Letter from Africa: The looting of Nigeria's pension funds

Shola Odunfa

 

In our series of letters from African journalists, Sola Odunfa in Lagos writes that many elderly Nigerians are battling to survive after their pensions were stolen by corrupt officials.

The compulsory retirement age for public officials in Nigeria is 65 years, after which one is expected to settle down to an easy life of contentment and leisure.
But don't you believe it.
The reality is that you may spend your old age running after government contracts if you have the wherewithal, or tending chickens in your backyard to eke out a living.
It is not that the pension cannot sustain you. Far from it.

''They stepped out of the public service into the embrace of discomfort and hunger brought on them by former colleagues who had stripped the treasury bare”

The state pension is big enough to encourage you to seek rejuvenation, even by taking a new wife and starting life all over.

After all, you could be as young as 60, the age for voluntary retirement.
Nigeria has two classes of government pensioners. One consists of those who took insurance for their old age by either stealing as much as they could while in the public service, or collecting as many bribes as they were privileged to do by their offices. Members of this class have no need of their pensions.
The second class is made up of the honest, self-righteous ex-public official who would not touch one kobo of government money beyond their salaries and allowances and to whom bribe-taking was contrary to their religious beliefs and family values.
Investigations suspendedThis second class had calculated their pensions and concluded that they and their spouse would live in comfort until death.
But they stepped out of the public service into the embrace of discomfort and hunger brought on them by former colleagues who had stripped the treasury bare.

 Police offices cannot be sure of a comfortable retirement

In the past three years, several official investigations into Nigeria's pension funds have revealed theft on an unimaginable scale.
Newspapers reports of the hearings convey the impression that the funds were stored in open rooms to which officials had unimpeded access. Apparently, officials were free to walk in and loot as much as they could.

''Government pensioners, wherever I meet them, cut a sorry image”

A junior clerk allegedly had 12 million naira (about $75,000; £49,000) in his bank account. A deputy director in a ministry allegedly had 500 million naira ($3m) in one account and $2m, in hard currency, in another account.

Nigeria's police officers, themselves not immune to the temptations of corruption, are not guaranteed a comfortable old age either. The investigations have revealed that the Police Pension Fund has also been ravaged.
The list is endless. Yet, the investigations have been suspended without covering all ministries and parastatals.
One of the cases that was pursued caused yet more controversy in January when a high court judge imposed a fine of $4,600 on an official who had pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal $142m from the police pension pot - instead of opting for the harshest sentence available, a two-year jail term with a fine.
The judge was subsequently suspended for a year without pay by the National Judicial Council for failing to exercise "discretion judicially and judiciously" in the case.
Government pensioners, wherever I meet them, now cut a sorry image.
They spent their working years serving the public, despite poor pay, in the belief that their old age would be well-cushioned by a generous pension for life.
Now they live by the day in the forlorn hope that a cheque may come in unexpectedly. Many of them regret their honesty in service.
BBCNews

 

The Buhari I Know

SAM NDA-ISAIAH

Last week, a certain Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who claims to be second in command of Boko Haram, held a radio conference with journalists in Maiduguri in which he declared his sect’s readiness for a conditional ceasefire. He went ahead to name those they preferred or trusted to facilitate a proposed dialogue with the federal government. On his list of preferred facilitators were General Muhammadu Buhari, Shettima Ali Monguno, Gaji Galtimari and Bukar Abba Ibrahim. Only Buhari is not of the Borno/Yobe axis. But only the name of Buhari has generated passionate interest from both admirers and detractors.

Predictably, Buhari’s foes have jumped on this piece of news and are celebrating their pet fantasy: that Buhari must have been a sponsor of Boko Haram. Why should they pick him if they do not share common beliefs, someone declared in a newspaper yesterday. A certain Bitrus Kaze, who claims to be a lawmaker representing Jos South/Jos East federal constituency in Plateau State, and who, I am certain, has never met Buhari, asserted quite “authoritatively” via a press statement that the nomination of Buhari as a facilitator by Boko Haram can be “likened to the proverbial birds of the same feather (sic) that flock together”. Continuing, he said, “anyone who has been following the internecine violence perpetrated especially in northern Nigeria by those merchants of death should understand their choice of General Buhari. Eventually, the men behind the masks are being unveiled. In my view, Buhari, like Boko Haram, is a religious extremist who cannot be trusted to negotiate for sustainable peace in Nigeria. In the build-up to the 2003 presidential election, Buhari was reported to have asked Muslims across the country to vote only for the presidential candidate that would defend and uphold Islam.”

