Atiku Abubakar

Atiku Abubakar was born on 25 November 1946 to a Fulani trader and farmer, Garba Abubakar, and his second wife, Aisha Kande, in Jada village of Adamawa State. He was named after his paternal grandfather Atiku Abdulqadir and became the only child of his parents when his only sister died at infancy.[6] In 1957, his father died by drowning while crossing a river to Toungo, a neighbouring village to Jada.[6]

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[7] in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination.

Abubakar then proceeded to attend Nigerian Police College, Kaduna. He left the college for a position as a tax official in the Regional Ministry of Finance. Later he received admission to study at the School of Hygiene, Kano in 1966. In 1967, he graduated with a diploma. That same year, Atiku Abubakar was admitted for a Law Diploma at Ahmadu Bello University on a scholarship. He graduated in 1969 and was employed by Nigeria Customs Service that same year.

Following secondary school, Abubakar studied a short while at the Nigeria Police College in Kaduna. He left the College when he was unable to present an O-Level Mathematics result. 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 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 has four wives and is the father to 28 children.[8]

While at Idi-Iroko, Abubakar met nineteen-year-old Titilayo Albert, who he secretly married in December 1971, in Lagos, because her family was initially opposed to the union. On 26 October 1972, Titilayo delivered a baby girl they named Fatima. She later gave birth to Adamu, Halima and Aminu.

In January 1979, he married Ladi Yakubu as his second wife. "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," Abubakar has said.[9] 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. She gave birth to Aisha, Hadiza, Aliyu (named after her late father), Asmau, Mustafa, Laila and Abdulsalam.

His fourth wife, Fatima Shettima, followed in 1986. Fatima gave birth to her first child Amina (Meena), Mohammed and two sets of twins Ahmed and Shehu, Zainab and Aisha then her last daughter Hafsat.

Abubakar later divorced Ladi, allowing him to marry, as his fourth wife (the maximum permitted him as a Muslim), Jennifer Iwenjiora Douglas.[10]

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.[14]

Abubakar launched a bid for the Presidency in 1993, placing third after MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries.[14]

During the Sani Abacha transition he showed interest to contest under the United Nigeria Congress Party, the transition program came to an end with the death of General Abacha. In 1998 Abubakar launched a bid for the governorship of Adamawa State on the platform of the People's Democratic Party. He won the December 1998 elections, but before he could be sworn in he accepted a position as the running mate to the People's Democratic Party's presidential candidate, former Head of State Olusegun Obasanjo.[15]

On 25 November 2006 Abubakar announced that he would run for president. On 20 December 2006, he was chosen as the presidential candidate of the Action Congress (AC).[20]

On 14 March 2007, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) released the final list of 24 aspirants for 21 April presidential election. Abubakar's name was missing from the ballot. INEC issued a statement stating that Abubakar's name was missing because he was on a list of persons indicted for corruption by a panel set up by the government.[21] Abubakar headed to the courts on 16 March to have his disqualification overturned.

Abubakar with Muhammadu Buhari.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on 16 April that INEC had no power to disqualify candidates.[22]

The ruling allowed Abubakar to contest the election, although there were concerns that it might not be possible to provide ballots with Abubakar's name by 21 April, the date of the election. On 17 April, a spokesman for INEC said that Abubakar would be on the ballot.

According to official results, Abubakar took third place, behind PDP candidate Umaru Yar'Adua and ANPP candidate Muhammadu Buhari, with approximately 7% of the vote (2.6 million votes). Abubakar rejected the election results and called for its cancellation, describing it as Nigeria's "worst election ever."[23]

He stated that he would not attend Umaru Yar'Adua's inauguration on 29 May due to his view that the election was not credible, saying that he did not want to "dignify such a hollow ritual with my presence".[24]

Following the 2007 elections, Abubakar returned to the People's Democratic Party. In October 2010 he announced his intention to contest for the Presidency. On 22 November, a Committee of Northern Elders selected him as the Northern Consensus Candidate, over former Military President Ibrahim Babangida, former National Security Adviser Aliyu Gusau and Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State.[25]

In January 2011, Abubakar contested for the Presidential ticket of his party alongside President Jonathan and Sarah Jubril, and lost the primary, garnering 805 votes to President Jonathan's 2736.[26]

