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.
 |
| *Eyadema (pix:nndb) |
One of
General Buhari's contemporaries was Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea
who hated intellectuals the way Buhari hates journalists. At a point, Mbasogo
resorted to the killing of intellectuals so much so that more than a third of
the country's population had to flee the country to escape his brutal and
sadistic reign. Again, Siad Barre was another senseless dictator and butcher
who seized power in Somalia
from October 21, 1969 to January 26, 1991. He jailed opposition members on
ethnic grounds just as Buhari jailed politicians of Southern Nigeria extraction
such as Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who was not even in government, Jim
Nwobodo, Sam Mbakwe, Ambrose Alli, Bisi Onabanjo, Adekunle Ajasin, Bola Ige,
etcetera, and created sacred cows by leaving several politicians from the North
who were even more corrupt than their Southern counterparts untouched. In fact,
Buhari placed President Shehu Shagari under house arrest while he jailed the
Vice President Dr. Alex Ekwueme under dehumanizing circumstances. When General
Ibrahim Babangida overthrew the Buhari junta in a palace coup on August 27,
1985, the reason he gave as justification for the action was: misuse of power,
violations of human rights and Buhari's failure to deal with the country's
deepening economic crisis.
Jean-Bedel
Bokassa of Central African
Republic was Buhari's contemporary. Mobutu
Sese Seko who misruled Zaire and stole its resources flat into his private
pockets for 32 miserable years until he was chased out by Desire Kabila, a
rebel kingpin and died in exile in 1998, was another shameless friend of General
Buhari's. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi
who murdered thousands of innocent primary school pupils for daring to protest
his attempt to centralize the purchase of their school uniforms at exorbitant
rates and later died in exile in Nigeria in 1997, was Buhari's
contemporary. Also, Hissene Habre of Chad,
a rebel who came to power by invading Chad
through Libya
and killed thousands of people in the process was Buhari's contemporary.
General Idi Amin Dada of Uganda,
unarguably the most notorious and most sadistic dictator Africa
has ever produced, was Buhari's tutor in the art of dictatorship. Lest we
forget, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi of Libya
who was alleged to have sponsored about eighty per cent of coups in Africa was Buhari's god-father. It was from Gadaffi that
Buhari learnt his catechism of religious fanaticism and the praxis of trying to
Islamize Nigeria and Africa.
 |
| *Biya (pix: africaw) |
Buhari
presided over the most sadistic military regime in the history of Nigeria. In the
days of General Buhari as a maximum dictator, a thick satanic cloud shot our
land from the sight of the civilized world. And the voice of the media, the
hungry and powerless masses was overpowered by the intimidating din of the
forces of tyranny. He used Decree 2 and Decree 4 to silence the media and the
opposition to his dastardly rule. Not only did Buhari gag the press with his
official secret decrees; he banned the Oni of Ife from exercising his freedom
of worship by seizing his international passport for traveling to Israel. He used
a retroactive decree to murder two accused drug pushers just to prove that his
regime was tough. That is to say that the crime Ben Ogedengbe and one other
fellow allegedly committed did not carry the death penalty as at when it was
committed. Buhari jailed the quintessential educationist and social critic Dr.
Tai Solarin and denied him his asthma drug because he campaigned against
military rule and for democracy. He raided the Apapa home of the legendary
sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and seized his passport so that Baba would not travel
out of the country. Buhari jailed the iconic Afrobeat maestro Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti in 1984 for daring to sing against the dictatorial tendencies of
his military regime. He also jailed Beko Ransom-Kuti for demanding the release
of his brother, Fela.
Almost
all the leading professional bodies in the country directly had a taste of the
bitter pill of Buhari's dictatorship as he banned the Nigerian Medical
Association NMA, broke up the press conference being addressed by Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and clammed four of their leaders into
detention. He also jailed Awwal Ibrahim for criticizing his government. If
these and many more are the excesses of Buhari, where and when did he take his
induction training for the change mantra his spin doctors are bandying around
him? When did a man who presided over the most base and barbaric military
dictatorship in our chequered history suddenly become a change agent? We may
well find a philosophical explanation as to why Nigeria came to that sorry pass. The
task of holding back, by force if necessary, the worst manifestations and most
dangerous consequences of passion is entrusted to the state. This was the
thought of St. Augustine,
which was to be closely echoed in the sixteenth century by Calvin. Indeed, any
established social and political order is justified by its very existence. Its
possible injustices are just retributions for the sins of Fallen Man.
 |
| *Al-Bashir (pix:pbs) |
To be
sure, some hints of more particular motives for Buhari's actions as a military
dictator are every now and then fagged up to why our society created such a
monster in the first place. It could be beneficial for literary scholars to
embark on a psychoanalytic study of military dictatorship in Africa nay, Nigeria, to try
to trace the complex connections between the traumatic memories of that era and
certain recurring patterns of the African cum Nigerian question. But,
unfortunately, we are still detained in primitive accommodation. If we are not,
why, for God's sake are some people still hell-bent on recycling military
dictators as leaders in this age and time when democracy has been entrenched
with ubiquity and constancy all over the world? If we detest Olusegun
Obasanjo's recent civilian dictatorship between 1999 and 2007 as the years of
the locusts, why are some Nigerians sheepishly rooting for yet another dictator
in 2015? Does a leopard change its spots?
Whereas in Chile,
Bolivia, Haiti, Pakistan,
Yemen,
etcetera, felons such as Buhari are being tried for crimes against humanity,
why are some Nigerians trying to deodorize an iron fist dictator and religious
fanatic as a change agent? What manner of change will Buhari who cannot produce
his West African School Certificate bring to Nigeria in the second decade of the
Twenty First Century when presidents across the world are well schooled with
chains of academic degrees? Even as the feudal and religious forces which enjoy
playing dice with the collective destiny of the nation are still plotting, many
Nigerians have learned nothing and forgotten all. Buhari is certainly not
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan's match in all ramifications. His contemporaries are on
the wrong side of history.
*Amor, journalist and writer, contributed this piece to MUST READ from Abuja.
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