1.Introduction:
One of the ‘mysteries’ of
today’s politics is what some Nigerians see as the continued popularity of
President Muhammadu Buhari in the North, despite his evident ineptness and the
many, many failures of his government. When these Nigerians see him in outings
where massive crowds of young people work themselves into a frenzy as they rent
the air with “Sai Baba!” chants, they wonder what diabolical concoctions he
must have let loose on them to make them feel this way.
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| *Kennedy Emetulu |
People are being buried in
grinding poverty, the economy is on a stretcher, Nigeria is regressing into the
Stone Age in every respect and Buhari hops into a plane to London and back or
walks 800 meters
and the whole place is filled with jubilation in the North, or so it seems. What
information do these people have that the rest of us don’t have? What planet
are they living on when the nation clearly is on a deathbed?
2. The False Successor:
In the nation’s history,
only two Northern politicians have had what can be considered the type of
popular support or loyalty that Buhari has today in the North. These men were
Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Mallam Aminu Kano. But the irony
is that as opposed to Buhari, these men actually had political ideas of
governance and real track records that gave them credibility with the people.
The Sardauna was a natural inheritor of a traditional base for leadership. Most of the North with its mainly conservative Muslim culture has always had a monarchical political structure which survived colonialism, but which in an attempt to be modernized merely transferred token power to politicians while real power remain with the Emirs and the Native Authorities.
The Sardauna was a natural inheritor of a traditional base for leadership. Most of the North with its mainly conservative Muslim culture has always had a monarchical political structure which survived colonialism, but which in an attempt to be modernized merely transferred token power to politicians while real power remain with the Emirs and the Native Authorities.
But as independence loomed
large and as it became obvious that modern politics would play a pivotal role
in the future of the North’s relationship with the rest of Nigeria Lagos
However, the general
alienation of the ordinary people (talakawa) was a huge social and political
issue in the North. In the pre-colonial days, these ordinary people had always
found champions amongst Islamic scholars and teachers, the bolder ones amongst
whom sometimes challenge the feudal system and gain some rights for the common
people. But, while the Northern feudal and establishment people found a natural
political home in the NPC, the talakawa couldn’t ideologically, even though in
the highly ethnically directed politics of the time, they’d naturally identify
with the NPC in elections. It was that void that Aminu Kano, the son of an
Islamic scholar filled with the formation of the Northern Elements Progressive
Union (NEPU), which under a banner of a kind of Islamic socialism set up an
ideological divide with the conservative feudalists of the Northern political establishment.
Aminu Kano railed against
what he termed the “Family Compact rule” (feudalism) and called on the talakawa
to engage in a “class struggle” against the “vicious circle of the Native
Administration”. Aminu Kano’s call for the “emancipation” of the talakawa, the
reform of the autocratic institutions and their transformation to democratic
institutions in the hands of the talakawa “for whom alone they exist” and his
call for gender equality were ideologically packaged for politics in what was
clearly a culture war.
But this was a mere
perforation of the huge cultural blanket underpinning politics and its
development in the North because most of the political figures and policymakers
of the dominant Northern People’s Congress (NPC) were people that had feudal
relations or who grew through the system. Aminu Kano’s politics made him quite
popular amongst the talakawa, but his party, NEPU, could not match the NPC
politically. In the Second Republic , Aminu Kano established the People’s
Redemption Party (PRP), which had its political strongholds in Kano
and Kaduna
3. The ‘Northern’ Agenda:
However, unlike the genuine
popularity of the two politicians mentioned above, Buhari’s popularity is a
well-crafted fraud by the Northern political establishment in what they term as
competition against the South. In other words, Buhari is not an accident in our
national life. A closer look at his career will reveal that he is the Northern
establishment’s sword against the Nigerian petroleum economy and later, its
politics. As the Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural Resources in
1976, Buhari was the first Kaduna Mafia’s point man in their attempt to control
the Nigerian oil economy. That role required him to be mythologized in the
North. Thus, his popularity is built on divisive politics propagated with lies
and sustained by more lies and posturing. He has nothing to offer in terms of
ideas, but he has been a Northern and now a Fulani cultural activist in and out
of uniform and his position today is a direct result of a careful political
play that hoodwinked everyone, including some of his most fervent supporters,
North and South.
Basically, Buhari has two
sides to him up North. There is the side of him as the arrowhead of the
Northern establishment against the South in the elite fight for control of the
nation’s resources. This was something that became imperative for the Northern
elite shortly before the war when the secessionist Biafra
took over the oilfields. However, even though oil had not become definitive of
our national economy at the time, everyone recognized the potential. So, after
the war, the Northern elite coveted control of this resource. For many reasons,
their desire never materialized until a series of events culminated in Buhari
taking control of the oil portfolio in 1976 on behalf of the Northern elite.
The second image is the image he has with the talakawa or ordinary Northerner.
It is presented quite crudely as Buhari representing a mix between an Islamist
messiah, cultural activist and political leader. Amongst this group, he has
what is akin to a cultic following because of false promises made over the
years, promises he’s still riding on today, even when it is now obvious he
cannot fulfill them.
After the war, the Supreme
Military Council (SMC) and the Ministry of Mines and Power controlled the
Nigerian petroleum economy from the government side. Then the oil boom came and
General Yakubu Gowon was playing Father Christmas with Nigeria ’s wealth, selling oil cheap to African
nations, paying the salaries of Grenada
The Northern power brokers
were not happy with Yakubu Gowon because originally, he was supposed to be a
placeholder for a truly Muslim Northern leader supposedly to continue with the
‘term’ of Tafawa Balewa cut short by the January 1966 coup. After the July 1966
coup happened and it was obvious that the country was not going to welcome a
Muslim Northerner as leader whether in and out of uniform, Gowon, a minority
Northern Christian was put forward for national leadership by the North. He was
merely supposed to be a figurehead while the core North in and out of uniform
control things. But then the Civil War came, that strengthened him and some
Southern power brokers like Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro and Okoi Arikpo and
some so-called Super Permanent Secretaries helped the inexperienced military
run the war economy without borrowing and without debt.
By the time Obafemi Awolowo
was leaving the government on principle in 1971 because he had realized that
the military were technically already reneging on the promise of handing over
power to civilians, Gowon had become stronger with a class of military boys
he’d promoted and the Super Permanent Secretaries. With the oil boom, the Udoji
salary awards and the relative peace in the polity, Gowon thought he had a
leeway to play military politics with the promised handover date of 1976,
especially also with his connections particularly with the British government
and some Western nations generally. However, he thought wrong because the North
was still working with its pre-Civil War agenda. Gowon was overthrown on the
29th of July 1975 while he was in Kampala, Uganda at an Organisation of African
Unity (OAU) summit and Murtala Muhammed, the leader of the 29th of July 1966
revenge coup took over.
