Time to rebuild Nigeria".
The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress
National leaders of the APC
Members of the National Executive Council of the APC
Your Excellencies, State Governors
Distinguished Senators
Honourable Members of the House of Representatives and Assemblies
The Chairman and Members of the Convention Committee
State and Local Government Chairmen of the APC
Distinguished Delegates
Members of the Press
Invited Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
acceptance:
1. First of all, I wish to express my gratitude to the Chairman and members of the Convention Committee for planning and conducting a hitch-free convention. The same appreciation goes to the chairmen of National and State Executive Councils of our party. Thank you very much for doing an excellent job.
2. I would like to pay tribute to Chief Bisi Akande the first chairman of APC and his National Executive for managing the party in its early stages.
3. I also wish to commend Lagos State Government and state party for hosting this convention. Time was when people feared to come to Lagos. Today, Lagos is the cleanest and dare I say safest city in Nigeria. This achievement is due to the leadership and strength of purpose of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and Chief Babatunde Fashola the two Governors since 1999 and their team of professionals for this wonderful transformation Nigeria greets you!
4. The outcome of the presidential primaries of the All Progressives Congress is a demonstration of democracy at work. It is testimony to the fact that democracy as a concept is greater than the interests of individuals in a free and functional political system. What has just happened is not about winning or losing but about the triumph of liberty, freedom of choice and association, which are hallmarks of democracy.
5. To my fellow contestants; Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Owelle Rochas Okorocha and Mr. Sam Nda Isaiah, I wish to thank you for putting up a good fight. The keenly contested primaries we just had will help to strengthen our party and democracy, and ultimately send our message to Nigerian voters in the impending elections.
6. To you all, I pay my absolute compliments and congratulate you on the success of your respective campaigns. I extend my gratitude to you all for accepting the outcome of this convention and agreeing to support my candidature as we move forward. I shall meet with you all in the coming days to fashion out how we shall confront the challenge ahead.
7. My dear fellow countrymen and women, it is with a deep sense of humility that I stand before you today to accept the nomination of my party, the All Progressives Congress to be its candidate and flag-bearer in 2015 presidential elections.
8. My nomination is not because I am better than any of the other contestants. I see it as a tribute and mark of confidence to carry the torch as we all join hands to rescue our dear country Nigeria, from those who have led us into the current state of insecurity, poverty, sectarian divide and hopelessness among our people.
9. I stand before you today to ask that you join me in a common cause. My call to you is not to realise the personal fulfilment of one man. This Common Cause is nothing less than the love for our nation and concern for its present condition. And a resolve to make things better for Nigeria.
10. What I say today is for all Nigerians: Christian and Muslim, Southern and Northern, rich and poor, young and old, man and woman. We are all citizens of Nigeria. There is no dividing line among us that I care to honour. Either we advance as one or fail altogether.
11. My choice and my colleagues choice and wish is that we progress together. Preserving the nation’s future is a scared obligation to all of us in this party. Leaders should be wholly committed to fulfilling this obligation otherwise they have no business being leaders.
12. Sadly, the current administration does not believe in this obligation. By their actions they are leading us to calamity.
13. At International Conferences, the Nigerian delegation is usually among the largest but at the same time the least effective. Our president should have the status and the voice of Africa's largest nation. But in political influence we are among the weakest.
14. Shall we at home continue to live in a condition where the Power Holding Company and its successors seem only to have the power to hold us in darkness?
15. Shall we continue in a situation where 250 of our daughters have been abducted and the government has been unable to rescue them or provide credible information about what steps they are taking?
16. Shall we live in a nation where several people were trampled to death in search of jobs in a stadium and yet no one has taken responsibility for the tragedy?
17. Shall we live in a nation where the ranks of the poor swell and their poverty increase while the consorts of the powerful enjoy unprecedented wealth? The lives of the poor are bled dry while those of the powerful soak in excessive abundance.
18. My answers to these questions are “No, No, No, No!”
19. It is time to close this demeaning chapter in our nation’s history.
20. I ask that you join this effort, not for me, but to establish a better land for all of us.
21. I understand and accept the hard challenge ahead. When all is said and done, let it be written that Muhammadu Buhari gave his all for this nation.
