In all of my life’s endeavours nothing good has ever come to me easily, and the pattern has become second nature to me. – Atiku Abubakar
As the world wakes up from the most rattling, or rather baffling, presidential election in ‘God’s Own Country’, the United States of America where an iconoclastic 70-year-old business mogul, Donald J. Trump, won the November 8 polls after beating the rest of civil humanity to a sour silence; our own business magnate, philanthropist extraordinaire and Nigeria’s former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, quietly turns 70 November 25, in a modest manner depicting the mood of a nation in recession.
Candidly speaking the Turakin Adamawa is a dazzling spectacle of an enigmatic statesman with vast global socio-political tentacles. A bridge builder and a social engineer. However, the mercurial but amiable herdsman-to-headman is often misjudged, misconstrued and misrepresented to different publics. Despite this, the man of immense faith in God and family never allows songs of praise for himself.
Though media savvy, but when taciturn Atiku could be an oasis in the desert of communication. At other times this zero-to-hero development exponent remains an editor’s delight on sound bites and headlines.
Atiku’s life’s journey from yesterday’s cradle in Jada in Adamawa State to national political pinnacle today has been fraught with many ups and downs. The humble shepherd boy, a beneficiary of American Christian Mission scholarship, and today’s founder of American University of Nigeria (AUN), was born humbly in 1946. He lost his loving father as a mere teenager. And had to buy a mud house for his mother at age 16 – from proceeds of menial labour. Even as a child, Atiku understood pain as the doorpost to future pleasure, through the dint of hard work, team play and devotion to developmental education.
A year ago in Song, an Adamawa town close to the state capital Yola, Atiku’s secondary school mate of many decades, Alhaji Ayuba Musa Mamawa Gande, a retired civil servant, described his bosom friend as “brave, brilliant, charitable, people-oriented and a problem solver. We in fact nicknamed him the Bulldozer. He doesn’t forget his friends and he has been helping the communities and our state without complaints.”
At the home front, Atiku runs a fairly large but scandal-free family. In spite of the larger-than-life posture of their politically exposed father, Atiku’s children are well tutored in academics and social behaviour. Their modest lifestyle contrasts those of their peers from same privileged background. Atiku’s children are so cultured and cultivated so much that they may pass for ordinary folks next door. As a standing rule, no child of Atiku gets married without a minimum of first degree qualification. And after school, they hustle like every other person, working hard to earn a living. And whenever Atiku witnesses his son or daughter going into matrimony, he fights back tears of joy while reminiscing the absence of his own father at his marriage due to premature death.
Coming to his main forte of education and philanthropy, Atiku is a resounding success. Having been forcefully taken off the pastoral field to receive US-styled self-reliant education, a feat that saw his father being temporarily incarcerated, Atiku craves qualitative and quantitative education for all and sundry. Not only has he given scholarships to tens of hundreds locally and globally without noise making; amongst them 25 escaped Chibok girls, four of whom are now undergraduates at AUN.
Aside, his American citadel of learning founded over a decade ago, includes a crèche, kindergarten, secondary and a university of international repute. And as icing on the cake, Atiku introduced the “Feed and Read” educational programme to alleviate poverty in society and inculcate robust learning to street kids and internally displaced children. Some of them are now living lights to others.
In short, Atiku’s kind hearted largesse at returning sanity back to humanity knows no bounds. He is the singular individual creator of jobs in his Adamawa homestead, through established companies and corporate entities such as Adama Beverages, Gotel media, AUN and Rico Gardo Nutrition, among others.
Frankly speaking, Atiku is a spectacle to behold and a cynosure to beloved. He’s a political hydra with many far reaching nourishing tentacles across national and international boundaries. For a man that is detribalised by marriage, public service experience and socio-political expediency, this charismatic chieftain of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), seems like the proverbial equivalent of a mustard seed that has grown into a giant oak tree, giving shade to many from near and far.
That, in itself, is a source of worry to haters of Turaki. Some of his avowed political hecklers find utter discomfort in entrusting power at the centre to a man who seems to have a Midas’ Touch in his varied business dealings. To that extent, detractors haul insults and assault at Atiku. And many a time they get away with their libellous claims; just because their victim most times “leaves things to God.” Some of them even foam, like soap eaters, to raise dust dunes of misrepresentation of Atiku while bewildered in the rain forest of facts and credible third party endorsement for the man they love to hate.
However, a benevolent Atiku has put to shame most of his doubters and outright sworn enemies, by employing legal means and due process of the law of the land to pulverize the unwholesome allegations of corruption always heaped on his way to political success. Still hot on the burner is the recent certificate of clean health from criminal charges by the United State’s Justice Department against the callously maligned citizen Atiku, by hatchet jobbers.
But the good news is that those trying to slot a wedge between President Muhammed Buhari and Atiku, are doing our country a great disservice. It is on record how the ambassadorial role played by the former Vice President, in liaison with South African President Jacob Zuma, later resulted in the bilateral collaboration that made Dr. Akinwumi Adesina of Nigeria the President of the African Development Bank, from which soft loans are now coming to rescue our country from the throes of budget deficit, recession, outright poverty and starvation.
Before then, during the election that produced PMB, Atiku, an erstwhile presidential aspirant, supported the APC candidate with his assets including his media office. Nearly 20 members of the Atiku Media Office went into the trenches to battle the well oiled war machine of the then incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. That team was led by Malam Garba Shehu, a veteran journalist and communications strategist, now Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity.
In summary Atiku’s mien, much more like public relations discipline, dwells intrinsically on creating holistic and unbiased understanding amongst people, for mutual benefits, equity and unity and overall national development of Nigeria.
So, please raise your glasses for a toast to Turakin Adamawa, Atiku Abubakar, political icon, mercurial industrialist, gold-hearted philanthropist, foremost education investor, and a family man of substance, a zero-to-hero visionary leader and a herdsman to a headman. May you live long and continue to be of more usefulness to humanity, Sir.
Written by Alaba Yusuf.