But Murtala was to prove a
huge disappointment to the Northern power schemers. They had fashioned a
programme of Northern control of politics through the army, but with what they
saw with the oil boom and petrol being the new gold, he was supposed to come in
and put the North properly in the driving seat. Unfortunately for them, the
Murtala of 1966 and the Civil War was no longer the Murtala of 1975. With his
relationship with men like MKO Abiola and some Southern and Northern radical
intellectuals, he had become socially and politically educated and had become a
changed man. He was no longer the rabid ethnic jingoist that plotted the July
1966 coup or whose troops went on a killing spree in Asaba during the war; he
was now an undiluted patriot, a driven man who thinks Nigeria London
4. The Power Machine:
Though all Nigeria
For the Northern schemers,
this was convenient. They had a man who they could blackmail with his
friendship with Chukwuma Nzeogwu, a man they could virtually ask to do anything
to placate the North and he would do it, a man who could be their poodle.
Obasanjo has always been and will remain so, they thought. Based on the
Northern agenda, two officers that were key agents of the Kaduna Mafia were to
be put in prime positions to achieve the political, and economic aims of the
North. Shehu Yar’Adua, a Lieutenant Colonel, was catapulted to Brigadier and
Major General immediately to be Obasanjo’s second-in-command; but, in truth, he
was effectively the real power at Dodan Barracks. Buhari who was Governor of
Borno State was drafted straight to the centre to take charge of the national
economic asset as a new Federal Commissioner for Petroleum and Natural
Resources.
5. The Jackpot Of The
Petroleum Portfolio:
Taking over the national
petroleum assets was the most important thing for the Northern power brokers
before a return to civil rule planned for 1979. Though they were sure that they
would remain in control after the military handover, the oil boom had opened
their eyes to the potential in the oil industry and Buhari was their man. Under
Buhari, they had the perfect cover to do the looting of our national wealth.
That cover was the international petrol politics going on with the Organisation
of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) still fighting the West and the
Obasanjo government continuing with the anti-imperialist agenda of Murtala and
with plans to continue with the nationalization of the petroleum industry.
While the noise about all this was happening internationally, Buhari was making
hay domestically setting up the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)
and positioning his people with the new petroleum assets in his hands. Today,
we complain that Northerners own most of the prime oil assets in the
oil-producing areas, but what we may not know is that it started mostly with
Buhari as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum. Mamman Daura, his nephew holed up
with him in Aso Rock today was and still is his principal agent.
We are hearing now in the
news that Buhari has refused assent to the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill
(PIGB) because he fears it would reduce his control of the oil industry. But
the irony is that this is precisely the reason for the bill – to make the
Nigerian petroleum sector more transparent! Of course, Buhari has not been
there all the 17 years this bill has been in the making, but he is the
president who has it in front of him now to sign into law. Whatever the
political shenanigans holding it up all these years, the point is it’s ready,
but Buhari who promised he was going to sign it if it comes to his table is
demurring. Do we have to be told why?
The modus operandi was that
Buhari would always be the Teflon Don. He created a graduated system of rent
that had many fronts and go-betweens. This went on nicely while Nigeria was celebrating the impending return to
civil rule with the Second
Republic
Another uncomfortable thing
Nigerians heard about Buhari even in hushed tones was that he was the leader of
the military officers who were insisting on Sharia at the Constituent Assembly
before they hand over. Indeed, there were many stories of attempts within the
military high command to sabotage the handover to civilians to herald the
Second Republic and the N2.8 billion oil money missing under Buhari’s watch was
believed to be money used to settle the officers who were about to sabotage the
transition programme. Buhari oversaw this heist. Therefore, it was no surprise
that it was the same Buhari that emerged as military Head of State when they
overthrew Shehu Shagari out of fear that the latter was going to lose the
Northern political stranglehold through his poor management of the Nigerian
economy and the growing political instability.
6. Head Of State:
The greatest fear the
Northern branch of the Nigerian Armed Forces had at the time was Obafemi
Awolowo. The election of 1983 was evidently rigged and the National Party of
Nigeria (NPN) had to do some arithmetical maneuver in court to survive his
challenge. But it was obvious that he was gaining more grounds politically all
around the country and his acuity had even become sharper with age as he took
the Shagari government to the cleaners over its austerity measures and
corruption. To the class of officers who entered the army under the political
mentorship of Ahmadu Bello, knowing that the story was that the planners of the
January 1966 coup were thinking of handing over power to Awolowo, these were
not good signs. They feared that an Awolowo presidency may jeopardize them all,
especially with rumours flying around that if Awolowo wins, he was going to
probe the N2.8 billion missing from the NNPC, the massive corruption in the
army following the oil boom and that he was even going to put on trial officers
that were believed to have committed genocide during the war.
Thus, it was no surprise
that one of the very first things Buhari did when he returned to government as
military Head of State after the coup that ousted Shagari was to raid and
ransack Awolowo’s homes in Lagos
Buhari continued with his
pro-Northern rent politics over oil, while he ran a very repressive government.
He was able to cover up a lot of the underhanded dealings in his regime by
publicly pretending he was fighting corruption, making scapegoats of
politicians with atrocious show trials and long jail sentences. Of course, he
had no idea of the economy or how to run a stable polity. When it became
unbearable for the nation, his colleagues in the army simply performed the coup
de grâce and removed him and there was jubilation all over the land.
The Ibrahim Babangida coup
was not so much a halting of the Northern agenda, but more an attempt to refine
it. Babangida’s control of the army establishment gave him a great platform to
succeed with the coup. With the depth of Buhari’s unpopularity, ineptitude,
wickedness against the civil populace and Nigeria
Babangida attempted to open
up the industrial-military complex to more Southerners in the media,
intellectual and business class. It was a way of him using favours and
‘settlements’ to buy political loyalty and also supposedly to open up the
closed political space. But in the end, he began regressing and with his
‘Maradonic’ attitude towards the transition to civil rule, he began to lose
goodwill inside the army and amongst the civil populace. The April 1990 Major
Gideon Orkar coup exposed the heart of the leadership as still basically
hegemonic and June 12 1993 just further confirmed it.