Hon. Kaze also spoke of the Sheikh Lemu report in a way that showed clearly that he didn’t read the report and didn’t listen to all the statements and explanations of Sheikh Ahmed Lemu.

The social media and the internet have also been worked into a frenzy on this issue of Buhari’s nomination by Boko Haram. Most who berate the former head of state on the internet are clearly ignorant of the man they comment so authoritatively about. But the one I find more exasperating is the mischief of those around government who, though not making public statements, are rejoicing over this development. It’s like Boko Haram has given them exactly what they have always craved free of charge. One of them jokingly said, “Why should we be surprised? We have always known that Buhari is the chairman of Boko Haram.” Of course, they did not want to be quoted.

The people around President Jonathan have, for long, been insinuating the nonsense about a link between some northern leaders and statesmen who have served this country in the past meritoriously and Boko Haram. Because they were the sponsors of the Niger Delta insurgency, they believe that everyone must be like them. Only a few like Pa Edwin Clark have been courageous enough to actually name General Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the sponsors of Boko Haram. I once told some of them to take Clark to court on the matter, but they all told me they would not dignify the man.

Only very few people would claim to be closer to General Buhari than I. And even among those close to him, very few can claim to know him like I do. Buhari is one of the most outstanding human beings I know, with all his faults. He is certainly not a perfect man. It is not for nothing that I have supported and voted for him in all the three attempts he has made to be president of this country. Buhari may not be a perfect person or your ideal politician, but I am yet to meet a sane person who would disagree with me that Nigeria would have been a totally different place if he had been sworn in as president in 2003 or 2007 or 2011. At the very least, nobody would have attempted to steal N2.6 trillion under his presidency and if any thief were bold enough to try it, there would be very harsh consequences – exactly the kind of leadership that any country that cherishes progress would need. He would have given a damn about declaring his assets and there would have been a very clear response to the Niger Delta militancy and oil thefts that took a life of their own during the Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan presidencies. And Boko Haram would not have overpowered the government as we see today. Remember when he was head of state and Maitatsine insurgents struck in Kano? That was the last time the world heard anything about Maitatsine. In fact, for those who remember very well, Maitatsine started during the Shehu Shagari era and it was when Buhari took over and the sect struck in Kano killing many people that he put a decisive end to the insurgency. Buhari had said at the time that Maitatsine would never happen again and it never did. Boko Haram is a mutation of Maitatsine.

Anyone that is close enough to former presidents and heads of state would know that one thing that binds them together – and which they all agree on, no matter their differences – is the obsessive belief in the oneness and stability of Nigeria. And I am close enough to almost all living former heads of state (with the exception of Obasanjo, of course) to authoritatively speak on this.

Buhari, of course, is one man that is generally misunderstood. I remember, a few years ago, when a pastor friend of mine said that Buhari didn’t laugh at all and would always be unfriendly. I found a way to lure my friend into Buhari’s home one evening. Immediately we came before the former head of state, I announced to Buhari in the presence of everyone, “Sir, this my pastor friend said you don’t laugh at all.” Buhari burst into a hearty laughter and immediately started a very funny conversation with my pastor friend. By the time we left, my friend was both in stitches and delighted. This has been a subject of his discussions since.

Buhari’s favourite in LEADERSHIP is the Ghana-Must-Go pocket cartoon at the back page. He would call several times laughing and laughing and laughing. By the way, this Ghana-Must-Go fetish is also shared by General IBB, General Abdulsalami, General Danjuma, the late President Yar’Adua, former Vice President Atiku and sundry political leaders of disparate tendencies across the country.

Buhari always enjoys a good joke even if it is one poked at him. And he is one of the wittiest persons I know. Recently, some pretty-looking ladies went to visit him at home to seek his support and blessing for their NGO. They asked for a photograph with him which was later published in several newspapers. On sighting the photograph, I called him to say that he should have proceeded to pick one of them as a second wife. He was so amused that he told some people that “Sam ba ya da kirki”, meaning “Sam is a very unkind person.” He said I was unkind to have suggested such an unkind thing to him. Everyone laughed.

During a Council of State meeting just before the 2003 elections in which he was the presidential candidate of the opposition ANPP contesting against the PDP of which a sitting President Obasanjo was the candidate, there was a banter between him and Obasanjo which many people still remember. Buhari had a cold then and was coughing just before the meeting. It was also during the outbreak of some strange kind of flu in Asia. When Obasanjo noticed Buhari was coughing, he said, “Muhammadu, hope you have not contracted that strange disease”, or something to that effect. Buhari immediately responded and said, “I have not been globetrotting sir.” Everyone burst into loud laughter. That was the period Obasanjo was gallivanting all over the planet and hardly stayed at home to perform his presidential duties. What Buhari was telling Obasanjo then was that it was he (Obasanjo) who would more likely contract a foreign disease as a result of his famed globetrotting.

