by John Danfulani

“There are tree types of lies…lies, damn lies, and statistical lies” Benjamin Disraeli

It’s no longer in doubt that some forces are hell bent on making sure that they dent the reputation of the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar( Turakin Adamawa). To this gang, pulling Turaki down is a mission that must be accomplished come rain, come shine. And they have zeroed their minds that below the belt kicks are acceptable- so long as that will lead to achieving their ultimate goal of throwing the kitchen sink on Turaki. In short, to them, Turaki is a fair game.

Abdulkadir Inuwa Suleiman’s 1st December 2016 diatribe and mudslinging op-ed titled “The Canonisation Of The Unsaintly” published in The Leadership Newspaper is part of the heinous plot against Turaki. From the get-go, the owner of the pen commenced his discourse with dissimulative antics of a broad discussion of Donald John Trump’s inauguration and his disdain of the wave of corruption in Nigeria. Because he is a Man Friday on a character termination mission, the mask fell off his head. A concise version of his junkism is; Atiku was not invited to Trump’s inauguration on 20th January 2017 because he is not clean enough to make the list.

The questions begging for answers are:
(1) When did not making an inauguration list become a certification that you are a corrupt person?
(2) Is Turaki the only former Vice President in the world or continental Africa that was excluded from the list?

There are numerous disjointed and hyperactively deceitful postulations that are not worth invoking blow by blow refutations. Truth be told, we heard the voice is of Isua but the hand is of Jacob. And every soul is aware that Turaki’s interview with EFCC Magazine ( ZERO TOLERANCE) triggered this well-orchestrated campaign of calumny against his person.

To go a bit specific, Turaki’s claim that the former Bureau For Public Enterprises (BPE), Minister of Federal Capital Territory, and now the Governor of Kaduna State Mr Nasir Ahmed El-rufa’i offered him free Shares of Transcorp engineered this hullabaloo and razzmatazz. In less than 48hrs, Mr El-rufa’i hemmed his version of what transpired in the most guttural and uncivil language unbefitting of his position as a former minister and Governor of Kaduna State, as usual. From the heading of his piece “Atiku haunted by his corruption demons”, there is no second guessing that he was a loose cannon discharging a volley of bullets without minding his target.

Like Mr El-Rufai, his pen boy cited Reps Jefferson’s scandal in the U.S.to justify their Turaki’s corruption thesis they are desperately yet woefully trying to sell to Nigerians and the world at large. But in Turaki’s response to the issue in ZERO TOLERANCE Magazine, he gave a clear account of what happened and ended by saying he went to the U.S.twice after the end of his tenure as Vice President in 2007. Because of the interest their mischievous claim generated, Punch newspapers wrote the State Department asking: “whether Abubakar is wanted in the US in connection with any issue of money laundering. The mail also asked the department to confirm whether Abubakar has been banned from entering the US and if there is any court case against him concerning the Halliburton scandal which resulted in the conviction of a US lawmaker, William Jefferson”. Responding to Punch’s inquiry the spokesman US DOJ, Peter Carr said, “Thank you for reaching out to us. I have checked the public court records, and they do not show cases filed against a defendant named Atiku Abubakar.” With this clarification, has this matter not put to rest their challenge that Turaki is dodging the U.S because of bribery scandal?

It’s a known fact that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (El-rufa’i’s former boss) certified in his memoir “My Watch” that Mr El-rufa’i is a pathological liar. Here are President Obasanjo’s words “Nasir’s penchant for reputation damaging is almost pathological. Why does he do it? He is brilliant and smart. I appreciated his brilliance and acknowledged his weaknesses, the worst being his inability to be loyal to any person or issue for long….”. If one wishes to compile Mr.El-rufa’i’s outright lies, a single volume wouldn’t be enough.

Take a look at a few of his recent lies; on 6th April 2016 in Sunrise Daily of Channels Television, he claimed that one LGA in Kaduna State has more gold than the entire gold in South Africa. That same day, he claimed that he had stopped the killings in Southern Kaduna. These two claims were confirmed fake because the entire gold in Nigeria can’t measure up to a single gold field in South Africa. And the killings in Southern Kaduna has taken a genocidal dimension.

All this campaign of pulling Turaki down has to do with 2019 Presidential race. Mr El-rufa’i in conjunction with some Aso Rock hawks political players believe that hacking Turaki down by placing a moral yoke on his head should start immediately. But this is too pedestrian when it comes to an astute political figure and a dogged fighter like Turaki. Turaki knows when it’s a quarter to midnight and half past six in the morning. He is a bat that has seen all political nights from the early 90s to date. For people like El-rufa’i and his brigade of conspirators to think that peddling falsehood will help their case of ineptitude and political wettism is absurd.

Turaki is not their palaver but their record and faithfulness to the mandate given to them on 28th March and 11th April 2015. They have explanations to offer on why they turned the world’s third fastest growing economy and Africa’s largest economy to a basket case and recession. Mr El-rufa’i and his cabal also have clarifications to make on why they reneged on many promises made in the course of 2015 campaigns. These are their banana peels, not Turaki.

They know as well as we do that, the fear of Turaki in Nigeria politics is the beginning of knowledge. So, all these struggles and blackmails are tantamount to the last kick of a dying horse. And whether they like it or not, Turaki has the right to throw his cap into the presidential ring in 2019. They have an uphill task because Turakin Adamawa is known to be the strongest and thickish political operator in the entire Nigeria. And in his act of politicking, he doesn’t malign, denigrate, or get personal. And throughout his 25yrs in active politics, he has always been a dependable and loyal ally and respectful to his bosses.

Leave Turaki alone and face your self-inflicted predicaments.

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija