If Buhari were to be corrupt like Atiku, by Akan Ebenezer

“Atiku’s supporters are not even denying that he is corrupt, but they would rather celebrate his “success” as a billionaire. We conveniently forget that on the path to his glory, he shortchanged millions of people of their benefits, expectations, policies and infrastructure that they could have built their lives on for a fair footing or a fair stab at survival.”

Corruption is now a virtue, If you employ some hapless people with the loot. 

That is the wisdom from wailers who accept the perception that Atiku is corruption personified, but would rather seek disingenuous excuses to overlook that blot. And a major blot it is.

The dictum that a society deserves the leadership it gets is a truism, and buttresses the fact that we are all complicit in this mess that the country has become. And we definitely dont want to change.
Buhari has been mocked and lampooned for being contented with his lot, or specifically his “farm”, and the fixation on the number of cows he has. But we forget that its not everyone that is caught out to blaze business trails and play at being a Master of the Universe. For all we know, the farm is just a token endeavour to assuage his ancestry, and was never really meant to be a “big” business venture. More like a gentleman farmer just going through the motions.

But Buhari as a former governor, a petroleum commissioner, and as a former military dictator would have easily parlayed his positions of influence into oil wells, juicy and monopolistic concessions, import licences, awarded himself some national asset- or whatever nefarious activity would have suited his whims.

But my people have turned that principled stance into a flaw. Like Obama was a successful business man, or Blair, or Clinton, or Merkel, and a whole lot of other leaders. Maybe they would have felt better if he had a few oil wells in his name, schools, or some verifiable successful scam they could point to. For Buhari, the worst we can say is that he has been justifiably a ward of the country- from being a salaried soldier to enjoying a humongous severance package as a former head of state. Nigeria has been good to him and his family.

We all saw how OBJ, Abacha, IBB and GEJ got humongously rich with their presidencies. Even OBJ allotted his Poultry a plot in our Central Business District just to show his Farm was the best. Abi na de university and the Transcorp debacle?

But while we blame Buhari for following the straight and narrow path, we now want to celebrate Atiku for seemingly abusing every position he has ever held to amass wealth for himself. Even Intels started while he was still with Customs, and that has been his foundational claim to being a billionare.

We tout him as a successful billionaire, but we cant point to the investments that made him a billionaire apart from his stake in Intels as a facilitator/Insider that openned doors to the Italians. Atiku has never had a hand in running Intels, he only got them a monopoly, concessions that gave them the confidence to rip us off- shebi they had to refund 14 billion to us when the NPA read them the riot act?

Atiku supporters are not even denying that he is corrupt, but they would rather celebrate his “success” as a billionaire. We conveniently forget that on the path to his glory, he shortchanged millions of people of their benefits, expectations, policies and infrastructure that they could have built their lives on for a fair footing or a fair stab at survival. Do we know how our port management would have evolved without Intels? Who benefits from his 4 million per session university- the poor or the rich? Sure his school might be worth it, but it wasn’t built on altruism, but to tap into our hunger for commendable education.

But if we call Dangote and Otedola billionaires, their investments, despite their privileged beginnings are there for us to point to. So what are Atiku’s investments? How have they grown and impacted on lives to warrant the tag of Atiku being a successful businessman? Is it not the norm for our political businessmen to use their “legitimate” business as cover to launder and funnel money to other activities?

Buhari can easily give details of his investment without mixing gari and sand. We are yet to get a coherent history of Atiku’s so called business acumen. In one story Atiku claimed he started his business with a housing loan with which he built a house on a land allocated him by his state. In another story he claimed he obtained a loan, bought vehicles and started a transport business. He left many unanswered questions that makes us wonder how a civil servant became a billionaire.

If Buhari had been a corrupt, unscrupulous, conscienceless and unpatriotic Nigerian like Atiku them, Atiku’s farm in Adamawa which he claimed is the biggest, would be a little portion in Buhari’s farm after he had financed its growth with proceeds from his offices as Minister of Petroleum, Governor of N’East, Head of State and Chairman of the PTF.