8. Petroleum Trust Fund:
Again, the Northern agenda
was fully revived under General Sani Abacha, but his attempt to personalize
power and go rogue on the industrial-military complex were just a few in the
many political battles he had to fight. Abacha who had the Buhari temperament
felt he needed to play to the Northern power brokers in the face of the fierce
challenges he encountered in the South and from a very active civil society and
the international community by making them (the Northern power brokers) believe
the agenda was still on. Two men represented his keys to them - Buhari and
Shehu Yar’Adua. With Abacha looking to transmute into a civilian president,
Yar’Adua was a threat. So, he got Yar’Adua killed in prison in Abakaliki on
trumped-up coup charges, locked up Obasanjo and many others, but invited Buhari
to oversee a newly-created super-parastatal, the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF).
This was a statement to the Northern power brokers that they were back in
business with their man effectively the head of the petroleum money again.
Of course, as is normal
with Buhari and the Northern agenda, he created a vast network of Northern
fronts and emergency billionaires on the oil money, channeled projects
disproportionately to the North and generally legitimized Abacha and his
transmutation agenda with the Northern power brokers. However, Abacha’s death
again changed the whole calculation. With him dead, the Babangida wing of the
industrial-military complex was back in power under General Abdulsalami
Abubakar and they were now eager to do a quick getaway with an arrangement with
their international backers to take over the seemingly unending political
transition programme to civil rule. One man that appeared head and shoulders
above the rest in the new machinations was Obasanjo. How did this happen?
9. The Obasanjo Challenge:
What happened was that
while the North was scheming and placing Obasanjo as a stooge in the late
seventies, Obasanjo found a way to create a new national power niche for
himself by becoming a CIA agent after President Jimmy Carter visited Nigeria Africa .
They laundered his image as an international statesman with many outings with
the Commonwealth and the Ford Foundation and so on. Obasanjo soon recruited
Babangida and later, Aliyu Gusau, Danjuma and Abdulsalami Abubakar for the CIA
too. At the time, it was the height of the Cold War and the threat of Soviet
expansionism in Africa was real. America needed to have a strong presence in the Gulf of Guinea
to protect its oil supplies and Nigeria Nigeria Nigeria
With that kind of power
behind him, Obasanjo, unlike in his first incarnation as military Head of
State, was now no longer a poodle of the North (even though he was and still is
a poodle of the Western powers). Buhari and the old school Northern schemers
were simply shunted aside and Obasanjo was able to hold them at bay with the
work he and Danjuma (who became his Minister of Defence) did by totally
emasculating the Northern-controlled military and giving the Sharia advocates a
free reign while pretending to fight them. Buhari, who at this time was using
the Sharia movement as a political front couldn’t use it to mobilize against
the government in the North as planned because Obasanjo just more or less
ignored them when they were going on with this political Sharia. Amidst all the
killings and deaths, Obasanjo just stonewalled them.
Immediately Obasanjo took
over, the Northern schemers then began to present Buhari as their political
face through the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and later, the Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC). In those 15 years of all these incarnations, Buhari
had an iron grip on the political parties he was using for the agenda. But
while Nigerians witnessed him fail at every election and wondered why he was
not really campaigning in the South, what he was actually doing was sewing up
the Northern base by selling the Buhari myth as the man who would be going to
claim back all the national wealth the Southerners have stolen to help the
North. This is all Buhari is about in Northern consciousness - the Mahdi, the
political arrow against Southern infidels and thieves.
10. Buharism:
Also, in the early 2000s,
as part of a plan to present Buhari’s politics as a national alternative to the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), we got people who started to portray him as a
thinker, an ideologue. In that regard, a few Northern intellectuals began what
was essentially a rewrite of history by framing the clueless economic policies
that he pursued when he was military Head of State as “Buharism”. Prominent
amongst the theorists of Buharism then was Sanusi Lamido Sanusi who is now the
Emir of Kano. The man who at the time complained that he was being seen as an
“ideologue of Fulani supremacy” because of his support for Buhari said Buharism
was a bourgeois nationalist ideology that was taking us to Eldorado before it
was sabotaged by “the fifth columnists within the military establishment” and
other “retrogressive elements”. Buhari was presented as someone who only had a
difference of opinion with the Washington Consensus about how to improve the
balance of payments of the country, a kind of nationalist capitalist in the
mould of Malaysia
Of course, the issue wasn’t
that people didn’t understand the problems with IMF prescriptions at the time
or that they were just ready to accept them, the issue was that Buhari had no
real answers to the problems facing the country except posturing. His policy
proposals were naive and self-serving as there was no room for accountability
and plenty for favouritism. Indeed, Buhari’s policies were very costly for
Nigerians, yet people like Sanusi were defending his dictatorship and fascism
as necessary to set the country on the right path. Sanusi even went as far as
defending Buhari’s call that Muslims should vote for good Muslims in elections
by claiming that this was just Buhari calling for Muslims to vote for good
people.
Truth is Buhari had nothing
to offer while in government as a military officer and outside government as a
politician before he was voted in as president. Anything Buharism represented
and whatever it was in theory and in practice was disastrous. I mean, if
according to his supporters Buhari was not given the opportunity to show us
that Buharism was a great idea in the eighties because he was overthrown, he
had the opportunity after he was elected in 2015 to show us how good it can be.
But he turned out a huge national embarrassment because we saw how totally
clueless that policy was when he was insisting on “defending the naira” as all
came crashing down around him as he sent the economy into a tailspin. The same
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was all over the place begging for devaluation! In the
end, Buhari ran away from his senseless Buharism with his tail tucked between
his legs! Honestly, like some kindergarten narrative, the Buhari oversell has
been on repeat for almost two decades now and the tragedy is that so-called
educated and informed people are still buying it.
Of course, the Northern
power brokers have no illusions about Buhari’s intellectual capacities. To
them, he’s just a tool. They know he is their battering ram against the
Southern economy through the oil, they know he’s their man in their quest to
steal the oil wealth. But this ‘double-face’ is something Buhari has built his
entire political career on. To the ordinary people, he appears to be the
incorruptible, no-nonsense leader, but to the Northern power brokers, he is
their champion in stripping the South of wealth and diverting it to them.
11. The Gambling Chief:
Recently, Sule Lamido, the
former Governor of Jigawa State was speaking in Hausa and he called Buhari a
‘Kartagi uban 'yan caca'. This is a very cryptic comment only truly understood
by a few people in the Northern establishment. Literally, what this comment
means is that Buhari is the head or chief of gamblers, the one who sets up the
table and gets everyone to sit down and gamble and who then collects his cuts
from the winners. He seemingly is not part of the gambling, but he is the
organizer and the biggest beneficiary. It’s an analogy that is clear to those
addressed. Gamblers are seen as shifty characters with no morals, people who
would betray anyone for money; Buhari is their protector who profits from their
act while pretending not to be part of them. What the man is effectively saying
is that Buhari is the father of corruption pretending not to be corrupt.
