Nigeria: Like Rafindadi, Like Daura

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

 Like most other appointments in his 11 months in the job, only President        Muhammadu Buhari knows why he pulled out his kinsman, Lawal Daura, from  retirement and handed him the sensitive and strategic job of director general of    the Directorate of State Securities (DSS).

That was in July 2015, barely one month after he was sworn in as president on May 29.

*Lawal Daura 

But whatever his reason, as usual, it has less to do with competence, the axiomatic act of putting a round peg in a round hole, but more with the overarching considerations in all of his political moves – nepotism, prejudice, clannishness.

For a president who has confessed his love for working with those he knows and who, despite all the positions he has held in the country – including being military head of state for 20 months – his circle of friends is limited to his Fulani kinsmen, Daura may well be his idea of the man who the cap fits after he sacked Ita Ekpeyong who headed the agency from September 2010 to July 2015.

Established under the National Security Agencies Act of 1986 (Decree 19) the DSS, also known as the State Security Service (SSS) – one of the three successor organisations to the National Security Organisation (NSO) dissolved in 1986 – is the primary domestic intelligence agency of Nigeria.

Before the DSS, there was the NSO, set up in 1976 with Abdullahi Mohammed as the first director general.

But the NSO under Mohammed Lawal Rafindadi was broken up into three agencies by former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, after it had been turned into a monster used to abuse Nigerians and trample upon their fundamental human rights by the Buhari-led military junta between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985.

In appointing Daura the DG of a critical security apparatus such as the DSS, it would seem that Buhari’s primary goal, aside consolidating power in the hands of his Fulani brethren, is to recreate the stomach-churning 20th century secret police used by his military junta to whip people into line in a 21st century democratic environment.

Electing A Dictator – A Major Drawback For Nigeria’s Democracy

By Lloyd Ukwu

Prelude:

The problem with dictatorship is that it usually lacks the capacity and patience to understand the meaning of the rule of law and due process. Both doctrines are often slow and therefore require patience. Dictators don’t have patience, they want it here, now and by any means necessary. 

 In 1984, Muhammadu Buhari overthrew the democratically elected government of President Shehu Shagari. It is true that every coup plotter is guilty of breaching the Nigerian constitution and shooting his way into power. But arguably, unlike Ibrahim Babangida that overthrew a military junta, Buhari’s offense was more egregious because he overthrew a democratically elected government – an expression of the collective will of Nigerians. In his false feeling of importance, Buhari has always believed in his messianic mission. He thinks that he knows it all, and that, unlike any other Nigerian, he knows what is best for Nigeria. His twisted sense of superiority and inordinate craving for power found expression in his 1984 coup and his subsequent, repeated run for the presidency. Before he finally won in 2015, he had been defeated in three earlier presidential elections. 

On his third defeat, he broke down and wept in public, an action that would have ended his political career if he were an American politician. Politicians hardly weep in America. To me, that unrestrained public effusion of tears signified his utter desperation for power. His frequent threats to Nigerians were also indicative of his excessive hunger for power. 

After he lost the 2011 presidential election, he made his threats; vowing to make Nigeria ungovernable. And true to his word, he attempted to make Nigeria ungovernable. Through his Boko Haram connection, he unleashed terror on Nigeria. Some say that if Buhari had no relationship with Boko Haram, why did the terrorist group nominate him as one of its negotiators? And before the 2015 election, he threatened to spill blood and cause mayhem if he loses the election. Unfortunately, in 2015, Nigerians buckled under Buhari’s threats and shenanigans, and elected a dictator-president. 

The President of Northern Nigeria?

By Abiodun Ladepo

Hurray! It is September and Nigerians from the South can now expect to be called upon to serve their country as members of President Buhari’s cabinet. No, they are not going to be the National Security Adviser. They are not going to be Accountant-General of the Federation. They are not going to head DSS, EFCC or INEC. They are not going to head the Nigerian Ports Authority or the Nigerian Maritime Administration, Safety and Security Agency (NIMASA). They are not going to head Customs or Immigrations.