22. As such, I make these five pledges regarding the government if we are elected next February;
a. We will govern Nigeria honestly, in accordance with the constitution.
b. We will strive to secure the country and efficiently manage the economy.
c. We will strive to attack poverty through broadly-shared economic growth and attacking corruption through impartial application of the law.
d. We will tolerate no religious, regional, ethnic or gender bias in our government.
e. We will return Nigeria to a position of international respect through patriotic foreign policy.
f. We will choose the best Nigerians for the right jobs.
23. Our government will be committed to the cause of the common man. Whether you are a Christian from Bayelsa State or a Muslim from Katsina State, you are first and foremost a Nigerian in my eyes. I shall treat you equally as my people, my national family, my brothers and sisters. There can be no genuine love of our country without loving all its people in our diversity.
24. Just as APC stands as a new party for a new Nigeria, our government will institute new policies to realise the new Nigeria.
25. We shall institute just policies that afford people the dignity of work and pay them a living wage for their sweat and toil. We intend to do this by instituting a national industrial policy, coupled with a national employment directive, that together shall revive and expand our manufacturing sector, creating jobs for our urban population and decreasing our reliance on expensive foreign imports.
26. We shall implement a national infrastructure master plan that will provide construction and related jobs across the land. Furthermore, by improving our transportation infrastructure through road, rail and port construction we expand the outer bounds of economic growth as no economy can grow beyond the capacity of its infrastructure.
27. Agriculture remains the backbone of the economy. Our government, when elected, will establish an agricultural policy that provides farmers a dignified living through improved inputs, improved extension services, access to credit and price support mechanisms.
28. On corruption, the government will enhance EFCC's powers to investigate independently. Moreover, we intend to plug the holes in NNPC accounting. There will no longer be two sets of books, one for public consumption and another for insiders who profit from this slick fraud. In an APC government, the public will know how much NNPC makes and where all the money goes.
29. No longer shall illegal flows of massive sums leave these shores to finance other economies. While our people languish in poverty, we effectively give financial aid to nations that is not justified. I am sick of this. It must stop. The money saved will finance jobs, health care and the provision of social safety net for the needy, weak and vulnerable of our land.
30. We will be a compassionate government, for out of compassion arises the truest forms of wealth and progress a society can attain. We shall open the door to tertiary education to excellent students who otherwise could not afford it. Pregnant and poor women and children shall be entitled to basic health care.
31. This is a Nigeria that I envisage but it is a far cry from the Nigeria that is now. Change is imperative if we are to avoid the impending national failure. Poor leadership placed us in the ditch. Continuation of poor leadership will only dig a deeper trench for all of us to fall in.
32. Let us join hands in progressive union to pull each other and the nation from the abyss.
33. I pledge to do my utmost to make this happen but cannot do it alone. I need your support. I need your help to become President of Nigeria so that government may come to serve you, so that it may bring relief to the broken and weary among us and so that it may usher in a new Nigeria meant for us all, a Nigeria that is the birthright of everyone but the exclusive possession of no one.
God bless you.
God bless our fatherland – Nigeria
Thank you.
Thursday 3 September 2015
Wednesday 26 August 2015
Aitete m’Ole: Be Alert As Saraki Brews Another Seditious Alcohol – By Abubakar Baba Sulaiman
Posted By: Amina Adams
Culled from EMPOWEREDNEWSWIRE.COM
In a moment of blind desperation, a recidivist will not only do anything to cover up his previous crimes, he would also go further to rubbish the authority managing such crimes and drag people into the mud of integrity distortion, forgetting that gravity is a law, what goes up must come down. You cannot break the law without the consequences, no matter how long it takes.
This is the situation Nigeria has found her self with someone like Bukola Saraki as her Citizen. He is a singular individual that has embarrassed the system more than any other person. The desperation to cover up his many crimes (ranging from corruption, financial and economic crimes, document forgery etc,) in order to escape justice is the reason why we are witnessing all the strange happenings in the nation’s polity. It is strange, unbelievable and alarming. He is going all out to do anything he finds doable for his personal preservation. This will not only include the use of media to castigate the system, it will also include the blackmailing of the people that are saddled with the responsibilities of prosecuting these crimes and adjudicating on justice.
