KASHIM SHETTIMA IS NOT ATIKU ABUBAKAR’S MATE, By Yakubu Ahmed-BK

The day Dino Melaye threw his sense of worth to the dogs and resorted to vulgar abuse on APC Vice Preaidential candidate Senator Kashim Shettima, was the day it dawned on me that Atiku Abubakar has lost it. That incident in Damaturu, the Yobe state capital convinced me, beyond all doubts, that Atiku Abubakar and his kitchen cabinet of rogues and charlatans had a premonition that this election will be Atiku’s last attempt at leading this country.

That realization was what informed Melaye to become hysterically uncontrollable and irresponsibly abusive in a thuggish manner reserved only for motor park and area gangsters.

The organic crowds that trailed APC’s presidential rallies across the country and the statements that came out of them, of undiluted and unflinching support, especially from the masses of the people, have succeeded in driving the Atiku gangsters mad and to the edge of their abysmal and damning failure.

The rally in Maiduguri today, about the best so far in terms of crowd and the message it sends, was one hallmark that has succeeded in separating the chaff from the grain and showing who, between Shettima and Atiku is the bride of his home state, his geo-political zone and the North as a whole. Is Atiku Abubakar as popular in Adamawa as Kashim Shettima is in Borno? Can the two be compared in the six states of the geo-political zone? What about in the whole North? The answer is a capital NO. The unprecedented crowd in Maiduguri today and the other successful ones in the states of the North so far visited, have proved, without a shred of a doubt, that Kashim Shettima, though younger, is not a mate of Atiku Abubakar. He has demonstrated that he is North’s undisputed political compass, who has mastered the art and is on the block to provide that leadership missing link.

When Dino went haywire and began his ill-informed abuse, in the presence of Atiku and other big-for-nothing hangers on, it only gave credence to the folklore, that he who throws decorum away and resorts to abuse, has seen, from afar, his own inescapable downfall and shame.

When two kids fight, the one who resort to invectives, is the one who has received beating the most. What this means is that Atiku Abubakar is on the path of being retired for life and that his inability, as an elder, to rein in Dino and show his aversion to vulgarity and irresponsibility, right in the podium, tells us that he was in cahoots with it or was even a party to knitting this show of shame together and overseeing how it was laid out. He, literally supervised the “showcasing the show of shame in Damaturu.”

It also gives us a glimpse into the way their diseased minds work. The moment it proves to them, that they are on the losing side, they cared less what they say or how they say it, so long as it soothes their bruised ego.

What we expected Dino to do instead of showing the animal traits in him, was to tell Nigerians what his principal has achieved for the North when he served, for eight solid years, as the most powerful Vice President in the history of this country. We also thought he will lay before Nigerians how many people his principal has mentored in the North. In fact, Atiku Abubakar has been challenged severally to show just one infrastructural project he initiated and executed for the benefit of the people of his village in Adamawa state, or one single person he has mentored or raised. He drew blank. He has nothing to his name other than a few money making ventures, that are beyond the reach of the common man.

The electric crowd in Maiduguri today has answered what ever questions political opponents have about the place of Kashim Shettima in the minds and psyche of the people of Borno state, the North East geo-political zone, the North and Nigeria as a whole.

Of course, Dino Melaye and his pay master have done their worse in Damaturu. It smacks only of vulgarity, tantrums and invectives. We would answer them in the way it will hurt them most; and that is at the polls on the 25th of February, 2023.