'BUHARI',the antidote to corruption-WHAT A HUGE LAUGH!!
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.

File photo; Tinubu and Buhari – leaders of ACN and CPC
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

Letter to Buhari from the grave of the innocents –
By Bashir Yusufu
Dear General Buhari; I would’ve addressed this letter privately to you, but in the expectation that you may not receive it, I decided to make it an Open Letter, in the hope that you would stumble on it, read it and hopefully feel some of the pains and anguish that have been my lot. Having said that, permit me therefore to proceed with the rest of this missive from the grave of innocents departed.
Last night, while I was at my modest home in Katsina, relaxing and probably half-awake, I heard the voice of my cousin who was killed in the North in April 2011 during the post-election violence instigated by your loss of the presidential election. With bloodshot sad eyes, my cousin, looking apparition-like, was wailing “Gen Buhari, why why”. My cousin’s name is (or was) Mallam Yusuf Danfulani, a bright young lad originally from Katsina State, who was slaughtered in cold blood and set on fire by youths chanting “Sai Buhari”, like they are again now chanting in 2015.
Gen Buhari, in case you have forgotten, Yusuf was slaughtered in your name even though he never did any wrong to you, and even voted for you against Dr Jonathan. He lost his life just because the murderers you encouraged by your many hate speeches believed Yusuf to be from middle belt or southern Nigeria, most probably because of his bulky looks and brave, patriotic attempts to prevent the killing of an innocent Youth Corper, Ukeoma Ikechukwu. Even though he cried out in Hausa and Fulfulde, he was still not believed by those you (Buhari) managed to brainwash to see all non-Fulani Nigerians as conspiring to vote against you. In this very case, Yusuf voted for you but his ‘Sai Buhari’ killers never believed he did. Like you, Gen Buhari, the mob was baying for the blood of innocents.
If not for Yusuf’s best friend who was with him and was himself nearly killed, we would not have recognized his charred body that was burnt beyond recognition. And thanks to the same friend for recounting to us the little he could make out at the last moments of Yusuf’s life, the agony he passed through and the most important words he uttered before he gave up. It is the same words I heard him utter last night from the grave: ‘Gen Buhari, why why’. Yet, to this day, you (Buhari) have not cared to apologize or show any remorse, but you instead offered lame excuses for the bloodletting you had instigated, and still instigate. I now ask you this: Gen Buhari, must you always shade blood, like you started doing from 1983, to rule Nigeria? Do you recall how you killed Brigadier Bako in 1983 just so you could take power by force from Shehu Shagari?
General Buhari, Ukeoma Ikechukwu himself was reported missing that same day Yusuf was murdered by your supporters, and finally confirmed dead the following day when his charred remains was discovered in a hooded area. Apparently, your supporters had dragged him out of the open and tortured him before finally snuffing life out of him. Like my cousin, Yusuf, Ukeoma was very young and an innocent. Unlike Dr. Jonathan, they were not contesting against you. Yet, when they were killed, part of Nigeria was killed with them; the same Nigeria that you are now angrily campaigning to rule.
Yusuf and Ukeoma were not alone. Six other innocent Youth Corpers were also murdered in Bauchi, where you Buhari, polled 1,315,209 votes (almost 82 per cent), defeating Dr Jonathan who scored 258,404 votes and did not even hit the 25 per cent mark. The corps members were reportedly chased to a police station where they sought refuge. But the rioters, who were raving mad with bloodlust and chanting “Sai Buhari”, overran the station and murdered the young Nigerians in cold blood. So, Gen Buhari, as you can see from the Bauchi result and it’s aftermath, your supporters even shade blood when you win; still you have no qualms. Today, you are prancing around the nation, arrogant and angry as usual, behaving like you have already won the election; and thus setting up another bloodletting if you are not announced winner.
The story of Obinna Okpokiri is as heart-wrenching as Yusuf’s. The 27-year-old was butchered and burnt to ashes, in the service of his fatherland. Okpokiri’s own circumstances were as gruesome as they could be. He had run to the Corpers’ Lodge as the rampaging ‘Sai Buhari’ rioters targeted Youth Corper polling officers recruited by INEC for the election. As painful death loomed, the young Nigerians contemplated fleeing to the barracks. But they were not lucky enough. Your ‘Sai Buhari’ supporters caught up with them, slaughtered and set them on fire. Like Yusuf, these innocents are human beings and future leaders on the last laps of fulfilling their national duty before moving on to a bright future. But it was not to be because, in your name, Gen Buhari, they were slaughtered, sliced, soaked in petrol and scorched. Reduced to ashes in minutes and in the most callous fashion by those that are not better citizens or humans than them.
General Buhari, while you are now busy inciting another violence, please bear in mind that in 2011, your supporters turned violent in whole 12 northern states as they burned the homes, vehicles, and properties of innocent Nigerians, some of whom are also Muslims and Northerners like you and my cousin Yusuf. Your ‘Sai Buhari’ supporters also targeted and killed Christians and members of southern Nigerian ethnic groups, who were seen as supporting the PDP, and they burnt churches across the north. One particular attack in Bauchi stood out as most heart-breaking. According to Human Rights Watch, on April 17 in Giade, a rural town in northern Bauchi, ‘Sai Buhari’ mobs attacked youth corps members in the town. The Corpers, who were mostly from Yoruba, ran to the local police station to seek refuge, but the mobs stormed the police station. The mob killed the police officer on duty and burned down the police station. They raped two of the female youth corps members and then hacked them to death with machetes, along with five male youth corps members. In total, rioters killed ten youth corps members in that town alone.
A lecturer at the Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic, Zaria, Kaduna State, described to Human Rights Watch how a mob of Muslims chanting “Change, Sai Buhari” attacked and killed several Christian students, a Christian lecturer and four Muslim students suspected of being PDP sympathizers on April 17: He said “Between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m., they entered the school chanting slogans and shouting: “Where are the Christians and Muslims that supported the ruling party?” They had painted their faces black and were shouting that they needed “change”, the Congress for Progressive Change campaign slogan. The mob had all sorts of weapons – machetes, sticks, and clubs. They started breaking the glass on the buildings. The students ran away but the mob pursued them into the staff quarters and they had nowhere to go. The mob beat them to death. The lecturer they killed was Yoruba“.
Finally, Gen Buhari, let me end this letter by asking you this question: When are you going to apologize to me, to Yusuf’s aged parents, to Ukeoma’s parents, to parents of all innocents murdered by your brainwashed supporters, to Nigeria and to mankind? And here is Yusuf again, asking you from the grave: “Gen Buhari, why why”.
Bashir Yusufu.
yusufubashir@yahoo.com