Sir, I am a citizen of Nigeria, from what is known geographically as
the Northern part, and by my training and upbringing, I am taught the
virtues of respect for the elder and obedience to responsible and
accountable leaders. Coming from Zaria, I have grown up to understand
that trust and honesty are important pillars for leadership and this, in
cases of aberration, leads to dissent as a result of leadership
failure, which always find legitimacy in the absence, or perceived
weakening, of these pillars. This leads to the rise of injustice and
descent to immorality and criminal conducts in society, giving rise to
crisis of confidence and overall anarchy, as we have witnessed in
Nigeria over the last few decades.
On December 31, 1983, when you spearheaded the overthrow of the Alh.
Shehu Shagari led Second Republic, one of the justification for the
coup was the ‘crisis of confidence afflicting our nation’. The reality
before us since 1999, as Nigerians, is that we continue to face this
crisis of confidence. In fact, if your coup speech is to be replayed,
word for word, it will reflect present national conditions. And like in
1983, the yearning for change is evident in the conduct of our
politicians which you so lucidly captured in your 1983 speech as
follows:
“It is true that there is a worldwide economic recession. However,
in the case of Nigeria, its impact was aggravated by mismanagement. We
believe the appropriate government agencies have good advice but the
leadership disregarded their advice. The situation could have been
avoided if the legislators were alive to their constitutional
responsibilities; Instead, the legislators were preoccupied with
determining their salary scales, fringe benefit and unnecessary foreign
travels, et. al ,which took no account of the state of the economy and
the welfare of the people they represented. As a result of our inability
to cultivate financial discipline and prudent management of the
economy, we have come to depend largey on internal and external
borrowing to execute government projects with attendant domestic
pressure and soaring external debts, thus aggravating the propensity of
the outgoing civilian administration to mismanage our financial
resources. Nigeria was already condemned perpetually with the twin
problem of heavy budget deficits and weak balance of payments position,
with the prospect of building a virile and viable economy.
“The last general election was anything but free and fair. The only
political parties that could complain of election rigging are those
parties that lacked the resources to rig. There is ample evidence that
rigging and thuggery were relative to the resources available to the
parties. This conclusively proved to us that the parties have not
developed confidence in the presidential system of government on which
the nation invested so much material and human resources. While
corruption and indiscipline have been associated with our state of
underdevelopment, these two evils in our body politic have attained
unprecedented height in the past few years. The corrupt, inept and
insensitive leadership in the last four years has been the source of
immorality and impropriety in our society.”
With very minor editing and emphasis, these would aptly describe our
reality today. The only fundamental difference was that, unlike in
December 1983, our political reality today is in spite of your active
partisan involvement. Active partisan involvement to the extent that you
were the strongest opposition Presidential candidate and one of the
political parties that contested the last general elections (2011) was a
party you organized, promoted and fielded candidates for the elections.
The party today has a serving Governor for Nasarawa State, Senators,
House of Representatives members and many members of House of Assembly
in many states under the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). The fact
that, based on performance or conduct of these elected CPC
representatives, I can not differentiate them with PDP representatives,
is the source of my worry. I am therefore writing you this letter as a
contribution to the process whereby we must critically evaluate our
actions and honestly provide leadership to the process of moving our
people and nation forward.
Let me quickly admit here, in the effort to move our people and
nation forward, our primary task must be to develop the capacity to
fight oppression and injustice. This requires a capacity to live above
board, in other words, the capacity to live exemplary life as a source
of moral authority, if you like discipline, which has today come to be
strongly associated with your leadership qualities. To that extent
therefore one would expect that the CPC state government of Nasarawa
will be a model and a source inspiration for Nigerians. Alternatively,
we should have a situation where CPC legislators would be “alive to
their constitutional responsibilities” and would not be “preoccupied
with determining their salary scales, fringe benefit and unnecessary
foreign travels.” Unfortunately, we are not able to make this assertion.
Perhaps, it is still very early since there is still three years ahead
of us.
