₦airaland Forum

datribune:
I don't care 4 d PDP & APC but I care greatly about d patriot, GMB. if elections ar a referendum on performance while in office, GMB has proved himself & I will vote 4 him any day, any time, any platform.
Wit no visible achievement to point to, I can not in good conscience vote 4 GEJ.

mokaflex:
Buhari is the only hope for 9ja. I pray he wins

datribune:
I don't care 4 d PDP & APC but I care greatly about d patriot, GMB. if elections ar a referendum on performance while in office, GMB has proved himself & I will vote 4 him any day, any time, any platform.
Wit no visible achievement to point to, I can not in good conscience vote 4 GEJ.

mokaflex:
Buhari is the only hope for 9ja. I pray he wins

PhockPhockMan:
Amaechi just disgraced himself by talking like a child. He claimed he spent 1.5 billion for Ebola. See corruption being promoted.

mmmustapha:
SAI GMB, A MAN WHO REFUSE TO BE CURRUPT

jmaine:
You will surely go broke if you take a single word from a politician like Buhari . . .

He said he wasn't going to contest the 2011 election and that the election will be last. Now what happened afterwards ?

lilprinze:
Buhari losing elections since 1999 I don't need a prophet or suit Sayer to come and tell me GEJ is going to defeat the serial loser like he did in 2011.

madamoringo:
He was right innit? Do you have any other job other than bootlicking GEJ arse?

Where is the ibo candidate? Oh never mind, ibos are slaves to Nigerians!

tandj:
Meanwhile all d northerners i knew are against him(especially christians)
Why is it so?

Caseless:
lunatic!!!

BluIvy:
Haba! What's wrong with you people? Saying the samething over and over again. Can't you see its too late? APC has made their choice, its done! Now go back to the drawing board get a new line. Gee! To think someone is paying you lot wasting tax payers money for such stupidity irks me badly.

Bennyberry:
AND DIS STUPID TOPIC MADE FRONTPAGE...seems NAIRALAND IS AN AFFLICTION OF THE PEOPLE DEMOCRATIC PARTY....why not let d peoplr decides if it gonna b fruitful or not..most of u saying GEJ till 3015.dont evn hav voters card or are even up to 18yrs...

datribune:
I don't care 4 d PDP & APC but I care greatly about d patriot, GMB. if elections ar a referendum on performance while in office, GMB has proved himself & I will vote 4 him any day, any time, any platform.
Wit no visible achievement to point to, I can not in good conscience vote 4 GEJ.

seemsnice:
I write this because of millions of
Nigerians who are below 30 and who
constitute a significant chunk of our
voting population.
This is the ICT generation that is largely
ignorant about the events of the
Buhari era (1983-85) and so can be
misinformed and misled by needless
propaganda. I have sat with many in the under-30 bracket and those slightly
above who only have faint recollections
of the Buhari era and the level of
ignorance about that era is amazing.
Before being MILITARY Head of State,
Buhari had been Governor of one of
the Northern States (under Obasanjo’s
Military government) as well as
Minister for Petroleum. He later
served
as Chairman of PTF under Abacha.
Please consider the following
unassailable facts:
He birthed and supervised the
establishment of our existing
refineries.
There was no religious crisis while he
was Head of State. It started under his
successor IBB!
In his time as Head of State he
reduced
inflation from 23% to 4%, by fiscal
discipline and a homegrown economic
team (not achieved under any other
era, even military).
·JJ Rawlings of Ghana took over 2yrs
before him, and killed all the corrupt
leaders, while Buhari only sentenced
the corrupt leaders here to prison.
Under his watch as PTF Chairman,
what he did in road construction in that
short period hasn't been matched by
12yrs of the PDP.
Hospitals and universities around the
country never witnessed as much
benefits as they got from the PTF from
any government after or before his
time.
Despite serving in senior capacity in
the oil sector, first as Minister for
Petroleum and then Petroleum Trust
Fund, Buhari has no petrol station,
much less a rig, refinery or an oil block
like so many of our leaders.
He could have retired into nauseating
opulence like an IBB or Danjuma or
even OBJ but didn't.
·Instead of hobnobbing with the high
and mighty, he has cast his lot with the
ordinary man most of who follow him
out of hope and belief in his values.
People who know him have said
of him... "All I need from Buhari is his
word, I can take it to the bank".
He is the only politician in the North
today who fills rallies without renting a
crowd. The Kaduna rally of 2nd March
is eloquent proof!
He refused to collect an allowance
while serving as Chairman of the PTF
because he said since he was already
drawing a pension from government,
his conscience would not allow him
to draw another salary from the purse
of the same government.
He is the only former head of state
that does not own property or land in
Abuja .
Every attempt to rubbish him through
probes in time past ended up
vindicating him! The man who was
asked by OBJ to take over the running
of PTF before it was scrapped with the aim of probing and indicting Buhari, was the
one who ended up being prosecuted
for misappropriating $100m of PTF
funds!
Buhari again, was vindicated.
He has OPENLY challenged those who
accuse him of religious fundamentalism
to come out and show proof. No one
has till today, taken up the challenge.
His personal driver of many years is a
Christian from Plateau State !
His government initiated the War
Against Indiscipline that has made
environmental cleanliness, queuing up,
not urinating by the roadside etc
features of our national life even till
today.Does it then surprise you why
corrupt people would be spreading
such heinous rumour about Buhari?
He
is a threat to them and they know
what he is capable of doing to
corruption and
corrupt people when he comes into
office! So shine your eyes and make
the right decision. If honesty,trust, integrity,sincerity,dedication and
probity are the things you want for
Nigeria ,now is the time to choose
right.
Now that you know better, your vote counts, vote wisely. GOD BLESS NIGERIA.

