The grounds on which General Buhari is
being promoted as the alternative choice are
not only shaky, but pitifully naive. History
matters. Records are not kept simply to
assist the weakness of memory, but to
operate as guides to the future. Of course,
we know that human beings change. What
the claims of personality change or
transformation impose on us is a rigorous
inspection of the evidence, not wishful
speculation or behind-the- scenes
assurances. Public offence, crimes against a
polity, must be answered in the public space,
not in caucuses of bargaining. In Buhari, we
have been offered no evidence of the
sheerest prospect of change.
On the contrary, all evidence suggests that
this is one individual who remains convinced
that he is one ex-ruler that the nation cannot
call to order. Buhari? Need one remind
anyone – was one of the generals who
treated a Commission of Enquiry, the Oputa
Panel, with unconcealed disdain. Like
Babangida and Abdusalami, he refused to put
in appearance even though complaints that
were tabled against him involved a career of
gross abuses of power and blatant assault on
the fundamental human rights of the
Nigerian citizenry. Prominent against these
charges was an act that amounted to nothing
less than judicial murder, the execution of a
citizen under a retroactive decree. Does
Decree 20 ring a bell? If not, then, perhaps
the names of three youths – Lawal Ojuolape
(30), Bernard Ogedengbe (29) and
Bartholomew Owoh (26) do. To put it quite
plainly, one of those three Ogedengbe – was
executed for a crime that did not carry a
capital forfeit at the time it was committed.
This was an unconscionable crime, carried
out in defiance of the pleas and protests of
nearly every sector of the Nigerian and
international community religious, civil rights,
political, trade unions etc.
Buhari and his sidekick and his partner-in-
crime, Tunde Idiagbon persisted in this
inhuman act for one reason and one reason
only: to place Nigerians on notice that they
were now under an iron, inflexible rule, under
governance by fear. The execution of that
youthful innocent for so he was, since the
punishment did not exist at the time of
commission – was nothing short of
premeditated murder, for which the
perpetrators should normally stand trial upon
their loss of immunity. Are we truly expected
to forget this violation of our entitlement to
security as provided under existing laws? And
even if our sensibilities have become blunted
by succeeding seasons of cruelty and
brutality, if power itself had so coarsened the
sensibilities also of rulers and corrupted their
judgment, what should one rightly expect
after they have been rescued from the snare
of power. At the very least, a revaluation,
leading hopefully to remorse, and its
expression to a wronged society. At the very
least, such a revaluation should engender
reticence, silence. In the case of Buhari, it
was the opposite. Since leaving office he has
declared in the most categorical terms that
he had no regrets over this murder and would
do so again. Human life is inviolate. The right
to life is the uniquely fundamental right on
which all other rights are based. The crime
that General Buhari committed against the
entire nation went further however,
inconceivable as it might first appear. That
crime is one of the most profound negations
of civic being. Not content with hammering
down the freedom of expression in general
terms, Buhari specifically forbade all public
discussion of a return to civilian, democratic
rule. Let us constantly applaud our media,
those battle scarred professionals did not
completely knuckle down.
They resorted to cartoons and oblique,
elliptical references to sustain the people’s
campaign for a time-table to democratic rule.
Overt agitation for a democratic time table
however remained rigorously suppressed
military dictatorship, and a specifically
incorporated in Buhari and Idiagbon was
here to stay. To deprive a people of volition
in their own political direction is to turn a
nation into a colony of slaves. Buhari
enslaved the nation. He gloated and gloried
in a master-slave relation to the millions of
its inhabitants. It is astonishing to find that
the same former slaves, now free of their
chains, should clamour to be ruled by one
who not only turned their nation into a slave
plantation, but forbade them any discussion
of their condition. So Tai Solarin is already
forgotten? Tai who stood at street corners,
fearlessly distributing leaflets that took up
the gauntlet where the media had dropped
it. Tai who was incarcerated by that regime
and denied even the medication for his
asthmatic condition? Tai did not ask to be
sent for treatment overseas; all he asked was
his traditional medicine that had proved so
effective after years of struggle with asthma!
Nor must we omit the manner of Buhari
coming to power and the pattern of his
corrective rule. Shagari’s NPN had already
run out of steam and was near universally
detested except of course by the handful
that still benefited from that regime of
profligacy and rabid fascism. Responsibility
for the national condition lay squarely at the
door of the ruling party, obviously, but
against whom was Buhari’s coup staged?
