₦airaland Forum

Read the full article, as published by Sahara
Reporters on January 14, 2007 » , below:
This intervention has been provoked, not so
much by the ambitions of General Buhari to return
to power at the head of a democratic Nigeria, as
by declarations of support from directions that
leave one totally dumbfounded.
It would appear that some, myself among them,
had been overcomplacent about the magnitude of
an ambition that seemed as preposterous as the
late effort of General Ibrahim Babangida to aspire
yet again to the honour of presiding over a
society that truly seeks a democratic future.
What one had dismissed was a rash of illusions,
brought about by other political improbabilities
that surround us, however, is being given an air
of plausibility by individuals and groupings to
which one had earlier attributed a sense of
relevance of historic actualities.
Recently, I published an article in the media,
invoking the possible recourse to psychiatric
explanation for some of the incongruities in
conduct within national leadership. Now, to tell
the truth, I have begun to seriously address the
issue of which section of society requires the
services of a psychiatrist.
The contest for a seizure of rationality is now so
polarized that I am quite reconciled to the fact it
could be those of us on this side, not the
opposing school of thought that ought to declare
ourselves candidates for a lunatic asylum. So be
it. While that decision hangs in the balance
however, the forum is open. Let both sides
continue to address our cases to the electorate,
but also prepare to submit ourselves for
psychiatric examination.
The time being so close to electoral decision, we
can understand the haste of some to resort to
shortcuts. In the process however, we should not
commit the error of opening the political space to
any alternative whose curative touch to national
afflictions have proven more deadly than the
disease.
In order to reduce the clutter in our options
towards the forthcoming elections, we urge a
beginning from what we do know, what we have
undergone, what millions can verify, what can be
sustained by evidence accessible even to the
school pupil, the street hawker or a just-come
visitor from outer space.
Leaving Buhari aside for now, I propose a
commencing exercise that should guide us along
the path of elimination as we examine the existing
register of would-be president. That initial
exercise can be summed up in the following
speculation: “If it were possible for Olusegun
Obasanjo, the actual incumbent, to stand again for
election, would you vote for him?”
If the answer is “yes”, then of course all
discussion is at an end. If the answer is ‘No’
however, then it follows that a choice of a
successor made by Obasanjo should be assessed
as hovering between extremely dangerous and an
outright kiss of death.
The degree of acceptability of such a candidate
should also be inversely proportionate to the
passion with which he or she is promoted by the
would-be ‘godfather’. We do not lack for open
evidence about Obasanjo’s passion in this
respect.
From Lagos to the USA, he has taken great pains
to assure the nation and the world that the
anointed NPN presidential flag bearer is
guaranteed, in his judgment, to carry out his
policies. Such an endorsement/anointment is
more than sufficient, in my view, for public
acceptance or rejection. Yar’Adua’s candidature
amounts to a terminal kiss from a moribund
regime.
Nothing against the person of this – I am
informed - personable governor, but let him
understand that in addition to the direct source of
his emergence, the PDP, on whose platform he
stands, represents the most harrowing of this
nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the
horrors of the Abacha regime.
If he wishes to be considered on his own merit,
now is time for him, as well as others similarly
enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that
goes with his repudiation of that party, a
dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse
its menacing future.
We shall find him an alternative platform on which
to stand, and then have him present his
credentials along those of other candidates
engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance.
Until then, let us bury this particular proposition
and move on to a far graver, looming danger,
personified in the history of General Buhari.
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. Public offence,
crimes against a polity, must be answered in the
public space, not in caucuses of bargaining.
In Buhari, we have been offered no evidence of the
sheerest prospect of change. On the contrary, all
evident suggests that this is one individual who
remains convinced that this is one ex-ruler that
the nation cannot call to order.
Buhari – need one remind anyone - was one of
the generals who treated a Commission of
Enquiry, the Oputa Panel, with unconcealed
disdain. Like Babangida and Abdusalami, he
refused to put in appearance even though
complaints that were tabled against him involved
a career of gross abuses of power and blatant
assault on the fundamental human rights of the
Nigerian citizenry.
Prominent against these charges was an act that
amounted to nothing less than judicial murder,
the execution of a citizen under a retroactive
decree. Does Decree 20 ring a bell? If not, then,
perhaps the names of three youths - Lawal
Ojuolape (30), Bernard Ogedengbe (29) and
Bartholomew Owoh (26) do. To put it quite plainly,
one of those three – Ogedengbe - was executed
for a crime that did not carry a capital forfeit at
the time it was committed.
This was an unconscionable crime, carried out in
defiance of the pleas and protests of nearly every
sector of the Nigerian and international community
– religious, civil rights, political, trade unions etc.
Buhari and his sidekick and his partner-in-crime,
Tunde Idiagbon persisted in this inhuman act for
one reason and one reason only: to place
Nigerians on notice that they were now under an
iron, inflexible rule, under governance by fear.
The execution of that youthful innocent – for so
he was, since the punishment did not exist at the
time of commission - was nothing short of
premeditated murder, for which the perpetrators
should normally stand trial upon their loss of
immunity. Are we truly expected to forget this
violation of our entitlement to security as
provided under existing laws? And even if our
sensibilities have become blunted by succeeding
seasons of cruelty and brutality, if power itself had
so coarsened the sensibilities also of rulers and
corrupted their judgment, what should one rightly
expect after they have been rescued from the
snare of power” At the very least, a revaluation,
leading hopefully to remorse, and its expression
to a wronged society.
At the very least, such a revaluation should
engender reticence, silence. In the case of Buhari,
it was the opposite. Since leaving office he has
declared in the most categorical terms that he