Hon. Kaze and many others who do not know Buhari call him a religious extremist – and Hon. Kaze particularly still quotes something he claims Buhari said a long time ago: advising Muslims to vote only for fellow Muslims. Well, I think people like him would need to read Bishop Matthew Kukah’s position on this, which he wrote in an article at the time. Bishop Kukah, who knows Buhari well and even spoke with him on the matter, spoke the truth at that time as he always does. Those who also know Buhari would tell you that there are only two Nigerians who can get him to do what he doesn’t want to do – General Gowon and General Danjuma, both Christians. I am sure Hon. Kaze and his like do not know Buhari enough to know this. Neither would they know that his personal driver of more than 10 years is a Christian. His cook is a Christian and so are many others on his domestic staff.

On December 31, 1983, just after the overthrow of Shehu Shagari, and the coup was still going on, Buhari left Kaduna to return to his base in Jos where he was the GOC. On his way, he sent a message to other “conspirators” that Major-General Domkat Bali, who was the most senior among the coupists, should be declared head of state. It was later in the day that Bali and others in Lagos dispatched an Air Force plane to Jos to bring him (Buhari) to Lagos in order to make him head of state. Muslim extremist Buhari choosing Bali, a Christian, to be head of state? Does this make sense? Buhari told me this story himself. The story was even the more corroborated by Dr Mahmud Tukur, the cerebral minister of commerce in his cabinet then and perhaps the closest to him. Dr Tukur actually went further to tell me that, on two occasions as head of state, Buhari almost walked away and simply wanted to hand over to Bali because he just didn’t like the way some of his colleagues were behaving. This is also another exclusive for people like Hon. Kaze.

You may not like Buhari and may actually hate his guts, but there are some facts about him that cannot be controverted. He actively detests corruption, he hates slothfulness and takes Nigeria and public service too seriously to be associated with any type of crime whatsoever. He has told me that Islam does not approve of taking innocent lives. Boko Haram people may be trying to latch onto his credibility, but the Buhari I know is unlikely to accept to be part of anything to do with Boko Haram. Don’t forget, this is the man who obliterated Maitatsine when he was in power.

If Buhari has any faults at all, it is that he is totally without guile and too naïve to stop election riggers from always taking advantage of him. I have had issues with him over the path to victory in the past elections. He has not been able to cobble together the kind of national alliance that is a desideratum for winning the presidency in a democracy and a strategy for stopping election riggers. When Obasanjo in 2003 and 2007 and Jonathan in 2011 declared that the elections would be free and fair, he believed them hook, line and sinker. You can accuse Buhari of too trusting but certainly not violence or religious bigotry or mischief. He is too much of a statesman and too much into the principles of law and order to be associated with the kind of crimes that Hon. Kaze and Jonathan’s cronies are trying to associate with him.

I am a Christian, a Bible-believing one and a very proud one for that matter. If Buhari were a tenth of what people like Kaze, who don’t know him but authoritatively say he is, would I still be one of his closest associates?

EARSHOT

The Murder Of General Shuwa

If Nigerians are not frightened about the way someone of General Mamman Shuwa’s stature would so easily be shot dead by yet undetermined gunmen, then, we must be sleepwalking into destruction. Boko Haram has declared that it had no hand in the needless murder. Shuwa was a very simple man and mingled freely with the lowest in the society. If a war hero like Shuwa did not die on the warfront only to be killed so cheaply by common criminals, then, we must all sit back and ponder the future of Nigeria. As someone wrote in a newspaper yesterday, if someone like General Shuwa can so easily be killed, then, an endgame is unfolding in the north which could spell terminal disaster for the whole country.

But why are we so helpless? Why do we seem to be sleepwalking inexorably towards our annihilation as a nation? Have we been so programmed for self-destruction that we can do nothing to reverse it? We need answers to these questions quickly before it is too late. And only those in charge of the country can give the correct answers.
via: Nasril el-Rufai on facebook

STILL ON BUHARI.

Ibrahim Muhammad Kurfi on facebook

''After retirement the untired General went home and become the chairman BOT of "Gidauniya Jihar Katsina"( an NGO founded after a fund raising to develop katsina state) in 1991. He led for 17 years and voluntarily retired in 2009. It was really the best of all times; we saw prudence, accountability and honesty and resourcefulness in stewardship, for, more than 500 millions were spent under Buhari in different projects: drilling boreholes, agric loans, healthcare facilities, learning materials for schools etc. Truly, the katsina people first spotted the beacon of hope''. - Ibrahim Muhammad Kurfi on facebook.