naija2dabone:
The worst thing that can happen to Northern presidential aspirations in 2015 is for Buhari to be on the APC ballot.

On Friday, 23rd August, 1985, the military government of Major-General Mohammadu Buhari decided to place me under arrest. My crime was that I wrote, among others, an article entitled: “Counter-trading Nigeria’s Future” in the National Concord, exposing the government’s scam of diverting public funds into private coffers through barter-trade with Brazil. A man by the name of Benson Norman was sent from the State Security Services (SSS) to my office to get me. Not finding me, he left a note that I must present myself unfailingly at the SSS office at 15 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi Lagos the next Monday morning.

However, on Sunday, 25th August, 1985, Lateef Aminu came first thing in the morning to my house to inform me that the government of Buhari/Idiagbon had been overthrown. For this reason, I am fond of telling people that God brought about a change of government in Nigeria just because of me.

Coup-plotter

Under the Buhari/Idiagbon regime, once you ended up at 15 Awolowo Road, you may never be heard of again. Decree Number 2 of 1984 empowered Tunde Idiagbon to arrest and detain anybody indefinitely without trial and without legal reprieve. After Buhari was overthrown, Mohammadu Gambo opened the prison doors of 15 Awolowo Road on public television, revealing people in various stages of UnCloth and malnutrition that had been kept in the dungeons without trial by Buhari’s hound-dogs.

As self-imposed Head of State, Buhari had no regard for human rights. Immediately he seized power, he announced that he would “tamper with” the press. Soon, the infamous Decree Number 4 was promulgated which made even the publication of the truth a punishable offence. Under this cover, Buhari jailed innocent journalists, including Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabo. He abolished civil liberties, promulgated retroactive decrees enabling him to kill Nigerians through jungle justice, proscribed civil society organizations and professional groups and exercised “absolute” power.

This same Buhari would now have us believe that he has gone through some metamorphosis and has become a democrat. I am sure you will forgive me if people like me don’t believe him. Buhari is not, has never been, and will never be, a democrat. Only in Nigeria would a man with his track record, who came to power through a military coup that illegally overthrew a democratic government, now be acclaimed as a democrat. It is on record that Buhari’s military regime is the only one in Nigeria’s history that failed to promulgate a program for return to civilian rule.

Facts and fiction

So what exactly qualifies Bihari as a democrat today? Precious little! There is nothing democratic about forming and joining political parties just in order to be the presidential candidate. Little wonder then that Buhari’s parties have a short shelf-life. Buhari would like to be Nigeria’s head of state once again. He can no longer achieve this through the barrel of a gun. The only route now open to him is through the democratic process. That is the reason why he now conveniently fashions himself as a democrat. It is merely a means to an end; no more, no less.

Buhari’s reputation as an anti-corruption crusader is also a myth. As head of state, he did not make any dent in Nigerian corruption. All we got was a cosmetic “war against indiscipline.” The counter-trade scam happened under his watch. Rather than deal with it, he sent his hound-dogs after nonentities like me who dared to expose it. That scam was no different, in scope and scale, from the petroleum subsidy and other corruption scandals that have since plagued Nigeria. The Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) that Buhari headed under Abacha was also a citadel of corruption. While Buhari himself might not have enriched himself, his cronies and those who worked under him did so handsomely.

On three different occasions, Buhari has run for the presidency. On three different occasions he has failed. That should really be enough. If, as seems likely, he were to run for the presidency a fourth time in 2015, there is no question that he would fail yet again. Try as he might again and again, Mohammadu Buhari can never be President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Buhari’s sectarianism

There is a fundamental reason behind this. Buhari is a lousy politician. He is an unbending former military dictator and not a democratic consensus-builder. Like his new ally, Bola Tinubu, Buhari is a regional, sectional politician. Such politicians are practically impossible to package and market nationally in the ethnically-delicate Nigeria of today.

Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasir El’Rufai, one of those Northerners who deserve to be serious contenders for the presidency of Nigeria, observed that Buhari remains “perpetually unelectable” as a result of his “insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus.” This is an elegant way of saying that politically, Buhari has an uncanny tendency to put his foot in his mouth. He talks before thinking of the political implications of his words. He shoots from the hip.

The strength of Obasanjo, which enabled him to capture the presidency on two different occasions, was that he was perceived as a broadminded politician, not overly partial to his people in the South-West. As a matter of fact, in his first election, his people did not want him. The strength of Goodluck Jonathan, which propelled him to win the presidency, was that he was able to string together a coalition that stretched both north and south of the Niger. The weakness of Buhari is that he is totally unacceptable to people outside his region.

Buhari is a Northern regional champion. As head of state in the 1980’s, his government was unapologetically Northern. No attempt was made to balance the ticket at the top. It was the only regime in Nigeria’s history headed by two Northerners. When he seized power, Buhari put Shagari, the Northern head of state he overthrew, under house arrest. But then he jailed Alex Ekwueme, the Southern vice-president. You may well ask what makes Shagari less culpable for the misdeeds of the Second Republic than his number-two man. The simple fact was that Buhari was Fulani as was Shagari; but Ekwueme was Igbo.

Impolitic words

At the height of the Sharia debate during the Obasanjo administration, Buhari declared that Muslims should vote only for fellow Muslims. This was politically suicidal for a man seeking national office. He became an advocate for implementation of Sharia all over Nigeria. He protested to the Oyo State governor, in the context of a dispute between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous farmers in the state, that “your people are killing my people.” This turned out to be unfounded and perhaps the reverse.

His threats during the campaign for the 2011 elections incited widespread violence in the North after he lost. His supporters went on a rampage; looting and killing; in spite of the fact that, by all accounts, the elections were adjudged the most free and fair in the history of Nigeria’s current democratic experiment. By the time the mayhem had subsided, over 1000 people had been slaughtered in cold blood and some 65,000 displaced.

Forgetting that a statement made in Hausa would readily be translated into English, Buhari later declared unapologetically in a BBC interview: “If what happened in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.” These are the tokens of an irresponsible politician, whose ambitions for power supersede the national interest. Who then are the dogs and baboons that Buhari has in mind to soak in blood if and when he loses yet again come 2015? Are they his children or are they those of others?

With the Boko Haram insurgency in the north, Buhari played to the Northern gallery yet again, calling the Jonathan government “the biggest Boko Haram.” Wole Olaniyi was a fly in the wall at a meeting in Kano Government House designed to persuade PDP rebel governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, to decamp to the APC. Assuming that only Northerners were present, Buhari declared the Boko Haram was a “strategic plan” by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to “destroy the North.” When Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states, Buhari still saw this with Northern goggles, insinuating that the President is waging war on the North.

President of the North

Without a doubt, Buhari has massive support in the North. Indeed, he is the most popular Northern politician in the North today. But that precisely remains his undoing at the centre. The more he has been identified as a Northern champion, the less attractive he has become as a national choice. Even in the North, his support base is limited to the Muslim population. He does not appeal to Northern Christians. Then there is the added factor of the opposition of his implacable opponents among the Northern elite. Men like Babangida and Atiku would rather die than allow Buhari get to Aso Rock.

One thing is certain, the South-South and the South-East will not vote for Buhari in 2015. Not only that; there are no buyers for Buhari’s sectarian politics in the South-West. No matter what Tinubu might be telling him, the people of the South-West will not vote for Buhari in 2015. We already had the template in 2011, when Buhari tried to sell himself, first by balancing his ticket with a Yoruba man; and then by making sure the Yoruba man is a Christian; a pastor no less. But it just did not wash. It will not work in 2015.

The worst thing that can happen to Northern presidential aspirations in 2015 is for Buhari to be on the APC ballot. That is a sure guarantee that the North will not be providing the next president. Buhari would be a shoo-in in an election for president of Northern Nigeria. But in an election encompassing the entire country, the best he can envisage is to be a kingmaker. He cannot be king. The nearest Buhari will get to Aso Rock in 2015 is by attending the Council of State meetings.

musulumi:
I don't mind being the only one voting for this man every four years.................

Ovialekhe:
That man is an extreme jihadist. Will rather sit at home playing ludo dan vote for him.His fake smile is so satanic.