FEATURE: ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR, A LEGEND AT 77

ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR

A LEGEND AT 77

Atiku Abubakar GCON is a Nigerian politician and businessman who served as the vice president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 during the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo.

He clocked Seventy-Seven today 25th November 25, 2023.

Atiku Abubakar was born on 25 November 1946 in Jada, a village which was then under the administration of the British Cameroons. The territory later joined with the Federation of Nigeria in the 1961 British Cameroons referendum.

His father, Garba Abubakar was a Fulani trader and farmer, and his mother was Aisha Kande. He was named after his paternal grandfather Atiku Abdulqadir who hails from Wurno, Sokoto State and migrated to Kojoli village at Jada, Adamawa State. His maternal grandfather called Inuwa Dutse migrated to Jada, Adamawa State from Dutse, Jigawa State. 

He became the only child of his parents when his only sister died at infancy. His father died in 1957.

His father was opposed to the idea of Western education and tried to keep Atiku Abubakar out of the traditional school system. When the government discovered that Abubakar was not attending mandatory schooling, his father spent a few days in jail until Aisha Kande's mother paid the fine.

At the age of eight, Abubakar enrolled in the Jada Primary School, Adamawa. After completing his primary school education in 1960, he was admitted into Adamawa Provincial Secondary School in the same year, alongside 59 other students. He graduated from secondary school in 1965 after he made grade three in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination.

Following secondary school, Abubakar studied a short while at the Nigeria Police College in Kaduna. He worked briefly as a Tax Officer in the Regional Ministry of Finance, from where he gained admission to the School of Hygiene in Kano in 1966. He graduated with a Diploma in 1967, having served as Interim Student Union President at the school.

In 2021, Abubakar successfully completed and passed his Master's degree in International Relations at Anglia Ruskin University.

In 1967 he enrolled for a Law Diploma at the Ahmadu Bello University Institute of Administration, on a scholarship from the regional government. After graduation in 1969, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was employed by the Nigeria Customs Service.

Abubakar worked in the Nigeria Customs Service for twenty years, rising to become the Deputy Director, as the second highest position in the Service was then known. He retired in April 1989 and took up full-time business and politics. He started out in the real estate business during his early days as a Customs Officer.

In 1974, he applied for and received a 31,000 naira loan to build his first house in Yola, which he put up for rent. From proceeds of the rent, he purchased another plot and built a second house. He continued this way, building a sizeable portfolio of property in Yola, Nigeria. In 1981, he moved into agriculture, acquiring 2,500 hectares of land near Yola to start a maize and cotton farm. The business fell on hard times and closed in 1986. "My first foray into agriculture, in the 1980s, ended in failure," he wrote in an April 2014 blog. He then ventured into trading, buying and selling truckloads of rice, flour and sugar.

Abubakar's most important business move came while he was a Customs Officer at the Apapa Ports. Gabrielle Volpi, an Italian businessman in Nigeria, invited him to set up Nigeria Container Services (NICOTES), a logistics company operating within the Ports. NICOTES would later go on to become Intels Nigeria Limited and provide immense wealth to Abubakar.

 Abubakar is a co-founder of Intels Nigeria Limited, an oil servicing business with extensive operations in Nigeria and abroad.

Atiku's other business interests are centred within Yola, Adamawa, and include the Adama Beverages Limited, a beverage manufacturing plant in Yola, an animal feed factory, and the American University of Nigeria (AUN), the first American-style private university to be established in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Abubakar's first foray into politics was in the early 1980s, when he worked behind-the-scenes on the governorship campaign of Bamanga Tukur, who at that time was managing director of the Nigeria Ports Authority. He canvassed for votes on behalf of Tukur, and also donated to the campaign.

Towards the end of his Customs career, he met General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, who had been second-in-command Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters between 1976 and 1979. Abubakar was drawn by Yar'Adua into the political meetings that were now happening regularly in Yar'Adua's Lagos home, which gave rise to the People's Front of Nigeria.

The People's Front included politicians such as Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, Baba Gana Kingibe, Bola Tinubu, Sabo Bakin Zuwo, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Abdullahi Aliyu Sumaila and Abubakar Koko.

In 1989, Abubakar was elected the National Vice-Chairman of the Peoples Front of Nigeria in the build-up to the Third Nigerian Republic. Abubakar won a seat to represent his constituency at the 1989 Constituent Assembly, set up to decide a new constitution for Nigeria. The People's Front was eventually denied registration by the military government (none of the groups that applied was registered), and merged with the government-created Social Democratic Party (SDP).

On 1 September 1990, Abubakar announced his Gongola State gubernatorial bid. A year later, before the elections could hold, Gongola State was broken up into two – Adamawa and Taraba States – by the Federal Government. Abubakar fell into the new Adamawa State. After the contest he won the SDP Primaries in November 1991, but was soon disqualified by the government from contesting the elections.

