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.
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