In a November 2013 interview, regarding Obasanjo's alleged attempts to justify his third term bid, Abubakar is quoted as saying: "[He] informed me that 'I left power twenty years ago, I left Mubarak in office, I left Mugabe in office, I left Eyadema in office, I left Umar Bongo, and even Paul Biya and I came back and they are still in power; and I just did eight years and you are asking me to go; why?' And I responded to him by telling him that Nigeria is not Libya, not Egypt, not Cameroun, and not Togo; I said you must leave; even if it means both of us lose out, but you cannot stay."[27]

On 30 March 2014, Nigerian media reported that a delegation from the Northern Youth Leaders Forum visited Obasanjo at his home in Abeokuta and pleaded with him to "forgive your former vice-president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of whatever political sin or offence he might have committed against you." In response, Obasanjo is quoted as saying that "as a leader and father, I bear no grudge against anybody and if there is, I have forgiven them all."[28]

In August 2013, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) registered two new political parties. One of them was the Peoples Democratic Movement. Local media reports suggested that the party was formed by Abubakar as a back-up plan in case he was unable to fulfil his rumoured presidential ambitions on the PDP platform.[29] In a statement Abubakar acknowledged that the PDM was founded by his "political associates", but that he remained a member of the PDP.[30]

On 2 February 2014, Abubakar left the Peoples Democratic Party to the join All Progressives Congress.[31] with the intent of contesting the Nigerian presidency in 2015 on the party's platform.[32]

On Friday, 24 November 2017, Abubakar announced his exit from the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party he helped to form.[33]

On 3 December 2017, via a Facebook Live broadcast, Abubakar announced his return to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The announcement followed consultations the former vice president had with party leaders and stakeholders from across the country. He said he decided to 'return home' to the PDP now that the issues which made him leave the party had been resolved.[34]

Abubakar declared his candidacy for the presidential nomination of the PDP mid 2018 and won the nomination at its convention on 7 October. He defeated 11 other contestants and got 1,532 votes, 839 more than the runner-up, the Governor of Sokoto State Aminu Tambuwal.

Atiku Abubakar continued his campaign rally in Kogi State as he promised to complete abandoned projects in the state.[35] On 30 January, he participated in the town hall meeting tagged #NGTheCandidate. And in the meeting, he declared that he will grant amnesty to looters [36] and he vowed to privatize 90% of NNPC, Nigeria's primary source of income.[37] Atiku took his campaigns to Katsina, visit Emir of Daura on 7 February 2019[38]

On February 27, 2019, Atiku lost the presidential race to President Buhari.[39] He is willing[40] to contest the election in court describing the election as “worst in Nigeria’s democratic history."

Abubakar launched the True Federalism campaign in 2017. He has been delivering speeches all over the country inspiring Nigerians on the need to restructure the country. He has been receiving massive endorsement for his stand on True Federalism.

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 competes to attract investments and skilled workers rather than merely waiting for monthly revenue allocation from Abuja"

Many of his speeches have caused positive stir nationwide as Nigerians are supporting the idea of True Federalism which involves allowing states to have control over their resources most especially the South-South and South East of Nigeria.[41]

In his speeches and commentary, Abubakar is a vocal advocate of the importance of Nigeria's educational system. He is also the founder of the American University of Nigeria (AUN) in Yola, Adamawa. It was founded in Yola, the capital of Adamawa State as American University of Nigeria (AUN) by Abubakar in 2005. He has said that having benefited from the U.S. system of instruction as a young man, he was eager to make available in Nigeria an American styled faculty – emphasizing critical thinking, small classes, student participation, problem-solving. AUN has received special recognition from Google.

In August 2014, Abubakar said in a statement:[42]

″Our country's educational institutions are clearly not providing quality learning. Our teachers need to be taught. This situation is a new development—of the past 10 years or so. The steady decline of education in Nigeria is a reflection of our country's relegation of education to the background of national essentialities. That is where the change must begin. Teachers are important—as important as senators and doctors. Indeed, teachers determine the quality of senators and doctors. And so, the entire country stands to suffer the effects of this neglect in future. Nigeria must once again make education a priority. We must return to the basics.″[43]

In a bid to alleviate the educational decadence in the North East, Abubakar issued scholarships to 15 escapees of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping.[44]