By Femi
Aribisala
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 undress 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 programme
for return to civilian rule.
Facts and
fiction
So what
exactly qualifies Buhari 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 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 bad 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 1980s, 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.