had no regrets over this murder and would do so
again.
Human life is inviolate. The right to life is the
uniquely fundamental right on which all other
rights are based. The crime that General Buhari
committed against the entire nation went further
however, inconceivable as it might first appear.
That crime is one of the most profound negations
of civic being. Not content with hammering down
the freedom of expression in general terms, Buhari
specifically forbade all public discussion of a
return to civilian, democratic rule. Let us
constantly applaud our media – those battle
scarred professionals did not completely knuckle
down.
They resorted to cartoons and oblique, elliptical
references to sustain the people’s campaign for a
time-table to democratic rule. Overt agitation for a
democratic time table however remained
rigorously suppressed – military dictatorship, and
a specifically incorporated in Buhari and Idiagbon
was here to stay. To deprive a people of volition
in their own political direction is to turn a nation
into a colony of slaves. 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.
So Tai Solarin is already forgotten? Tai who stood
at street corners, fearlessly distributing leaflets
that took up the gauntlet where the media had
dropped it. Tai who was incarcerated by that
regime and denied even the medication for his
asthmatic condition? Tai did not ask to be sent
for treatment overseas; all he asked was his
traditional medicine that had proved so effective
after years of struggle with asthma!
Nor must we omit the manner of Buhari coming to
power and the pattern of his ‘corrective’ rule.
Shagari’s NPN had already run out of steam and
was near universally detested – except of course
by the handful that still benefited from that regime
of profligacy and rabid fascism. 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 cozy house detention in Ikoyi while his
powerless deputy, Alex Ekwueme, was locked up
in Kiri-kiri prisons. Such was the Buhari notion of
equitable apportionment of guilt and/or
responsibility.
And then the cascade of escapes of the wanted,
and culpable politicians. Manhunts across the
length and breadth of the nation, roadblocks
everywhere and borders tight as steel zip locks.
Lo and behold, the chairman of the party, Chief
Akinloye, strolled out coolly across the border.
Richard Akinjide, Legal Protector of the ruling
party, slipped out with equal ease. The Rice
Minister, Umaru Dikko, who declared that
Nigerians were yet to eat from dustbins - escaped
through the same airtight dragnet.
The clumsy attempt to crate him home was
punishment for his ingratitude, since he went
berserk when, after waiting in vain, he concluded
that the coup had not been staged, after all, for
the immediate consolidation of the party of
extreme right-wing vultures, but for the military
hyenas.
The case of the overbearing Secretary-General of
the party, Uba Ahmed, was even more noxious.
Uba Ahmed was out of the country at the time.
Despite the closure of the Nigerian airspace, he
compelled the pilot of his plane to demand
special landing permission, since his passenger
load included the almighty Uba Ahmed.
Of course, he had not known of the change in his
status since he was airborne. The delighted
airport commandant, realizing that he had a much
valued fish swimming willingly into a waiting net,
approved the request. Uba Ahmed disembarked
into the arms of a military guard and was
promptly clamped in detention.
Incredibly, he vanished a few days after and
reappeared in safety overseas. Those whose
memories have become calcified should explore
the media coverage of that saga. Buhari was
asked to explain the vanished act of this much
prized quarry and his response was one of the
most arrogant levity. Coming from one who had
shot his way into power on the slogan of
‘dis’pline’, it was nothing short of impudent.
Shall we revisit the tragicomic series of trials that
landed several politicians several lifetimes in
prison? 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.
The conduct of the Buhari regime after his coup
was not merely one of double, triple, multiple
standards but a cynical travesty of justice. Audu
Ogbeh, currently chairman of the Action Congress
was one of the few figures of rectitude within the
NPN. Just as he has done in recent times with the
PDP, he played the role of an internal critic and
reformer, warning, dissenting, and setting an
example of probity within his ministry. For that
crime he spent months in unjust incarceration.
Guilty by association? Well, if that was the
motivating yardstick of the administration of the
Buhari justice, then it was most selectively
applied. The utmost severity of the Buhari-
Idiagbon justice was especially reserved either for
the opposition in general, or for those within the
ruling party who had showed the sheerest sense
of responsibility and patriotism.
Shall I remind this nation of Buhari’s deliberate
humiliating treatment of the Emir of Kano and the
Oni of Ife over their visit to the state of Israel? I
hold no brief for traditional rulers and their
relationship with governments, but insist on
regarding them as entitled to all the rights,
privileges and responsibilities of any Nigerian
citizen. This royal duo went to Israel on their
private steam and private business.
Simply because the Buhari regime was pursuing
some antagonistic foreign policy towards Israel, a
policy of which these traditional rulers were not a
part, they were subjected on their return to a
treatment that could only be described as a head
masterly chastisement of errant pupils. Since
when, may one ask, did a free citizen of the
Nigerian nation require the permission of a head
of state to visit a foreign nation that was willing to
offer that tourist a visa?
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, obeying laws set down as guides to
public probity. Example speaks louder than
declarations, and rulers cannot exempt
themselves from the disciplinary strictures
imposed on the overall polity, especially on any
issue that seeks to establish a policy for public
well-being.
The story of the thirty something suitcases – it
would appear that they were even closer to fifty -
found unavoidable mention in my recent memoirs,
YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DOWN, written long
before Buhari became spoken of as a credible
candidate. 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
needle’s eye. Not only did Buhari dispatch his
aide-de-camp, 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.
That officer, the incumbent Vice-president is now
a rival candidate to Buhari, but has somehow, in
the meantime, earned a reputation that totally
contradicts his conduct at the time. Wherever the
truth lies, it does not redound to the credibility of
the dictator of that time, General Buhari whose
word was law, but whose allegiances were clearly
negotiable.

e too long

if i read all this, I may start purging