It’s been said he is a man of integrity, General Muhammadu Buhari, and that’s a legacy and a worthy one too. Even if he fails tomorrow, that’s going for him. But in a country as complex as Nigeria, integrity, though important, is one out of many. Humanity and religious rightness are others if not more overriding because deep in their content is freedom. To put a living human being in a crate like an ape is frightening. It’s not about human rights, it’s beyond it; it offends the conscience. If one could be so hard to that extent, his humanity is under question and to hand over enormous power like in the case of a Nigerian president is taking a risk short of prudence.
The crating of Umaru Dikko was done to check corruption Buhari’s style. Now see us, see corruption wearing cap. He is the life patron of the Miyetti Alah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) to which the Fulani herdsmen belong. See what the herdsmen are doing from the Middle Belt to the West and now in the East. A strong voice of Buhari against this people would have gone a long way to call them to a halt. That voice is yet to come loud.
But why Buhari in the first place? He would have been an unknown figure had he not done the out-of-the-ordinary. He plotted and executed a coup against a democratically-elected government for reasons that have not sunk in the Nigerian mind and now turns around to ask to be democratically elected. His underlining reason was corruption, ‘to stamp it out’, as their language goes. That was corruption as an infant; now its beards are white. So his true reason for taking over power could not be corruption. Granted that he has laboured in vain several times to become the president of Nigeria, one can’t discountenance an innate power quake in him. He just wants to be in power, fight against corruption is mere subterfuge. Now his adherents have added the fight against insurgency. He failed in corruption; if he will succeed in insurgency, why has he waited till nearly 200,000 people are dead to reveal that magic? He is keeping it to his chest till he comes to power, meaning, if he does not come to power, that solution will be buried no matter how many souls perish. Then where is the Nigerian in him?
Juxtapose this against the tears he shed for the country in 2011, I can’t see where the tears flowed to. It has not been forgotten how making Nigeria ungovernable if he lost in 2011 allegedly came from one of his utterances. This goes to buttress the be-in-power instinct driving strong in him. But what did he do with power when he had it? He backdated the obnoxious Decree 20 to publicly execute people accused of drug-related offences. The issue here isn’t the offence. It is circumventing the law to pull through his desire thereby turning himself above the law, yet today marijuana is piped. The Emir of Kano and the Ooni of Ife were both subjected to inhuman treatment for travelling to Israel because Buhari’s, not Nigeria’s, foreign policy was antagonistic towards that country.
When he was head of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), the East has not forgotten how its road network suffered serious neglect against the beautifully-asphalted network in the north; the people have not forgotten how in Buhari’s Supreme Military Council (SMC) there was no personality of Eastern extraction present; they have not forgotten how his policies stifled Igbo trading spirit. These things are remembered now and the people ask, has he changed? What next could he do when given enormous power?
The case of Adekunle Ajasin is a good reminder – how the man was acquitted by the court, rearrested by Buhari several times against court judgments. Worse still, when he was summoned by the Oputa panel to answer for these gross abuses and lacklustre respect for the rule of law, he shunned the panel. Someone not availing himself to his people’s asking turns around now to ask for their votes. How? Add this to his widely quoted sympathy for Sharia bits in the country, then one confirms the theory of imprudent risk letting Buhari have power.
One doesn’t, however, need to worry much. Chuba Okadigbo escorted him to power, both failed out; Tunde Bakare did so and went back to his ministry; Osinbajo is on, he will do same. Why same? Because the Buhari inside Buhari the candidate is suspicious. That suspicion has refused to go away though the man tries so hard. Nevertheless, if he should fail this time, he should bid goodbye to politics. He has tried and we have tried.
Onyebuchi Onyegbule
