TO WAZIRI ATIKU ABUBAKAR: A FINAL WORD FOR A DIMINISHING STAR (PART 1)

I received a WhatsApp message from Waziri Atiku Abubakar on Sunday afternoon in response to my open letter to him which was published earlier that day titled ‘AND NOW YOU CALL HIM BOLA’ together with another article which I published the Sunday before titled ‘THE 7TH BID OF WAZIRI’.

For the record he wrote:

“PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE FEMI. YOU SIMPLY DON’T HAVE THE CREDIBILITY TO CRITICISE ME”.

My response to him, inter alia, was as follows:

“IF I AM NOT CREDIBLE ENOUGH TO EXPOSE YOU THEN WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU ARE CREDIBLE ENOUGH TO EXPOSE OR DISRESPECT OBJ, GEJ, BAT OR KS? IF I DO NOT HAVE THE CREDIBILITY TO CRITICISE YOU OR THE RIGHT TO DO SO, WHO DOES? IF I AM NOT CREDIBLE WITH ALL I HAVE EXPERIENCED, SEEN AND BEEN THROUGH IN POLITICS OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS AND THE EVIL I HAVE SURVIVED OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS THEN WHO IS? CERTAINLY NOT YOU OR AMAECHI SIR”.

That is where our conversation ended.

Waziri, forgive me, but given this, coupled with the wild and indecorous words that you used against President Tinubu in the press conference that you gave just yesterday, I am inclined to agree with my learned friend and brother Festus Keyamo SAN, the Honorable Minister of Aviation and Aerospace, who responded by saying,

“Atiku actually needs mental health support at this critical time as he peters out into political oblivion”.

Outside of that, in the light of recent developments, I am constrained to write to you yet again.

I say this because I was told that on Sunday afternoon, at the same moment that you sent me your message on WhatsApp, your minion and most junior cheerleader, a sickly creature who looks twice his age, who is withering away from some strange disease and whose name I always forget, wrote an article in an attempt to respond to my open letter to you.

I was reliably informed that amongst much else in his “response” he wrote that my supposedly “estranged” ex-wife, who remains very close and dear to me even though we are no longer married, had said a number of ugly things about me in the past, all of which I have denied, even though we are at peace today and have put all that behind us.

The disjointed verbiage and unadulterated garbage that your dog wrote which only my press secretary found the time to read and which is below my dignity and status to respond to is, to me, like water off a duck’s back.

Lions do not respond to dogs and this is especially so when that dog only has three legs and no tail.

Simply put I do not take cognisance of anything your hired help writes: I would rather give my attention to you personally.

If you do not have the strength and courage to respond to me publicly yourself, as you have done privately, then at least send your rumbustious, owambe-loving, champagne-swirling, bon vivant and chief cheerleader whose defunct Pendulum column I used to read and who is infinitely more qualified to carry out this fool’s errand and not some unlettered village idiot or prize fool like the creature you sent.

That chief cheerleader also made reference to my ex-wife a few months ago during the course of an acrimonious debate that I had with him on X about President Tinubu and he insisted on bringing my family into the discourse.

Sadly it doesn’t stop there.

Yet another one of your cheerleaders, a former Senator with a bald head and a silver grey beard, who sometimes insists on wearing a skirt and who sleeps with cars and motorbikes in his bedroom also resorted to attacking the family of his adversaries during the course of political discourse by once threatening to “beat and impregnate” Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the First Lady, right there on the Senate floor and by insulting President Tinubu’s entire family, including his children and all of their mothers, on television just a few months ago.

In fairness to him whilst admitting that he threatened to “beat” Senator Tinubu he denied the “impregnate” part but went on to say, in the most shameless, inappropriate and indecorous manner, that she had “entered menopause”.

He also resorted to mocking the President’s age and health in the 2023 presidential election campaign by singing insulting and utterly depraved songs at campaign rallies in the presence of the godless deplorables that were on the campaign trail with him who ought to have known better and told him to stop.

My question is as follows: are you the one that encourages these troubled souls that hover around you to resort to this uncouth behaviour or is it that they are just dysfunctional and ill-mannered?

Whatever the case I hold you accountable for not being able to control them.

I am constrained to ask, is that the best your media team can do?

Talk about what wives and ex-wives say about their husbands and former husbands or rant about the personal lives and families of others?

Should they not stick to soft-sell magazines if that is the sort of rubbish they want to write about?

In any case where were these rascals when you and I sat in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Federal Executive Council 20 years ago?

Yet since they have chosen to tread that path I pity you because what your ex-wife has said about you has now become fair game.

Ditto your family matters and the tragic misfortune that constantly stalks your closest aides each time you run for the Presidency.

If you insist that we go down this murky rabbit hole we will and we shall do so together.

Your aides forget that I am not on the ballot but you are.

There was a time when family members were regarded as being sacrosanct and kept out of political discourse and war but not anymore.

Sadly your boys have lowered the bar and your camp will regret it.