For followers of Northern
politics, this was some brave talk from Lamido. At some other time he had
called Buhari a blackmailer. People may think Lamido is after Buhari because
he’s in the PDP and running for the presidential ticket of his party, so as to
challenge Buhari in the forthcoming election. While that is part of it, it does
not fully explain what is going on. People familiar with Lamido’s political
history would have realized that he built his political career on the back of
being a radical Northern politician under the old PRP as one of Aminu Kano and
Abubakar Rimi’s protégés. Though he did taint his credentials with the ignoble
role he played as the Secretary of the old Social Democratic Party (SDP) who,
along with Tony Anenih sold MKO Abiola’s mandate to the military, yet he has
always been opposed to the traditional power brokers of the North. His rise to
become Jigawa State Governor was actually in spite of them. He had built up
enough political capital with the talakawa to credibly win elective office in
Jigawa, which was created from the old Kano State
What he was doing with that
comment was not only sending Buhari a message, but also he was sending a
message to the Northern power brokers. He is ‘breaching’ one of their cardinal
rules, which is to protect the Teflon image of Buhari in the South. It is
instructive that Lamido was one of the few top Northern politicians in the PDP who
refused to join the ‘Northern conspiracy’ against Goodluck Jonathan, which was
to support Buhari against their own party man and the then incumbent president.
His travails with his sons at the hands of the EFCC and in prison are mainly
attempts to rubbish him amongst the talakawa with whom he has a lot of
credibility. He’s paying the price for breaching the Northern concert to
protect Buhari’s well-crafted image of personal integrity.
12. Taqiyya:
The way Buhari sells the
agenda with the Northern commoner is to present himself as a true Muslim
fighting for their welfare. It’s been working so far because Buhari and his
promoters in the Muslim North always justify his collaboration with some
Southerners (something naturally necessary to win the presidency), especially
those even the common people up North consider as corrupt as Taqiyya. In
Islamic theology, Taqiyya is supposed to be a protective injunction against
persecution. Sharia allows a Muslim to act deceptively or lie to save himself
and his faith when under persecution, but like some religious doctrines open to
misuse and misinterpretation, the Buhari promoters have used this principle to
successfully explain Buhari’s hobnobbing with some of those his Northern fans
thought he should be going after if indeed he is fighting corruption or
fighting for them.
It was also his explanation
for picking a Christian pastor, Tunde Bakare as running mate in 2011 and his
collaboration with Bola Tinubu and Professor Yemi Osinbajo in 2015. In 2011, his
popularity up North came to a peak and the feeling amongst his followers was
that he would finally win the election, especially as the story was sold that
Jonathan was a minority nobody who stole the mandate of the North by torpedoing
the PDP’s zoning formula after the death of Umaru Yar’Adua by denying the North
the opportunity of completing Yar’Adua’s term. That feeling of injustice
fuelled and grew the Buhari support base up North. It was a shock to him and
his supporters when he lost in a free and fair election to Jonathan. It led to
an outbreak of violence in the North, which led to the deaths of hundreds of
Southerners based in the North, including members of the National Youth Service
Corps (NYSC) who Buhari and his supporters accused of collaborating with the PDP
to rig the election. Buhari did not condemn the violence which cost the nation
more lives than it has lost since the Civil War, rather he justified it as
caused by cheating.
13. Alimi Finds His
Afonjas:
After the 2011 election,
Buhari in an emotional public speech declared that his 2011 run was going to be
his last attempt to win the presidency. But shortly after he took his CPC into
alliance with Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and factions of a few
other parties to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), which then became
the biggest opposition party against the PDP. Buhari’s problem before now in
negotiations with others in a bid to form coalitions against the PDP was his
inflexibility. But his 2011 loss made him realize that if indeed he was going
to win the presidency, he needed some kind of partner in the South who can
either deliver the South-South, South-East or South-West vote.
A number of factors worked
to produce Buhari as the 2015 presidential candidate of the APC. First, the PDP
in its overconfidence committed a sort of hara-kiri by letting its internal
troubles get out of control. The biggest of those problems centred around the
Jonathan presidency’s interference in the politics of the Governors Forum which
put him at loggerheads with then Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State. In
their attempt to undermine Amaechi, the presidency began to sponsor a challenge
against him in the Rivers State PDP with the aim of seizing the party from
under his control. The arrowhead of this challenge was Nyesom Wike who had been
Amaechi’s Chief of Staff and at the time a Minister in Jonathan’s government.
Wike, a formidable grassroots politician, was one of the principal persons
behind Amaechi, so losing him was a huge blow to Amaechi.
But, the Wike challenge was
not only aimed at taking over the PDP from Amaechi’s control, it was also aimed
at installing Wike as the Governor to succeed Amaechi against Amaechi’s chosen
person in the form of either Dakuku Peterside or Magnus Abe. This made it quite
difficult for Amaechi to remain in the PDP as he began to hobnob with the APC
people, dangling before them the prospects of breaking into the South-South.
While such prospects were somewhat farfetched, losing Amaechi to the APC was a
bigger blow for the PDP nationally, even if not in Rivers State
In the South-East, the only
thing the APC had was Rochas Okorocha taking a faction of the All Progressives
Grand Alliance (APGA) to join up with the APC mainly because he had
presidential ambition too and was desperate to actualize it in any party.
Again, Buhari promoters welcomed this because they thought it would deplete the
PDP votes in the South-East and also deplete the votes of his internal
opponents within the APC in the South-East.
However, it was in the
South-West Buhari hit jackpot. The desperation of Bola Tinubu made this
possible. Tinubu who as Lagos State governor survived the 2003 Obasanjo tsunami
against the Alliance Lagos
State Edo , Osun and Ekiti. This feat made Tinubu a larger than
life political figure as he was known to be benefactor to the new governors
taking over and even others seeking elective offices under the banner of the
party elsewhere. It is a statement on the state of progressive politics or what
is left of it that today Tinubu is so strong as to lay claim, even if
debatably, to the title of Asiwaju, a cultural title first bestowed on the
highly revered Awolowo unchallenged.
Indeed, Tinubu fancies
himself as the extant leader of the Yoruba politically and therefore the doyen
of “progressives”. Of course, it’s a farce. He’s just a good player of the
contemporary Nigerian establishment politics who in the beginning was mainly
using the ACN for his own political survival and recalibration. In 2006, he imported
Abubakar Atiku into the AC to contest for the presidency against Umaru Yar’Adua
when Atiku’s natural party, the PDP, under Obasanjo’s control kicked him out.
