Recently, on July 14, Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president, announced his latest defection from a political party. It was his fifth since 1999 when Nigeria returned to civil rule. In 2006, while still vice-president under the administration of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku defected to Action Congress, AC. In 2007, he returned to PDP, only to decamp to the All Progressives Congress, APC, in 2014.
Three years later, in 2017, Atiku defected from APC and returned to PDP. Now, in 2025, he has defected from PDP to the African Democratic Congress, ADC, under which he is assembling a coalition to face the APC and its flagbearer, President Bola Tinubu, in the 2027 presidential election, which, seemingly, he’s keen to contest. That would be Atiku’s seventh attempt at the presidency, aged 80! Outside politics, Atiku is known for many things. He is a proud family man, a successful businessman, and a holder of a major traditional title, the Waziri of Adamawa.
But if Atiku were to die without becoming Nigeria’s president, how, apart from being a vice-president, would he be remembered politically? Well, for two things: a habitual presidential aspirant and a serial party defector. The first is not a problem. Anyone can run for office as many times as they want. Abraham Lincoln famously suffered eight defeats in seeking various public offices before he was elected 16th president of the US in 1860.
However, being a serial party defector is different: it undermines political integrity. Truth is, political nomadism trivialises politics and treats it as a self-serving endeavour rather than a serious, public-spirited calling. The English philosopher Micheal Oakeshott said that politics “is as much about temperament as it is about belief.” For Atiku, a political mendicant, who moves from party to party, politics is more temperamental than principled, more self-interested than self-denying. In 2017, when Atiku defected from APC, he said he joined the party “with the assurance that the vision other founding fathers and I had for the PDP would be actualised through the APC.”
Since that actualisation didn’t happen, he had to leave APC, well, to return to PDP. But this month, when resigning from the same PDP, Atiku said in his resignation letter: “I find it necessary to part ways due to the current trajectory the party has taken, which I believe diverges from the foundational principles we stood for.” He added: “It is with a heavy heart that I resign, recognising the irreconcilable differences that have emerged.” One must ask: what is this “vision”, what are these “foundational principles”, that are so restless and can’t find a home in one party, forcing Atiku, like a political wanderer, to drift between parties? Of course, in a democracy, party affiliation cannot be locked in a permanent fixture. Politicians can and do switch sides.
In Britain, in the 19th century, William Gladstone, a former prime minister, famously moved from the Conservative party to the Liberal party, and, in the early 20th century, Winston Churchill, another British prime minister, began his political life as a Conservative but later moved to the Liberal party, then rejoined the Conservative party. But these famous defections were driven by major ideological and policy splits, not personal ambitions. For instance, Gladstone defected from the Conservative party because the party did not share his liberal ideas about free trade and laissez-faire economic policies, known as Gladstonian liberalism.
Given his visceral opposition to protectionism, he could no longer belong to a party that believed in it, so he had to defect to the Liberal party to align with like-minded people. But in Nigeria, party defections are not driven by ideological and policy differences, but by personal ambitions. Atiku’s defections were motivated by his search for a platform to actualise his lifelong presidential ambitions. When he joined the Action Congress in 2006, it was because the party would offer him the ticket for the 2007 presidential election, which the PDP denied him. When he defected from PDP the second time in 2014 and joined APC, it was to run for president under the party, which President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid foreclosed in PDP. When Atiku left APC and returned to PDP in 2017, it was because he knew that APC would never give him its ticket for the 2019 presidential election.
So, he had to run back to PDP, which gave him its presidential ticket twice, in 2019 and 2023. Well, now, Atiku has left PDP because it became crystal clear to him that the party would not hand him its 2027 presidential ticket. Atiku’s expectation now is that joining ADC, around which he is forming a coalition with Peter Obi, Nasir el-Rufai, Rotimi Amaechi and many other disgruntled former PDP and APC leaders, would fetch him the party’s ticket for 2027. So, here’s the point. Atiku’s serial defections have been self-serving and opportunistic. It wasn’t the betrayal of some nebulous “vision” that drove him out of the APC in 2017, it was because the party’s presidential ticket wasn’t available to him.
And it wasn’t the violation of some “foundational principles” that recently forced Atiku out of the PDP, a party under which he was vice-president for eight years and presidential candidate twice, it was, truth be told, because the party won’t give him its ticket, a third time, for the 2027 presidential race. So, it bears repeating: Atiku’s defections are self-serving and opportunistic. But which politician is not self-serving and opportunistic in Nigeria? None! The only difference is that some are cleverer and smarter than others. Those who nursed lifelong presidential ambitions and achieved them in Nigeria did two things. They formed a political party, of which they were the undisputed leader, and built a formidable electoral base to drive their ambitions.
That was what Muhammadu Buhari did, and it was what Tinubu did. The Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, was Buhari’s party, and he cultivated a cult following that gave him the famed “12m bloc votes” in the North. Similarly, Tinubu was the undisputed leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and he deployed his stupendous wealth and political sagacity to build a sizeable political base in the South-West, which he used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the North. Without a doubt, APC was formed in 2014 solely to actualise the presidential ambitions of two people: Buhari and Tinubu. Truth is, if Atiku wanted to hold sway in a political party, he should have invested heavily in one and built a formidable political base. He did neither.
Atiku is not an epitome of party loyalty. He sees every party through the prism of his ambitions. Yet, he brings nothing truly substantial, such as Buhari’s cult following or Tinubu’s resources, to the table. That doesn’t work. What’s more, Atiku ignores the zeitgeist of the moment. He ran for president in 2023 when the consensus was that power should return to the South. He wants to run in 2027 when the broad consensus is that power should remain in the South for a second term. Those are fundamental defects that serial defections can’t cure. If Atiku never becomes president, he would be remembered as Nigeria’s most notorious, yet futile, serial defector. A sad legacy!
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