GEN. BUHARI‘S LONDON LECTURE: EMERGING FACTS ABOUT INEC.

 With the whole world turning to
a global village, last week‘s London lecture by
Nigeria‘s former most exemplary head of state &
current champion of democratization, polital freedom
& due process Gen. Muhammadu Buhari has already
reached the nook & cranies of the whole world.
Perhaps, what remain unmanifested was his gospel
truth description of Nigeria‘s electoral body (INEC) &
the judiciary. INEC boss chief press secretary
Kayode Idowu‘s confirmation that, a faceless group
of people did approach INEC for registration of a new
political party by name African People Congress
(APC) could just be the begining of the manifestation
of Gen. Buhari‘s description of INEC as per its natur
& essence of compromise. At the London key note
adress lecture, Gen. Buhari said about INEC: “ INEC
TOP ECHELONS ARE IMMERSED DEEP IN
CORRUPTION & ONLY WHOLESALE CHANGES AT
THE TOP COULD BEGING TO CURE MALIASE. WHAT
IS REQUIRED IA A GROUP OF INDEPENDENT
PEOPLE, PATRIOTIC & INCORRUPTIBLE, BUT WITH
THE CAPACITY TO HANDLE SUCH A STERENEOUS
ASSIGMENT OF CONDUCTING ELECTION IN
NIGERIA“. Else where to prove INEC allowing itself to
be compromise, Gen. Buhari cited an instance: “IN
ONE OF OUR COURT CASES, OPPOSITION PARTIES
CHALLENGED THE PATENTLY DISHONEST FIGURE
INEC ANNOUNCED & SUPBOENED THE BIOMETRIC
DATA IN COURT, INEC REFUSE TO DIVULGE THEM
ON THA LAUGHABLE EXCUSE OF NATIONAL
SECURITY“. About the judiciary & our judges, Gen.
Buhari said: “ IN A SHOW OF UNPRECEDENTED
DISHONESTY & UNPROFESSIONALISM, THE
PRESIDENT OF THE COURT OF APPEAL READ OUT
INEC FIGURES WHICH INEC REFUSE TO COME TO
COURT IN ORDER TO PROVE OR DEFEND THE
RESULT ACCEPTED BY THE COURT“. Perhaps, if
there is any Nigerian that still in doubt about Gen.
Buhari‘s description of our nation electoral body as
well as our judiciary & the judges from 2003 to date,
that person should oviously doubt about his
nationality. He could be a Nigearian living in yet
another different Nigeria. INEC has since ceased to
be independent.

Abdulqadeer Musa on facebook

INEC Names New Secretary

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) today appointed Augusta Chinwe Ogakwu as its new Secretary.  She will take over from Abdullahi A. Kaugama, whose five-year tenure expired on June 26, 2013.

According to a statement by Kayode Robert Idowu, Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Mrs. Ogakwu moves to the new office from her present position as Director of the Legal Services Department, a position she assumed three months ago.  Prior to that, she had since May 2009 served as the Head of Unit/Director, Alternative Disputes Resolution since May 2009. She was also Acting Director, Legal Services Department from May 2003 to September 2005.

The new Secretary joined INEC as Chief Legal Officer in 1998 from the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) where she had been the Assistant Chief Legal Officer.
Mrs. Ogakwu holds a Masters Degree in Law from the University of Lagos, besides several professional accreditations in the field of Law, WorkPlace Conflict Management and Resolution and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). She has also undergone intensive Executive Leadership Training as part of her professional development. Her professional certifications include being Fellow, Institute of Chartered Mediators and Conciliators (ICMC) (Nigeria); Completion Certificates, United States Institute of Peace (USIP); Member International Dispute Resolution Institute (IDRI) among others.
Saharareporters

Tolu Ogunlesi: Waiting for our fairy ship to dock (1)

You’ve probably heard of the Failed States Index, an annual ranking released by the intriguingly-named “Fund for Peace” and published by Foreign Policy magazine.

The Failed States Index classifies countries on the basis of 12 “indicators”:

Demographic Pressures, Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons, Group Grievances, Human Flight, Uneven Development, Economic Decline, Delegetimization of the State, Public Services, Human Rights, Security Apparatus, Factionalised Elites, and External Intervention, and assigns a ranking, where Position ‘1’ is a most severe case of state failure (now held by Somalia for the sixth year running).

