-War Against Indiscipline (WAI): On the 20th of March 1984, the Buhari/Idiagbon regime launched this programme that many Nigerians will remember biting their fingers and desperately preventing a tear from dropping ….lmao! Not a few will forget the koboko (horse whip) lashes that lacerated their backs when they became unruly at bus-stops or littered the environment. And if you fail to do the environmental sanitation activities at that time, you don enter one chance be dat. Just pray that a miracle will occur and Idiagbon’s WAI Brigades (set up in each state under the Ministry of Information and Culture) do not catch you.

The essence of WAI was to instill discipline and order in a society that has now all but broken down as far as morality and etiquette were concerned. Today, indiscipline and entropy reign in the Nigerian society. Even while outside the country, quite a lot of Nigerians are thoroughly indisciplined, shouting at airports, making noise inside the aircraft (or refusing to switch off phones or use seat belts), fighting over things that will leave you smh..ing, not obeying simple instructions in their host countries and all sorts of abanilojuje behaviour.

Nigeria surely needs a new version of WAI, with vigorous implementation from the Presidency downwards because the level of entropy today is alarming. Soldiers beat up policemen, civilians are regularly harassed by uniformed men to the point that many ‘bloody civilians’ think it is a normal thing…and so on, and so on. WAI was first launched in Kano by the late Major General Tunde Idiagbon.

As far as the Buhari regime was concerned, indiscipline was the major obstacle to Nigeria’s social, political and economic development and that if national development was to be made, then Nigerians must (whether they like it or not) accept discipline as a way of life ‘at a personal, government, corporate and institutional levels’. Even if they made some mistakes, they were right about that one, and today, our society still stinks to the high heavens with indiscipline. Yes, and a megadose of corruption. The WAI programme was executed under five phases:

-Queue culture (it really annoys me when I get to an ATM and we cannot form just a single line. We just crowd round the whole machine and start saying ‘Ehs, Aunty, Ayudilastpesinondilayn? Please ayam at your back‘ then you go sit down or hang somewhere and have yeye gist with a friend, wasting precious time of national productivity. I am yet to get to an ATM and see Nigerians queue up neatly in a line, not to talk of campus bus-stops, iyen tie worse or filling stations. So much chaos everywhere).

-Work ethic (unless you threaten civil servants with query and sack, many will not arrive punctually or prefer to sell all sorts of things in the office, from Tianshi herbal tea to GNLD vitamins. But honestly, can you really blame them?)

-Nationalism and patriotism (for where? Nbo? Pa kini? Kilonjebe?) If a slave ship berths today at Apapa and the sailor calls that it is a slave ship going to America, it will be full in less than 30 minutes.

-Corruption and economic sabotage (dat one na one a per-second basis)

-Environmental sanitation (go and tell that one to Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji, the Ochendu Ibeku, the Ohazurume of Abia South and the Utuagbaigwe of Ngwaland (our leaders and megalomania of pathological proportions sha). Just make sure that tourists do not see those mountains of dirt and refuse in Aba. Ariaria ‘International’ Market nko? Make I no talk sef). Same goes for Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State. This one that they haff opened Soprait and many pipu will go and do som sopin, I just hope that the Mount Kilimanjaro of refuse in Ibadan do not become an Everest overnight. Ajumodoti o kin shey inkan toda o…lol! #JustSaying…lol! Not that other states are extremely neat too o…lol!

Buhari and Idiagbon focused on these five areas with their WAI policy. They no doubt had good intentions to instil a cultural revolution and value reorientation into the psyche of the Nigerian but it was not to be. And it remains so, as you read this.

-Also, General Buhari dealt mercilessly with religious fundamentalists during his era. In February and March 1984, the Maitatsine sect under the leadership of Musa Makaniki unleashed terror on the populace in Yola, Adamawa State and about 1,000 lives were lost. Buhari had to send in federal troops to crush the extremists. A similar event would occur in 1985 under Buhari.

