Atiku’s Aide Replies Keyamo, Says Ex-VP Never Abandoned June 12 Struggle

* Narrates how PDP’s presidential candidate rejected headship of interim govt

Emmanuel Addeh

Media Adviser to former Vice President and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr Paul Ibe, yesterday pushed back on the allegation that he (Atiku) abandoned the June 12 struggle.
The spokesman to the politician and businessman in a series of tweets, noted that the events of the June 12 crisis were too well documented for anyone to seek to distort it.

The Minister of State for Labour and Productivity, Mr Festus Keyamo, had alleged  in his own tweets that Atiku never fought for the restoration of the mandate presumably won by Chief Moshood Abiola, but was annulled by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) in 1993.
Keyamo stressed that Atiku was among those who first abandoned ship, maintaining that after the June struggle, ‘strangers’ emerged from nowhere and hijacked the democratic train at the centre.

But describing Keyamo’s narrative of events as a blatant lie, Ibe said that because of the role Atiku played, the former vice president was marked for assassination, especially due to his opposition to military rule.

According to him, it also led to the then Head of State, Sani Abacha, appropriating  INTELS, a company belonging to Atiku and trying to kill him in Kaduna before  he managed to escape only after some of his security aides had been killed.

He explained that what Keyamo failed to say was that it was Atiku’s sacrifice of stepping down for Abiola that metamorphosed into his victory in the primaries and subsequent success in the June 12, 1993 election.

“I wish to remind Festus that the same Atiku that he is in a hurry to malign was approached to serve as the Head of the Interim National Government (ING) while he was in London. And it may interest him to know what Atiku’s response was: “I am not going to be part of a brief administration”.

“We know those who participated in the Abacha government which dealt a death knell to the revalidation of the June 12 mandate. Some are late, some are still alive. Atiku was one of those who did not want to have anything to do with the Abacha military rule, not even with a long spoon,” he argued.

Quoting page 237 of Atiku’s biography written by the late Dr Adinoyi Onukaba, Ibe stated  stated that Atiku had expkained why he never have the Abacha regime a chance. “We decided not to participate in Abacha’s government because we did not want any more military rule,” he quoted him as saying.

Even after prominent members of the political class, among them those close to Abiola were picked to serve in Abacha’s government, he explained that  Atiku did not want to serve in the dictatorship because of his commitment to democracy.

Worried about the protracted political crisis in the country, Ibe stated that Atiku decided to do something about it by sending an open letter to Abacha in 1994 in which he proposed a seven-point solution to the crisis.

“The highpoint was the handover on January 1, 1995 to a democratically elected government. Atiku’s position was eventually adopted by a resolution of the 1994 Constitutional Conference to set an exit date for the military,” he added.

“But Abacha did not find this move funny,” he wrote, noting that he then caused the detention of Shehu Yar’Adua and sought to separate him from Atiku by wooing him to dump Yar’Adua and pave the way for him (Abacha) to work with Atiku.

“But Atiku is not one to sell anyone for a mere porridge. He didn’t return to Abacha after he was asked to go think over the proposal to dump the Tafida, the man who helped him cut his teeth in politics,” he pointed out.

For his hard-line stance on the matter, he argued that Atiku narrowly escaped an assassination plot in his Kaduna home in which seven lives were lost in the bid to foil the plot to kill him.

“Following the bloody attack in Kaduna, Atiku was persuaded to proceed on exile. The import of this thread is to put a lie to Keyamo’s baseless claim that Atiku abandoned June 12 and was not consequential in the struggle to enthrone the democratic rule of today.

“Atiku was instrumental in birthing June 12 following his stepping down for MKO Abiola to emerge as the SDP candidate and eventual winner of that historic election.

“It was to his credit that the presidential candidate of the PDP worked assiduously for the exit of the military and enthronement of the democracy that he is still actively involved in deepening. History is stubborn, and not even Festus Keyamo or any other can erase it,” he declared.