PART 1 OF 4: THE BOY WHO WOULD NOT BE DIVIDED
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
A schoolboy stands before his classmates in Ganye and tells them something they do not want to hear. They boo him. The noise fills the room. This boy does not sit down. He will spend the rest of his life refusing to sit down when the crowd is wrong.
That boy is Atiku Abubakar. I will tell you how that story ends. But first, I must tell you how I came to know it.
I did not follow Atiku Abubakar blindly. Before I committed my name, my pen and my political life to his cause, I deemed it necessary to study the man completely. I studied the praise and I studied the attacks. I read the innuendos, the vituperation and the outright lies, because a man who intends to follow a leader must know the whole file, not the flattering pages alone.
There is no book written about Atiku that I will not study, and there is no press cutting from the daily newspapers that I will not read. Over the years I have gathered a mountain of press cuttings, and I have gone through them one by one. That discipline armed me with the facts. I can now say, with the confidence of a man who has done his homework, that the Atiku I follow is a man of rare leadership, clear vision, iron determination and unmatched experience.
What follows is drawn from all that I have studied, read and the findings I have made about Atiku Abubakar. Every line of it is a record, not a slogan. I will lay it before you in 4 parts. Read them all, and then judge for yourself.
AN ORPHAN WHO BECAME A BRIDGE
Atiku lost his father at the age of 11. He grew up an only child. That loneliness could have made him bitter. Instead it made him hungry: hungry for family, hungry for community, hungry for a world where people are joined rather than separated.
You can see that hunger in the schoolboy. When his schoolmates formed separate Fulani and Chamba student associations, he opposed the division and argued for one body without ethnic labels. He was Fulani, and the easy road was his own tribe. He refused. He was booed for it. He held his ground, refused to join either camp, and worked quietly with the moderates until a single Ganye Students Association for all students was born.
He was booed for demanding unity. He held his ground until unity won.
Before he had money, a title or a single vote, Atiku was already building bridges across ethnic lines, and all his life he has worked for harmony between the Fulani and the other peoples of his area. Nigeria did not teach him unity. He brought it with him.
Set that beside the politics Nigerians know too well: men who harvest votes from ethnic and religious fear, who divide a nation of more than 250 ethnic groups in order to rule it. Atiku learned the opposite lesson before he was old enough to vote. That is the first qualification for leading Nigeria, and he has carried it since boyhood.
And at 15, still a student, he bought his mother a house. That is the measure of the boy who would become the man.
THE RANK OTHERS DESPISED
On 30 June 1969, Atiku joined the Department of Customs and Excise as a Cadet Assistant Preventive Superintendent, Service Number 7370. Some of his Zaria schoolmates turned the same offer down because the starting rank looked too low for graduates. Atiku took the chance. It is not where you start that matters, but how far you are prepared to climb.
He and his course mates became the first graduate cadets in both the Police and Customs, trained at the Police College, Ikeja and the Customs Training School, Ebute Metta.
He came to Lagos curious and adventurous. He loved travel and new experiences, believing that such experiences enrich a life, and he embraced the diversity of the city, from the cinemas to the stadium to Fela Kuti’s Africa Shrine, while never crossing the boundaries of his faith. A northern Muslim at ease in the most cosmopolitan city in West Africa: that was Atiku at 22.
AMBUSH ON THE BRIDGE
His first posting was Idi Iroko, on the border with what was then Dahomey, one of the busiest and most dangerous border posts in Nigeria. He served as officer in charge of baggage, working with over 100 colleagues collecting duties and arresting smugglers, in an environment where some officers lost their lives.
Picture the scene. A makeshift bridge ahead, sabotaged by smugglers. The trap springs. He survived, and he did not retreat. He followed his instinct, traced the smugglers to their warehouse and seized their goods. From that experience he drew a lesson he would carry for decades: smuggling is defeated only through cooperation with neighbouring states.
Ambushed on a sabotaged bridge, he did not run. He tracked the smugglers home and seized their goods.
THE HAND HE EXTENDED TO THE DEFEATED
When the civil war ended in January 1970, thousands of Igbo refugees began the long journey home, many with nothing but their lives. Atiku and his colleagues processed their return, helping them as best they could under the federal policy of reconciliation.
