In spite of my recent criticisms of the government of President Muhammadu Buhari – recent because I used to be one of his well-known supporters (remember I wrote in 2015 that Nigeria needs him more than he needs Nigeria), I have concluded at least five of my last eight articles with prayers, wishing him God’s guidance in his arduous state duties.
I keep praying for him because I have, personally, not lost faith in Nigeria. Indeed, I believe that this country can survive its present challenges and emerge a much more united and prosperous country. What we presently lack is leadership; one that will know neither Jew nor Gentile, but would rule with the mindset that East, West, or North, Nigeria is one; a united country, under God. I also believe that we can still see president Buhari experience a Pauline conversion.
After all, this is the same man Nigerians ensured his election both in 2015 and ‘19 after three unsuccessful attempts. We obviously did not forget how vigorously he had always championed Northern causes as in when he equated attack on Boko Haram with an attack on the North or how the same philistines named him one of their representatives in an anticipated dialogue with the President Goodluck Jonathan government. Rather, for those of us who aggressively canvassed his candidacy during those two election cycles, as well as the Nigerians who massively voted him, especially those from the South, the following reasons adduced recently by Dele Momodu, the Ovation publisher for supporting him would hold good for all of us:
“One. We were tired of PDP after 16 years of profligacy and all kinds of bad behaviour that seemed to make General Abacha begin to look like a Saint. Two. In the days of tribulations, you sometimes run to the elders of the family in order to tap into their uncommon experience and wisdom notwithstanding their shortcomings. We perceived Buhari to be such an elder. Three. We reasoned that whatever is lacking in the President would be covered by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo who is recognised not only as a cerebral and knowledgeable man, but also an outstanding and accomplished administrator, given his stint at the helm of affairs of the Ministry of Justice in Lagos State. Four. We expected the President to cooperate beautifully with some of the bright people in his Party, who know their onions and can guide him in the right direction. Five. We never thought in our wildest imagination that any leadership, no matter its background, would ever have the temerity and audacity to lead us back to the dark days of the military. Six. We expected the President to have accepted the reality that the world has changed so drastically since he was forced out of power in 1985 and it is virtually impossible to continue to run government in analogue fashion”.
More than these, however, Buhari’s incandescent personal integrity was enough for me. Here was a man, a general of the Nigerian army, many of whose colleagues were corrupt to their teeth, who has held very high public offices, including that of military Head of state but had not been accused of corruption and who, in addition, lives a completely ascetic life, and I needed no further persuasion that this was the person to lift Nigeria out of the moral depravity, the deep dungeon, into which 16 years of a thieving PDP had thrown it. I could not, in my life, have imagined what we came to see of President Buhari as elected president of the most populous Black nation on earth. I never could have imagined President Buhari as an ethnic champion, with his government’s key policies, sans its infrastructural development policy, being solely targeted at benefitting his ethnic group, the Fulani – RUGA, WATER BILL, and now, his intending to exhume from the dead, an antediluvian GRAZING ROUTES, even when he should know that the federal government cannot legally exercise authority over an inch of state land, without the state governor’s permission, or without being hauled before the courts by the original land owners.
As a commentator on one of my recent articles recently put it, President Buhari did much more to disappoint Nigerians.
Commented Joshua Oyewande on my article: “President Buhari As I Have Never Seen Him …” of 13 June, 2021: “Buhari has disappointed himself. Buhari has disappointed Nigerians. Buhari has disappointed humanity. For Buhari to tell Nigerians and the world that the Fulanis carrying AK47 and other sophisticated weapons used in killing, maiming and raping of farmers, innocent women, children working on their farmlands in Yorubaland, Iboland, in the South South, even in some parts of the North, are Fulanis from Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Senegal, is not only an indictment of himself but also that of his government. Human rights lawyers should get ready to prepare charges for war crimes against him at the ICJ in The Hague”. “ … Buhari should not shift any blame on any governor. State governors are not in charge of Customs and Immigration”.
Many Nigerians, not just Oyewande feel that aggrieved.
But what do we need a Nigerian President being hauled before the world court for? Won’t that tarnish, rather than enhance Nigeria or should a whole country be going, heedlessly, after one man? Even though as late as during his recent interviews, President Buhari was still avuncular, defending all these, and feeling sorry about nothing, I believe we would be better served salvaging our country, rather than pursuing a chimera.
And here exactly is where Truth, Dialogue and Reconciliation come in.
Contrary to the views of many, Nigeria is not a mistake. What it has lacked, like forever, is sincere leadership, the type that reminds one of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, even though out of religious bigotry, Turkey’s current rabid President, Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, has completely obliterated Ataturk’s historic contributions to that country.
The bitterness in South Africa was probably nowhere near what currently obtains in Nigeria when they set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the end of the Apartheid regime. The present, federally instigated iniquities in Nigeria are such that nobody with his/her head in the right place can suggest such for Nigeria at this moment. Rather, we must consciously, and honestly, begin the process of righting the many wrongs tearing our country apart. And that can only start with President Buhari who many Nigerians hold responsible for the calamitous state of our country today.