It is with these issues in mind that I believe it is important I
write you. Your recent declaration as reported by News Agency of Nigeria
(NAN) on April 13, 2012, to the effect that you will be contesting the
2015 elections compelled me to, not just write to you, but make my views
open to the public. In making my views open the public, I am conscious
of my limitations as an ordinary citizen and to that extent, therefore,
my views will not enjoy the benefits of wide publicity and
acceptability.
Consistent with my upbringing, I intend to state my views honestly,
truthfully and with the utmost respect to your person. Also, consistent
with the training of my parents and teachers, I will, with the best of
intentions, convey to you my feelings with high sense of obedience to
you as a 70 year old person, who has not just paid his dues but who has
remained the only surviving leadership model for my generation. I say
this with every sense of responsibility and conscious of the fact that I
am not a member of your party and did not vote for you in the last
general elections. In fact, I am a member of the Action Congress of
Nigeria (ACN) and contested the 2011 elections as the Senatorial
Candidate of the party for Kaduna North.
I am sure with this disclosure you may be tempted to dismiss my
views. However, being the leader you are, I also expect that you will at
least read the letter before you pass your final judgment. I will
therefore proceed to state why I believe your declaration to contest the
2015 Presidential election will not lead us to the desired changes we
all aspire to have for Nigeria.
First, as I inferred above, your party, Congress for Progressive
Change (CPC) is not different from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP). In fact, the truth is that it has been taken over by what I can
call the PDP virus based, on the fact that the only serving Governor of
the party was a member of the PDP and only decamped to your party after
being denied the opportunity to contest on the platform of the PDP. As a
result, his team (Commissioners and members of the State House of
Assembly) are predominantly PDP.
In addition, the representatives of the party in the National
Assembly (Senators and House of Representatives) have not differentiated
themselves from the dominant conduct of PDP members. They have in fact
joined the PDP club of legislators to enjoy fat salaries and benefits.
They are part and parcel of unaccountable and corrupt legislative order,
whose business today is predominantly to resort to blackmails and
intimidations with several reported allegations of corrupt practices.
Arising from this, we have a national assembly that is unaccountable,
whose budget is known only to its members. It is not only CPC
representatives that are accomplices to this ugly reality.
Representatives of ACN, Labour Party, All Progressives Grand Alliance
(APGA) and all other opposition parties are equally guilty.
The second issue is the fact that the result we have today is a
product of the way your party recruited its candidates for the 2011
elections. I am one of those who sincerely believed that you lost the
party at the point of its formation, because you were not able to
control the process that led to the emergence of leaders of the party.
This gave rise to a situation where those who emerged as the leaders of
the party at national, state, local government and ward levels are
people with the same orientation of PDP, orientation driven by the greed
and lust for money and power that has dotted our political landscape
today.
On account of this, the party leadership openly courted and
facilitated the emergence of known PDP members as candidates of the
party for the 2011, people whose core value system is completely at
variance with what you stand for and represented. There are of course
other situations where people that may not be PDP but are known to have
openly fought against you between 2007 and 2011 in your former party,
All Nigeria People Party (ANPP), people who have undermined your
leadership and sabotaged your cause, became the dominant players in CPC
based on the opportunistic strategy of winning elections. Many have won
the 2011 elections with your endorsement and are today as guilty as the
PDP people you are spearheading the fight against.
The third issue relates to your inability to convert your mass
followership into electoral victory in states and at other levels. I
expect the response that this is on account of PDP rigging machine. I
believe there is PDP rigging, but I also believe that the PDP rigging
machine overpowered your popularity because of internal poor party
administration, which led to cases of injustice. The case of Katsina and
Kano states are good example. It is clear that your party lost the
Governorship election in Katsina State because of mismanagement of the
party primary. Otherwise, how do you account for a situation where the
CPC won majority seats in the State House of Assembly and National
Assembly but lost the Governorship election? If the party can defeat PDP
at those levels, why was it not able to defeat the PDP at the level of
Governorship?
The case of Kano is worse. Being a state where the CPC was very
popular, it was a tragedy that the party only contested the Governorship
and Presidential elections. This is because all the candidates for
House of Assembly, House of Representatives and Senate virtually
withdrew from the contest on account of perceived injustice to Alh.
