[size=14pt]Buhari and the mirage of anti-corruption [/size]
Written by Ebenezer Adeniji Friday, 01 April 2011

Statesmanship is defined by an impartial concern for the public good. It also has a lot to do with the content of such a leader’s personal values. Globally, religious zealotry and ethnic jingoism clearly do not fit well as edifying values. This is why some watchers find Nigeria, and the Nigerian political space, somewhat strange. The value system of some of our national figures could be so overly diseased, and parochial; and rather than odium, it earns them praise and worship. For all that the late General Sani Abacha was and represented, it was bizarre that a section of this country lionised him. The production and selling of Abacha’s images in this part of the country is still strangely a brisk business, leaving one to conclude very strongly that, indeed, the major divide in this country is not situated in geography, but in thinking processes and value systems.

The issue here is General Muhammadu Buhari, who has been angling to rule Nigeria in the past eight years. Buhari has been riding on the wings of just one point - purity from official corruption. Buhari has misled the man in the street, to believe that a clean slate on corruption is just all it takes to be a competent leader and a man of ideas.

Without undermining the critical place of integrity in governance, Buhari’s score-card as military Head of State, between 1983 and 1985, firmly leaves one with no doubt that personal integrity, and competence, can be as far apart as the North and South poles. Buhari, as Head of State, amply showed that an indolent office secretary, who can be trusted with everything in the office, including office pins, has no more value than the efficient one with itchy fingers. PresidentJonathan has been around, only for nine months. Buhari ruled this country for close to two years. It will profit the system, if Nigerians, and the voters, should challenge Buhari on his achievements in government as Head of State.

It is on record that from 1979 to 1999, no single investment was made in the power sector. This period included Buhari’s time in office. What steps did Buhari take on the country’s social and physical infrastructure? Buhari talks about the Midas touch, he will bring to bear on governance from May 29, yet does not feel any moral pinch, for his tactical side-stepping of his 1983 to 1985 score-card on campaign grounds.

In productive climes, Buhari would never wish to breathe a word on the political scene, but this is Nigeria, a country of anything goes. Buhari’s relevance in today’s political equation rests squarely with Islamic activism. Buhari was the mastermind and cheer-leader of the blood-stained Sharia law campaign in the Northern region. It was murderous campaign, given the massive destruction of the lives and properties of southerners in the North in the wake of Sharia implementation in the states of the region. In the lead-up to the 2003 general election, in which he contested for the presidency, Buhari sent out a call that Muslims in the country should be guided by religion in their voting pattern. As the dangerous religious campaigns against President Jonathan flourished in mosques in the North, in radio stations in the region and by text messages, Nigerians, including Sule Lamido, governor of Jigawa State, a neighbouring state to Buhari’s Katsina, traced the ill-wind to Buhari.

For Buhari’s supporters, it is just enough that Buhari is not corrupt, and more compelling to those of them that support him among the northern Muslim population is that he is a northerner, a champion of Islam, who wants to take power back from a southerner, and an “infidel” Christain. These ethnic and religious contents are entirely the drivers of every single support Buhari gets in the North. But for the larger health and well-being of all Nigerians, these must be seen and treated as the active ingredients of religious radicalism, terrorism and national security risk.

Even in his campaigns in the North, Buhari’s attitude and style have been ominous. His northern political rallies come across more as religious revivals than political campaigns. Aware that he is a symbol of Islamic activism among his people, Buhari addresses his northern supporters, only in Hausa language, and would often not even bother to address the developmental challenges of the people. Buhari can do these among the northern youth population that converge for his rallies and get away because, he well understands that their presence was entirely motivated by religion, Islamic struggle and not governance issues.

If religiousness is all it takes to drive a country on the path of productiveness, development and service delivery, then let the supporter of APC take over in Darfur, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and Al Shabab in Somalia. Let Sharia take over in all Muslim countries, and Canon Law in those of the Christains. May Al Queada over take us all! But competence is the issue, and Buhari failed woefully, pathetically on this score between 1983 and 1985.

Buhari despises the elite of his people, remaining ominously aloof, rigid and forebodingly one track-minded. These are all red flags! Nigerians should be circumspect. This man may not be corrupt, but there are certain alarms about him. Buhari clearly transmits red signals in the polity. It is clear that apart from the states of the North-West and North-East, his Congress for Political Change (CPC) would hardly earn 25 per cent of the total number of votes cast in the remaining states of the federation.

By implication, two zones just cannot earn Buhari the presidency he is looking for, no matter their voting strength. As a fledging one-man party, his CPC also lacks a strong national presence, organisational and structural framework needed for strong political in-roads in all the states for a victory in a presidential election. It is also evident that the Buhari’s personality and character profile are assets to him only among the Hausa-Fulani of the North-West and partly North-East, and strictly for the Muslim population of the two zones, but a heavy personal baggage on him in the entire South, and the Christain-dominated North-Central, with a low population of the Hausa-Fulani stock. These scenarios promise yet another presidential election rout for Buhari. The huge worry is whether his CPC supporters, whom he has weaned on violence and religious bigotry, would allow peace reign after Buhari had gone down on April 9.

Nigerians have been fed excessively with the issue of Buhari as lily-white to the extent that many now throw up. But I wish I were a presidential candidate. With all these debates, I would have given anything to have a one-on-one with Buhari. I would have loved to tell him to his face that the Lateef Jakande’s $60 million metro rail project for Lagos, which he cancelled immediately after he over-threw the Second Republic, has now accumulated a debt profile of over $3 billion for Lagos State, making the state the most indebted state to Paris Club in the federation. I would remind Buhari that Gbolahan Mudashiru, his Military Administrator for Lagos State, alerted him on the clause in the contract agreement that would yoke the state to this debt, if the contract was cancelled unilaterally, and that he replied Mudashiru, that he didn’t care a damn.

Though the fund for the execution of that project which would have given the people of Lagos an intra-city light train transport system would not have come from Buhari’s Supreme Military Council, General Buhari, as Military Head of State, cancelled this wonderful project of the state government, with ethnicity on his mind.

Buhari’s action of jailing Dr Alex Ekwueme, then Nigeria’s vice president, from Anambra, and keeping President Shehu Shagari, from Sokoto State in a house arrest in Ikoyi was also ethnically fired. So also was the shorter end of the stick he handed the South, as chair of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), in the execution of projects.


Dr Adeniji is a UK-based
chartered accountant


http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/politics/19803-buhari-and-the-mirage-of-anti-corruption

It will also interest BBmaniacs to know that there are millions of Nigerians in the north (including muslims) who do not support the sharia idea. Those millions are being oppressed but now they have a chance to speak their mind by voting. These are the millions that will vote GEJ. The millions that will stand against oppression. The millions that will choose FRESH AIR.

Bb guys accuse of being bigots, but their man has clearly shown to us that he is more than the russian racists. If we can not go with the histories, why is buhari presently campaigning only in the north when he wants to rule nigeria

Smoke screen