Our attention has been drawn to the recent call
by Pastor Ayodele Oritsejafor,
President of
Christian Association of Nigeria
(CAN ), for the
arrest of General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) – the
national leader of the Congress for
Progressive
Change (CPC) – on account of his
recent
commentaries on national issues. We are aware
that this is a rehash of the stance of
Pastor Ayo
Oritsejafor to a previous piece of
mendacious
writing by Dr Reuben Abati in his Guardian
Newspaper column, wherein he
alluded to GMB as
being responsible for post-election
violence in
some parts of the North in April, 2011. The
subsequent libel suit instituted by
GMB revealed
that Abati had no shred of evidence
for his
reckless surmising. Meanwhile, Pastor Ayo
Oritsejafor had used the platform of
CAN to
impetuously seek the arrest of GMB
based on
fiction and orchestrated literary violence by the
PDP-led Federal Government. The
subsequent
appointment of Dr. Reuben Abati as
the Special
Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on media
and Publicity revealed the fitting
reward for that
hatchet job. We have also noted the
physical
presence of President Good-luck Jonathan at the
ceremony where Pastor Ayo
Oritsejafor was
presented a gift of Bombardier Jet on
10th
November, 2012. The kernel of the latest orchestrated
distortion of
GMB’s recent commentaries was
done to blacken
him as supporting the insurgency of
Boko Haram in Nigeria. In fact, Pastor Oritsejafor
impudently
asserted:
“He is, therefore, the prime leader of
this religious
and blood thirsty sect called Boko Haram, a
movement that is based on a warped
interpretation of a strict adherence to
force
people of other religions into Islam.
This kind of fundamentalism is the driving force
behind his
failure of each election in the
country.”
It is our view that this statement is
utterly tendentious and unsupportable by
incontrovertible facts. We are aware
that, as it was
before and after the 2011 elections,
Pastor Ayo
Oritsejafor is keen on helping the electoral
fortunes of his friend, President
Good-luck
Jonathan. We are therefore
compelled to re-tell
GMB’s uncompromising stand on Boko Haram.
In a recent interview in June 2012,
this is what
GMB said on Boko Haram:
“When we knew who was Maitatsine,
wasn’t he arrested, killed and his corpse shown
to
everybody? But this Boko Haram, if
you could
recall somebody recommended me
to represent Boko Haram. I told them the honest
truth that I
didn’t know who their leadership was
and I still
don’t know who their leaders are. I
don’t know their philosophy because no religion
advocates
hurting the innocent. So, all those
people giving it
a religious meaning are wrong. You
can’t kill a person and say Allahu Akbar (God is
great). It is
either you don’t know what you are
saying or you
don’t believe in it. It is one of the
two.” On 25th December, 2012 (Christmas
day),
bombings took place at the St.
Theresa’s Catholic
Church, Madalla, Niger State; Jos,
Plateau State; and Damaturu, Yobe State. This is
what GMB said:
"Bombing other human beings to
death at any
time is callous. It becomes much
more reprehensible on a Christmas day
and all lovers of
peace must condemn these
gruesome acts and
demand that the perpetrators be
fished out and brought to book."
The amiable General and our
National leader
continued:
"How on earth would the Vatican and
the British authorities speak before the Nigerian
government
on attacks within Nigeria that have
led to the
deaths of our citizens? This is clearly
a failure of leadership at a time the government
needs to
assure the people of the capacity to
guarantee the
safety of lives and property. You
can devote the entire budget to security and there
won't be any
result if there is no competence in
leadership to
know what to do at the right time."
We leave discerning Nigerians to judge and see
the anomaly in Pastor Oritsejafor’s
reckless call
and GMB’s unwavering patriotic
stand on Nigeria’s
insecurity. Again, Pastor Oritsejafor has proven to
be, a willing implement for
destabilization in the
hands of the Presidency, in the
orchestrated
heckling of GMB ahead of the 2015 elections.
As we shall prove shortly, the moral
rectitude,
personal discipline and patriotic love
for Nigeria
by GMB is head and shoulder above what the
current leaders of the Nation
possess. GMB is not
in the mould of leaders that do not
match their
words with deeds. In the run to the 2011 election,
Dr. Good-luck Jonathan told an
unsuspecting
Nation: “My ambition is not worth the
blood of
anybody.” But truly, his electioneering campaign
was trailed by blood, tears and
woes! As a ruling
President, Dr Good-luck Jonathan
has caused more
destabilization of the polity through his capricious
politics than any of his predecessors
in office.
