And now you call him Bola!

My dear Waziri Atiku Abubakar,

I listened with great interest to your speech of October 1st.

It was calm and well-expressed but intellectually flawed, highly disrespectful, inherently dishonest and completely devoid of decency, logic and rationality.

What is worse is that you refused to address President Tinubu as “President” but rather continuously and derogatorily called him by his given name “Bola”.

Surely this level of meanness is beneath you too. Yet, despite this provocation, I will not refer to you as “Kachalla” and will grant you the respect I continue to think you deserve.

Bashorun Akin Osuntokun, former Special Adviser on Policy to President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Director General of the 2023 Presidential Campaign Organization Peter Obi, expressed the thoughts of millions of people when he wrote, among other things, the following.

“Abubakar has the right to criticize the President, however harshly. What I found objectionable was his repeated decision to call him “Bola”. This was not a stronger argument; it was an unnecessary display of disrespect. This is not acceptable. This is bad manners and above all an insult to Nigeria on whose behalf he occupies that office… This is not a call for deference to the policies or person of Tinubu. It is a call for decorum and decency… Imagine a former vice president who in a national speech refers to the sitting president as “Segun” or “Muhammadu” would be unmistakable.”

Osuntokun is right.

Yet, judging from other parts of his article, he seems surprised by your insolence, while I am not.

Are you not the same Atiku who betrayed his principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo, two years after he was elected in 1999 and conspired with a handful of governors to overthrow him in primaries and take over from him in 2003.

Are you not the same Atiku who publicly insulted Obasanjo from 2003 to 2007 despite being his Vice President?

Are you not the same Atiku who tried to justify your rebellion and betrayal by saying that you were only opposing Obasanjo because of the “third term” when in fact your rebellion started long before 2007 and your intention was to prevent him from getting a second term in 2003?

Are you not the same Atiku who recently went on Arise and called President Goodluck Jonathan an “inexperienced youth” who “has made mistakes” and whose inexperience has contributed to preventing him from “properly managing the affairs of the country”.

Were you referring to a former President who is 69 years old, who led our country for 5 years first as interim President then as President, who was elected Vice President just under 20 years ago, who was elected first Vice Governor and then Governor of his State 27 years ago as a “young man” with no “experience”?

Are you not the same Atiku who went on the BBC Hausa Service and described Vice President Kashim Shettima, a humble man who unlike you has the courage to be loyal to his boss, as “disrespectful” simply because he challenged you to account for your tenure and tell the world how many people you have empowered since you entered politics 33 years ago?

Your response to him was that it was against Northern culture for him to ask such questions to elders like you, yet you did much worse to Obasanjo in 2002 when you attempted to strip him naked before the world, take away his shoes and crown and humiliate him out of office.

You and your legion of fallen angels have gone even further, peddling the disgusting and abominable lie and the diabolical lie that a man who was old enough to be your father and who was, as president, your principal and boss, knelt before you, grabbed your feet and literally begged you to allow him to run for a second term in 2003 knowing that Obasanjo would rather die than do such a thing or endure such humiliation.

Where were your Northern culture and customs then?

The truth is that you do not reflect the decency, moderation, patience, good manners, belief in God, loyalty, fortitude, kindness, generosity, charity, kindness, compassion, honor and other virtues associated with the North but rather are the antithesis of it.

You are truly a master of intrigue and a master of contradictions and deceit.

Yet it doesn’t end here.

Are you not the same Atiku whose running mate, Rotimi Amaechi, said, just a few weeks ago, that he was “ineligible,” that he “had been there before and lost,” and that he had “nothing new to bring to the table?”

Are you not the same Atiku who, after a young Christian girl named Deborah Samuel, was burnt alive by an angry mob in Sokoto on May 12, 2022, initially posted your condolences and commiserations on your handle X and yet removed it an hour later for reasons best known to you?

This was after President Muhammadu Buhari, the Sultan of Sokoto and Senator Aminu Tambuwal, who was the governor of Sokoto State at the time, had ALL condemned Deborah’s murder and expressed their regret.

Yet you failed to do the same and instead publicly questioned your aide when he did so on your behalf.

Worse, when asked 7 months later at a Channels Television town hall meeting, you lied and said you had previously condemned the murder.

Expecting any form of genuine love, decency and decency from you is like expecting kindness from a pitbull terrier and compassion from a hungry wolf.

The truth is that you have no respect, no decency and no sense of moderation and the only thing you are true to is your ambition.

You are finally manifesting your true nature, inordinate ambition, pathological obsession and pure desperation to gain power at all costs.

Yet the truth is that questionable characters who still have so many questions to answer should be embarrassed to question anyone about responsibility.

Empty promises that we all know you are unable to keep due to your greed and lack of patriotism cannot fool anyone into trusting you.

And since you disrespect the office of President and insist on calling him “Bola”, you, my dear Waziri, may NEVER reach that height.

(Chief Femi Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, former Minister of Aviation and Nigeria’s High Commissioner-designate to South Africa, Lesotho and Estawani)