Whoever has been reading this column will remember that I have always emphasised the necessity for telling ourselves the truth. This was mostly in relation to those around the President who, probably out of fear or intimidation, or the Fulani culture of respect, and never controverting the elder – (Fulanis predominate the presidency), have not been telling the president the truth either of the daily butchery of human beings in all parts of the country, or the unbelievable incidences of kidnapping of students, even mere pupils, especially in the North and perpetrated mostly by Fulanis, native and foreign, as His Eminence, the Sultan recently honestly confirmed; the ballooning prices of foodstuff which is turning millions of Nigerians into destitudes – reminds one of the late Dikko who said Nigerians would eat from the dustbin – or the embarrassing, daily devaluation of the naira which is now, surprisingly hovering well over 500 to the dollar, even as the borrowings from China to build railways into the president’s “ cousin’s” – his own words – Niger Republic continues, unabated.
As if to bail me out of my inability to brilliantly craft the situation in the presidency, this is how Dr Tunde Oluwajuyitan of The Nation reflected it in his article: ‘A President Trapped In Age Of Feudal Lords’ – Thursday, 17 June, 2021:”President Buhari remains stranded in the age of feudalism where the lords value honour and loyalty of their serfs who must be bound by oath of allegiance. It is not an accident (therefore), that most of his loyal gatekeepers are unable to tell him the truth”.
Still talking truth, President Buhari must also show that he knows the truth about the bestiality of marauding Fulani herdsmen just as I indicated above that His Eminence, the Sultan did, affirming that 8 out of 10 kidnappers in Nigeria are Fulanis. There is nothing shameful about saying the truth if the president is keen about healing the country.
The same appeal goes to Governor Umahi and his other colleagues in the Southeast who, together with the Igbo elite, rather than honestly name IPOB and the ESN as the terrorists killing security personnel and burning government properties in that part of the country , are mouthing inanities like ‘unknown gun men’ and ‘it is not in the Igbo culture to burn things’. If that is true why are they now shouting about government’s determination to run these ‘unknowns’ aground. How long ago was it that the same Kanu, the IPOB leader, got Lagos literally burnt down, without a single word of remonstration from the East – the reason it is said that what goes round, comes round.
Unfortunately, their timidity, taciturnity and fear of IPOB, have all led the president into equating all Igbos with IPOB as in when, during one of his recent interviews, he alluded to IPOB, saying they are all over the country, and have properties scattered all over. That, of course, was very unbecoming of the President as it illustrates nothing but bitterness against a major ethnic group in the country while he more than romances his own. It will be wishful thinking for Igbos, or anybody for that matter, however, to think that government can look askance while all that mayhem is happening in the Southeast and the Southsouth.
While at this too, and still in the process of righting wrongs, President Buhari must now admit that it is unstatesmanlike, putting the headship of nearly all major agencies of government, in his administration, in the hands of Northerners.
Judging from his appointments, I often wonder if, out of 20 appointments to be made, he would not really wish he could allot 22 to the North. And, without specific constitutional provisions, I doubt if any Igbo would be in President Buhari’s Executive council. This is absolutely iniquitous, and it is time the President changes his attitude to Igbos. If it came from the war years, a half century plus should be more than enough to cure the president of that beef; all in the name of healing our country.
As the Nigerian Army, speaking through its spokesperson, Brig- General Onyema Nwachukwu, said only this past week, “gun alone cannot stop the prevailing security threat across the land”.
Only equity and fair mindedness, can.
This is why the President should now nurture that spirit that led him to, a few weeks ago, send the Magashi – led delegation to jaw jaw with leaders of the Southeast during which they discussed issues of marginalisation, herders/ farmers problems etc which sa the Southeast leaders rejecting secession. This is the way to go and president Buhari should now intensify this healthy interaction rather than hold on to agelong prejudices simply because the youth of that region are, albeit in a wrong manner, reacting to their people being treated like orphans in their own country.
After all these have been done, only one thing would remain, and it is this: that the President disavows of the Miyetti Allah nauseating claim that Nigeria is the captured territory of the Fulani. They should be told, in unmistakable terms, that this is a historical fallacy as Fulanis never captured the Kanuris, the Yorubas or any ethnic group in Southern Nigeria. Should they require any education in that respect, the Yorubas beat Fulanis back, with their tail behind their legs, at the Oshogbo battle of 1840 when the following Ilorin war chiefs were captured: Jimba, head slave of the Emir and one of the sons of Ali, the Fulani commander-in-chief. Also captured were Chief Lateju, and Ajikobo, the Yoruba Balogun of Ilorin, both of who, being Yoruba by birth, were executed as traitors.
If President Buhari chooses Nigeria, by disavowing of that annoying claim, in addition to the earlier steps suggested, the stage would have been set for true dialogue between, and reconciliation, of all ethnic groups in Nigeria.
May the good Lord guide the President as he sets about healing the land.
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