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.
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 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.
Nor must we omit the manner of Buhari coming to
power and the pattern of his corrective rule.
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 cosy house detention in
Ikoyi while his powerless deputy, Alex Ekwueme,
was locked up in Kirikiri prisons. Such was the
Buhari notion of equitable apportionment of guilt
and/or responsibility.
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.
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. For
the exercise of a changeover of the national
currency, the Nigerian borders air, sea and land
had been shut tight.
The story of the thirty something suitcases it
would appear that they were even closer to 50 –
found unavoidable mention in my recent memoirs,
YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DOWN. 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,
Mustapha 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.
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.
•Professor Wole Soyinka wrote this in 2011. It is
reproduced here for its contemporary relevance.

Abeg 1 bottle of Origin 4 oga Wole..

herald9:

We can't eat this yam without sauce...

sauce or not......
D food is true to taste