I am now constrained to go back into the records and talk about what your estranged ex-wife, Jennifer Douglas, said about you, what she did to you, what you did to her and more importantly what she allegedly did for you in the Leno Adesanya Mambilla Power Plant fraud and other questionable matters.

For example the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (2010) documented more than $40 million USD in suspect transfers involving your then-wife Jennifer Douglas.

I wonder what you have to say about this?

That is a real report even though, in fairness, it did not produce an indictment or a criminal conviction against you because, by that time, you had conveniently fled America.

Whatever she said about me, at least my ex-wife did not throw all my personal belongings, including my underwear, out into the streets from my Dubai home and keep everything that was there, including the furniture, the cars, the washing machine, the kitchen utensils and the house itself for herself.

Neither did she complain about the company I kept with men.

Again there are the words of Fati Muhammed, a Kannywood actress and former associate who claims she was very close to you.

Just a few days ago she said the following:

“I have been supporting Atiku in politics since 2007 and what has kept me away from him is his lies and broken promises”.

One wonders what you did to this lady to attract such ‘accolades’ from her.

I guess we shall soon find out.

Outside of that we shall also talk about precisely what you did at the airports and seaports in your younger days as a Customs officer, how you allowed 51 suitcases filled with God knows what to be smuggled through Lagos Airport and what your link with a shady Italian national called Gabriele Volpi and his son Matteo really was.

I will also mention your affiliation with NICOTES (which later became Intels) and how a Customs Officer like you went from a rather conservative salary to being a large shareholder in a multi-billion dollar corporation overnight whilst you were still in Customs.

Again what you did when you were Vice President between 1999 and 2007 which led you to be the subject of an extensive investigation by the American FBI and which caused President Obasanjo to express his deep regrets about picking you as his running mate and calling you “very corrupt” becomes relevant.

So does your link with Congressman William J. Jefferson, an American legislator who was sentenced to 13 years in 2009 after the FBI found 90,000 USD cash in his freezer which was part of a 500,000 USD bribe which had been asked for and he was planning to give to a very highly placed Nigerian Government official.

It has been alleged that the Government official in question was you but, in fairness, this is yet to be proved, you were not indicted or convicted for it and I cannot therefore confirm it as a fact and neither do I claim to do so.

Yet it is worth our attention and scrutiny and we shall find out more about this sordid case and whether you had any involvement in the malfeasance.

The easiest way for you to sort this matter out though and clear the ugly rumours that you had asked for the bribe is for you to travel to America, report to the FBI and let them ask you the relevant questions.

If you have nothing to hide or fear I suggest you do this as soon as possible so that we can finally clear the air.

Again there was the unresolved allegation of the ‘Special Purpose Vehicle’ (SPV) which was a corporate vehicle that you allegedly told your former media aide, Mr. Michael Achimugu, that you created specially for the purpose of avoiding what you allegedly described as “open corruption” and siphoning public funds in order to raise money for funding the PDP and your private usage.

In 2023 Achimugu released an audio tape of a conversation with a man whom he claimed was you making these startling and damning confessions and that voice was heard explaining to him in graphic and clear terms how a conspiracy was hatched to commit such thievery.

In fairness, you claimed that the voice was not yours and neither can I confirm or deny that it was.

However under normal circumstances this provides enough evidence to, at the very least, result in a full criminal investigation and, if found wanting, a formal prosecution but instead of thanking God that the matter was not treated with the seriousness that it deserved you still insist on running for the Presidency whilst at the same time claiming that others do not have the credibility to criticise you. What a nerve!

The truth is that the assertion that anyone that is a freeborn Nigerian lacks the credibility to criticise a man that has so many questions to answer like you is simply asinine.

Permit me to add that there are also things you allegedly did many years earlier in the 1980s and 1990s that are, to say the least, suspicious and questionable.

We shall look into all these things after which we shall all be in a position to know who has credibility and who does not.

As an opener kindly tell us why you allegedly cannot go to America freely and without your associates helping you to get a “special package visa” as they did in 2019?

If this is true and, I have no way of confirming or denying that it is, it gives cause for concern.

These things need to be looked into and discussed because you are aspiring to become our President.

You talk about credibility but I am not the one that betrayed my principal and boss and in the process privatised the whole of Nigeria!

You did that and if you had the chance you would do it all over again.

The truth is you are nowhere near me in terms of pedigree, credibility, education, upbringing or lineage.

The only thing you have is money and though your vast wealth may buy houses, cars, gold bars, private jets, political parties and the worship and adulation of your court jesters and cheerleaders it cannot buy CLASS or CHARACTER and neither can it move the finger of God or tamper with the manifest destiny of men.

(END OF PART 1)

(Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, the author of this essay, is a former Minister of Aviation, a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, Nigeria’s Ambassador to South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Aare Ajagunla of Otun Ekiti, the Otunba of Joga Orile and a Legal Practitioner)