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It will be hypocritically naive of anyone to feign ignorance of or pretend not to wake up to the strange dimension Bukola is introducing into our system. He is by the day teaching our younger generations how to commit crimes and escape justice. The dimensions are really alarming. For some of those who can properly define treason and can apply the appropriate rule of interpretation known to the law, with all these heaps of offences on his crime farm, Bukola shouldn’t only be prosecuted for his various financial crimes, treason and treasonable felony charges should be added to the list of these counts. The evidences are enormous and impeccable. He has bastardised the thinking of everyone that impunity is now even more celebrated by the unsuspecting public.
While I may not be absolving the EFCC Management of any complicity, I am however alarmed that such allegation is subtly orchestrated by Bukola Saraki whose entire family is entangled in one financial crimes or another. It is now the case of “aitete mu ole, ole n mu oloko”. This is what happens when a criminal is left unprosecuted for so long a time, despite the abundant evidence sgainst. He is really rupturing the System. It is so strange and sad that a criminal under investigation will now be the one to determine how the Body that is so charged to prosecute him will go about that. It is a case of attempted intimidation. To bad for him, dustbin has been provided to clean up the mess even before he litters the floor. He is just compounding his many problems.
Crime they say is functional. That can’t be far from correct. The evasive dimension now introduced by Bukola this time has now shown us that a lot is needed to be done in the amendment of our administration of criminal justice system as well as the Acts governing financial crimes – at what point should the prosecuting agency answer questions raised concerning its operation or even allegation on self probity when by the unconscious arrangement of vicious circle, the team that is to probe such agency have among them, financial crimes suspects under investigation and prosecution by this same anti-corruption agency. Ironically, in the present National Assembly setting, a larger percentage of them are former governors or former political office holders who have one or two cases to answer concerning corruption and other financial running into billions of naira fraud. The complicity makes it look frustrating, nonetheless, with political will and fearlessness, the fight can be won once there is no compromise or fear of criticism on the part of the “executioner”.
A lot has been said about character of the man with the gavel and there is no doubt in the fact that the petition against the EFCC chairman this time is evidently suspicious and the instigation compass is pointing towards the direction of the one and only felonious and ferocious Bukola Saraki. It is almost looking like an intimidation of the anti-graft agency to drop the various financial crimes allegations against his family.
While all these were going on at the national stage, Bukola has equally been instigating another incitement and this time around to embarrass President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR. It is a doubt assault that can only be orchestrated by a fellow in typical characteristic of a man in resemblance of “Oyenusi”. I do not have any other typology to give it than that.
Having failed in his many attempts to get President Buhari’s attention, Bukola has gone further to organise a “mass rally” under the dusguuse of grand reception by “Ilorin caucus” resident in Abuja. What he doesnt know is that, as he is planning, patriotic people are watching and keeping vigil of his moves with full knowledge of his scheming.
Let me give you the full insights to the yet another “coup” in the making. Bukola approached Alhaji Kawu Baraje to help talk to some Ilorin indigene resident in Abuja to kind of organise a grand reception in his honour. While Baraje accepted the difficult task, considering the fact that responsible Ilorin elites in Abuja have long distanced themselves from the continuous embarrassing dispositions of Bukola Saraki in order to avoid any form of generalization as if all Ilorins are like him. While Baraje seems to be slow at achieving that, Mashood Mustapha, for his own selfish interest brought a card to the table, negotiated Bukola to appoint him one of his Special Advisers, promising him that with such position in his hands, he can move the mountain for him. Anyway, the mountain still remains static till now.
Their continuous scheme brought in Alhaji Saka Sa’adu who promised to cajole some of the Ilorin elders to allow them use their house. It was on this assurance that they sought to convince General Abdullahi Adambgba and Justice Alfa Belgore to either host the “reception”.
For thoss who know Bukola very well, it will be suicidal to underrate his devilishness. However, the older experience of these respected individuals, taking a cue from President Buhari’s countenance to Bukola has made them “retreat” in wisdom from hosting such a gathering.
While many people may think it just a gathering to host “one of their own”, Bukola has a plan B.
