The worst thing that can happen to
Northern presidential aspirations in
2015 is for Buhari to be on the APC
ballot.
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 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 UnCloth 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 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, 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 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.


www.premiumtimesng.com/opinion/153674-buhari-will-never-president-nigeria-femi-aribisala.html

Well said