Mohammed Abacha who won the party primary but was asked by the party
national leadership to withdraw for Col. Lawal Ja’afaru Isa.
Related to this, is the recent case of Kebbi State. Citizens of the
state were shocked when after winning a court verdict from the electoral
tribunal nullifying the 2011 gubernatorial elections and ordering
re-run, the CPC leadership in the state, including the gubernatorial
candidate decamped and withdraw from the re-run election. The ACN
gubernatorial candidate also did the same. This was possible because the
CPC leaders are in the first place PDP in content and substance but
finds their way into CPC in order to pursue their greed and lust for
power and money.
My fourth issue has to do with the failed attempt for the merger of
opposition parties under the National Democratic Movement (NDM)
initiative in 2009 and the alliance between the ACN and CPC in 2011.
Without going into details, the accounts that is open to the public was
that you opted out of the merger negotiations having succeeded in
registering the CPC. With respect to the failed alliance of 2011, the
account was that while the ACN was ready to withdraw its Presidential
candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu in favour of your candidature, the CPC
refused to concede the position of Vice President to the ACN.
All these accounts have not been refuted by either you or the CPC
leadership. If anything, they were rationalized. Now my worries have
turned to fear. This is because I have so many questions that are
bothering me. These are: now that you have declared to contest for the
2015 elections, will you have a new approach in the runoff to 2015 or it
will be another repeat of the 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections –
experience whereby ordinary citizens have very high expectations that
you will be able to provide leadership for the electoral defeat of PDP?
Will your campaign be driven by the same team of administratively
incompetent and politically naïve and deceptive people who have failed
to develop a national outlook and expand your support base to cover all
parts of the country?
This leads me to my fifth point Sir. As a Northerner, to that extent
do you intend to use your aspiration to first throw up credible
contestants for political offices in the North, contestants that upon
winning elections would spearhead the socio-economic, educational and
political development and material transformation of the region for the
benefit of the teeming Talakawas? Remember, your political presence
alone is a determinant of who win and lose elections in most parts of
the 19 states of Northern Nigeria. This will not be an issue at all if
your party leadership, your campaign team and other candidates that
would be fielded by your party are to have the same coloration or even
minimal resemblance to your values. This way you will have a team that
sings from the same page and are sensitive to the interests of the
masses of the people of Nigeria at home and abroad who are hoping for a
new day to dawn for the betterment of their country. Unfortunately,
this is most probably not going to be the case. The truth is that most
of the members of your party’s leadership, your campaign team and party
candidates are PDP in every respect – they are masquerades parading in
borrowed garbs as they care not a whit for the people, but for their own
selfish interests. Some of them are even worse than PDP. They will not
only emerge as candidates of your party but they will be promoted by you
and aided to win elections.
I make this argument with the benefit of experience. It has happened
in 2003, 2007 and 2011. You will recall that in 2003, ANPP defeated PDP
in Kano with your blessing. It is now history how the ANPP government
in Kano between 2003 and 2011 mismanaged and squandered public resources
to the point where the people had a sense of missing the PDP government
of 1999 – 2003, which partly accounted for the second coming of Rabiu
Musa Kwankwaso, no thanks to the mismanagement of internal processes of
your party, CPC. Similarly, Alh. Isa Yuguda won the 2007 governorship
elections in Bauchi with your support. Again, it is now history how Isa
Yuguda defected back to PDP shortly after the 2007 elections. Since the
emergence of the CPC government in Nasarawa following the 2011
elections, there have been speculations around the Nasarawa governor,
Tanko Al-Makura planning to go back to PDP. Although there has been
constant denial by your party leadership at both state and national
levels, this speculation has remained stubborn.
What this point out is your inadvertent contribution to the
phenomenon of bad governance in Nigeria. This needs to be addressed. And
looking at the simplistic, intellectually frail and reflectively naive
ways you have announced announce your declaration to contest the 2011
elections, it is important we draw your attention to this fact. I call
it simplistic, intellectually frail and reflectively naïve because the
announcement does not come with critical evaluation of your experiences
and a commitment to change the ways you played politics in 2003, 2007
and 2011. If that happens, the result is most likely to be the same –
the PDP will again overpower all opposition, including your very humble
self and our tragedies and woes will continue.
