Fortune is oft portrayed as a wheel, rolling this way and that, spinning and spinning, pregnant with the happiness or sadness of the sons of men, until it sputters to a halt, after delivering the tidings of fate. What of misfortune, then? If fortune favours the bold, might misfortune be said to favour the beaten?
For, make no mistake, right now, His Excellency, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is a beaten man.
And now fate has beaten him in the cruelest way of all. The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party is bereaved. His close friend, confidant and political associate, Umar Pariya, died a few days back in faraway Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He said to have dead of Pancreatic cancer. Pariya, is survived by six children. In a clime where proclamations of loyalty are barely worth the oxygen with which they are made, men of proven integrity who stay with one through thick and thin are priceless. Little wonder the former vice president is in deep pain. He is despondent and disconsolate as the ice-cold reality of his friend’s demise hit home.
It was claimed that he gave up the ghost after being placed on life support for multiple days.
Since the presidential election, Atiku had been on a self-imposed sabbatical in Dubai even as his legal team fought a battle to overturn the election results.
The grim reaper, however, has other ideas. And so everyone mourns the departure of a man who had friends across the political divide. Since the sad news broke, the country’s political community has come together to condole with his family for their loss. President Muhammadu Buhari issued a condolence message to Atiku on the demise of his closest associate.
