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.

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.

Femi Aribisala is a columnist at
Vanguard Newspaper.



www.theheraldng.com/buhari-and-the-lion-of-bourdillon-femi-aribisala/?wt=5

Too lenghty.

"By the time he re-surfaced Boko Haram was toast........line of d year

But the diehard GMB supporters will never agree with these glaring facts. Only March 28th will open their eyes.

Pls before you derail the thread, counter the points raised. Present issues and leave the messenger.