Nigeria has gone from Number 54 when the Index was launched in 2005, to a consistent Top 20 position since 2007. This year, we are sharing space in that section with such distinguished honorees as Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Niger – and, quite interestingly, Kenya. (Benin Republic is 78, Ghana 110, South Africa, 113).

The instinctive official Nigerian response is to dismiss such reports as inaccurate, unfair, and not reflective of the ongoing transformation agenda, while many “Africanists” are likely to label the not-very-kind-on-Africa Index as yet another outplaying of a misguided, unrepentant Imperialist Complex.

Me, I’m not that dismissive. As a Nigerian living in Nigeria, I know that from what I see all around me, Nigeria, if it’s not already a failed state, isn’t very far from being one.

And I don’t even need a report compiled from all the way in Washington to convince me of that. From going days without electricity (in 2013!), to being forced to pay Power Holding Company of Nigeria bills, to existing at the mercy of telecoms companies that make sure every call is a dropped call, to banks posting soaring profits from acting like leeches, to the stories of mothers regularly dying during childbirth even in urban areas, to the endless accounts of random acts of kidnapping and murder, to driving around at night expecting to be accosted by armed robbers, to a situation where Boko Haram had effectively replaced the government in much of North-Eastern Nigeria – everywhere around me is evidence of a state that has given up on its people.

In September 2009, presidential spokesman, Reuben Abati, wrote a column piece titled, “Portrait of a Country as a Failed State”. It’s such a brilliant article that my writing this piece feels a bit like reinventing the wheel; there is nothing I will probably say that Abati didn’t eloquently say in that article of his.

Let me share one long quote from that 2009 piece:

“How about the lack of regular electricity and the high cost of diesel which has driven companies across the border or forced them to shut down, like the textile factories, resulting in job losses and greater social hardship? No end in sight to the Niger Delta crisis, with governments only managing to dance round the issues. Across the country, armed robbers, kidnappers, rapists and ritualists are on the prowl. Ten years ago, we wrote on the bad state of Nigerian roads. The Federal Road Safety Corps used to complain about the urgent need to revamp the roads in order to reduce carnage; last week, the FRSC said precisely the same thing, and yet in 10 years, close to a trillion naira has been spent on road audit, construction and maintenance. The roads are still bad. We are confronted with corporeal changelessness and worsening uncertainty.”

This was written four years ago, when Goodluck Jonathan was still a Vice-President.

Even though Abati now appears to have changed his mind about Nigeria being a failed state, that piece might as well have been written this morning. The “armed robbers, kidnappers, rapists and ritualists” are still as active as ever. (They have even gone more brazen in recent months as typified in the killing of over 30 pupils in Government Secondary School, Mamudo, Potiskum, Yobe State over the weekend.) Occasionally, they get caught; more often than not, they don’t.

The “Niger Delta crisis” seems to have calmed down – but we know the truth is different. The bombings and blown-up pipelines have given way to mind-boggling levels of oil theft, costing Nigeria as much as $7bn in lost revenues annually. And yet for this theft, there’s an additional tax to be paid – in the form of the billions of naira in security contracts awarded to ex-militants to guard the pipelines.

For all the “macro” progress in the reform process, electricity has not improved (for more on this topic, see my article from two weeks ago titled, Let there be light!). Days go by, and all I can hear is the sound of generators; the serenity that comes with noiseless PHCN electricity is to be treated, when encountered, as the guilty pleasure that it is.

Last week, I saw an advert in the papers; the Ogun State Government welcoming Mr. President to “flag off” the reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. I should have been excited, but all I could think to myself was, “We’ve been here before.”

After suffering almost total neglect throughout the eight years of the Obasanjo administration (especially puzzling because much of it ran through the then President’s home state; according to the law of self-interest, that road should have received more interest than most other Nigerian roads), the Yar’Adua government finally managed to concession it. For four years, the road lay in limbo – workmen doing little more than assembling and dismantling themselves from spot to spot – the perfect metaphor for the state of Nigerian infrastructure.

I think that the starting point for real change in Nigeria is acknowledging how bad things actually are; admitting that we’re indeed a failed state. We can’t be defending ourselves by quoting the amount of Foreign Direct Investment that is coming into the country. Those funds are flowing in spite of, and not because of, our circumstances. What shall it profit a nation trumpeting growing FDI figures when local industries are daily collapsing under the weight of needless operating costs? When proclaiming that more money comes into Nigeria as Diasporan remittances than anywhere else in Africa, are we remembering to ask the obvious question: Why do we have so many Nigerians abroad who refuse to return home in the first place?