Listen; there is quite a long list of serious positions they are not going to have because those positions have gone to the North. In the infinite wisdom of President Muhammadu Buhari, after having searched the length and breadth of Nigeria looking for competent people who are also not tainted by the stain of corruption, these positions will only go to the North where there is an abundance of incorruptible and competent Nigerians.

Curbing Violence In Nigeria (III): Revisiting The Niger Delta

Violence in the Niger Delta may soon increase unless the Nigerian government acts quickly and decisively to address long-simmering grievances. With the costly Presidential Amnesty Program for ex-insurgents due to end in a few months, there are increasingly bitter complaints in the region that chronic poverty and catastrophic oil pollution, which fuelled the earlier rebellion, remain largely unaddressed. Since Goodluck Jonathan, the first president from the Delta, lost re-election in March, some activists have resumed agitation for greater resource control and self-determination, and a number of ex-militant leaders are threatening to resume fighting (“return to the creeks”). While the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East is the paramount security challenge, President Muhammadu Buhari rightly identifies the Delta as a priority. He needs to act firmly but carefully to wind down the amnesty program gradually, revamp development and environmental programs, facilitate passage of the long-stalled Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and improve security and rule of law across the region. CLICK HERE TO READ  THE FULL REPORT

Buhari Why?

By Onyemaechi Ogbunwezeh

Fellow Nigerians!

I can't still wrap my head around this!

The election of Muhammadu Buhari is gradually unravelling as a hagiography ghost-written by Big oil and other vested-interests of imperial atrocity that has continued to rape Africa for 600 years now.

Two days ago, General Muhammadu Buhari, elected President of Nigeria on the 28th of March, 2015, and who was about to be sworn in on the 29th of May, left Nigeria under the clouds of darkness, whose opacity is unparalleled, and jetted out to London for reasons no one has been able to decipher.

Buhari Why?

His press team came out to say that he went to London to rest. He travelled in the company of Deziani Allison Madueke. Was this an accident? This would be an accident if you believe that a politician would never lie.

This journey raises serious questions of fundamental importance to all Nigerians. Who actually owns Nigeria? And who actually rules Nigeria? And for whom do they rule this country?

APC Should Face The Real Issues

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Recently, the Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Mr. John Oyegun, was quoted as saying that he was “sad” that his party could not produce a lawmaker from the South East to be elected as senate president or speaker of the House of Representatives when the new national assembly would be inaugurated in June. This was because during the last elections, the APC performed so poorly in the South East that it was unable to win a single seat in the two houses of the national assembly in the region. 

*Bola Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari and John

  Oyegun 

Ordinarily, this should have been an exclusive problem of the APC, but given the way Mr. Oyegun spoke, someone might be deluded into thinking that some really monumental tragedy had hit the South East – for which the people of the area should be in deep mourning by now. 

Since the presidential election which the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, told us was won by the APC’s General Muhammadu Buhari, one has lost count of articles ecstatically celebrating how the “wrong voting” of majority of South Easterners has now put the zone to a “great disadvantage.”

Some solutions have also been “kindly” proffered by quite a number of people to “help” the South East out of its predicament, like the very absurd suggestion that a senator-elect from Enugu State should decamp to the APC so he could become the senate president; or even the much more off-putting call on a female Senator-elect from Anambra State to step down for the APC candidate she defeated, since the man is a “very good material” for the senate presidency. One could go on and on, but what is of concern here is that Mr. Oyegun’s assertion would seem to have somewhat elevated these clearly pedestrian views and clothed them with the false robe of serious discourse.

Obasanjo’s Belated Distaste For Corruption

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

A few hours after the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Attahiru Jega, told Nigerians that General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressive Congress (APC) has won the March 28, 2015 Presidential Elections, a former head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo, released his congratulatory letter to Buhari. In it, he told Buhari, among other things, to rid “our land of corruption”  

*Obasanjo

“With so much harm already done to many national institutions including the military, which proudly nurtured you and me, you will have a lot to do on institution reform, education, healthcare, economy, security, infrastructure, power, youth employment, agribusiness, oil and gas, external affairs, cohesiveness of our nation and ridding our land of corruption,” Obasanjo wrote in the six-paragraph letter.

