When Will Nigeria Start Getting Better?

By Kanayo Esinulo
Those who are familiar with how the machine of government works will easily tell you that leaders, most leaders, are somehow prisoners of ‘Security Reports’, but what these ‘knowledgeable top functionaries’ of government will never disclose to anyone, including the leader himself and the inquisitive thinking community, is that a good percentage of these ‘Security Reports’ are often hugely inaccurate, sometimes exaggerated and a few times overtaken by unexpected sudden events. They hardly provide the leader the necessary insights and all sides of the actual situation upon which proper policy decisions can be based for the general good.

What is often submitted as security reports contain, largely, what would make the leader happy, stampede him or her into making silly mistakes or even frighten him into becoming a prisoner in Government Lodge. And because our leaders are often caged and over protected from interfacing with us, the ordinary citizens, and knowing how we really feel and how government policies affect our lives positively or negatively, the sweet-heart security reports are taken seriously by them, and policy decisions are then taken, based on the contents and conclusions of the reports. But a good and experienced leader reaches out to the people as much as possible and as much as security considerations would permit.

Let me table a quick coda: Muhammadu Buhari first struck our national consciousness during the bloody Maitesine uprisings in some parts of Northern Nigeria in 1982. He was in-charge of a command in Jos, the capital of Plateau State. Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari was the President and Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces. When Maitesine, the militant Islamic group, was fully contained in Kano, they ran into neighbouring Cameroun and still constituted a menace to our national security from that flank, it was this man, Muhammadu Buhari, who mobilised troops under his command and engaged the rascals, decimated their strength, killed and captured many of them and drove them deep into the Republic of Cameroun beyond the orders of Shagari, the Commander-in-Chief. Instantly, Buhari became a national celebrity. He mesmerised and defeated the ill-trained and ill-equipped Maitesine invaders. I was with NTA News, Victoria Island at the time. We tried to secure elaborate interview with Buhari for our national audience, but he shied away from the national media. But all the same, his gallantry and patriotism became an instant hit.

So, when he surfaced after the events of December 31, 1983 as the popular choice of the coup makers against the Shagari government, he was not totally unknown to most Nigerians. His Second-in-Command in the new government, Tunde Idiagbon, was, then, relatively unknown but soon became a star in the new government, and in his own right too. The character of the regime began to manifest clearly soon after it settled down to business. There were side talks about the sectional and ethnic inclinations of the regime as exposed by the arrests and detention of our erstwhile political leaders: Shagari was kept under ‘house arrest’, while his Second-in-Command, Alex Ekwueme was securely put away in prison.

Governors whose cases were strictly under investigation, Lateef Jakande, Sam Mbakwe, Ambrose Alli, Adekunle Ajasin, Abubakar Rimi, Jim Nwobodo, etc., were scattered in various prisons in the country. Alli virtually lost his sight while in prison and upon his release by the Babangida regime eventually died a blind man. Mbakwe never really fully recovered from the illnesses he contacted while under that rigourous solitary confinement, Pa Ajasin lost form and his usual robust good health withered away while under Buhari’s gulag. Lateef Jakande barely survived the trauma of that prolonged detention in prison.

Alli, Mbakwe, Ajasin and Jakande, as Nigerians later knew, were not rich after all and by any standards. Yet, they were paraded as criminals who looted our public treasuries. Then, the big one: the unprecedented attempt to bring back to Nigeria, by force, and in a crate, Shagari’s Minister of Transport, Alhaji Umaru Dikko, for trial. The exercise failed and the world was outraged. The Israeli abduction technicians who packaged and executed the failed project for the Buhari military regime pocketed their huge price and quietly disappeared into thin air.

The truth today is that possibly Buhari was ill-advised and mis-informed before he approved the very extreme measures that his military government took against the ousted second republic politicians. But so far, he has not openly admitted that some mistakes were made, including the unnecessary ‘invasion’ and rigourous searching of the Apapa residence of the Yoruba political icon, late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I repeat: all the governors of the second republic detained during the military regime of Buhari, only very few came out of the rigourous solitary confinement with their good health intact. Go and check. The story about Ambrose Alli, a professor of pathology, and former governor of old Bendel State [now Edo and Delta]who went blind while in prison is still a story to be fully told. And Alli died a poor man.