My sixth point, relates to the fact you will be 73 when the 2015
elections will be conducted. Looking at your personal life, I believe
you are sincerely troubled by the absence of alternative leadership in
the country and this is what propels you to continue, in good conscience
and with good reason, to offer yourself. In evaluating this issue, I
think it is really unfortunate that our national situation is almost
pushing you to follow the inglorious path of the Robert Mugabe’s and
Abdullai Wade’s of Africa. With the administratively incompetent and
politically naive team that you have currently in place, based on my
analysis above and if past experience is a guide to future
possibilities, the probability that your Presidential candidature for
2015 will be overpowered internally by forces of reaction and
retrogression and externally by the vampire PDP machinery is very high.
What do we do therefore? Do we simply just surrender to PDP without a
fight and to that extent ask you to withdraw your interest in
contesting for the 2015 Presidential elections? If we ask you to
withdraw, would that not simply translate to abdication of our
responsibility to our people? What then are the options before us?
Sir, these are not easy questions to answer, yet we must answer them
convincingly. First, we must on no account surrender to the pestilence
that is PDP – from 1999 to now, they have constituted the worst
nightmare and disaster of Nigerians. On no account should we allow a
situation where we inadvertently facilitate the continued rule of PDP in
anyway. To that extent, therefore your aspiration to contest the 2015
Presidential elections must be discouraged because of two fundamental
reasons:
a) The first is that the same altruistic reasons driving your
aspirations will not regulate the structures of your campaign and would
not be able to fight against the emergence of greedy and corrupt
politicians who will be embraced by you and supported to win the
elections.
b) The second reason is that your aspiration would blur our peoples’ vision as they will not be able to see beyond you.
Sad as it may seem, and probably unpalatable as it may seem, I must
therefore submit that our society will benefit more without your
aspirations for 2015. In the circumstance, it is my hope that you will
consider changing your role to that of leading the negotiation process
towards strengthening the capacity of opposition parties in Nigeria.
Events in nearby Senegal should serve as a source of inspiration. To
strengthen opposition parties in Nigeria would require a strategy that
would throw up completely new candidates at all levels in 2015,
including especially the Presidential elections. Your moral authority to
serve as the facilitator of this will engrave your name in the sands of
Nigerian history as one nationalist who sacrificed everything,
including his personal aspirations and ambition to ensure that the
monster called PDP is defeated.
I am convinced that members of CPC who are pushing you to contest
don’t wish you well and you should not listen to them. In the event that
you listen to them and contest the 2015 elections, in the manner you
did in 2003, 2007 and 2011, history and future generations of Nigerians
will be justified if they turned out not to be kind to you. In fact, for
those of us in the North, we will be justified to be aggrieved with
your decision, especially given the quality of leadership your
aspirations has nurtured and imposed on our people at other lower
levels.
My conclusion therefore is to remain a member of the ACN in spite of
my respect for you. In remaining a member of the ACN, I am conscious of
the challenges facing all of us in the North. Part of it includes the
fact that arising from my inability to join your party, I will remain a
political orphan in my constituency with greater probability that my
candidature will not attract your support no matter his/her credential
and therefore may not win election. Unfortunately, my party (ACN)
leadership at national level appears to be operating in a comfort zone
and as a result may only start prioritizing the development of my party
structures in my constituency when it is too late.
Admittedly, I must recognize that the problem of administrative
incompetence and political naivety, which define your party, CPC, also
gets manifested in different ways in my party, the ACN. One of the ways
it gets manifested is the inability to recruit new membership in other
parts of the country outside South West and Edo. While it is a
reflection of the failings of many of us from outside the South West and
Edo to encourage and nurture positive disposition towards the
development of party structures, it must be recognized that the dominant
approach is to look in the direction of aggrieved politicians in PDP
who may have resources to expend in the development of structures of the
party.
