On Friday, 23rd August, 1985, the military government of
Major-General Muhammadu Buhari decided to place me under arrest. My
crime was that I wrote, among others, an article entitled:
“Counter-trading Nigeria's Future” in the 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 Irabor. 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 program
for return to civilian rule.
Facts and fiction
So what exactly
qualifies Bihari 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 why 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, Muhammadu Buhari can never be President of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria.
Buhari's sectarianism
There is a fundamental reason
behind this. Buhari is a lousy 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 1980's, 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.
PRESIDENTIAL candidate of the All
Progressives Congress for the February 14 election, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari (retd.), has said that campaigns should focus on national
issues and not on his state of health and dead Nigerian leaders.