There are those who suspect that he did this in secret collaboration with
Obasanjo, so as to give Atiku false hopes and ultimately bury his ambition.
Well, what we know is that the latter lost woefully, but at least we could all
blame it on the massive rigging by the PDP then, even as discerning people knew
he had no chance, because AC went into that election lukewarmly. Again in 2010,
Tinubu imported Nuhu Ribadu into ACN, even though as EFCC head, Ribadu had
described Tinubu as one of the most corrupt persons in public life and had
vowed to bring him to book. Tinubu played godfather to him but led him too
straight to the electoral slaughter slab in 2011. Again, there are those who
actually suspected that he did this in conjunction with Obasanjo to railroad
the then opposition. However, while all the stories connecting Obasanjo to
Tinubu and AC and ACN presidential candidates are, of course, just
speculations, there is no doubt that Tinubu had a personal agenda with his
importation into his party of these persons. For instance, not a few noticed
the report that he was being sent a presidential jet to meet up with Jonathan
even mere hours before the 2011 presidential election.
However, if there was any
romance between Tinubu and Jonathan, that came to an end after Tinubu was put
on trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. The case was not diligently prosecuted.
In fact, there were reasons then to think it was just something done to give
the impression the Jonathan government was tackling corruption. Eventually, the
case was dismissed and, curiously, the government of Jonathan did not appeal
the verdict. We were to learn later that Jonathan’s Attorney General, Bello
Adoke argued against the appeal on the spurious ground that there are people
who, according to him, “we just cannot afford to rubbish over anything”. Yet,
by that time, Tinubu’s name had become synonymous with corruption and with
James Ibori, the former Governor of Delta State on trial in the UK , questions were being asked in several
quarters why Tinubu, supposedly one of his allies, was not on trial in Nigeria
Tinubu ensured that this
rebranding of Buhari was done with no cost spared! Prior to this time, Buhari
had a very poor image in the South as a whole following his poor leadership as
a military Head of State. He was known as an ethnic bigot who did everything to
rubbish the South, especially Yoruba leaders. As I said earlier, the great
Obafemi Awolowo was put under house arrest in Ikenne, while all the governors
from his party, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), were all thrown into jail to
serve atrociously long sentences. Some came out of jail to nurse various illnesses
and eventually die from such illnesses. He stopped the then ongoing Lagos
Metroline Project initiated by the Lateef Jakande administration in Lagos,
harassed MKO Abiola and attacked his businesses. He jailed Fela Anikulapo Kuti
and his brother, Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, drove many Southern intellectuals and
academics into exile and generally made the South a living hell for citizens.
When he was overthrown, it was jubilation all over the South.
Buhari was to return as
part of Abacha’s kitchen cabinet when the latter imprisoned Abiola. As head of
the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), he unabashedly discriminated against the South.
After his time with Abacha, he reincarnated as a Sharia advocate, marching to
the Ibadan to complain to Governor Lam Adesina about the supposed mistreatment
of the Fulani in the South-West only to be thoroughly educated by the governor.
Tinubu knew that no other Nigerian leader has been so openly mean and so wicked
to the South than Buhari, but he was looking at his own ambition and thinking
he has to go through Buhari to the presidency. He therefore got his minions
together and they stole their states’ coffers dry to install Buhari as the APC
candidate.
However, when it got to
choosing Buhari’s running mate and Bola Tinubu put himself forward, he was
fought tooth and nail by other top party members like Bukola Saraki, Nasir
el-Rufai, Rochas Okorocha and Rotimi Amaechi who felt that his influence over
the presidential candidate was too much already. Not only that, they also felt
that a Muslim-Muslim ticket would not work at the time, despite Tinubu’s
counter that it worked for MKO Abiola and Babagana Kingibe in the old SDP.
In the end, despite the
proposal that Rotimi Amaechi should take the slot and Nasir el-Rufai still
rooting for Bakare, Tinubu prevailed with Buhari to leave him with the
privilege of choosing the Vice Presidential candidate if he was going to be out
of the picture himself. Tinubu, who holds the honorific title of “National
Leader” of the APC then chose his longtime acolyte and loyalist, Professor Yemi
Osinbajo who served him as Attorney General while he was governor and who also
is his business partner. He is virtually a placeholder for Tinubu in the
administration today.
Watchers of political
development would have noted a swagger in Tinubu’s steps recently because he
thinks Buhari is eating out of the palm of his hand right now. Whatever Tinubu
is thinking, he needs to know that Buhari may be inept and clueless about
administration, but he is very adept at the Nigerian power game because of his
position in the Northern scheme and because of his long time serving in
leadership positions in the system. Today that scheme has become a factional
Fulani hegemony project under his presidency because other patriotic and
peace-loving Fulani have seen the stupidity of it all.
Though Tinubu is not part
of the Fulani hegemony scheme, he is at the moment fully part of the project to
get Buhari reelected because he thinks his political future and fortunes depend
on Buhari winning a second term. Of course, the Fulani hegemony scheme would
eventually swallow him up if he helps Buhari to a second term, but he doesn’t
know that yet. He’s been given clear warnings these past three years, but like
a dog who no longer hears the hunter’s whistle, he’s doubling down on his
support for Buhari. Afonja must answer his name, it seems.
Yet, if Tinubu understands
that he would be the biggest fish to be caught in Buhari’s net and that cutting
him down to size would represent Buhari’s biggest achievement in the eyes of
his Northern base, he would not play Afonja. If Tinubu recognizes that taking
him out is imperative for the factional Fulani agenda and that it means the
final conquest of the South in the eyes of the hegemonists, he would snap out
of his political reverie right now. If Tinubu knows that he’s now on a path to
a lonely journey that will cost him dear and that no Nigerian would fight for
him when it happens, he will sit quietly and rethink his options.
14. The Industrial-Military
Complex And Their Last Winning Hand:
Now, despite the political
mergers working in Buhari’s favour, the real factor that determined it for him
was the industrial-military complex. Jonathan is the only Nigerian leader up to
that point who was not a member of the industrial-military complex. He became
president by providence through the death of President Umaru Yar’Adua who was
installed by Obasanjo after his third term bid was thwarted. He sort of tied
the hands of his fellow industrial-military complex members because Umaru
Yar’Adua was junior brother to one of them, the late General Shehu Musa
Yar’Adua. That tied the hands of Ibrahim Babangida who was considering running
at the time.