If you are wondering while I have to lump the EFCC matter with proposed gathering of Ilorin elites to host Buki together, you can only imagine the “coincidence” of the time.
Apparently, Bukola is still nagging in ignorance that there are people who are ahead of his game, no matter how “sophisticated” he plays it. By Bukola’s diary, the gathering is expected to take place today at the residence of Justice Alfa Belgore, with some northern Emirs in attendance, the same day EFCC Chairman has been “summoned” to appear before the Senate Committee for investigations.
Meanwhile, unknown to those that might attend the get together party, Bukola has gone to rent crowd to join the gathering, from where they will match the street of Abuja and to the National Assembly to discredit the EFCC and by extension President Buhari. By his plan, he will turn the event to solidarity rally in his honour, discrediting and blackmailing the President in order to give his imminent prosecution witch-hunting. Isn’t that devilish?
It will now be looking like the man President Buhari is using as EFCC chairman is compromised, painting the picture that the president’s fight against corruption is selective and devoid of good intention. He is to gather the Emirs to scandalise the President to believing that he (President Buhari) is rude to the Emirs.
However, so ignorant of him, he has failed to realise that even before he planned it, the Intel about his moves is accurate. Sahara reporters have laid credence to this submission on their latest report of the intricacies on the undercurrent that led to the petition against the EFCC Chairman.
Let me use this opportunity to advise all those that might have been coopted to do this hatchet job to be properly guided and back down if they still care about their names. Otherwise, before they know it, Bukola would have hoodwinked them into rubbing their names in the mud.
I also do wonder if people are even aware that the degree certificate purportedly obtained by Bukola Saraki is becoming a subject of doubt just as it is looking like the young man never had his time in the NYSC scheme as he might have claimed.
A man who keeps too many secrets has a lot yo fear. His restlessness know no bound because he had got a lot on his sleeves.
At this point of our history, with the advent of all these alien scheming by Bukola, I think the issue now has gone beyond the management of corruption and penalty for fraud, rather, the big issue now is the urgent need to save the system from complete destruction, preventing this criminal norms from being internalised by the living and coming innocent generations. If we leave the system this vulnerable, Bukola will infect it with atomic WMD.
My take. It is my submission that the any further delay in properly handling Bukola Saraki may be detrimental to the collective existence of every other Nigerian. His strange and criminal strategies to evade prosecution will not only destroy the system in soonest time, it will also transmit the virus to the younger and coming generations. The time to properly handle him is now. The multiplicity of his offences ranging from forgery, certificate falsification, perjury, corruption, etc should ordinarily have stripped him of any privileges. His trial shouldn’t even a month before he would be sent to hus natural abode – Kuje.
If this man (Bukola Saraki) is not stopped now from destroying the system, he will stop the system from working.
When the system is ready to do this, reactionary noises should be disregarded – JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED!
The Buhari magic - Lawal Ogienagbon
He and his party promised change and little by little, the country is experiencing change. Even without him saying it, we are all acting correctly, especially the anti-graft agencies and government workers. Yet President Muhammadu Buhari has not spent 100 days in office. So far, he has done 90 days, but see what is happening in the country. His predecessor spent over six years in office and never made half of the impact Buhari has made in three months.
What is it that has made Nigerians change overnight with the coming of Buhari? It is the Buhari persona, say analysts. Buhari came into office with the reputation of a no nonsense man and with his integrity intact. Nigerians know him too well having been military Head of State between December 1983 and August 1985.
For the 18 months he was head of state, he did not allow power to get into his head; he maintained his major general rank unlike others who rushed to promote themselves as soon as they got into office.
They succeeded because by then, Buhari’s cup had become full in the eyes of the people. Yes, his administration had alienated itself from the people because of what they perceived as some of his harsh policies, which led to the execution of three drug traffickers through a retroactive law; the execution of a woman trafficker, who had a handicapped child, and the imprisonment of two journalists under Decree 4. Buhari had a mission and he was in a hurry to execute it, but we were not on the same page with him. He knew what he wanted for the country, but we misunderstood him.
