H ON Friday, 23rd August, 1985, the military government of
Major-General Mohammadu Buhari decided to place me
under arrest. My crime was that I wrote, among others, an
article entitled: “Counter-trading Nigeria’s Future” in th
National Concord, exposing the government’s scam of
diverting public funds into private coffers through barter-
trade with Brazil. A man by the name of Benson Norman was
sent from the State Security Services (SSS) to my office to get
me. Not finding me, he left a note that I must present myself
unfailingly at the SSS office at 15 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi Lagos
the next Monday morning.
However, on Sunday, 25th August, 1985, Lateef Aminu came
first thing in the morning to my house to inform me that the
government of Buhari/Idiagbon had been overthrown. For
this reason, I am fond of telling people that God brought
about a change of government in Nigeria just because of me.
Coup-plotter
Under the Buhari/Idiagbon regime, once you ended up at 15
Awolowo Road, you may never be heard of again. Decree
Number 2 of 1984 empowered Tunde Idiagbon to arrest and
detain anybody indefinitely without trial and without legal
reprieve. After Buhari was overthrown, Mohammadu Gambo
opened the prison doors of 15 Awolowo Road on public
television, revealing people in various stages of undress and
malnutrition that had been kept in the dungeons without
trial by Buhari’s hound-dogs.
As self-imposed Head of State, Buhari had no regard for
human rights. Immediately he seized power, he announced
that he would “tamper with” the press. Soon, the infamous
Decree Number 4 was promulgated which made even the
publication of the truth a punishable offence. Under this
cover, Buhari jailed innocent journalists, including Tunde
Thompson and Nduka Irabo. He abolished civil liberties,
promulgated retroactive decrees enabling him to kill
Nigerians through jungle justice, proscribed civil society
organizations and professional groups and exercised
“absolute” power.
This same Buhari would now have us believe that he has
gone through some metamorphosis and has become a
democrat. I am sure you will forgive me if people like me
don’t believe him. Buhari is not, has never been, and will
never be, a democrat. Only in Nigeria would a man with his
track record, who came to power through a military coup
that illegally overthrew a democratic government, now be
acclaimed as a democrat. It is on record that Buhari’s
military regime is the only one in Nigeria’s history that failed
to promulgate a programme for return to civilian rule.
Facts and fiction
So what exactly qualifies Buhari as a democrat today?
Precious little! There is nothing democratic about forming
and joining political parties just in order to be the
presidential candidate. Little wonder then that Buhari’s
parties have a short shelf-life. Buhari would like to be
Nigeria’s head of state once again. He can no longer achieve
this through the barrel of a gun. The only route now open to
him is through the democratic process. That is the reason he
now conveniently fashions himself as a democrat. It is
merely a means to an end; no more, no less.
Buhari’s reputation as an anti-corruption crusader is also a
myth. As head of state, he did not make any dent in Nigerian
corruption. All we got was a cosmetic “war against
indiscipline.” The counter-trade scam happened under his
watch. Rather than deal with it, he sent his hound-dogs after
nonentities like me who dared to expose it. That scam was no
different, in scope and scale, from the petroleum subsidy and
other corruption scandals that have since plagued Nigeria.
The Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) that Buhari headed under
Abacha was also a citadel of corruption. While Buhari
himself might not have enriched himself, his cronies and
those who worked under him did so handsomely.
On three different occasions, Buhari has run for the
presidency. On three different occasions he has failed. That
should really be enough. If, as seems likely, he were to run
for the presidency a fourth time in 2015, there is no question
that he would fail yet again. Try as he might again and again,
Mohammadu Buhari can never be President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria.
Buhari’s sectarianism
There is a fundamental reason behind this. Buhari is a bad
politician. He is an unbending former military dictator and
not a democratic consensus-builder. Like his new ally, Bola
Tinubu, Buhari is a regional, sectional politician. Such
politicians are practically impossible to package and market
nationally in the ethnically-delicate Nigeria of today.
Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam
Nasir El’Rufai, one of those Northerners who deserve to be
serious contenders for the presidency of Nigeria, observed
that Buhari remains “perpetually unelectable” as a result of
his “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial
focus.” This is an elegant way of saying that politically,
Buhari has an uncanny tendency to put his foot in his mouth.
