BUHARI'S POLEMICAL MARKSMANSHIP
By
Don’t ask me what the hell that retired General Mohammadu Buhari wants. What else? The slim man from Daura wants, like many others, to replace Olusegun Obasanjo at Aso Rock as the next president of the republic. And why not, if not? That really is the beauty of the democratic process - the existence of a huge and tolerant market place of ideas, big enough to accommodate the good, the bad and the ugly. So Buhari has made it known that he is not done yet with the rulership of Nigeria, having once illegally torpedoed a duly elected democratic government only to impose himself on the nation as a military head of state until his lieutenants treacherously shoved him out of power rather unceremoniously. But he is still alive.
If you are old enough to have witnessed the way and manner the regime that Buhari led treated politicians, it will be pretty unbelievable that such a man would one day find himself as member of the political class which he so unabashedly humiliated and callously devastated and for a very good cause too. Our politicians do not deserve anything better than the "Buhari treatment" judging by the way they carry themselves even now. Yes, he was draconian but he sure had the support of most of the ordinary people of Nigeria who where fed up with the politicians who refused to accept the challenge of leadership while hankering after the privileges of power like spoilt children. So Buhari’s potential enemies are the politicians who continue to remember how their nakedness were brutally exposed for popular view in those frightful days of WAI and other neo-Nasser antics. I wonder if General Tunde Idiagbon were to still be alive, whether Buhari would have been faced with any problem of finding a running mate.
The personality of Buhari is not only to be determined within the few months he tried to combat the indiscipline in our society with a military mien or the discipline he brought to bear on our economy sprinkled with some nationalism as he resisted the devaluation of the Naira nor accept to throw the national economy to the dogs of the Bretton Wood system as represented by the IMF and the Worldbank. We are also to determine the thin man now behind agbada by his not-too-recent role as the principal bursar of the PTF sub-national but a truly private parallel economy, a creation of Abacha, and the same man everyone is now trying unashamedly to beat in the corruption race. More recently, Buhari became better known as an apostle of the Sharia system, something he had the power to impose on the nation where he was in power but wisely did not do, a development that reduced him into the interminable sectarian bigotry of neo-Talibanism which some of our Moslem compatriots have allowed themselves into.
So the Buhari that is likely to register in the minds of many Nigerians today, depending on where you belong and from where you are looking at him, is the man who killed the second republican democracy and its politicians; the man who attempted to liberate the Nigerian economy from the clutches of corruption and its kalo-kalo fiscal idiosyncrasy; the man who, in a moral U-turn, worked with Abacha who was nothing but a moral pariah and held the till at the Sodomic PTF; the man who is alleged to want Nigeria to toe the path of Afghanistan and make all of us, Christians, Moslems and all, a subject of the Sharia. So from one Muhammdu Buhari, you have as many picks as you may want to, all depending on what you want.
Take it or leave it, the man is in politics and indeed, the only real challenge to the Obasanjo incumbency, especially as the Minna man is playing safe, perhaps for now. It is therefore critical that watchers of the nation’s politics must take more than a passing interest in him. If I did not want the name Buhari on this page because some later-day journalists, especially young wordsmiths in the fledging northern press have been drumming the man up as if he really has no weight unless he is stuffed with trash and arrant nonsense in the form of exaggerative editorial promotion, you would understand why. It sounds like a hard sell because when rabbits are presented as elephants or rotten yogurt are marketed like fresh milk, then, it is good sign that something grievous is amiss.
Last week the man spoke for himself and like a good soldier, he picked his target rather efficiently. What else other than the contradictions of the current Obasanjo system which has provided essay material for every ‘corner-side letter writer’. Well, Obasanjo called for the darts when he proclaimed a war against corruption in a system that was erected by corruption. I have said it over and over again that had Obasanjo known a bit about the motives of those that came to him at Otta by night and decided to make him president, he would have, at the very least, in the fashion of our police men asked them "wetin una carry"? Individuals who were running from the justice of the people cashed on the unexpected freedom from jail of Obasanjo and talked him into the presidency knowing his unending love for Nigeria and his dream to make history in an a-historical society. Expectedly, while Obasanjo was talking about "no business as usual" his makers were gathering Ghana-must-go bags. By the time the masquerade came to the open, it was already enough time for 419ers, fraudsters, June 12 annulists and sundry actors of public criminalities to become the new helmsmen, and naturally, all the good talk of accountability and transparency were tucked away into the ever flowing Agbada.
Otherwise, no one can deny that Obasanjo has all it takes to restore democracy to Nigeria, probity to governance and all the positive characteristics of a developing society and more. In deed, he has proved, like any ordinary person, that he can do most of these things inspite of the fact that he is now a very pitiable hostage to the men and women that have now turned corruption into a national ‘way of life’.
That is where we think Buhari comes in and why he is on our agenda today. If no one has been able to tell the President what really is happening with his men, Buhari has just done that in a paper he titled "Discipline and Accountability under Democratic Leadership" in which he lamented that "rogues are now statesmen" in the country. If you recall that Salisu Buhari, the first speaker of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly was a certificate forger, if you recall that we once had a dubious man like Evans Ewerem as President of the Senate, if you recall that there are more jeeps and limousines now than when IBB and Abacha combined held the treasury to themselves; if you recall that we now have more people with dubious ancestry and political philosophy dictating morality to us, then, you will readily understand what Buhari meant by the claim that rogues are now statesmen.
Of course, many people are going to poke holes into the equity of Buhari moral standing especially as his own hands may not be that clean. For example, I am not too sure the man got beyond the crocodiles when he said that the queries about the infamous 53 suite cases should now be directed to the vice-president Atiku, being the then Customs chief when those scandalous suit cases came into the country in the dead of night. His explanation about a man with many wives and siblings would have washed but that he could still in 2002 AD pretend not to know what happened says a great deal about his own ethics.
That caveat is necessary so that the reader does not start to have funny feelings about the man Buhari. Be that as it may, he has raised the moral stakes for the present administration when he went further to say that "we cannot in all honesty be said to have tried our best to lay down the foundation of a stable democratic polity or the ground for good governance; rather what we observe in this country is not the responsible exercise of power, but an intoxication of leadership by it". This to me is nothing but polemical marksmanship.
The man went on to say that "it is an understatement to say that there has been a clear lack of accountability in the conduct of public affairs in the country". Well, this bit of it is debatable because until the present regime, Nigeria was being governed like a cult of evilmen and goggled kleptocrats of which Abacha was the head. There is certainly more openness today than the nation ever had in the days of the military but then, we must be careful never to compare darkness with light. Our comparison should be like with like -- democracy with democracy. And I cannot agree more with him when he said that "Because little is being done to the culprits, this has also fueled the scrambles for appointment, especially to executive positions, which because of the same lack of accountability, enable their acceptance to do as they please".
I can bet the retired General that many of those who had rooted for him till now will begin to withdraw hearing what he has to say about public service. He should not be surprised if all the presently warring politicians sink their differences just to ensure that he does not get beyond nomination level for he is till capable of sending many of them to jail once more for ‘their’ ill-gotten wealth just like he did to them in his first coming, albeit unconstitutionally. Everything Buhari said in that paper is what Nigeria's Ghana-must-go leadership abhors. I do not need any magician to tell me that the Buhari camp is threatened with mass desertion. His party may even disown him as a ‘dangerous’ man.
I would suggest that he joins a political science department of any of the campuses and teach aspects of his new political morality. It might help.
August 2002