ATIKUGATE IS NOT GOING AWAY – JESUTEGA ONOKPASA

Atikugate is actually so cut and dried that none of those speaking for the man at the center of the scandal, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubarkar, seem to be capable of mounting the slightest logically coherent, barely believable or howsoever legally tenable defense for their principal!

The other day Senator Ehigie Uzamere only succeeded in making himself look quite petty and rather pathetic when he published an article in defense of Atiku and ended up only reinforcing the case against him.

Daniel Bwala, a lawyer and another Atiku aide, had earlier only succeeded in shamelessly making a case for the concealment of corruption while warning members of his generation to endeavour to remain loyal to corrupt elites and elders, and to refrain from exposing them so as not to jeopardize their advancement in life!

Elemona Onoja, yet another lawyer and Atiku mouthpiece, was simply pitiable on AIT as he attempted a defense of the indefensible and struggled to explain the unexplainable.

At a point he even seemed to be asking viewers to see some good in certain components of Atiku’s nauseating admissions on Michael Achimugu’s tape, thus like his colleagues above, unwittingly admitting the authenticity of the recording!

Then, like someone who had suddenly reemerged from decades of hibernation at some dreadfully remote location, Udenta Udenta, apparently a professor of something, went on Arise Tv and, with a straight face no less, sought to pretend Atikugate is a non-issue while declaring Atiku Abubarkar winner of an election still more than a month away!

Entirely ignoring the elephant in the room, Professor Udenta, an obviously depleted and pitiably spent political quantity (or lack thereof) was yielded center stage on Nduka Obaigbena’s platform-for-hire to launder the image of a money launderer and to dictate the outcome of the February election to the viewership!

The media has been loudly silent on Atikugate where they didn’t seem capable of getting enough of all the fiction and balderdash about Tinubu and nonexistent drugs.

You would think that a truly professional press would have found the quantum of evidence against Atiku not only most alarming for a presidential candidate but compelling enough to vehemently insist on the law taking its course.

But ours is fast unhinging into a press with true professionals seemingly becoming ever fewer with ever more halfbaked clowns becoming its superstars!

Atiku most definitely has a case to answer and cannot continue to shame this nation by running for its highest office.

Atikugate is already more than a national embarrassment and anyone hoping it will fizzle out like things peculiarly Nigerian are only fooling themselves.

Atikugate will not go away because we will make sure it does not.

Onokpasa, a lawyer and member, All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, writes from Warri.