Under his watch, the Nation state is
tottering and
statecraft in peril, but he prefers to use negative
propaganda against those he
perceives as
interested in contesting for the
Nation’s
presidency, to actually evincing enviable
leadership of the country.
There are certain incongruities in the
Nation state
under President Jonathan that GMB
has continued to sensitize Nigerians about, and for
which the
government has continued to distort
with its
divisive weapon of preying on the
ethno-religious fault lines in the Country.
· In 2009, Mohammed Yussuff, the
leader of Boko
Haram, was arrested by the military
and handed
over to the Nigeria Police. He was paraded with
hand-cuff before Journalists. Barely
twenty four
hours’ later, Yussuff’s lifeless body
was shown to
Journalists and still in hand-cuff! In a related
development, persons suspected to
be Boko Haram
members or sympathizers were shot
by the Police
at point-blank range. The video footage of the
incident posted by al-Jazeera
showed some of the
people on crutches and made to lay
face-down
before a police man bent over and summarily
executed them all.
This act of cruel injustice, coupled
with the official
acquiescence of the PDP-led
Federal Government of President Good-luck Jonathan
was what GMB
said to be the genesis of the bloody
insurgency of
Boko haram.
· In Baga, a fishing community in Borno State, a
Nigerian Soldier was killed. The
ensuing reprisal
attack by the Military left in excess of
185 persons
dead – mostly children and women – and many
houses destroyed.
· The previous prosecution of the
war on terror in
northern Nigeria had been done with
such unprofessional ferocity that left tales
of human
rights abuses and extra-judicial
murders. The
United States of America (USA) had
pilloried the Nigerian military for this. It is on this
background
that GMB expressed his scepticism
about the
current declaration of state of
emergency in three northern states. With the
communication black-
out over these states, are we not to
expect more
abuses in the name of enforcing
security? · In May, 2013, about 60 security
men (consisting
of police and State security
operatives) were
allegedly gruesomely murdered in
Nasarawa by the Ombatse cult group. In a bizarre twist
of the
events, the Director-General of
Directorate of State
Security (DSS), Mr. Ita Ekpeyong,
said he had forgiven the killers of the service
men and left
them to God’s judgment. GMB, in his
characteristic candour, lambasted
the head of
Nigeria’s spy agency for this perfidious statement.
These are his exact words:
“However, the Nasarawa
attack is a cult that infiltrated the
police itself.
The latest I learnt from you the press is that the
number of security personnel killed
is 56. The cult
group slaughtered 56 security men.
The SSS boss
or whoever that said he has left everything to God
has no right to do that.
Constitutionally, Nigerians can
practice any
religion they want or they can be
atheists or anything they want to be, that is
constitutional.
But nobody should hurt a citizen of
Nigeria and
then get away with it, not to talk of
slaughtering 56 law enforcement agents and then
somebody
coming out from the system to say
such a thing.
It is either that person doesn’t know
what he was talking about or he shouldn’t even
be there.”
In many jurisdictions, notably the
advanced
democracies, any murderous
violence on the service men is viewed with
uncompromising
severity. In the same vein, there is
also a
concomitant punishment of the
service men for any breach of service codes or rules
of
engagement.
Last March, Staff Sergeant Robert
Bales, a veteran
of four US combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq,
ran amok and killed sixteen persons
in Kandahar
province of Afghanistan, while also
burning their
houses and villages. The United States (US)
authority did not go the way of
Nigeria. The
offending service man was arraigned
before the
Court by military prosecutors. From latest
developments on the case, Bales
stands the risk of
life imprisonment or death sentence.
We have
stated this example to show the utter irresponsibility and ineptitude
currently pervading
the business of governance in the
Nigerian state.
The Federal Government, under
President Good- luck Jonathan, had shown complicity
in the
exacerbation of security concerns in
Nigeria.
As a Party, we know that the Federal
Government of President Good-Luck Jonathan,
like the previous
PDP administration, seems too
intimidated by
GMB’s sterling qualities and previous
meritorious service to Nigeria that no effort is
spared to
depreciate his status through
deliberate
distortions and misrepresentation of
his statements. We sincerely
sympathise with them!