-On the 3rd of February, 1984, members of the National Security Organization (NSO) arrested an American businesswoman, Mrs. Marie McBroom at gunpoint. The lady was on Nigerian soil during the December coup and decided to stay behind and finish her business deals involving food material and petroleum for her import-export enterprise that she just opened. She was not the only one arrested, there was another female tycoon, Dorothy Davies and both of them were accused of trying to buy crude oil without getting a licence for export. Both were bundled to an interrogation unit at the NSO headquarters before being flung into the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons. Davies spent 40 days and 40 nights…lol in jail before she was released while the American woman languished in jail for nine good months before she was arraigned before a military panel made up of four members on the 30th of November, 1984. Probably more than any other body in the nation, the NSO was granted incredibly wide powers of arrest and detention and decrees were handed out to back this. There was the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree Number 2 of 1984, under which the NSO could detain anyone they feel is a security risk. Under this obnoxious and tyrannical decree, one can be detained for three straight months in two tranches which could be renewed. There was also the authoritarian Decree 4 under which it was a punishable offence for anyone to publish any material that was deemed as embarrassing to any government official. On the 11th of April, 1984, operatives of the NSO arrested two journalists: Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, of the Guardian newspaper and before you could spell KAI, they were brought before a Special Military Tribunal led by Justice Olalere Ayinde and accused of falsely accusing public officials even if what the journalists wrote was on point. on the 2nd of June, 1984, a summon from the tribunal was sent to the accused and it read:

Form 2 Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree No. 4 of 1984 summon to accused. “That you Tunde Thompson and Nduka Iraboh of The Guardian Newspaper, Limited, Rutam House, Isolo on April 1, 1984 at Rutam House, Isolo in Lagos, did publish “False statement contrary to section 1(1) of the Decree No. 4 of 1984. You are therefore summoned to appear before the Tribunal mentioned above sitting at Federal High Court on the 4th day of June at the hour of 9.00 a.m in the forenoon to answer the said complaint”. Their employer, Guardian Newspapers Limited was also accused.

-The Umaru Dikko Affair: On the 5th of July, 1984, a team of Nigerian security operatives (led by Major Mohammed Yusufu) and Israeli katsas (field intelligence officers from the MOSSAD, Israel’s national intelligence agency, also called the world’s most efficient killing machine) were on hand to kidnap and bundle back to Nigeria, a former minister of transportation during the Shagari era (as Shagari’s in-law, he also had extreme influence in the government). His name is Alhaji Umar Dikko. After Shagari was overthrown, Dikko vanished into the thin air only to resurface in the United Kingdom where he stayed in exile.

Then came Buhari and his anti-corruption goons, and they were bent on getting their hands on people like Dikko, who was accused of stealing $1 billion before negotiating with his legs. Thus, he was drugged, put into a crate and labelled as ‘Diplomatic Baggage’. An empty Nigerian Airways Boeing 707 plane was already waiting at the Stansted Airport waiting for him to be ‘extradited’ back to Nigeria (I laugh so hard each time I remember this story, sounds like a comedy-filled drama). Just at the last moment, one of the eagle-eyed British officers at the airport noticed some unusual activity and demanded a thorough search. The Nigerian team of ‘kidnappers’ had rented an apartment and actually posed as refugees seeking asylum from Buhari’s regime while the Israeli guys disguised as anti-apartheid activists and tourists from Africa…lol!

Later on, the team combed all the high-brow areas of London, sifted through the registries but saw no trace of Dikko until one day when one of the Israelis sighted him while driving. He parked and trailed Dikko to his home. The Director of MOSSAD, Nahum Admoni was immediately contacted and an Israeli consultant anaesthetist was hired to administer anaesthetic agents to Dikko and fit in an endotracheal tube to prevent him from choking to death in his own saliva.

The next day, Dikko was abducted right in front of his home and put in a van driven by Yusufu. And off to the airport, where he was passed off as ‘diplomatic luggage’ from the Nigerian embassy. Dikko said in an interview with the BBC in 1985:

“I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head – and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs.”

Unfortunately for them, Dikko’s secretary, Elizabeth Hayes, had witnessed the abduction and she alerted the authorities thinking it was an act by criminals, even the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was informed. And again, they failed to actually label the crate as diplomatic baggage and as the airport officials were clearing the ‘cargo’, a list arrived alerting them of a kidnap. That was how the plan was foiled. The crate was opened just minutes before the plane was to take off and inside it was Dikko, without shoes, socks or shirt but with a heart monitor placed on his chest and handcuffs on his ankles, lying on his back and the Israeli doctor, who was inside with his kit of anaesthetics to ensure that the poor dude does not die in flight. The cargo manager, narrated that the cargo was not labelled and did not have the proper documentation and they had to opened and do the accreditation in the presence of a Nigerian diplomat, who was already present, he said to the BBC:

…the cargo manager, hit the lid on the bottom and lifted it. And as he lifted it, the Nigerian diplomat, who was standing next to me, took off like a startled rabbit across the tarmac,” Mr Morrow said.
“You have to remember we are on an airfield which is square miles of nothing. He ran about five yards (4.5m), realised no-one was chasing him and then stopped.
“Peter looked into the crate and said: ‘There’s bodies inside!’
Even after that, the kidnappers insisted that Dikko was the biggest crook in the world…lol!
If not, Dikko would have opened his eyes only to meet himself under the bright shiny sun of Ikeja and he go do him like dream……e for sweet die….lolololol! He was later taken to a clinic and he sustained no injuries and later lived in Britain for more than 10 years before returning to Nigeria. In an interview in November 2012 with the BBC, Dikko said he has not forgiven his kidnappers:

”Those that orchestrated my kidnapping are still alive; it was just wickedness and blatant lies against me. They are still alive and why would I forgive them? Why would I forgive such inhuman and barbaric act against human being, without them asking for forgiveness? This is the lies we face in Nigeria and the truth is clear, I haven’t forgiven them, it is just propaganda that they used through the media. Have they repented? Before you forgive a person, he must repent and say it is a mistake or intentional, but have they repented? This is my stand, if some agreed that they made a mistake then you forgive them; but they have not and I haven’t forgiven them. What have they found after all these plots?

Nigeria, the land of very funny people…lmao!

Diplomatic relations between Britain was broken off for two years and even when a formal application was made to the British government by Buhari’s junta, it was turned down. Omo, e no funny o…lol! The drama did not end there.

The Nigerian Airways crew was detained (Buhari also responded by ordering a British Caledonian plane that was already in the air flying from Lagos to London via Kano be returned back to Lagos where it was also detained by the Nigerian authorities. Immediately the United Kingdom released the Nigerian Airways crew, Buhari also freed the British plane to fly to London…lol) and total of 17 men were arrested and four of them were later sentenced to 10-14 years, these included the anaesthestist, two MOSSAD agents who hid in the second crate and Yusufu. All of them were released after spending 6-8.5 years in jail and were silently deported. Nigeria retaliated too buy promptly picking up two British engineers (for stealing aircraft….rotflmao!!!) in Nigeria and slamming 14-year prison sentences on them. Do me I do you, man no go vex…lol!

Interestingly, both the Nigerian and Israeli governments denied any responsibility in the saga. However, Nigerians were overwhelmingly in support of Buhari at this time and even called for diplomatic relationship with Britain severed. Even the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) commended Buhari for the way he handled the affair.

NB: I must state that this operation was covert and was carried out despite the fact that both countries were yet to normalize diplomatic relations. Israel was still getting a huge chunk of her oil from Nigeria while Israel was a major supplier of arms to Nigeria. Both nations still had underground relations. Even till today, Israeli forces are involved in providing security for the Aso Rock Presidential Villa.

-His regime also managed to reduce inflation, rejected all IMF’s conditionalities, such as the devaluing the naira, sharply reduced unnecessary imports, minimized oil bunkering and when bunkered oil was seized, he used it to get relevant commodities, equipment and machinery using the counter trade policy. The latter measure ensured that Nigeria was exporting even above the OPEC quota. Today, what happens? An entire tanker full of bunkered oil disappears right under the nose of the Nigerian Navy…lol!

-There was also a sudden creation of new notes to halt currency smuggling and there was considerable refinancing of trade debt arrears.

Where are those asking for his achievements? Remember he was able to do all these under 20 months, not up to 2 years.

Its so true. pls tell them. tell our youths that GEJ has nothing to offer them. we must bring back the african values that we are known for. join the train of change that is blowing. vote buhari .

My friend don't be deceived, BH is coming to take his own pound of the flesh.

He has nothing, absolutely nothing to offer except "corruption" but our prisons are already congested.

psucc:
My friend don't be deceived, BH is coming to take his own pound of the flesh.

He has nothing, absolutely nothing to offer except "corruption" but our prisons are already congested.

Dnt worry, prison will b enuf to contain even ur Mr clueless as I'm certain, he wld emerged d worst corrupt nigerian in history. Money laundered in foreign banks wil make abacha loot a child's play, trust me.

Why do u tink Jonathan has chosen to attack buhari's image in effort to poison d minds of nigerians using lies as against reeling out wat his govt has don or wil do to compliment d jobs on ground. Its a clear case of blatant failure.

Vote gmb/osibanjo for a new Nigeria..away frm badluck

shachris03:
Where are those asking for his achievements? Remember he was able to do all these under 20 months, not up to 2 years.

Ngeneukwuenu is that you? War against Indicipline. Please flog your kids with koboko the way Nigerian army was instructed to flog Nigerians.