It was the season of victory celebrations and hastening to identify with victors, so, such outpour of sentiments were not unexpected, even from very suspicious and grossly unqualified quarters. We live in a country of pathetic denialists, where the citizens are in such a hurry to forget and the media finds the ennobling task of asking deep questions and reminding us of even our most recent past a very tiresome and undesirable task.

And so, in such a country, persons like Obasanjo who deployed enormous zeal and determination to wreak unqualified damage to their country can afford to rewrite recent history and brazenly crown and advertise themselves as heroes and  patriots. And our largely pathetic media would eagerly join, if not lead, the celebration of this unsightly dance in the slimy pond of egregious hypocrisy and mediocrity.   

Illiberality In An Age Of Conspiracy

By Dan Amor

For those who have a profound appreciation of power and its most penetrating insight as well, the fact of the matter, as the Italians once succinctly put it, is that power cannot be wrested no matter the paradigm one uses without certain attributes by the group or individual that jockeys after it. Popularized as the Three Cs in political parlance, any group that earnestly seeks power must be cohesive. It must be coherent. And it must be conspiratorial. 

*President Jonathan 

In an attempt to wrest power from President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, even before the Senate's Doctrine of Necessity following the untimely death of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, some hawks have tried to employ certain machinations including coercion and brigandage to humiliate him from the pinnacle of power.

Few Nigerians have been so persistently, so perversely and so pertinaciously maligned in the folklore of our political evolution. Even before Yar'Adua was officially pronounced dead, there was  cataclysm in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) arising from the sharp division between defenders of entrenched interests who insisted that the North must retain power and those who insisted that the sanctity of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must supervene.  That is where Jonathan's problem started. With the intervention of the Senate, he assumed the Presidency in acting capacity and later as substantive President. In 2011, northern politicians insisted that Jonathan should not run, which is grossly unconstitutional. Again, the Constitution gained upper hand, and Jonathan, in what was considered a free-and-fair election by local and international observers, won a pan-Nigerian mandate as the country's fourth democratically elected President.

Where is Muhammadu Buhari?

By Chuks Iloegbunam 
Yes, indeed. That is the question. Where is the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC)? The man left Nigeria in mysterious circumstances sometime between February 15 and 19, 2015. His manner of disappearing raised eyebrows across the country, for he suddenly melted into ether. To divert the attention of the curious, his handlers posted numerous false pictures on the Internet and planted same in national newspapers. There, suddenly, was Muhammadu Buhari, confidently emerging from airport formalities at either Heathrow or Gatwick! There, suddenly, was a relaxed Buhari in some well-appointed London studio, granting a press interview. 

*Muhammadu Buhari 

It didn’t take a century for the pack of lies to crumble. It turned out the pictures released of Buhari by his handlers were of the man on a UK visit during 2013. It turned out that the Buhari interview was years old, and had been conducted not anywhere in Europe but inside an Abuja Transcorp Hilton suite. Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose personally visited the suite and demonstrated beyond every iota of doubt that it was the venue of the so-called interview the APC claimed its presidential candidate had granted in London. Eagle-eyed journalists supported Fayose’s findings by detailing features of the interview picture that pinned its origin to the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.

Shed Your Own Blood, Mr. Politician!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Whenever Nigerian politicians threaten that blood would flow if they lose in an election, what they always have in mind is not their own blood or that of their children and wives.  Even their distant relations and friends do not figure in their calculations.

*Post-election violence: who dies? (pix: salon)

What they have in mind is the blood of grossly impoverished Nigerians (people totally unfamiliar and unrelated to them whose death or impairment would not interfere with their happiness, assuming they even get to hear of it) whom they believe they would always be able to easily brainwash and deceive with dirty naira notes to unleash violence. These sometimes waste their lives in the service of those selfish and ultra-callous politicians who do not even place the slightest hint of worth on the lives of other Nigerians. These politicians have also learnt to deploy two usually highly reliable intoxicants, namely, ethnicity and godless religion, to confuse and blur the reasoning of the people and lure them into the streets to embrace their wasteful deaths.

Soyinka’s 60 Reasons (2)—An Investigative Report

By Chinweizu

07feb15

Soyinka says he has 60 reasons for not voting for Jonathan?  

 Is this one of them?

