President Muhammadu Buhari And His Unfaithful Mistress

By Dare Babarinsa

Absolute power loves to come in the benign habiliment of profound understatement. When General Yakubu Gowon came to power after the coup of July 29, 1966, he was called the Supreme Commander and Head of the Federal Military Government. Yet his supremacy was heavily contested and the military government was deeply divided. Then the soldiers went to Ghana under the auspices of the new military ruler of that country and they met in Aburi. From that point on, Gowon took on the title of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. Yet with this new sober title, Gowon wielded more powers than hitherto.

*President Buhari 

When he came to power in succession to General J.T.U Aguiyi-Ironsi, the new Gowon was talking of handing over power to an elected regime by 1971. Then the Civil War intervened and the assignment of nation building came in earnest. After the war, Gowon wore his powers with outward lavishness. We all love his regular movement to the airport, with the white uniform outriders displaying the arts and science of acrobatic motorcycling. The pomp and pageantry of power appealed to our youthful sense. Gowon was young, breathtakingly handsome and power becomes him like a natural accouterment. He too fell in love with power, its dizzying scent, its allure and its tantalizing romance.

Behold General Buhari's Contemporaries!

By Dan Amor
They were all members of a departed era, apostles of a dying generation — a generation that raped Mother Africa to this pariah and prostrate status. Members of the clan of military dictators in Africa were many but for space management, we may mention just a few who were as brutal as General Muhamadu Buhari was before his regime was halted by General Ibrahim Babangida in August 1985. 

*Gen Buhari

At their commanding height was Gnassingbe Eyadema who in January 1963 organized the first military coup in Africa to overthrow the government of President Sylvanus Olympio. Eyadema assumed full power in 1967 and ruled till 2005 when he died. Before his death, he had groomed his son to assume the mantle of leadership in that tiny West African country like a dynasty. 

There is Paul Biya of Cameroon who came to power since November 6, 1982. There was a Charles Taylor, leader of the rebel group known as National Patriotic Front of Liberia(NPFL), one of the groups that forced erstwhile dictator Samuel Doe out of office. Taylor who committed a lot of war crimes and crimes against humanity over which he was jailed in 2012 by the International Court of Justice at The Hague, ruled Liberia between 1997 and 2003. Also, there is Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, one of the most treacherous dictators in the world today. He has been declared wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity since 2008 having embarked on ethnic cleansing like the late Adolf Hitler of Germany.