ONE month ago, the APC had whipped its
supporters into frenzy in believing it is bound to
win an election it really has no chance of winning.
In truth, if the election had been conducted then
for chairman of the EFCC, Muhammadu Buhari
would have been declared winner by a landslide.
However, with postponement of the election, a lot
of water has passed under the bridge. Even
Buhari’s self-styled credential as Mr. Integrity has
unraveled.
Buhari’s entire campaign posture for the 2015
presidential election stands on two shaky
grounds. He fashions himself as Mr. Integrity; the
implacable enemy of corruption in Nigeria. He is
the one who reportedly is going to ensure that
corruption is a thing of the past in Nigeria. He is
also the one who is going to destroy the Boko
Haram in the twinkling of an eye; even though a
number of months ago, he was negotiating for
amnesty and golden handshakes for the
insurgents, and they nominated him as their
preferred middleman in any truce negotiation with
Nigeria.
Buhari’s disappearance
Things have not gone too well for the Buhari
campaign since the postponement of the election.
He did not help things by disappearing off the
political radar for virtually two weeks. By the time
he re-surfaced, Boko Haram was toast. We no
longer needed Buhari’s vain promissory notes to
deal with the insurgency. One after another, town
after town were recovered from the Boko Haram.
In many respects, they have been routed as the
Nigerian army came into its own after having
received its new consignment of weapons.
As a result, we are no longer hearing anything
from Buhari about whipping Boko Haram. All he
had left was his anti-corruption mantra. But that
one also came to grief with the airing of AIT’s
tripartite documentary entitled: “The Lion of
Bourdillon.” This alleged that Bola Tinubu, the
self-styled national leader of the APC, is steeped
in corruption. It claims Tinubu is the biggest
landlord in Lagos, and maintains he has acquired
so much property through very sharp practices.
While the veracity of these allegations is yet to be
ascertained beyond reasonable doubt, the
documentary has brought to the fore the flies in
the anti-corruption ointment of Buhari. The truth
is that corruption in Nigeria is not the exclusive
preserve of the PDP. It is also the chronic ailment
of the APC. Neither is corruption only the malaise
of the Federal Government; it is equally the
malaise of state governments, including those
ruled by the APC. Indeed, Murtala Nyako of the
APC was impeached and removed as governor of
Adamawa State partly because it was alleged that
he had corruptly enriched himself with
government funds.
The question then is this: Does Buhari’s so-called
zero-tolerance for corruption extend to his APC
colleagues? Will Buhari, in the unlikely event that
he becomes president, go after APC thieves as
well as PDP thieves? Or will he turn a blind eye to
APC thieves and molly-cuddle them? Suddenly,
the anti-corruption searchlight turned on to Buhari
and his friends, and just as suddenly, we
discovered what some of us have always known:
that Buhari, the Emperor of Anti-Corruption, has
no clothes.
Buhari’s response to the issue of corruption in
APC ranks reeked with sheer hypocrisy and
double-standards. Like charity, Buhari’s anti-
corruption must begin at home in the APC if it is
to be credible. However, Buhari is not inclined to
prosecute his friends. Instead, he came up with a
pronouncement that virtually rubbished his anti-
corruption posture. He said: “Whoever that is
indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of
swearing-in, would be pardoned. I am going to
draw a line, anybody who involved himself in
corruption after I assume office, will face the
music.”
Insurance for corrupt supporters
This means as long as you steal money between
1999 and 2011, you have nothing to fear under a
Buhari presidency. This is, of course, an
insurance policy for his corrupt supporters,
assuring them that they would have nothing to
fear by giving him their vote. Buhari did not come
out in strident support of Bola Tinubu. He did not
come out to tell the world that, contrary to the
AIT documentary, the Bola Tinubu he knows is a
man of unimpeachable integrity. Instead, he told
the world that if there are thieves among his
friends, they can rest assured that he would
pardon their thievery.
When President Jonathan pardoned the former
governor of Bayelsa, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a
man who had been convicted of corruption and
was a refugee from justice from Britain, Nigerians
were incensed. This was rightly seen as the
president condoning corruption. One would have
thought this kind of thing would not occur with a
man who talks anti-corruption day and night.
However, in the case of Buhari, he would not only
pardon one corrupt associate, he would pardon
them all.
When asked how he was going to get funds to
revitalise the economy, Buhari stated that he was
going to get all corrupt past leaders and officials
cough out their stolen money. This was nothing
but a nonsensical policy. It is bizarre and odd for
Buhari to think he can run Nigeria, revamp the
educational system for example, by recovering
stolen money. Where will he get this money
from? Who will give it to him? Would such
recovered money not amount to a storm in the
teacup?
But now that he has dumped this anti-corruption
charade in favour of a blanket pardon for the
corrupt, it is clear that political reality is beginning
to erode Buhari’s highfalutin campaign
grandstanding. It is equally significant that
Buhari’s new stance on corruption comes
coincidentally after AIT documentary on “The Lion
of Bourdillon,” where one of his most important