This is a fundamental problem because what it means is that our
opposition parties in Nigeria, inclusive of your CPC and my ACN, share
the same political culture with the PDP, culture which you aptly
describe in your 1983 coup speech as resulting in problems of
indiscipline and mismanagement of resources thereby leading to loss of
confidence. Therefore, at this stage, what should occupy our attention
is not individual aspirations but that of doing the hard introspective,
reflective and proactive work of sanitizing our parties, such that they
are distinctively different from the PDP and in 2015, without you
contesting for the Presidency, a credible Nigerian can be thrown up. In
addition, with your towering charisma, you are the best person
positioned by history to facilitate the unity of all opposition parties
in the contest for 2015.
The element requiring the unity of opposition parties must not be
taken for granted, especially with the experience of 2011 where
information available to the public was that CPC/ACN failed because
Pastor Tunde Bakare, your running mate, refused to accept to step down. I
am convinced that it was your tacit prodding that encouraged Pastor
Tunde Bakare to adopt a hard line stance and refused to consider making
the much needed sacrifice. I am also tempted to argue that it was your
towering charisma that gave Pastor Bakare the courage and cover to be
able to undermine a patriotic national calling of the time.
Many would also emphasize the point that my ACN national leadership
also undermined the patriotic national calling of that time by failing
to forgo their demand for the substitution of Pastor Tunde Bakare with
their nominee. These are all true but very convenient arguments. My
position is that the alliance couldn’t have worked out because of two
factors. I believe the parties negotiating the alliance (CPC/ACN) were
not deeply committed to the negotiations and to that extent hardly see
the negotiation in terms of defining the kind of government that would
have taken over from the PDP. In other words, and this is the second
issue, if there were discussions of governance programmes, they were
only secondary. As a result, the main focus was just the 2011 elections.
This leads me to a more substantive issue, which informs my
objection to your aspiration to contest for President. To the ordinary
people, their belief is that if you win the Presidency you will be able
to fight against corruption and injustice in the country. Given the
configuration of your party CPC and all those directly driving your
campaigns and aspirations, it is debatable if you can be able to fight
any ill in the Nigerian society, not least corruption as a President.
This is the crux of the matter and all those who are quick to cite your
performance as Head of State between January 1984 and August 1985,
should ask themselves the following questions: does your campaign team
and current CPC leaders share your vision and have any commitment to
fighting corruption? Do they even have any difference with the PDP you
are fighting? Can you be able to replicate the same governance policies
and approaches under the 1999 constitution as amended?
As my elder and leader, I will urge you to sincerely answer these
questions. I am convinced that given your honestly will not allow your
personal aspiration to influence your answer. I am also convinced that
your aspiration is more challenging for those of us in the North.
Therefore, I must admit that your aspiration also means a challenge for
the political survival of many of us in the North. Without any doubt, it
also raises question about the capacity of politicians in the North to
assert their independence. Rather than follow the bandwagon, I draw
inspiration from Mallam Aminu Kano’s 1950 Memo where he proclaimed that
“I have seen the light in the far horizon and I intend to march into
full cycle, either alone or with anybody.” The task, therefore, for many
of us from the North who genuinely want to move our nation and society
forward, is to be able to follow the direction of the far horizon and
march towards the full cycle. Whether it is a journey we will make alone
or with other fellow patriots, it is a task that is necessary and
politically obligatory for our survival. I do hope you will reconsider
your decision and give us leadership in this journey. Otherwise, as your
loyal children, we have learned the appropriate lesson – go against the
current in the service of fatherland!
Gen.
Muhammadu Buhari, a former Head of State shoots from the hips and does
not suffer fools gladly. For three consecutive terms, he has run for
election with the hope of beating the ruling Peoples Democratic Party
and for three times he had failed.
Despite announcing recently and in the aftermath of the 2011 election
that he is done with the race, Buhari has in the past few days stirred
the Hornet's nest by predicted bloodshed in 2015 if, in his views,
elections are rigged "again". Coming at a time Nigerians are still
struggling with the general insecurity in the country, not a few are
worried that the General may belaying the foundation for another round
of bloodletting. EMMANUEL ENYINNAYA APPOLOS, reports.