China Signs $23Billion Oil Deal With Nigeria

http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-signs-23-billion-oil-deal-with-nigeria/19390

By Trevor Johnson

Global Research, May 28, 2010

Or is this one of those off-the-radar reasons that it pays not to mention to the people?

Now, about my friend and old sparring partner WS. If you want to know what the Western powers are up to in Nija, you just watch WS. He has been their boy-in-the-hood ever since one of his lecturers at IU inspired him to set up his Pyrates as cover for a Nija network branch of British intelligence. And you think he got his Nobel for his unreadable books? But that’s another story.

Anyway what has that deal, signed in May 2010, got to do with Wole’s pro-Buhari position, or with the momentum of the Buhari campaign despite his being prima facie the Boko Haram candidate?

The report about that China deal concluded on this note:

“Western policy on Nigeria is driven by the super-profits generated from the extraction of oil and its processing. While publicly the US and its allies proclaim the need for democracy and openness, this is window dressing. Anything that impedes their drive for profits, whether from local opposition or from a rival nation, will be dealt with ruthlessly when required. The latest moves by China will have caused consternation in the boardrooms of the big oil companies, and countermeasures are all but inevitable.”

That’s the link, I tell you, to events now unfolding in the 2015 elections.

Is the pro-Buhari campaign momentum part of the countermeasures? An effort at regime change by orchestrated propaganda?

To appreciate that possibility, go watch the film “A Very British Coup” to see how such is done.

But what was the deal for? Why did it give offence and cause consternation in the boardrooms of the western oil giants—Shell, ExxonMobil and the lot?

2015 Presidential Election Issues (3)

By Chinweizu

Part II of “2015-- Between Liberation and Slavery (3)”

Copyright © by Chinweizu, 2015

Sundoor999@gmail.com

 31jan15

A contribution to the Abuja symposium on “NATIONAL CONFAB AND THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS” on MONDAY, 2^ND FEBRUARY  2015

VENUE: LAGOS/OSUN HALL, TRANSCORP HILTON HOTEL

-----------------------------

 ===========================================

2015 Presidential Election Issues

After that historical backgrounder, I shall now examine 4 election issues, the two on everybody’s mind —Corruption and Insecurity, with insecurity in the two forms of Boko Haram and The Fulani militia, plus two others that are not but should be on everybody’s mind namely, the 1999 Constitution—hereafter referred to as the Constitution; and Candidate Buhari.  So all in all I shall examine 5 distinct election issues: Corruption; Boko Haram; The Fulani Militia; the 1999 Constitution; Candidate Buhari.

------------------------------------------------

1] On Corruption, I submit that, under the Constitution, no President of Nigeria can tackle corruption without inviting impeachment, simply because corruption is encouraged and protected by the constitution which he is sworn to enforce.

2] On Boko Haram, I submit that it is partly funded through the structures of the Constitution and can’t be extinguished without first discarding the Constitution. I also submit that a military solution to Boko Haram is not possible under the Constitution.

3] On The Fulani Militia, I submit that it is an ethnic cleansing and land grabbing instrument of the Caliphate and a mortal danger to all other Nigerians, and that it can’t be curbed under the Constitution.

4] On the Constitution, I submit that it is the godfather of corruption, as well as the codification of the sources of all the vices that plague Nigeria, and that Nigeria cannot be reformed without discarding it. Though ostensibly democratic, its frauds make it a fake-democracy constitution.

5] On Candidate Buhari, I submit that he has neither the will nor the ability to discard the Constitution but has every reason to perpetuate it. Accordingly he can’t solve any of the problems whose solution requires discarding the Constitution. So, those who expect him to change Nigeria by solving these problems are taking themselves for a ride.

From these submissions I argue that because these top problems—Corruption, Insecurity in its Boko Haram and Fulani Militia forms--- can be solved only after scrapping the Constitution; so, the principal election issue becomes the Constitution itself and how to replace it.  Hence, this election should be decided by the answer the candidates give to just one question: What’s your program for replacing the Constitution?

I shall now discuss these submissions one by one.

Discourse On Our “Mumu” (Part I)

--A backroom view of the state of the struggle for a True Federalism Constitution.