Thirty years after, we have come to appreciate the worth of Buhari. We virtually begged him to come and lead us now and bail the country out of the mess it has been thrown into by successive governments. It has been so far , so good under his watch even without his full complement of aides. It is as if we are no longer in Nigeria going by what we have been witnessing since his return to power as elected president. Just imagine what Nigeria would have been like today if Buhari had been allowed to sanitise the country the way he wanted in his first coming as military head of state.
But, we were not patient enough with him. We wanted the easy way out and see where that has led us. Our leaders – the happy going and smiling leaders – whom we preferred to Buhari, who we accused of not smiling, stole the country blind. Our country is still bleeding from their atrocities. Buhari may not be a smiling leader, but he knows what he is doing and what he wants for the country. He wants a Nigeria where things work; not a country where few people corral the wealth. This was what happened under past administrations and this was what he wanted to prevent back then; unfortunately, the corrupt, but wealthy minority had their way over the poor and gullible majority.
The scales have now fallen off our eyes. We have come to appreciate that Buhari meant well for the country then having weighed him on the same scale with those who sacked him from power. Has Buhari not been vindicated? He has. Our prayer is that God see him through during his second missionary journey.
He has yet to lift a finger, so to say, and things have started to fall in place. Before he took office on May 29, it was hard getting fuel to buy. It was queue, queue everywhere and filling stations were selling at over N150 per litre where the product was available. There is now orderliness at filling stations and petrol is selling for N87 per litre in many parts of the country. The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) like other agencies has suddenly become proactive,, working as if it has just been created to regulate the operations of these Shylock dealers.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) have also woken up from slumber. They have become so busy of late, inviting one person or the other and seizing one property or the other. It shows that where the leader does not condone corruption, the anti-corruption agencies will also not be afraid to do their work. The people at EFCC and ICPC know what Buhari can do if they do not do their job the way it should be done. But can they be trusted to truly prosecute the anti-graft war having kept criminally quiet under the immediate past administration.
They may have been hamstrung in the discharge of their duty by the body language of our leader then, but that is no excuse for them to shirk their duty. Why did they hold on tenaciously to their job under such circumstance? It would have been more honourable to quit than to work in an environment where corruption thrives. Can they now, in all honesty, pull in those they hobnobbed with just in the recent past for dipping their hands in the till? This is why the Senate is threatening to probe EFCC chair Ibrahim Lamorde over a matter it should have since exercised its oversight power. Is it now that Lamorde is beaming searchlight on some former governors, who are now in the Senate, and/or their spouses, that the Upper Chamber should be talking of probing him over the weighty allegations of diverting funds seized from some past government functionaries totalling N1billion?
The wind of change is blowing in all directions. Even the National Assembly is not left out. It has cut its yearly budget of N150billion to N120billion. The lawmakers are also contemplating cutting their N42, 000 monthly wardrobe allowance in line with the prevailing mood in the country. Their salary may soon be slashed by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), which Buhari carpeted on Tuesday for the lawmakers’ jumbo pay. Buhari has shown that leadership matters in the life of a nation. A good leader will grow his country; an inept leader will kill it. We saw that happen under Jonathan. May God forgive him and his bedfellows. Buhari’s distaste for corruption is legendary. And without being told, all those in his administration know that they must live above board because it is no longer business as usual.
Whether in or out of government, the people are feeling what is going on and we are all wondering is this not Nigeria? Of course, it is. The only difference is that things are now being done the right way. Buhari is a breath of fresh air. Our prayer is that may this romance endure
STILL ON BISHOP KUKAH'S POSITION - Arc. Bulama
Most Nigerians were taken aback by Bishop Kukah's recent comments because he was canvassing sympathy for GEJ's regime. Not stopping at that he went further to launch wholesale attack on the vision, nature and pace of PMB's govt in what appears to many as purely partisan tirade. His position was neither diplomatic, religious nor statesmanlike. Bishop Kukah has on this issue disappointed many. The outrage expressed by the public, to me is understandable
Again many would dispute the contention that Bishop Kukah 'is and was a principal actor in the coming of PMB'. Read below what one foremost columnist said - "Let it be bluntly and boldly stated that the Peace Committee is not about peace at all. It materialized as a last ditch ruling class initiative to force Gen. Buhari to accept dishonourable defeat and hence to stave off the revolutionary turmoil and anarchy that would have accompanied electoral miscarriage. It is a wearisomely familiar Nigerian ploy to impose 'peace' in the absence of social and political justice...........