Judging by the conduct of that regime, it was
not against Shagari’s government but against
the opposition. The head of government, on
whom primary responsibility lay, was Shehu
Shagari. Yet that individual was kept in cozy
house detention in Ikoyi while his powerless
deputy, Alex Ekwueme, was locked up in Kiri-
kiri prisons. Such was the Buhari notion of
equitable apportionment of guilt and/or
responsibility.
And then the cascade of escapes of the
wanted, and culpable politicians. Manhunts
across the length and breadth of the nation,
roadblocks everywhere and borders tight as
steel zip locks. Lo and behold, the chairman
of the party, Chief Akinloye, strolled out
coolly across the border. Richard Akinjide,
Legal Protector of the ruling party, slipped
out with equal ease. The Rice Minister,
Umaru Dikko, who declared that Nigerians
were yet to eat from dustbins – escaped
through the same airtight dragnet. The
clumsy attempt to crate him home was
punishment for his ingratitude, since he went
berserk when, after waiting in vain, he
concluded that the coup had not been staged,
after all, for the immediate consolidation of
the party of extreme right-wing vultures, but
for the military hyenas. The case of the
overbearing Secretary-General of the party,
Uba Ahmed, was even more noxious. Uba
Ahmed was out of the country at the time.
Despite the closure of the Nigerian airspace,
he compelled the pilot of his plane to
demand special landing permission, since his
passenger load included the almighty Uba
Ahmed. Of course, he had not known of the
change in his status since he was airborne.
The delighted airport commandant, realizing
that he had a much valued fish swimming
willingly into a waiting net, approved the
request. Uba Ahmed disembarked into the
arms of a military guard and was promptly
clamped in detention.
Incredibly, he vanished a few days after and
reappeared in safety overseas. Those whose
memories have become calcified should
explore the media coverage of that saga.
Buhari was asked to explain the vanished act
of this much prized quarry and his response
was one of the most arrogant levity. Coming
from one who had shot his way into power
on the slogan of discipline, it was nothing
short of impudent. Shall we revisit the
tragicomic series of trials that landed several
politicians several lifetimes in prison? Recall,
if you please, the judicial processes
undergone by the septuagenarian Chief
Adekunle Ajasin. He was arraigned and tried
before Buhari’s punitive tribunal but
acquitted. Dissatisfied, Buhari ordered his re-
trial. Again, the Tribunal could not find this
man guilty of a single crime, so once again
he was returned for trial, only to be
acquitted of all charges of corruption or
abuse of office. Was Chief Ajasin thereby
released? No! He was ordered detained
indefinitely, simply for the crime of winning
an election and refusing to knuckle under
Shagari’s reign of terror. The conduct of the
Buhari regime after his coup was not merely
one of double, triple, multiple standards but
a cynical travesty of justice. Audu Ogbeh,
was one of the few figures of rectitude
within the NPN. Just as he has done in recent
times with the PDP, he played the role of an
internal critic and reformer, warning,
dissenting, and setting an example of probity
within his ministry. For that crime he spent
months in unjust incarceration.
Guilty by association? Well, if that was the
motivating yardstick of the administration of
the Buhari justice, then it was most
selectively applied.
The utmost severity of the Buhari-Idiagbon
justice was especially reserved either for the
opposition in general, or for those within the
ruling party who had showed the sheerest
sense of responsibility and patriotism.
Shall I remind this nation of Buhari’s
deliberate humiliating treatment of the Emir
of Kano and the Oni of Ife over their visit to
the state of Israel? I hold no brief for
traditional rulers and their relationship with
governments, but insist on regarding them as
entitled to all the rights, privileges and
responsibilities of any Nigerian citizen. This
royal duo went to Israel on their private
steam and private business. Simply because
the Buhari regime was pursuing some
antagonistic foreign policy towards Israel, a
policy of which these traditional rulers were
not a part, they were subjected on their
return to a treatment that could only be
described as a head masterly chastisement of
errant pupils. Since when, may one ask, did a
free citizen of the Nigerian nation require
the permission of a head of state to visit a
foreign nation that was willing to offer that
tourist a visa? One is only too aware that
some Nigerians love to point to Buhari’s
agenda of discipline as the shining jewel in
his scrap-iron crown. To inculcate discipline
however, one must lead by example, obeying
laws set down as guides to public probity.
