Femi Adesina, special adviser media and publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari in a post-view of the 2019 Presidential election and the Supreme Court final verdict examines the various forces that gave Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the opposition candidate the false hope of defeating Muhammadu Buhari. Now two aides of Atiku, Segun Showunmi and Paul Ibie have fired back from all cylinders:

First: Segun Showunmi

A fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. (William Shakespeare, As you like it)

In this season when the Villa has become dangerous to the men of your tribe, with the man known as VP now minimized, you have in an unprofessional and despicable manner tried to do a revisionist explanation full of sycophancy on your warped reading of things around the 2019 election. Why would any sane person even consider there is anything to gloat about in one of the most disgraceful, and embarrassing sham of an election, also adjudged to be the worst in our history by those not drunk on filthy crumbs from the table of Buhari. Mister Adesina, will you keep quiet and let serious-minded historians speak some sense into you and by extension the nation.

Do you pride yourself to have done noble in a process that has called to question the dignity and otherwise credibility of INEC, the security agencies and the judiciary? Not sparing the huge consequences of a joke that Nigeria has become where affidavits without evidence now represent academic qualifications in our beloved Nigeria – thanks to you and your master. Or is it the brigandage and killing of our people that characterised that sham that has produced a stolen mandate that you gloat about. Please come near and explain how it is that you do not reflect on the greater implications of what the 2019 elections have turned out.

Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to President Buhari on Media and Publicity

Nigeria has disgraced herself within the comity of African nations who have shown significant improvement in their election management processes. And need I tell you relative to Kenya where their Supreme Court has demonstrated that they are independent enough to rule on the issues in their country notwithstanding whose ox is gored.

What Femi Adesina wrote: The Forces that gave Atiku Abubakar a false sense of hope

You must think that Nigerians are fooled by that huge embarrassment that took place in our election. Well, I suppose you need to read the views of the eminent Nwabueze, and you will be tamed, that is in case your soul is not lost to the devil.

I noted that you spoke about Obasanjo and his role in Atiku’s life, I would have preferred you consider that not everything said in anger could be the real state of the human mind for sometimes when people are annoyed they say things most of which they really don’t mean, and all of which there are no evidence to substantiate. As far as I see, Atiku Abubakar in the words of Shakespeare is; “I am a man more sinned against than sinning.’
(King Lear Act 3, Scene 2)

As those who called him all sorts of names have seen the light, let’s say they have been forgiven, for indeed, it is human to err and divine to forgive.

You talked about money, this gave you and yours up as hypocrites that you all are, and you all will forever be. Thank goodness, you also can attest to it that Atiku has no access to the National purse unlike your ‘see no evil do all evil leader’ who pretends that it was with cow milk that he funded his election. It is painful when the head-thief is calling decent people out as one without any evidence.

You spoke about our supporters; the great Atikulators. Please don’t go there for there is nothing to be compared between a civilized set of people when compared with your mostly illiterate, uncultured, and barbaric minions you called Buharist. You only need to see how ours behave relative to yours. I suppose if you would be happy to have yours as children, I pray your children behave that way and as I am happy to have mine, I pray mine act like atikulators; a dedicated, educated, well driven, full of purpose and brave lot. Let me hear a resounding amen to our respective prayers.

You talked about money, this gave you and yours up as hypocrites that you all are, and you all will forever be. Thank goodness, you also can attest to it that Atiku has no access to the National purse unlike your ‘see no evil do all evil leader’ who pretends that it was with cow milk that he funded his election. It is painful when the head-thief is calling decent people out as one without any evidence.

Remember what Shakespeare said about the evil that men do lives after them. Don’t worry, you will soon be called to account for your sojourn in government. I am sure that jail awaits most of you hypocrites who have plunged Nigeria into debts inching us to the status of a failed state. Yet, we can see little or nothing to show for it, sake of say you are smart rouges who will need forensic auditors to help the country unearth the corruption that is all around your government and the government you serve in.