Jonathan, who at first
appeared malleable, soon began to show streaks of independence that were not
welcome by the industrial-military complex. He denied them and their international
partners many deals, but it all came to a head when he attacked the fertilizer
cartel controlled by the retired generals. Once they realized they
weren’t going to get far with Jonathan, they began to attack him. Obasanjo
wrote his notorious public letter filled with lies, but rather than for
Jonathan to robustly handle his menace, he was rather lukewarm, thinking the
better approach was not to take on Obasanjo publicly. Obasanjo and the
industrial-military complex then welcomed Buhari back into the fold and
co-opted him to be their instrument in removing Jonathan. We all saw and heard
Ibrahim Babangida declare that they all were going support him. He even thanked
the APC for “honouring” the military by choosing Buhari.
They then went to work on
Jonathan. They fashioned a campaign that defined Jonathan as clueless, his
administration as corrupt and Buhari as the real antidote. They were all
falling over themselves to declare him a saint and Buhari and his promoters
just lapped it all up. They framed their campaign as “Change” and Obasanjo was
designated the “navigator” for APC after his rather dramatic tearing up of his
PDP membership card.
With the
industrial-military complex and the APC on the same page and with stolen money
from the APC states and some foreign elements behind him, Buhari was repackaged
as some no-nonsense corruption fighter and the general that will see off Boko
Haram, even when it was obvious to discerning Nigerians and international
observers that elements of the then opposition were in cahoots with Boko Haram,
while Buhari was their political mouthpiece. They brought in the David
Axelrod-led AKPD to help sell Buhari internationally. They rolled out the red
carpet for him at the Chatham House with no mention of the fact that this was
the same man that organized the terrorist kidnap of Umaru Dikko in London
Though, we have all
accepted today that Jonathan was defeated fair and square in the 2015 election,
there are reasons to believe that this may not be so. The only thing that gave
the Buhari victory any credibility was the precipitate way Jonathan conceded.
Personally, I think the man was intimidated and negotiated out of the
presidency by the industrial-military complex. For instance, the Kano Kano Kano
Jonathan inexplicably opted
not to challenge the result in court despite many obvious reasons he should
have done so. He was being celebrated everywhere for conceding, for being the
“hero of democracy”, for saving Nigeria from bloodshed when in fact there was
nothing to indicate that if he had simply gone to court to challenge the result
as he should have done, this would have led to bloodshed. Jonathan did not
think of the millions who voted for him, he did not think they must have a
reason for trusting him, he did not think it would serve the cause of democracy
better if he went to court, so that they can look at the evidence and put
everyone’s mind at rest with whatever decision they reach with such evidence.
The Professor Attahiru Jega-led Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC) was deliberately inefficient with the distribution of PVCs because they
had an agenda and the open rigging and underage voting that were recorded in
many places in the North simply did not matter to Jonathan. Once Abdulsalami
Abubakar came calling to convince him to concede and hand over, he couldn’t
wait to go back to Otuoke. And so began this Buhari reign as President of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria.
15. President Dysfunction:
Now, let’s get something
clear. Buhari will not live forever. One day, he will go the way of all mortals
and Nigeria Nigeria Nigeria Nigeria
It is important that those
who are considering Buhari again look at his organizational record and capacity
to build on friendships and goodwill. In a short space of three years, the man
has lost most people and most things that made it possible for him to be
president. He runs a dysfunctional government that is so collectively inept
that today they are a national disgrace. A lot of those who voted for them and
supported them initially can no longer justify their support for this
government. Only paid agents are shouting themselves hoarse defending their
emptiness. Every power group that helped bring him to power in and outside APC,
North and South, have backed away from his reelection bid. Indeed, most people
who defected from the PDP to APC to make it a national and viable party have
defected back to where they originally came from. I mean, how bad can you
really be to make that happen? How bad can you be to lose that type of
goodwill? Only idiots would believe the excuses Buhari and APC are giving for
these defections. The simple reason is inability to operate and run a party
with a national outlook with capacity to accommodate different interests with a
view to fashioning out progress from diverse opinions. The only people working
tooth and nail now to get Buhari reelected are persons who think they have
something personal to gain through his reelection, people like Tinubu and
Rochas Okorocha who think their way to the presidency in four years is through
Buhari’s reelection.
What the above tells us is
that if he wins a second term, it would be a worse disaster than the first
because his party would be involved in a deathly battle for who will succeed
him. His government would certainly not be stable enough to make development
plans and he himself with his age and not-so-great health condition and his
distinct lack of intellectual and emotional appreciation of the issues facing
the nation will not be in a position to do anything about the country sliding
more and more into anarchy. Buhari is only interested in giving excuses,
blaming others for his failures and accusing people of being unfair to him when
they ask him questions. The firm and progressive leadership we need certainly
won’t come from him. Everything tells us clearly that choosing him again will
be a form of national mass suicide.
16. The Wizards’ War:
Of course, we know that the
industrial-military complex and their international backers are fighting Buhari
today. But they are not fighting him because they want the best for us. They
are fighting him because they fear his capacity to take the nation into
uncharted territory and possibly destroy their investments with his
cluelessness. They had hoped he would lead by consultation with them, but the
man has gone rogue and is actually running a factional Fulani hegemonic agenda.
A lot of these people are men who fought the Civil War to keep the country
together and even though we know they’ve bled the country with their type of
leadership, the last thing they want is for the country to disintegrate and
with Buhari’s style, the possibility is real. These men who are now in the
departure lounge of life do not want to see their whole life achievements
destroyed by Buhari’s extreme bad governance while they still have breath. They
want to take the steering wheel from him again, install their own stooge and
keep things on an even keel once more.
But we must not listen to
them! Neither them nor Buhari represent a viable road to the right future for
the nation. We have all signed up for democracy. Buhari did not shoot his way
to power. Nigerians elected him and Nigerians must be the ones to
democratically send him back to Daura through a free and fair election. There
are now over 90 parties vying for elective offices, but we know only two are
really viable in terms of the presidency. So, let’s not beat about the bush, if
the APC presents Buhari again, let’s not waste our time thinking it too much;
we should simply choose whosoever the PDP brings along! Why, because such a
person, whoever he is at this stage, would be infinitely better than Buhari. I
mean, he possibly cannot be worse, can he?