By Chinweizu

10 January 2015

Sundoor999@gmail.com

Our 'mumu' (is it stupidity?) has caught up with us. Now, no one can escape the dire consequences of living in our cultural and institutional deceit, self-denial and delusions. In brotherly frankness, please take these from me,

Amos Akingba.

 The quote is the last paragraph of Amos Akingba’s email of 05jan15 to his aburo. It shall be the text for my discourse on why the decades-long struggle for a True Federalism Constitution stands today in danger of being defeated.

------------------------------

From the backroom where ill health has confined me, I’ve been watching this struggle for a True Federalism Constitution, TFC, and I have a few observations to share with the elders  and captains of the struggle.

The handwriting on the wall, as I see it, is that the chance of winning the struggle for TFC by dialogue and negotiation was lost on the Confab floor during its closing session when Arewa introduced a surprise amendment to the Confab Report requiring that it be sent to the NASS as proposed amendments to the 1999 Constitution. By not defeating that amendment, the non-Caliphate majority of the delegates—from the New South: i.e. south of Shariyaland, and comprising the zones of South-West, South-South, South-East, and North-Central as well as the indigenous non-Hafukawa who are trapped in Shariyaland itself, such as the Zuru in Kebbi State and the Chibok in Borno State, whose new alliance had secured those far reaching recommendations in the Confab Report-- threw away all the marvelous gains they had made. In not defeating that amendment, the New South delegates sent the report to a NASS where Arewa can kill or gut it.  Unless their fraudulently built-in dominance at the NASS can somehow be overcome, Arewa will get NASS to nullify the Confab Report and return the struggle for TFC to square zero where it started decades ago.

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.

2015 Nigerian Elections: Jonathan Will Not Win!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

                                                      

It is my considered opinion that President Goodluck Jonathan will not win the February 14, 2015 presidential election. But then, he will NOT also lose. And if Jonathan is declared winner after the votes had been cast and counted, it would not be because the people voted massively for him. It would be that Nigerians trooped out to overwhelmingly vote against the All Progressive Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. 

*Jonathan

Although, President Jonathan has performed far better than his predecessors in office, especially, his arch-critic, former President Olusegun Obasanjo (who went all out to impoverish and ground the country despite the unprecedented earnings that poured into the treasury during his tenure from oil exports) and whose regime brazenly institutionalized corruption (thereby, proving that it was indeed possible to beat the solid record left by the Ibrahim Babangida military regime), what cannot be  denied is that Jonathan could have done far better than he has done. But, sadly, the APC whose candidate is Jonathan’s major challenger is just incapable of inspiring confidence. Although labouring to present themselves as the “face of change,” the APC people only succeed in making Jonathan more appealing to the people by the way they conduct themselves and their campaign.

And despite all the resources and efforts the party has deployed to market itself as an alternative to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), it has only succeeded in solidifying the egregious impression that it is nothing other than the PDP’s dustbin, where mostly frustrated and disgruntled PDP members seek refuge and are heartily received no matter their past records.

Is Buhari The End Of Tinubu Politics?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

One of the most astounding surprises of the current political dispensation is the ease with which the National Leader of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has allowed himself to be convinced that in the event of a General Muhammadu Buhari win in the February 2015 presidential election, that there would still be anything like another “national leader” of the APC aside from Buhari himself.

Bola Tinubu and Buhari

I have not read the APC constitution, but even if there is a provision in it fueling such a grand assumption, such an office can only exist in name. It would amount to the greatest delusion of the century to imagine that any other “national leader” can co-exist with the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Resources, and that such a “national leader” would still be able the wield enormous influence and retain the loyalty of the governors, other elected officials and party leaders, even those he anointed and installed who had all along been very loyal to him.     

Now, no matter your view about Tinubu, you cannot accuse him of lacking in political shrewdness. One readily remembers what happened during the build-up to the 2003 elections when President Olusegun Obasanjo deployed a very simple, well-worn “we-are-brothers” strategy at the famous meeting with the leaders and “elders” of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in Lagos and changed the political equation in the South West in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The only governor who survived that great onslaught which prepared the ground for the untimely death of the AD was Bola Tinubu of Lagos State. And from the rubble of that “earthquake,” Tinubu built what later became the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) which surprised many people with the kind of progress it recorded within a very short time.    