One returnee he helped was Joseph Igwe, a trader in second-hand clothes. Igwe rebuilt his life, became a successful hotelier and owner of Bolingo Hotels, and remained Atiku’s friend for life. A young northern officer and a defeated easterner with nothing: if you want to know what Atiku means by national unity, it began there, at a Customs desk, in the ashes of a civil war.
At the same border, a struggling schoolgirl could not pay the duty on her parcels of cloth. Atiku paid 2 Pounds from his own pocket and handed her the change. She never forgot the kindness of a stranger.
His banker friend, Idris Yusuf, described him as belonging to the honest and truthful kind of people. The same Yusuf watched the young officer instruct his bank to invest up to 1 Pound a month from a modest salary in shares of well-performing companies. He called Atiku a shrewd investor who always wanted his money to work for him, and said that his later wealth came as no surprise.
LOVE THAT DEFEATED PREJUDICE
Then came Titi.
Atiku chose to marry for love rather than accept a wife chosen for him. He promised to sponsor her education. Titi admired his persistence, his quiet manner and his kindness. Every evening he drove from Idi Iroko to Lagos to see her, and returned early the next morning for duty. That is determination.
He went personally, with respected friends, to assure her mother of his good intentions. He overcame the prejudice of a nation just out of war, which said a Fulani man and a Yoruba woman did not belong together. He married Titi at the Ikoyi Registry in December 1971. In those same years he walked away unhurt from a serious car crash, as though Providence had other plans for him. Titi’s father, Domingo Albert, blessed the union. At the traditional Yoruba ceremony a year later, Atiku exceeded the family’s expectations on their long list of items, and a Muslim Nikkai followed.
Titi’s mother came to see the qualities that prejudice had hidden. She grew so close to him that she later said she would give him a thousand daughters if she had them. His own mother and his aunt, Azumi, welcomed Titi warmly, wanting only to see him settled and happy.
A Fulani son and a Yoruba bride, married in 1971, long before unity became a campaign slogan.
When his first child, Fatima, was born on 26 October 1972, he had friends abroad bring back childcare books and baby clothes before her arrival. He was overjoyed, bought her new things every week and showered her with gifts. Titi’s family were relieved to see that she lacked nothing.
THE VILLAGE BOY COMES HOME
Atiku took his wife and baby home to Yola, Jada, Ganye, Kojoli and Yelba, where he was celebrated as the village boy who made good and returned to give thanks. He brought presents for everyone. His cousin Umar Ardo said he had never seen his mother so happy, and credited Atiku with bringing good things to the village while staying connected to his roots.
He interpreted between his mother and his Yoruba wife, and spent 2 weeks showing Titi the region. That journey broadened her horizons and convinced her that ethnic stereotypes are dangerous.
He helped his cousins Umar Ardo and Abdullahi Nyako gain admission into Government College, Ganye, and arranged for his aunt Azumi to be their guardian. He paid tuition fees and pocket money for old schoolmates, and supported Abubakar Alkali Abba of Jada all the way through university and law school. Hamman, son of Ardo Ahmadu, describes him as the role model of the family in Kojoli. Others followed his career path, and Hamman credits him with a great role in moulding their lives.
A HELPER BEFORE HE HAD ANYTHING TO GIVE
Count the lives already touched in these early years. A schoolgirl at a border post. A defeated trader who became a hotelier. Two cousins placed in a good school. Schoolmates whose fees he paid. A friend carried all the way to the Bar. Atiku was lifting people before he had much to lift them with, on a junior officer’s salary.
That instinct never left him. Till today, it is what flows in Atiku’s veins: assisting people, mentoring people, opening doors for others and walking them through. Many leaders discover generosity when the cameras arrive. Atiku was practising it at a lonely border post where no camera would ever find him.
Many leaders discover generosity when the cameras arrive. Atiku practised it where no camera would ever find him.
But a good heart is not yet proof of a strong spine. In Part 2, the young officer walks into the busiest ports and airports in Nigeria at a time when corruption was the rule in Customs. Envelopes. Smugglers. A coup that swallowed careers overnight, with one of Atiku’s own friends among the plotters. Men came to him with money, and some came with danger. What he did next is the heart of this record. Do not miss it.
#AtikuTheRecord #Atiku2027 #ADC #InformedInspiredInvolved
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
22 September 2026