Example speaks louder than declarations, and
rulers cannot exempt themselves from the
disciplinary structures imposed on the overall
polity, especially on any issue that seeks to
establish a policy for public well-being. The
story of the thirty something suitcases it
would appear that they were even closer to
fifty – found unavoidable mention in my
recent memoirs, YOU MUST SET FORTH AT
DOWN, written long before Buhari became
spoken of as a credible candidate. For the
exercise of a changeover of the national
currency, the Nigerian borders air, sea and
land had been shut tight.
Nothing was supposed to move in or out, not
even cattle egrets.
Yet a prominent camel was allowed through
that needles eye. Not only did Buhari
dispatch his aide-de-camp, Jokolo later to
become an emir- to facilitate the entry of
those cases, he ordered the redeployment as
I later discovered – of the Customs Officer
who stood firmly against the entry of the
contravening baggage. That officer, the
incumbent Vice-president is now a rival
candidate to Buhari, but has somehow, in the
meantime, earned a reputation that totally
contradicts his conduct at the time. Wherever
the truth lies, it does not redound to the
credibility of the dictator of that time,
General Buhari whose word was law, but
whose allegiances were clearly negotiable.
On the theme of double, triple, multiple
standards in the enforcement of the law, and
indeed of the decrees passed by the Buhari
regime at the time, let us recall the notorious
case of Triple Alhaji Alhaji Alhaji, then
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of
Finance. Who was caught, literally, with his
pants down in distant Austria. That was not
the crime however, and private conduct
should always remain restricted to the
domain of private censure.
There was no decree against civil servants
proving just as hormone driven as anyone
else, especially outside the nation’s borders.
However, there was a clear decree against
the keeping of foreign accounts, and this was
what emerged from the Austrian escapade.
Alhaji Alhaji kept, not one, but several
undeclared foreign accounts, and he had no
business being in possession of the large
amount of foreign currency of which he was
robbed by his overnight companion. The
media screamed for an even application of
the law, but Buhari had turned suddenly
deaf. By contrast, Fela Anikulapo languished
in goal for years, sentenced under that very
draconian decree. His crime was being in
possession of foreign exchange that he had
legitimately received for the immediate
upkeep of his band as they set off for an
international engagement. A vicious sentence
was slapped down on Fela by a judge who
later became so remorse stricken at least
after Buhari’s overthrow that he went to the
King of Afro-beat and apologized.
Lesser known was the traumatic experience
of the director of an international
communication agency, an affiliate of
UNESCO. Akin Fatoyinbo arrived at the
airport in complete ignorance of the new
currency decree. He was thrown in gaol in
especially brutal condition, an experience
from which he never fully recovered. It took
several months of high-level intervention
before that innocent man was eventually
freed. These were not exceptional but mere
sample cases from among hundreds of
others, victims of a decree that was
selectively applied, a decree that routinely
penalized innocents and ruined the careers
and businesses of many.
What else? What does one choose to include
or leave out? What precisely was Ebenezer
Babatope’s crime that he should have spent
the entire tenure of General Buhari in
detention?
Nothing beyond the fact that he once warned
in the media that Buhari was an ambitious
soldier who would bear watching through the
lenses of a coup-detat. Babatope’s father
died while he was in Buhari’s custody, the
dictator remained deaf to every plea that he
be at least released to attend his father’s
funeral, even under guard. I wrote an article
at the time, denouncing this pointless
insensitivity. So little to demand by a man
who was never accused of, nor tried for any
crime,much less found guilty. Such a load of
vindictiveness that smothered all traces of
basic human compassion deserves no further
comment in a nation that values its
traditions.
But then, speaking the truth was not what
Buhari, as a self-imposed leader, was
especially enamoured of enquire of Tunde
Thompson and Nduka Irabor both of whom,
faithful to their journalistic calling, published
nothing but the truth, yet ended up
sentenced under Buhari’s decree. Mind you,
no one can say that Buhari was not true to
his word. Shall tamper with the freedom of
the press swore the dictator immediately on
grabbing office, and this was exactly what he
did. And so on, and on, and on….
source. opinions.ng

Waiting for the PDP supporters to attack the 'small boy' OP

*munching pop corn and coke*

*yaaawnss*
Please someone should summarise this thing for me.