allies was accused of corruption. Clearly, it is high
time Buhari stopped deluding Nigerians that he is
genuinely anti-corruption and that he can
eradicate corruption in Nigeria by sending corrupt
politicians to jail.
Buhari was Nigeria’s head-of-state for a period of
18 months in the 1980s. At the time, he ran so
rough-shod over the Nigerian judicial system that
the Nigerian Bar Association proscribed Nigerian
lawyers from appearing in any of Buhari’s
kangaroo courts. Buhari sent both corrupt and
non-corrupt politicians to jail, sometimes for up to
300 years. Nevertheless, corruption was not
eradicated. It continued unabated because it was
not addressed structurally. Even the practice
under Obasanjo of shooting armed robbers by
firing squad in Bar Beach failed to stop armed
robbery. All it did was to brutalise the Nigerian
public.
Jonathan’s effective approach
Surely, the more reasonable and effective method
is to remove the avenues for corruption. This is
what Goodluck Jonathan has been doing. He has
sanitized the payroll system by removing some
50,000 ghost-workers, saving the country a
whopping N200 billion in the first instance. He
has removed the fertilizer middlemen; saving
Nigeria hundreds of billions of naira. He has
sanitized the electoral register. Over three million
ghost voters have been removed; one million in
Zamfara State alone. He is going after corruption
in the oil sector with the Petroleum Industry Bill.
In the vainglorious case of Buhari, it did not help
matters that he fought corruption with corruption.
He interfered blatantly in the judicial process. The
judge who sent Fela to jail later went to apologise
to him in hospital afterwards that he did it under
government duress. Nevertheless, some members
of the Nigerian public, baying for the blood of
corrupt politicians, hanker back to the high-
handed days of the Buhari era, when the human
rights of innocent Nigerians were violated on the
altar of anti-corruption, and some Nigerians were
even judicially murdered under heinous
retroactive decrees.
What Buhari is not telling them is that he has no
power to do this under today’s democratic
dispensation. Buhari goes on the stomp and
says: “When we come into power, anyone who
steals Nigerian money will end up in Kirikiri
Maximum Prisons. We are going to make sure
that Nigeria’s wealth belongs only to Nigerians.”
But the truth of the matter is that, in a
democracy, the president does not have the
judicial power to send anybody to Kirikiri. If the
EFCC does not prosecute, the president cannot
become the chairman of the EFCC. If the judges
do not convict, Buhari cannot transform himself
into a judge.
Deceived electorate
All those who have been deceived into believing
that Buhari will just become president and begin
to lock up corrupt politicians left, right and centre
are dreaming. In the unlikely event that Buhari
becomes president, he will neither have the power
to do so, nor the inclination to do so. The reason
is simple: many of the thieves are his friends and
allies in the APC. Buhari talks change, but he is
running around with the old breed of politicians.
You can always tell a lot about a man by the
composition and character of his friends.
Buhari fashions himself as Mr. Integrity,
nevertheless, he was not averse to serve under
Sani Abacha, one of the most corrupt heads-of-
state in the history of Nigeria. Even more
significant, Buhari insisted that Abacha was not
corrupt at all. On the 10th anniversary of
Abacha’s death, Buhari told incredulous Nigerians
that all the allegations of looting the treasury
leveled against Abacha were “baseless.” He said:
“ten years after Abacha, those allegations remain
unproven because of lack of facts.”
Buhari held this position in spite of the millions of
dollars of Abacha’s loot recovered from banks
around the world, and in spite of the fact that the
Abacha’s family signed a formal agreement to
return over $1 billion of such monies to the
Nigerian government. We can see therefore that,
from the point of view of Buhari, only the PDP
has the copyright on corruption. Every allegation
of corruption leveled against his friends and
financiers must surely be “baseless.”
It is this kind of double standard that prompted
Buhari to jail Vice-president Ekwueme while only
putting President Shagari under house arrest.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti poked fun at this in one of his
songs. He said: “Driver commit accident Buhari
lock conductor.” Given the many corrupt drivers
that abound in Buhari’s APC’s, we can anticipate
that he will only be interested in locking up
conductors in the unlikely event that he ever
becomes president.



www.vanguardngr.com/2015/03/buhari-and-the-lion-of-bourdillon/

All this writeup wont save GEJ. We want change period

Pastor of hell

Change is all we need in this country.

I love reading Femi article beacause its insightful and factual based, Femi has been known to give APC a full exposee about their propaganda and lies. Ride on Femi let's deal wit APC on a factual basis

#Change the changer. Good write up. God bless Nigeria.

See another mumu na jona dollars dey make u talk rubbish abi

I have decided to march 4 buhari and vote for him


♥♥TEAM GMB♥♥

Buhari, the moronic dullard was hit below the belt.

Buhari, the moronic dullard was hit below the belt. He need to change himself first

GEJ till 2019.

#ihavedecided.

Had always thought if Buhari would probe past deeds, would probably have been the best way... Including the thieving you know.

Now, not so sure anymore. There needs to be a genuine
changer from somewhere, certainly not Buhari or Jonathan with the facts on ground.