nigerians should vote for credible candidates who would drive growth and development and make their lives better than it is now. Chief Obasanjos statement did not suggest his neutrality. In fact, the former President believes that only a fool will sit on the fence or be neutral when his or her country is being destroyed by incompetence, corruption, lack of focus, insecurity, nepotism, brazen impunity and denial of the obvious. Chief Obasanjo is no such fool, nor is he so unwise. The former president reassures Nigerians that he will not sit on the fence when he needs to be out and active for people to know where he stands in the best interest of Nigeria.But every time he hurled his barbs at President Buhari, presidential spokesmen, including the inimitable Information minister, Lai Mohammed, and the pugnacious media assistant Garba Shehu, gave as much as they received from the former president. For instance, on December 10, Mr Mohammed snatched the bottom from the former presidents conviction. With due respect to former President Obasanjo, began Mr Mohammed cynically, it is his constitutional right to support any candidate of his choice and we urge him to go out and campaign vigorously for any candidate he wants to support. He has not hidden his preference for the PDP candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and we wish him very best of luck. However, I want to assure you that his candidate will be defeated roundly and comprehensively. It is not about endorsement; endorsement does not win election. This confident response was nothing but a red rag to a bull.Chief Obasanjo is a man of many parts. He is as unrelenting against weaklings as he is merciless against his strong-willed enemies. It will not matter how President Buhari and his aides posture, whether as strongmen or weaklings. All that matters to the former president is that he has met his enemies, and he knows them, and he wants them to be subdued. He will stop at nothing to neutralise them. But, unlike former president Goodluck Jonathan who vacillated between courting Chief Obasanjo one day and denouncing him another day, President Buhari and his bad-tempered aides are eager to throw punch for punch, as often as needed. The smoke of the cannonade will only clear after February 2019, when from all indications either the president or Alhaji Atiku is electorally dead and buried. Alas, Chief Obasanjo knows that his political fate is now inextricably tied to that of Alhaji Atiku. So, in February next year, Nigerians will either witness a double coronation, at least figuratively, or a double burial in fact and in substance.
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