He talks before thinking of the political implications of his
words. He shoots from the hip.
The strength of Obasanjo, which enabled him to capture the
presidency on two different occasions, was that he was
perceived as a broadminded politician, not overly partial to
his people in the South-West. As a matter of fact, in his first
election, his people did not want him. The strength of
Goodluck Jonathan, which propelled him to win the
presidency, was that he was able to string together a coalition
that stretched both north and south of the Niger. The
weakness of Buhari is that he is totally unacceptable to people
outside his region.
Buhari is a Northern regional champion. As head of state in
the 1980s, his government was unapologetically Northern. No
attempt was made to balance the ticket at the top. It was the
only regime in Nigeria’s history headed by two Northerners.
When he seized power, Buhari put Shagari, the Northern
head of state he overthrew, under house arrest. But then he
jailed Alex Ekwueme, the Southern vice-president. You may
well ask what makes Shagari less culpable for the misdeeds of
the Second Republic than his number-two man. The simple
fact was that Buhari was Fulani as was Shagari; but
Ekwueme was Igbo.
Impolitic words
At the height of the Sharia debate during the Obasanjo
administration, Buhari declared that Muslims should vote
only for fellow Muslims. This was politically suicidal for a
man seeking national office. He became an advocate for
implementation of Sharia all over Nigeria. He protested to
the Oyo State governor, in the context of a dispute between
Fulani herdsmen and indigenous farmers in the state, that
“your people are killing my people.” This turned out to be
unfounded and perhaps the reverse.
His threats during the campaign for the 2011 elections incited
widespread violence in the North after he lost. His supporters
went on a rampage; looting and killing; in spite of the fact
that, by all accounts, the elections were adjudged the most
free and fair in the history of Nigeria’s current democratic
experiment. By the time the mayhem had subsided, over 1000
people had been slaughtered in cold blood and some 65,000
displaced.
Forgetting that a statement made in Hausa would readily be
translated into English, Buhari later declared
unapologetically in a BBC interview: “ If what happened in
2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the
dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.” These
are the tokens of an irresponsible politician, whose
ambitions for power supersede the national interest. Who
then are the dogs and baboons that Buhari has in mind to
soak in blood if and when he loses yet again come 2015?
Are they his children or are they those of others?
With the Boko Haram insurgency in the north, Buhari played
to the Northern gallery yet again, calling the Jonathan
government “the biggest Boko Haram.” Wole Olaniyi was a fly
in the wall at a meeting in Kano Government House designed
to persuade PDP rebel governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, to
decamp to the APC. Assuming that only Northerners were
present, Buhari declared the Boko Haram was a “strategic
plan” by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to “destroy
the North.” When Jonathan declared a state of emergency in
Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states, Buhari still saw this with
Northern goggles, insinuating that the President is waging
war on the North.
President of the North
Without a doubt, Buhari has massive support in the North.
Indeed, he is the most popular Northern politician in the
North today. But that precisely remains his undoing at the
centre. The more he has been identified as a Northern
champion, the less attractive he has become as a national
choice. Even in the North, his support base is limited to the
Muslim population. He does not appeal to Northern
Christians. Then there is the added factor of the opposition of
his implacable opponents among the Northern elite. Men like
Babangida and Atiku would rather die than allow Buhari get
to Aso Rock.
One thing is certain, the South-South and the South-East will
not vote for Buhari in 2015. Not only that; there are no
buyers for Buhari’s sectarian politics in the South-West. No
matter what Tinubu might be telling him, the people of the
South-West will not vote for Buhari in 2015. We already had
the template in 2011, when Buhari tried to sell himself, first
by balancing his ticket with a Yoruba man; and then by
making sure the Yoruba man is a Christian; a pastor no less.
But it just did not wash. It will not work in 2015.
The worst thing that can happen to Northern presidential
aspirations in 2015 is for Buhari to be on the APC ballot.
That is a sure guarantee that the North will not be providing
the next president. Buhari would be a shoo-in in an election
for president of Northern Nigeria. But in an election
encompassing the entire country, the best he can envisage is
to be a kingmaker. He cannot be king. The nearest Buhari
will get to Aso Rock in 2015 is by attending the Council of
State meetings.
Source:- Vanguard