You wonder where else we would take our petition, well you said something like tennis court, again I say, come close my child there is the court of the hearts, and minds of Nigerian people who know in truth that Buhari is sitting on a stolen mandate, and that the president they voted for was Atiku Abubakar. In any case, there is the court of history and how this era will be recorded, and certainly, as people of faith, there is the Court of God where each and every soul will give account and be recompensed for each and every action of theirs. Pray, can you and Buhari stand before the Throne of Judgement?

As far as we at Atikulators are concerned I leave you with a song
Onward Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before.
Christ, the royal Master,
Leads against the foe;
Forward into battle,
See, His banners go!
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus,
Going on before.

2 At the name of Jesus
Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers,
On to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver
At the shout of praise:
Brothers, lift your voices,
Loud your anthems raise!

3 Like mighty army
Moves the Church of God:
Brothers, we are treading
Where the saints have trod;
We are not divided,
All one Body we—
One in faith, and Spirit,
One eternally.

4 Crowns and thrones may perish,
Kingdoms rise and wane;
But the Church of Jesus
Constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never
’Gainst the Church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise,
Which can never fail.

5 Onward, then, ye people!
Join our happy throng;
Blend with ours your voices
In the triumph song.
Glory, laud and honour
Unto Christ, the King;
This through countless ages
Men and angels sing.

Shakespearean Femi Adesina, go about your duty and do not inch the nation into instability. Gloating over a sham of election is not the way to go. Peace Profound.

Paul Ibie: Those With Glass Jaws Shouldn’t Throw Punches

It is pulsating trying to ascribe any intelligent reason to why the chief spokesman to Muhammadu Buhari had penned a misleading account of the last presidential election in the country. But it wasn’t all together a bad idea. If anything, Femi Adesina gave a literary expression to how jolt to the hilt people at the Aso Rock Villa were about the inevitability of a win at the polls by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party and Atiku Abubakar during the February 23 presidential election. This much, Adesina himself, confessed to when he said, ‘before the election, you saw and heard Atikulators everywhere… They were all over the offices, marketplaces, churches, mosques, schools, on television, radio, newspaper; almost in all traffic lanes of life.’ That was both a candid and surreal expression of fear that the Atikulators were indeed poised for victory in the 2019 presidential election.

However, if we are to interrogate Adesina’s confession a little bit further, we would remove the mask and expose the chicanery that summed up the claim of victory by the APC and their Buharideens alike.

First of all , before the election, the APC band was busy chorusing around town that there was no Nigerian alive who was up to challenge and defeat Buhari in an election. They soon coined the phrase of ‘No Alternative’ to ingrain the argument that Buhari was super human and to scare the opposition from challenging a second term ticket with him.

The APC and the likes of Adesina who are disconnected from the reality of the angst of Nigerians against the incompetence and cluelessness of Buhari-led administration told a lie to the president that he was loved and adored by all. Thus, Buhari and the APC entered the 2019 presidential race with a foolish and corrupted sense of entitlement about a towering expectation from the people that was nowhere to be found. The Buhari team, unlike the Atikulators, lured their candidate into an election without an honest evaluation of the strength of their opponent. At the end, they entered a panic mode and, using the instrumentality of power of incumbency, took certain actions to guarantee victory at all cost which ultimately compromised the integrity of the election.

Read also: The Forces that gave Atiku a false sense of hope

The second irrational assumption is the claim that the Atikulators is an assembly of people who hate Buhari. According to Adesina’s words, Atikulators are ‘those who didn’t like Buhari, either because of ethnicity, language, religion, or the man’s aversion for corruption… So, they followed Atiku, not because they loved him, but they would have also followed a goat…’

It is often said that people who live in the corridors of power actually live inside a bubble. If there are people in this country who think that there is anything close to aversion for corruption by this current administration, they must be folks like Femi who are too busy choping and smiling, having a blurry vision of the cesspool of iniquities and the lack of rectitude in the system. Irrespective of what Adesina and his colleagues at the corridors of power might say, Nigerians already have their opinion about the vastness of space index for corruption in the Buhari government. And by the way, Femi and his co-travellers need to be reminded that those with glass jaws should not throw punches.