Available reports indicate that some of members of the committee were already privately gloating about the inevitability of a Jonathan victory.
They came to bury Buhari and not to praise him. But it bombed spectacularly.
Perhaps this is one of the 'spectacular' things that Jonathan did which Bishop Kukah referred to with deliberately oblique disingenuity'
- The trial of Bishop Kukah (Snooping Around, by Tatalo Alamu, page 3, the Nation, 23/8/15)
And lastly here is another view from an astute admirer of Bishop Kukah. Writing in Daily Trust, Timawus Mathias says - "One of Bishop Kukah's reasons for canvassing against any subjection of President Jonathan to a probe is that Jonathan 'did his best'....I am not surprised that the Bishop is this much protective of President Jonathan. It his calling to forgive if the sinner confesses and does penance..... Yet against the daily revelations of humongous pillages under Jonathan's watch, the Bishop seemed compromised, and hence contradictory and incoherent"
- What does Bishop Kukah want?
- Timawus Mathias (Daily Trust page 58, 26/8/15)
The trial of Bishop Kukah
by Tatalo
Poor Mathew Hassan Kukah! He has had it up to the nape of his cassocks. The torrents of abuse have now transformed into a tsunami of vilification. It was just as well that the week ended with the congregation of Catholic Bishops removing the ground from under Bishop Kukah by wholeheartedly supporting President Buhari’s anti-corruption hurricane.
Never in Nigeria’s public history has a hitherto respected man of god tumbled so fast in public esteem. Never has a man so widely admired for his cutting intellect become a master of pompous equivocation and fatuous obfuscation. Never has the implacable Nigerian intellectual lynch mob been so fast and furious in dismembering and devouring its victim.
It is a sad spectacle, and a consuming Nigerian tragedy to boot. Many of us who consider ourselves friends and admirers of the gutsy and cerebral Bishop of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese can only watch in pained silence as the man of god appears to unravel in a drama of self-demystification. But in revolutionary situations, everybody must answer their fathers’ name and one must be ready to drop a friend because of principles rather than drop principles because of a friend.
These must be revolutionary times in Nigeria indeed. It is only in revolutionary times that people lose total respect for priestly cassocks and other symbols of traditional authority. It is only in revolutionary times that the sacred become desacralized in bitter profanity and people move from hero to zero. The man of the people becomes the enemy of the populace. The dark night does not recognize sacerdotal distinction. As the mob brays in implacable distemper, the expiring ruling class that has held Nigeria hostage must note this development.
Bishop Kukah’s superiors in the Nigerian Catholic nomenklatura must be clicking their tongue in sagely relish. A child can have as many new clothes as an elder, but he can never have as many rags. Many of the superiors of the Sokoto Bishop must be rubbing their palms in smirking satisfaction. Only the barely discerning would not have noticed a certain froideur, a chilly discomfort among the Catholic hierarchs as Kukah rose to secular apotheosis as a liberating theologist and friend of the rich and powerful at the same time. As the Yoruba will put it, nobody must stop a youngster from climbing the hill of Langbodo.
In retrospect, perhaps it will be said that the Sokoto bishop chose the wrong time to cross the Homeric frontline between the Nigerian powerful and the teeming powerless; and between whistle blowing against the powerful or becoming a loud and brash megaphone of its rearguard rally. Not even the most gifted and proficient trickster knows when the trick will fail, and in revolutionary situations one cannot be too careless in his choice of enemies.
The last straw, it seems, is Kukah’s stirring at the behest of the controversial Peace Committee. Let it be bluntly and baldly stated that this committee is not about peace at all. It materialized as a last ditch ruling class initiative to force General Buhari to accept dishonorable defeat and hence to stave off the revolutionary turmoil and anarchy that would have accompanied electoral miscarriage. It is a wearisomely familiar Nigerian ploy to impose “peace” in the absence of social and political justice. But they misjudged the mood of the nation and the fact that Nigerians have had it with their ilk.