If wishes were horses, Nigeria would be the greatest country in the world. Our embassies would be besieged by Spanish, Portuguese and Greek emigrants seeking a better life; and there would be a Nigerian Visa Lottery through which a magnanimous Nigerian government would issue a limited number of residency permits to jobless American citizens every year.

Thirty years ago, Chinua Achebe nicely summed up that penchant for governing-by-bombast as “the cargo-cult mentality that anthropologists sometimes speak about – a belief by backward people that someday, without any exertion whatsoever on their part, a fairy ship will dock in their harbour laden with every goody they have always dreamt of possessing.”

Our fairy ship is still on the high seas. We can see it, we know it’s coming, because Nigerian faith is the evidence of things that do not exist, and never might.

The failing is no doubt one that implicates us all in some way or the other. But I happen to tend towards the Achebe argument that it’s “simply and squarely a failure of leadership.”

If there’s one lesson we’ve learnt, it’s that Nigerians are especially gifted at rising or falling to the level of the leadership they’re offered. When slacking is the name of the game right there at the top, it filters down across the entire system. Put a “sit-up” leader in place, and, the inevitable grumbling notwithstanding, most of us manage to sit-up. Replace that sit-up leader with a slacker, and we again adapt effortlessly.

Who knew that one day it’d become second-nature for Nigerian drivers to wear seatbelts? Now, it’s mostly instinctive. In those early days of the law, it was not unusual to see drivers hurriedly retrieve their belts when approaching a police checkpoint.

And then, as human conditioning goes, it started to become a habit.

One of our biggest tragedies as a people is that most of the time we’re not even getting a chance to get used to the helpful and productive habits that will rewrite the story of our dysfunction.

Those who should be laying out the framework for reconditioning our minds are too busy over-celebrating underachievements, too busy building castles on the ground for themselves, and in the air for the people whose lives they’re supposed to be transforming; too busy assuring the world that our fairy ship, having missed the scheduled 2000 and 2010 arrivals, will now surely arrive in 2020.
via: Nasril el-Rufai on facebook

On Pius Adesanmi’s “Eebu O So: Tinubu, Buhari, And Their Supporters” By Uchenna Osigwe