So, coming back to the question: who are the Atikulators? Perhaps Femi is a bit right when he says that they are people who didn’t like the policies of this president. Where he got it all wrong is that they didn’t have to dislike Buhari’s personality or identity in order to like Atiku because both men share same religion, ethnicity and even language. If these qualities are the reason why some people hate Buhari, it must go without begging that there must be some other reason(s) why the same people will prefer Atiku as a leader.

One epic episode in the 2019 election cycle is the live NTA interview anchored by Kadaira Ahmed. The interview afforded Nigerians a life time opportunity to hear the man called Buhari unscripted. Were Femi Adesina’s pen not beguiled by the lucre of power, he would certainly not find any excuse for himself to still be a Buharideen after watching the man unscripted at the interview.

There is a popular American saying that ‘fool me once, shame on you!’ In 2015, many of the people that supported and voted for Buhari feel that they have been fooled. They didn’t imagine that the man they would be voting as president would divide the country in the approximation of 70-30 percent. They didn’t believe that the man they voted would be clannish in his top appointments. They didn’t expect that a president who boasted that there would not be one corrupt person in his government will end up filling more than half of his cabinet positions with same ‘corrupt PDP people.’ They didn’t believe that the man who promised to crash the prices of petroleum products, but ended up doubling it should be trusted again. They felt betrayed by a man who promised them change but ended up changing his ways and his words!

One epic episode in the 2019 election cycle is the live NTA interview anchored by Kadaira Ahmed. The interview afforded Nigerians a life time opportunity to hear the man called Buhari unscripted. Were Femi Adesina’s pen not beguiled by the lucre of power, he would certainly not find any excuse for himself to still be a Buharideen after watching the man unscripted at the interview. Had Adesina been a mere mortal like the rest of us, he would have longed to see the Atiku episode of that interview and given the brilliance that the former Vice President showed at that interview, Adesina himself would have been an Atikulator. But he didn’t. Not because Adesina hated the ideas espoused by Atiku during the campaign trail, but for him and his cohorts at the corridor of power the refrain is: Buhari will NEVER relinquish power to Atiku.

The Atikulators are patriotic Nigerians. They wouldn’t have voted for a goat. I mean, they just wouldn’t have doubled down on the same mistake!

Atiku went through the judicial process to express his grievances with the election. He never called on his supporters to launch a violent attack, neither did he make a savage remark about baboons being soaked in blood. If Adesina feels what Atiku did is morally deficient, then it only shows the company he has been keeping of late is already telling on his vanishing ethos.

Again, there was a reference to what Adesina called hurricane Buhari sweeping everywhere across the length and breadth of Nigeria. Yes, he is right about that allegorical meaning of hurricane in Nigeria blowing through the bellies and wallets of Nigerians. But if by any stretch of assumption the hurricane was describing Buhari’s electoral popularity, it is safe to conclude therefore that our friend, Femi, is a fit for stand-up comedy. Or how could he have forgotten so soon what transpired in room 710 of Eko Hotel during his presidency of the NGE in the presence of my then colleague at Atiku Media Office, and now his colleague in the Aso rocked villa. But to avert a needless distraction, I am inclined to ensure that what transpired in that room is buried in the bowels of time.

Where in the world would Buhari of all people feel invincible in an election contest when the man could not trust where his own wife would vote on the election day.

Atiku went through the judicial process to express his grievances with the election. He never called on his supporters to launch a violent attack, neither did he make a savage remark about baboons being soaked in blood. If Adesina feels what Atiku did is morally deficient, then it only shows the company he has been keeping of late is already telling on his vanishing ethos.

And talking about jokes, there is a piece going around the social media that smart people who serve in Buhari’s government have a way of losing it. For Femi, that is more than a joke. And when next you have the opportunity to read Femi be sure to have a bowl of pepper and salt by your side. It will be wise to leave our friend with a popular Yoruba saying that the sheep that flocks with dogs will end up eating faeces.

*Mazi Paul Ibe is Media Adviser to Atiku Abubakar, Vice President of Nigeria, 1999-2007