The person would be better
because of the nature of the mandate that put him there and because of the
special historical circumstance that brings him about. That person will feel
the weight of the people and history on himself because he would realize that
no godfather, no industrial-military complex, no special interest brought him
to power, but the people of Nigeria making that decision because of the unique
circumstance they face at the moment. Such a man would be driven to prove that
good governance is indeed possible in Nigeria
17. Poisoning Civil
Society:
One sector that was key to
Buhari’s victory in 2015 was the civil society sector. It was this sector and
not the politicians that finally reached the Nigerian people with a message of
defiance against what they felt at the time was Jonathan’s profligacy. I think
they felt very disappointed with Jonathan because they could genuinely claim to
be part of the coalition that brought him to power with great expectations.
That affinity with Jonathan started with their united fight against the
Yar’Adua cabal that was denying him his constitutional right of succession. The
protest of civil society ultimately forced a resolution that brought the
Doctrine of Necessity and the eventual Jonathan takeover of the presidency.
Obviously, by the time
Jonathan was taking over as substantive president after the death of President
Umaru Yar’Adua, many members of the civil society groups were already working
in opposition to the PDP government. They were mostly split between the ACN and
the CPC mainly because of the influence of three persons - Bola Tinubu, Nasir
el-Rufai and Tunde Bakare. These people were preaching a brand of opposition
politics and sponsoring the type of public activism that the civil society members
mainly identified with. They showed their hand under the banner of the ‘Save
Nigeria Group’, which they successfully used to hijack the popular fight
against the Jonathan government’s fuel price increase of January 2012. This
gave them a lot of confidence going forward after the 2011 election. Towards
2015, with the mergers leading to the APC, a major part of civil society became
a key part of the political mobilization strategy and, eventually, they helped
in selling the Buhari candidacy.
At the time, it was one of
those national mysteries that not many could crack. How was it that civil
society groups, whose rise in power and profile started in earnest with the
military dictatorship of Muhammadu Buhari in 1984, were now the champions of
the same man in 2015? But for the discerning, it was not much of a mystery.
Bola Tinubu, Nasir el-Rufai and Tunde Bakare successfully weaponized the
national disaffection with the PDP, poured in money for mobilization and got
most members of these groups to stand by their politics. Their contribution to
this state of affairs was simply opportunistic. In fighting Umaru Yar’Adua and
Goodluck Jonathan, they ingratiated themselves with civil society groups,
telling fantastic tales of the evil in government and working them up to fight
what they thought were national battles, but which in truth were self-serving
political battles.
Today, the APC is in
government largely because of the mobilization work done on their behalf by
many civil society groups. Now seeing that what we have now isn’t what we
should be proud of, many civil society groups out of shame have slinked away
from public view, while many of those still pretending to stand are no more
than gangrened appendages of the ruling party. In the course of all this also, a
lot of them have become driven by ethnic sentiments and therefore clearly unfit
for purpose.
Yes, Buhari was a
beneficiary only because the civil society groups had the assurance that he was
a changed man who has learnt his lesson and who can be caged in a democracy.
They were going to inherit the Nigerian earth, they were told! Of course, this
was poison and they swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Today, civil society
power is at its nadir thanks to the emasculation campaign of their erstwhile
political sponsors. Well, there is no time for ‘jonesing’ as the streets would
say. They have to wake up and smell the PVC!
18. Two Alarm Bells:
Two recent developments
should alarm Nigerians and members of the human rights community particularly.
They should alarm us because they tell us clearly where Buhari is headed. The
first thing he did when he recently returned to Nigeria after another medical
trip to the United Kingdom was to declare that he would be jailing “more of the
thieves…that brought the economic problem to the country” because it is really
something expected of him. Not surprisingly, some of us were up in arms
accusing him of being tone deaf. However, that is because a lot of us do not
understand the script. The script is a return to dictatorship under the garb of
democracy. Buhari is desperate to remain in Aso Rock, no matter what happens,
but he thinks silencing the politicians, the elite and the people who do not
support him with this threat is the next thing to do.
First, the threat is
directed at those within his party still intent on decamping to the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP). He’s telling them that any decampment will put them in
his crosshairs. Naturally, he expects such a threat to keep them in line
because they know they are protected within the All Progressives Congress (APC)
no matter their crimes, as far as they are working for his reelection. He’s
also telling those in the opposition parties, especially the PDP that he will
be coming directly after those of them who pose a threat to his reelection bid
and/or persons who make their political structures tick.
There’s another group the
speech is directed to as a coded message. This is his Northern base. It is a
narrative long established that Southerners have stolen their wealth through
conspiracy with a few Northerners and that like a Mahdi Buhari is the one to
bring judgment upon them. It is proclaimed as the only job of his presidency
and what he would deliver on, which is why he said it is what is expected of
him.
Of course, he knows that
this is not the priority of the rest of Nigeria
The second development is
his scandalous speech at the annual Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) General
Conference. It was a speech unworthy of any democrat of whatever hue! He went
before the annual gathering of lawyers and effectively proclaimed his government
a dictatorship! The President in an administration that has a Senior Advocate
of Nigeria (SAN) as the Vice President and another as the Attorney General went
before the NBA to lie about a ruling of the Supreme Court evidently based on
the lies sold to him by another desperate Senior Advocate of Nigeria by the
name of Festus Keyamo who is now fully part of his campaign for reelection.
This is embarrassing enough, but more embarrassing is what the lie is meant to
achieve.
The president declared on
the strength of a non-existent law and a non-existent ruling of any court of
the land that the Rule of Law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s
security and national interest after he and his administration have refused to
release Mr Sambo Dasuki whom the courts have granted bail on numerous occasions
and after he and his soldiers have captured Mr Nnamdi Kanu who was on bail at
the time they invaded his home in September last year. Since then, no one has
seen Mr Kanu prompting fears that he may have been secretly killed. On Friday,
the 17th of August 2018, 120 women, aged between 22 and 70, mothers of children
went out to peacefully protest and plead for Kanu’s release in Owerri, Imo State
So, in the year of our Lord
two thousand and eighteen, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
went before the national body of lawyers and judges and declared that national
security and national interest are matters only he and his goons can deal with
and not our Constitution. Yes, in that singular speech, the president abrogated
section 35 of the Constitution, which is the section guaranteeing the right of
a citizen to personal liberty. The section lists the processes and the
conditions under which a person may be deprived of his or her personal liberty
and none of those conditions and processes includes a citizen being deprived of
his or her right to personal liberty when the president or the security
services feel that he or she is a threat to national security. None of it says
the president and the security services have the right to keep a citizen in
detention after the courts have granted them bail and after they’ve met the
conditions stated by the courts to be admitted to bail.