In 1993, Abubakar contested the SDP presidential primaries. The results after the first ballot of the primaries held in Jos was : Moshood Abiola with 3,617 votes, Baba Gana Kingibe with 3,255 votes and Abubakar with 2,066 votes. Abubakar and Kingibe considered joining forces combining 5,231 votes to challenge Abiola.

Shehu Yar'Adua however asked Atiku Abubakar to withdraw from the campaign, with Abiola promising to make him his running mate. Abiola was later pressured by SDP governors to select Kinigbe as his Vice-presidential running mate, in the June 12 presidential election.

After the 12 June and during the General Sani Abacha transition, Abubakar showed interest to contest for the gubernatorial seat of Adamawa State under the United Nigeria Congress Party. The transition program came to an end with the death of General Abacha.

In 1998, Abubakar joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and later secured nomination for Governor of Adamawa State, winning the December 1998 governorship elections, but before he could be sworn in he accepted a position as the running mate to the PDP presidential candidate, former military head of state General Olusegun Obasanjo who went on to win the 1999 presidential election ushering in the Fourth Nigerian Republic

On 29 May 1999, Abubakar was sworn in as Vice President of Nigeria. His first term was mainly characterized by his role as Chairman of the National Economic Council and head of the National Council on Privatization, overseeing the sale of hundreds of loss-making and poorly managed public enterprises alongside Nasir El Rufai.

Abubakar's second term as vice president was marked by a stormy relationship with President Obasanjo. In 2006, Abubakar was involved in a bitter public battle with his boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, ostensibly arising from the latter's bid to amend certain provisions of the constitution to take another shot at the presidency (Third Term Agenda).

Atiku Abubakar ran unsuccessfully for President of Nigeria six times, in 1993, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023.

He ran in the Social Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1993, but lost to Moshood Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe.

He was a presidential candidate of the Action Congress in the 2007 presidential election coming in third to Umaru Yar'Adua of the PDP and Muhammadu Buhari of the ANPP.

He contested the presidential primaries of the People's Democratic Party during the 2011 presidential election losing out to incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.

In 2014, he joined the All Progressives Congress ahead of the 2015 presidential election and contested the presidential primaries losing to Muhammadu Buhari.

In 2017, he returned to the Peoples Democratic Party and was the party presidential candidate during the 2019 presidential election, again losing to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.

Abubakar launched the True Federalism campaign in 2017. He has delivered speeches around the country on the need to restructure the country.

He recently declared at an event where he was conferred the award Hero Of Democracy by Hall of Grace Magazine, "Political decentralization will also help to deepen and strengthen our democracy as it will encourage more accountability. Citizens are more likely to demand accountability when governments spend their tax money rather than rent collected from an impersonal source."

He also said: "True Federalism will encourage states to compete, to attract investments and skilled workers rather than merely waiting for monthly revenue allocation from Abuja"

In May 2022, he was chosen as the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate again, this time for the 2023 general election after he defeated Nyesom Wike, the Governor of Rivers State, in the primaries. He came in second in the general election, being defeated by Bola Tinubu, though Abubakar joined other opposition candidates in demanding a revote.

Abubakar has four wives and twenty eight children. Atiku explains: "I wanted to expand the Abubakar family. I felt extremely lonely as a child. I had no brother and no sister. I did not want my children to be as lonely as I was. This is why I married more than one wife. My wives are my sisters, my friends, and my advisers and they complement one another."

In 1971, he secretly married Titilayo Albert, in Lagos, Her family was initially opposed to the union. His children from her include Fatima, Adamu, Halima and Aminu.

In 1979, he married Ladi Yakubu as his second wife. He has six children with Ladi: Abba, Atiku, Zainab, Ummi-Hauwa, Maryam and Rukaiyatu.

In 1983, he married his third wife, Princess Rukaiyatu, daughter of the Lamido of Adamawa, Aliyu Mustafa. The children from her are: Aisha, Hadiza, Aliyu (named after her late father), Asmau, Mustapha, Laila and Abdulsalam.

Abubakar later divorced Ladi, allowing him to marry, as his fourth wife (the maximum permitted him as a Muslim), Jennifer Iwenjiora Douglas.

In 1986, he married his fifth wife (only his fourth legal wife at the time, owing to his earlier divorce from Ladi), Fatima Shettima. Her children include: Amina, Mohammed and the twins Ahmed and Shehu, the twins Zainab and Aisha, and Hafsat.

On 1 February 2022, Jennifer Douglas confirmed her divorce from Abubakar in a statement to the media. According to her, their union broke down due to disagreements over her continued residence in the United Kingdom, amongst other long-standing issues.

In 1982, Abubakar was given the chieftaincy title of the Turaki of Adamawa by Adamawa's traditional ruler Alhaji Aliyu Mustafa. The title had previously been reserved for the monarch's favourite prince in the palace, as the holder is in charge of the monarch's domestic affairs.

In June 2017, Abubakar was given the chieftaincy title of the Waziri of Adamawa, and his previous title of Turaki was transferred to his son, Aliyu, his first son with his third wife.