Professor Pius Adesanmi was rather magnanimous in pointing out the achievements of Bola Tinubu as governor of Lagos state and those of Muhammadu Buhari, former head of state. His problem, however, seems to be that the supporters of these two political heavy weights come across as insulting, especially to Pius. So he wants to tell those apologists why and where their principals are wanting. In the process he managed to throw in some insults of his own!
The achievements of these two men are no mean feat. And Pius listed those, but then turned around to belittle them. Then he gave an order to Buhari’s handlers to begin to mould him in his (Adesanmi’s) own image, or else... Haba! The achievements of these two men and their supporters should be rightly celebrated because I think it’s largely thanks to people like them that we can today meaningfully talk of a viable opposition to the rot that is PDP, otherwise we’ll be talking of one party state today. These two guys could easily have joined the PDP and thereby join in the amala politics of the party, but thankfully they chose not to. Are they perfect? Certainly not, and that is why they should be criticized. But productive criticisms are usually constructive. For instance, before repeating the PDP allegation that Tinubu imposed his daughter on the traders as their leader, it might be good to hear from the other side. I don’t think anybody, including Tinubu, can easily impose leaders on traders without them fighting back, especially now he’s not the governor. You may be inadvertently ascribing to the man more powers than he actually wields. My own criticism of Tinubu is born out of his utterances, especially during the 2011 elections; which is why I for one don’t really believe that Tinubu’s latest romance with Buhari is genuine. I would, of course, love to be proved wrong. I have also criticized Buhari, again based on his utterances in the run up to the 2007 elections.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, the point is not that “Buhari is the only living Nigerian capable of this and that,” as Pius alleges, but rather the issue is this: among those who stand a REAL chance of becoming president 2015, who among them has the pedigree of Buhari? We asked this question before Jonathan was selected. Now that question stares us tauntingly in the face again! Sure, there are millions of Nigerians who can do better than Buhari in many ways, including yours sincerely, including Pius himself. But the real question is how many of us stand a real chance of winning in an election? It’s not too much to expect Pius to understand this.
To claim that some of Buhari supporters are fundamentalists because they put up a robust defence of the General is rubbish! I’m a die-hard supporter of Buhari and I don’t consider myself in any way, shape or form, remotely fundamentalist! Pius you’re wittingly or unwittingly insulting the intelligence of Nigerians who genuinely support the candidacy of Buhari based on his personal integrity which even you grudgingly acknowledge! Pius forgot to mention those who insult Buhari supporters with unprintable venoms, or doesn’t that count as insult? The truth is that with the advent of social media, every Musa and Tunde, every Obi and Tamuno can post their venoms online to poison the public space. These people have no inkling what a mature discussion is all about. They cut across the political and ethnic divides. To confine them to ‘fundamentalist’ supporters of Buhari is a sloppy characterization which unfortunately is aimed at demonizing the General even if only by proxy.
Pius then moves to his highfalutin advice to Buhari and his teeming supporters. Funny that a man is being maligned for what he didn’t do, for not fulfilling assignments people like Pius expect him to fulfill if he wants to be their president. I know one thing for sure: whatever Buhari says is bound to be taken out of context, twisted to fit the narrative his detractors have woven for over a decade now, whether it was said in Damaturu, in Otuocha or Otuoke; whether it was said in AIT, BBC, or NTA. Buhari is neither a lecturer nor an orator. There is no doubt that he gets many, many invitations. But unlike the thieving elites, Buhari doesn’t have a private jet and his income is limited to his pension, believe it or not. I reckon his wealthy well wishers foot his travel expenses. Despite that, if Buhari is all over the place as some people are suggesting, his detractors will say that he is desperate to become president, bla bla bla. If a man whose cook and driver—in whose hands his live literally rests—are Christians, whose daughter is reportedly married to an Igbo, whose running mates have always been southern Christians, have not escaped the charge of being a Muslim fanatic and northern irredentist, what good will travelling all over the south do for those who have already made up their minds about him eons ago? I mean, if people continue to call him a Muslim fanatic even after he chose a Christian pastor as running mate, don’t you think it’s a hopeless case trying to convince them? For your information, Pius, again sorry if I sound pedantic, more than any major politician in Nigerian, Buhari’s genuine support cuts right across the country: there are Ibibios, Igbos, Yorubas, Kanuris, Biroms, Ijaws, Ikweres, Ogonis, Tivs, Idomas, etc, etc, who will stake their very lives for the sake of Buhari because they know he’s an honest man! The point is that for the thieving elites, Buhari is a marked man. Recently a poster so badly construed that it’s evidently clear to any discerning mind that it’s the work of detractors, was all over Abuja calling Buhari the messiah Nigerians have been expecting, bla bla bla... Of course Buhari wasted no time in denouncing that hatchet job. Expect such shenanigans to continue as long as Buhari shows interest in ruling the country again. No one in our political scene elicits the kind of passion Buhari does. And this says volumes.
Pius claims that Buhari “releases northern and Islamic irredentist statements to the rest of the country in interviews granted the Hausa service of BBC and VOA, going as far as to carelessly equate a legitimate clamp down on Boko Haram with a war against the North…” That Pius sees the killing spree currently going in the north as “legitimate clamp down on Boko Haram” beggars belief. One would have hoped that his understanding of Buhari’s statement were better than that of the average ‘Nigerian’ understanding. As one wit said, not going beyond the average is what keeps the average low.