What the law says is that
if the president or his security services feel(s) that someone in detention
does not deserve bail because they are a threat to national security, the state
has to come to court to argue the case and show evidence why the court should
not grant the person bail. If in the discretion of the court, the state has not
made the case for the continued detention of such a person through its
submission, then the judge will grant bail and whatever prison or agency of
state holding such a person in custody must release them forthwith once the
bail conditions are met. If the state makes the case, the court will grant
their prayers and order the person to still be remanded in prison or detention.
The law never envisages a situation where the state will capture a citizen, put
him or her in detention and declare that some unknown law allows them to keep
this person in detention because he or she is supposedly a threat to national
security. The law has not given the president and his security services any
such powers. Only a judge of a competent court can make that decision.
So, yes, on that podium,
the president has ousted the jurisdiction of the courts in matters of bail for
anyone that he and his goons whimsically declare to be a threat to national
security. On that podium, he told the judges and the legal community that he
and his goons will not be coming to their courts to argue why anyone should not
be granted bail because that is now solely his decision based on his
interpretation of when whoever happens to be his victim poses a threat to
national security.
President Buhari does not
recognize that only the courts have the duty and the power to adjudicate on
what constitutes a matter of national security or when someone poses a threat
to national security based on the case made to the courts by the state and the
evidence presented. From now on citizens will be captured and thrown into the
gulag and the keys thrown away. Then the Attorney General would appear before
the cameras to tell Nigerians that in the case of the detainee in question, his
or her civil liberties and individual rights to freedom and movement do not
exist and cannot be granted by any court of law through any bail process
because in their case, the Rule of Law is subject to the supremacy of the
nation’s security and national interest as defined by the president and the
security services. This is where we are right now as a nation.
Of course, the more
disappointing thing for me is the loud silence that has greeted this menace
from the legal, civil society and human rights community. Where are the
lawyers? Where are the human rights advocates? Where is civil society? I can
understand that protocol probably did not allow them to openly object to the
president on the floor of the conference where he delivered the speech. But we’ve
heard from people who were there saying that the lawyers were clapping when the
president was delivering the speech. But whatever the situation, what has
happened since then? Why the eerie silence from members of the bar and the
human rights community? What kind of country are they looking to continue
practicing their law if they accept this from the president of a supposedly
democratic country? Can’t they see that this is a return to Decree 2 of 1984
promulgated by this same Buhari as a military Head of State?
I urge our lawyers and
civil society groups not give up now. They have to learn the lessons of the
past, pick themselves up and face the challenge we now have in front of us. No
one can make them irrelevant in the nation’s affairs but themselves! Yes, in
spite of everything, this is the time for them to wake up! The tag of
“democracy” must not deceive them because those who should be defending this
democracy have already compromised it! Thus, it is important that civil society
bodies rediscover their mojo now because they can once again save Nigeria
The civil society groups
must redevelop the June 12 mentality of the struggle to fight the menace in the
polity now! They must not look and say they cannot act because there are people
with whom they were in the struggle in the past whose political fortunes would
be hurt. No, it’s the survival of the nation that is at stake! Nigeria Nigeria Fourth
Republic
19. North And South United
For The North Against Buhari (Relationship Status: It’s complicated):
I do not think most people
in the South are still under the illusion that Buhari has anything good to
offer the nation. We know that APC political leaders who are feeding fat from
the Buhari presidency or who have political ambitions riding on the back of his
victory in 2019 will tell us Buhari is the best thing since ewedu and amala,
but most of us in the South know that’s not true. The problem we have today
with regard to Buhari is with the Northern elite and the ordinary Northerner.
We need to speak the truth to each other and that is the plain truth!
The Northern elite has to
come to terms with the fact that Buhari is a bad investment for them and the
nation. They may make money from having him in government, but it’s blood money
because many are dying from Buhari’s bad governance. They have to think of
making money with a better leadership that addresses the economic and social
needs of the country because there is every reason to believe that with Buhari
we are building up to a political and social upheaval of the worst kind.
I know the way most members
of the elite think is to go hide their families abroad and get a ticket ready
to move at the slightest sign of trouble. But that is myopia. When it will
come, a lot of them might not be in a position to do all they have planned to
do and the truth is no one knows who’d be a victim. It is therefore better to
enjoy the country and allow others too to enjoy. No one is saying everyone has
to be rich, but majority of Nigerians have no reason to be this dirt poor. I
mean, in a statement released ahead of her coming to Nigeria, Mrs Theresa May,
the British Prime Minister stated what the whole world now knows, which is that
Nigeria currently is the poverty capital of the world where 87 million
Nigerians live on less than $1.90 a day! Mrs May called our country “home to
more very poor people than any other nation in the world”. Is this what we
should be celebrating in 2018?
The elite and the predatory
establishment are as responsible for the state of the nation as much as Buhari,
but he has to go because he represents our biggest danger today. He’s a danger
to our national security, he’s a danger to our national unity and he’s a danger
to our national economy! The elite of the North must act patriotically and turn
their back on him now to save our nation because like the rest of the nation,
they know the embarrassment is becoming too much!
As for ordinary Northerners
still supporting Buhari and still thinking he would bring good governance to
them, especially the Muslims, all I will tell them is to go to their Koran and
also search all Islamic and Muslim literatures they can find. They should
review Islamic history all over the world and let them find that one good
leader in history or in contemporary times where their leadership has the same
effect on the people they lead as Buhari’s leadership has had on them in the
past three years and today. I will tell them that they are not worshipping
Allah. They are worshipping a man who repeatedly lies to them and whose only
love is to himself and his family. They have it in their hands to change their
fortune. They have their PVCs to send the message that they are not dumb.
Buhari is not the leader that will do for the North what the North deserves
now. But, as I said, it’s in their hands.
For the rest of Nigeria Britain
for years and that gap is wider now because despite the North dominating
national leadership, the leaders they have produced for Nigeria
The problem of Nigeria Nigeria Nigeria
All citizens must begin to
think of bridging the development gap as a project, North and South. We can
start with this election. If Buhari is reelected, we can be sure that the gap
will further increase because the man has no clue nor inclination to engage in
development of any sort. After his four years, the North will not smell the
presidency for at least 8 years. Only God knows what would be the state of our
country at the end of that time, even where there is no guarantee that any
Northern presidency thereafter would be better. We need to stop the bleeding
now!
We must start by making
sure that we vote in another Northerner with a developmental agenda as
President. If such a person wins and does a good job for four years, we would
be happy to give him or her another four years to continue with the good work.
If all that this person achieves after eight years is investing in education
and social development mostly in the North so we can get quality human capital
from that part of the country to help build a 21st century national economy and
society, then we would be fine. If we must save Nigeria Nigeria
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