But as things stand now, would it be safe to describe the APC as Tinubu’s last political gamble? Or is there something the man knows that he is not telling us? Is it likely that his interest might even be in 2019 instead of 2015? Could it be that having failed to persuade Buhari to give up his very problematic ambition, Tinubu has merely agreed to back him fully convinced that he would fail? And since everyone knows that this is Buhari’s “last card,” Tinubu can now persuade him to remain a “father figure” in the APC in order to retain his supporters up-North and then prepare the party for a real electoral contest with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2019? Because, it is difficult to imagine that the Tinubu we all know would just open his eyes and enter into an arrangement that would make him lose in a moment the enormous political clout he has worked so hard to accumulate just because he wants to witness a Buhari presidency!  

Okay, let us look at the issues involved. No matter how we choose to view it, the APC is nothing but an assemblage of strange bedfellows with clearly conflicting narrow interests held together by the secret hope in each person (or group) to outsmart and use the other to achieve his (or its) own personal agenda. In the APC, we have the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) which derived its strength and following from the deep conviction in the North that its leader, Buhari, could be a reliable tool for the gratification of the hard-to-disguise   desperation of the core North to take back “its power”. The defunct New-PDP, the second group that came together with others to form the APC, is, however, very easy to describe. 

It emerged from the sentiment fueled at that time by the Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, (who incidentally is still in the PDP and one of President Goodluck Jonathan’s strongest supporters in the North) that it was the time of the North to produce Nigeria’s president. And so it had no other agenda except the realization of a president of Northern extraction. And that is why the unduly loud presence of the Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi in that group (who was reportedly seduced by a “vice presidential carrot” dangled before him by Northern political strategists in order to use him against Jonathan in the Niger Delta to return power to the North) looked (and still looks) quite ridiculous to many people. We, also, have the defunct ACN led by Tinubu which saw in the North’s mad quest for power (as represented by the CPC and the New-PDP) an attractive opportunity to play on the national league – to lead a party whose influence and presence could be felt everywhere across the nation.

*Jonathan 

On its part, too, the “Bring-Back-Our-Power” groups within and outside the APC easily   saw in Tinubu an opportunity to use the ACN’s South-West’s supporters to realize their undisguised agenda. But to conceal their real, individual interests, these groups found a ready, mutual target in President Jonathan. And as they direct all their energy and focus on Jonathan whom they are attacking relentlessly, each is able to remove attention from its own motive and moves. Everyone is waiting for the right moment to remove his own mask.  That was why it was so easy for the APC to agree that their presidential candidate should come from the core-North. (Forget the suspicious appearance by Rochas Okorocha at the primaries).

That was also why the North could easily concede virtually every important and powerful post in the APC to others once they secured the assurance that the presidential candidate would not just be one of them, but one fully trusted to shun all pretenses and “political correctness” to emerge and act as a truly “Northern president”! And again, that is why no one has raised any objections to Tinubu’s continued reference as the “National Leader” even after the ACN where he firmly held that post had ceased to exist. They know that raising eyebrows now is a needless distraction. The preoccupation now is to put Buhari in Aso  Rock and every other thing will fall in place and every water will find its level.      

What further compounds matters for Tinubu and the South-West he is trying to pull along with him is what Buhari truly represents despite what some pundits are telling us. The Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Ahaji Ibrahim Coomasie, did not mince words when he said:  “I am the Chairman of the Arewa Consultative Forum and we have said it before, but we are reiterating it, that we are going to support the northern candidate. The APC has voted a northern candidate, so we are going to support him 100 per cent. So, Buhari is our candidate for the 2015 presidential election.” 

Northern leaders have never been able to conceal the sole motivation behind their stiff opposition against Jonathan. That is why no matter all he has done in the North all they want is for him to go away and hand over not just to anyone, but a person from the North. And not even a person from the Middle-Belt or a Christian from the North is good enough! That is the truth many people know but would never admit.