All politics is local. Tinubu for instance couldn’t have achieved what he achieved without a solid political base. If in doubt, ask Pat Utomi. So if Buhari comes out against the killings in the north in the name of ‘fighting’ Boko Haram, we should understand it as such. Whole villages have been razed and thousands of innocent people, including women and children, killed by the government troops. Buhari should be foolish not to speak out against that because he wants to be president. He has consistently condemned Boko Haram—never mind that such condemnations don’t make good press because they don’t fit the narrative. So speaking out against the atrocities of government troops should not honestly be construed as supporting the insurgents no matter how it is twisted. Nor should he be misunderstood when he pointed out that those Niger Delta criminals who call themselves liberation fighters are just that: criminals. What is good for one should be good for the other. But now it’s very lucrative to be a militant in the Niger Delta. Apart from being in government, it’s the next quickest way to become a multi-billionaire! Recently they publicly claimed responsibility for slaughtering nine police officers and kept custody of their corpses for sometime; they claimed responsibility for bombing Abuja on Independence Day, and have been promising to continue to make the country ungovernable. Both Boko Haram and the Niger Delta militants are enemies of the state who strive to make the country ungovernable and should be treated as such, no double standards please. Recently President Jonathan stated the obvious fact which is that there are more Muslim victims of Boko Haram than Christian victims. If Buhari made that statement, it should have been put down as one of the reasons why he should never be president of Nigeria!
Discerning minds know that there’s no real clampdown on Boko Haram as such. Jonathan has never been serious about rooting out the criminals. In fact he IS thoroughly confused about the simplest task of a commander in chief, so the Boko Haram menace simply overwhelms him. By now we should at least have had some of the real sponsors of Boko Haram arrested and prosecuted. Instead what we’ve had so far is at best a haphazard approach to the menace and at worse a killing spree in the name of rooting out the insurgents. It is not because Buhari said it. Indeed, the American secretary of state recently warned Nigerian authorities about the human rights abuses connected with the fight against the insurgents. As reported by the New York Times of 17 May 2013: “Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States was ‘deeply concerned about the fighting in northeastern Nigeria following President Jonathan’s declaration of a state of emergency,’ and that we are also deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism.” In the New York Times of 25 May 2013, Kerry was again reported as saying, when asked about the situation in northern Nigeria: “One person’s atrocity does not excuse another’s, Mr. Kerry said, when asked about reports of serious human rights violations by Nigerian forces.” Buhari has not said anything different. He was simply calling it as he saw it. But because he’s Buhari, Pius feels free to characterize his statements as “northern and Islamic irredentist statements”! It’s really sad that many Nigerians think ONLY through the prism of religion and ethnicity!
Many innocent civilians, especially women and children have been killed in the name of fighting the insurgents, tens of thousands of Nigerians have become refugees, whole towns and villages—think of Baga and Bama—have been razed to the ground in the name of fighting Boko Haram, despite all that, the insurgents have remained strong. The Jonathan government simply doesn’t know what to do with the Boko Haram menace except to try to make political capital out of it. So far what we have is a mishmash of incoherent and poorly thought out approaches. They’re simultaneously fighting them and offering them amnesty and also proscribing them!
Concerning the age of Buhari, Pius seems to be in this absurd reasoning that young age a good president makes. This is just a manifestation of an abject ignorance of history. It could be even worse: a band wagon effect. America, Britain, France, Canada, Kenya, Benin, Senegal, Ghana, etc, etc, have young presidents, so Nigeria must step forward and say ‘me too.’ “Imitation is suicide” says Ralph Waldo Emerson in his classic essay “Self Reliance.” The man, John XXIII, soon to be made a saint, who revolutionized the Catholic Church via Vatican II was 77 years old when he was elected pope. Incumbent Pope Francis is 76, and is ably leading more than 1.2 billion Catholics before our very eyes. Winston Churchill was 77 years old when he was elected prime minister of Britain after failing countless times. Today there are basically only two former Prime Ministers of Britain: Churchill and the others. General de Gaulle was 70 years old when he became the president of France; there are many more examples. There are also people who became leaders at a relatively young age and did well. Doing well or not doing well has nothing to do with age as such unless one is ignorant of history. Awolowo became premier of the western region at the age of 45 and did very well. But no one would doubt that he would have performed any less had he won the presidential elections of 1979 or 1983 when he was already in his 70s. Buhari became president at the age of 41 and did very well. And just like Awo, no one doubts that he’ll do at least as well in his 70s. The relationship between performance and age in most human endeavours cannot be straitjacketed as Pius seems to be claiming here.
Pius once proposed to us that bishop Kukah should run for president. This was a man who ran back from overseas to run Obasanjo’s farcical ‘Constitutional Conference’ whose mandate was ostensibly to rewrite the Constitution in order to allow the Owu chief to transform himself into an emperor. In such a post Kukah couldn’t but speak from both sides of his mouth. And it seems he remains ever close to the parasitic ruling establishment.
For Pius it’s hard to know where insult stops and real debate begins. If you come telling people that Buhari is an irredentist, you’ve killed debate right there and you shouldn’t be surprised if your interlocutor responds in kind. You’re pontificating for Buhari what he should do if he wants to win the presidency as if you just arrived from planet mars! Need one remind you that since 1999 the presidency has never been won: the thieving elites have always chosen who to give the presidency to, for obvious reasons. Buhari’s most insidious opponents are from the northern oligarchic establishment. Is it too much to expect Pius to know that?
In the spirit of your article, and expecting that Sahara reporters publishes this, I take it you mean we should criticize everything and everyone. So my question is, what exactly are you trying to say? Are you saying that Buhari is a northern irredentist and a Boko Haram apologist and an old man and therefore shouldn’t run for president? But, if he’s really thinking of running, then he better start running all over the country giving speeches and begging people to stop seeing him as an old religious fanatic who’s pushing a northern agenda? If that is your point, then it should have been better if you didn’t interrupt your self-imposed break. To pay you back in your own coin: your article is an insult on the intelligence of any above average Nigerian who knows what our real political problems are.
 Saharareporters