For the avoidance of doubt and
within the ambit
of space/time constraints, we hereby
avail discerning Nigerians some aspects
of the stellar
public service performance of
General
Muhammadu Buhari (GMB):
§ In August 1975, as a Lt. Colonel, GMB was
appointed military governor of North-
Eastern State,
an area now comprising the six
states of the North
East geo-political zone. He governed with such
acuity and urbanity that was
undoubtedly the
basis for the future development of
the area.
§ As Federal Commissioner for Petroleum resources
(March 1976-July 1978), two of the
Nation’s four
refineries, that is, warri and Kaduna,
were built.
Also, thousands of kms of pipelines and fuel
depots were constructed.
§ In 1983, the patriotic fervour of
GMB was rudely
put to test when the Chadians, in a
mindless expansionist adventure, invaded and
occupied 19
Islands in Lake Chad within Nigerian
territory. As
the General Officer Commanding
(GOC) the 3rd Armoured corps, GMB successfully
carried out a
blockade, forcing the return of the
territories -and
thereafter pursued the Chadians as
far as 50kms into Chadian territory; a feat loudly
applauded as
forward defence strategy at its best!
§ As the incoming Head of State on
December
31st, 1983, he aroused the Nigerian people into a
new wave of Patriotism with his
often-quoted
statement: “This generation of
Nigerians, and
indeed future generations, have no country other
than Nigeria. We shall remain and
salvage it
together.” This aptly captured what
later defined
the conduct of the Buhari administration. The 20-
month era of strong leadership
espoused what
later became known as
‘Buharinomics’, which
simply put, is an admixture of frugality, probity,
respect for contractual agreements,
expunction of
all covert or overt attempts at
subjugating the
Nigerian economy to world powers and above all,
the economic policy with Nigeria as
the centre-
piece. It is therefore without any whiff
of
equivocation to state that the boldest attempt, in
the last thirty years, at alleviating
the pains of the
teeming masses was during the
enactment of
Buharinomics. It was not surprising that inflation
rate inherited from the ruinous and
immediate
past civilian regime was lowered by
more than 18
points, from 23.2% in 1983 to 5.5% in 1985! The
Buhari regime rebuffed all entreaties
by IMF and
World Bank to devalue the naira,
remove subsidies
on services and increase pump price on fuel; not
even a special envoy from President
Ronald
Reagan was sufficient to make him
rescind his
decision! § As Executive Chairman of the
Petroleum Trust
Fund (PTF), hundreds of kms of
roads were
constructed to hitherto unreached
rural communities. He ensured the supply
of drugs to
the health centres of Educational
institutions. The
infrastructural development of the
Country was massive with his inimitable
management of the
funds released for PTF operations. It
is no wonder
that the subsequent scrutiny of the
financial dealings of the PTF showed an
excellent work done
by the agency.
It is against this back-drop that we
understand
the frustrations of the current leaders and their
sympathizers in the heckling
expeditions of GMB.
As things stand, he poses the
greatest challenge
to the continued existence of the indignity and
incongruity that the Jonathan
administration
represents. The tottering edifice of
the weather-
beaten umbrella of the People’s Democratic Party
(PDP) is aptly captured by the well-
reasoned words
of Othman Dan Fodio: “a kingdom
can endure with
unbelief but it cannot endure with injustice”.
As GMB once posited, “the battle for
social justice
is not just for me, or the opposition,
but a
challenge to all Nigerians. Each and everyone of us
has a duty to stand up and speak for
justice. The
first principle of justice in a
democracy is the
right of the citizens to freely choose their leaders.
This can only happen if elections are
free and fair,
not according to INEC or a bare
majority of the
Supreme Court. They must be free and fair by all
counts and in all senses.”
In the run to the April 2011 elections,
GMB saw
through the entire gamut of
deception of the Jonathan regime and wept. Many
jeered, some
excoriated him but the discerning
ones were also
inconsolable. Unfortunately, his
tears are drying up but the teeming Nigerian people
are now
made to weep. Every act of the
Jonathan regime is
a scripted venture in ruinous
adventure. There is confusion in the engine room and
the statecraft is
on auto-pilot. We are sure that
though the
situation is sordid, help is on the
way! The merger of the opposition parties shall
provide the fulcrum
for springing the Nigerian nation
back to life.
Indeed, to wrestle Nigeria from the
vice-grip of the current unpatriotic leaders is a
task that must
be done. Eternal vigilance is still the
price for our
liberty.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC

Go and tell Buhari and anango to always learn to control what come out of their shit mouth.