Indeed, if this election is about the possession of better ideas and competence, why on earth would any sincere, rational person be presenting Buhari as the alternative to Jonathan? The only coherent thing I have heard from Buhari since he indicated interest to run for president is that “the PDP government has failed.” Of course, anybody can say that – it does not require even a less-than average brain to be able to say it. Then he would start rolling out a catalogue of what he would do if elected president including a promise to “stabilize the oil market”! If I did not hear this myself during a Channels TV interview (still available on youtube), I would not have believed anyone hoping to be taken seriously would say such a thing. But that’s Buhari for you. Is he going to issue another Decree 2 to regulate OPEC activities? Okay, that aside, what are his strategies for achieving all the paradise-on-earth he is promising? No one has heard him utter a single one!

In the interview he granted an online medium, TheCable in October 2014, a very simple question was asked Buhari to outline his policy direction, to show how he would do things differently from the current president whom he has been criticizing and recover the country as he has been promising. When he failed to give any coherent answer, the question was rephrased  two more times, yet the Daura General just left what he was asked and continued saying every other thing that entered his head except the answers required from him.

Buhari announced the other day that if elected president, he will gather some other generals together to help him devise a strategy for ending the Boko Haram menace; in other words, right now, he has no idea how to end the security problem for which he and his party has fiercely attacked the present administration and which they have also made the backbone of the Buhari campaign. Given the very ugly developments (and his own pronouncements) in the course of his collection and submission of his N27.5 million naira APC nomination forms which grossly discoloured his so-called anti-graft credentials, and how dollars reportedly competed with naira to buy him delegates at the APC convention in Lagos, how can anyone possibly invest trust in Buhari’s ability to fight corruption given these early signs? Okay, his party has said that all public officers that looted the treasury in the past would not be bothered by a Buhari regime, but only new thieves would be dealt with, is he now saying that all those APC stalwarts (it was reported that a certain Southern governor was his biggest financier) who poured out all those wads of naira, dollars and pounds to generously bribe the APC delegates to vote him would not want to recoup their investments, plus the profits? Can Buhari say in all sincerity that he was not aware that corrupt elected officials and party moneybags deployed huge piles of public and private funds to outspend his co-contestants to purchase him the APC presidential ticket as was widely reported in the media?  Now, assuming he was not aware, when he found out later, what did he do? Did he try to distance himself from the horrendous sleaze? Was this what informed the pledge to not probe past corrupt public officers who had looted the treasure pale?    

I do not believe that those pushing Buhari into our faces are just being motivated by an Anything-But-Jonathan mindset. Indeed, they know exactly why they want to foist him on us, and they have not been able  to hide it. It is the army of “brilliant analysts” in the Lagos media that are overstretching their optimism and unduly embellishing very clearly declared intentions to confuse themselves.

If then Buhari proves book makers wrong and wins the presidency, it is difficult to see how the Ango Abdullahi-led Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and other fire-spiting “Bring-Back-Our-Power” warriors who will immediately form a ring around him can tolerate another “national leader” calling the shots out there or the interest of those he is pulling along with him.  One only hopes that this merger which is clearly a bad marriage still held intact by the anticipated realizations of private interests is not a disaster waiting to happen which, perhaps, only the failure of the APC in the February election will save us from?    

Also, those who have chosen to relapse into convenient amnesia and are busy celebrating the emergence of Prof Yemi Osibajo as Buhari’s running mate should hasten to recall the kind of vice president Jonathan was for Yar’Adua, how a tiny cabal ruled Nigeria in place of an unconscious president after brutally shutting out the vice president and threatening fire and brimstone against anyone who dared to suggest that their “son” was simply too incapacitated to continue to rule Nigeria. The constitution has not changed on the status of the vice president. He is still a “spare tire,” and would be even more so in a Buhari presidency.

So, could it be that the Asiwaju of Lagos is taking his followers, especially, in the South-West on a road that leads nowhere instead of, perhaps, exercising a little patience to give the ACN a little more time to grow and gather more weight and then really confront the PDP? Is he stretching optimism beyond its malleable limit? Or could it be that he has his own secret plan for beating in their own game those scheming to use, outwit, and relegate him? Indeed, we have interesting times ahead of us.

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*Ejinkeonye is a columnist with Daily Independent newspaper where this article was first published. (scruples2006@yahoo.com) Twitter:@ugowrite