Bar a few misguided ones who are glad to be dredged up from peat bog of political oblivion and the odd naïve do-gooders, most of our newly minted peaceniks are compromised scoundrels working for the old regime and traditional mischief-makers on a typical pay day. Available reports indicate that some of them were already privately gloating about the inevitability of a Jonathan victory. They came to bury Buhari and not to praise him. But it bombed spectacularly. Perhaps this is one of the “spectacular” things that Jonathan did which Kukah referred to with deliberately oblique disingenuity.
Having failed in their core mission, they have now transformed into a “peace” council to disturb the peace of the nation, and to stalemate the inevitable sanitization of the polity. They have gone about endlessly chattering about due process and the fact that this is a democracy and not a military order. One wonders how democracy and due process would have fared had they succeeded in suborning the sovereign electoral will of Nigerians. Let this be the last time President Buhari will give them a decent hearing.
Kukah’s attempt to defend the motive of the peace council has brought a gale of angry denunciations on the internet and social media with many of them charging the Catholic supremo with perfidy and betrayal. This columnist read about three hundred of these angry rebuttals and only a few were willing to stake their integrity on the integrity and honesty of the bishop. It was redolent of pent up fury and misgivings, as if they have been waiting for Kukah to cross the line.
Kukah’s attempt to correct a purportedly mischievous slant that gave the impression that the council went up to President Buhari to bargain for a soft landing for the disgraced and discredited Jonathan drew even more tempestuous tirades. And then in the unkindest cut of all, a shadowy and hitherto unknown organization going by the name of CUPS came out to directly impugn Kukah’s integrity and claims to probity in a well-detailed allegation of sleaze and corruption.
This column will refrain from publicizing the salacious and insalubrious details, but they go to show how far Bishop Kukah’s stock has fallen. It is a remarkable development and no matter his public grandstanding and defiance of the gravitational pull of seamy scandals, the plucky priest must be having some anxious private moments. Even if they remain at the level of mere allegations, that they are ever broached at all shows how public perception can be influenced by the power and putrescence of offensive associations. The bishop’s cup is full and it overflows indeed.
It may well be too late to ask the august catholic prelate to return to base. For a man of such calm and deliberate mien, such choices are not lightly made in the first instance. As we have said, everybody must answer to his patronymic in these perilous times. Like a savage hawk remarkable for its hunting prowess and ferocious precision, the Nigerian ruling class knows the particular moment to home in on its intended prey and which foibles and personal peccadilloes to zero in upon.
In a postcolonial society infamous for its political dysfunctionality , the transition from civil society activist to state actor is a very precarious affair indeed. In Nigeria, only few people, if any at all, have been able to manage the transition without major scars. This is because inchoate and disadvantaged civil society feels abandoned and neglected by one of its own. Like vultures waiting for the ethically deceased, they bid their time waiting to take their pound of flesh or carrion and the quiet hysteria of private abandonment soon gives way to the public hullabaloo of angry and messy divorce.
The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese seems to have had it coming for quite some time. There might have come a time when a practical patriot like Kukah might have come to the conclusion that it might be better and more nation-rewarding to remonstrate with the Nigerian powers that be at close proximity than to demonstrate against them from a far distance.
As a minority scion of the most minority of ethnic formations, Kukah might have concluded that he stood no chance raising hell among the hell-bound majority monsters—as he himself once memorably dismissed Nigeria’s major ethnic formations. It may well turn out to be a bridge too far, but in the brutal power calculus of Nigeria’s political coliseum, innocence is not a virtue but a symptom of suicidal naivety.
Who will then speak and speak up for the Nigerian minority ethnic subaltern? As a devoted watcher of Nigeria’s volatile and explosive political gymnasium, this columnist entered into a private correspondence with the father who art in Kaduna then over his seemingly seamless transition from civil society activist to state actor. Yours sincerely wanted to know whether the transition was conscious or seemingly unconscious. It was a particularly illuminating exchange whose details must remain private and confidential.
What did it for this columnist was Kukah’s out of proportion reaction to a Soyinka piece detailing the ills and ailments of the Nigerian postcolonial state. As usual with the implacably agonistic Nobel avatar, it was a merciless and astringent critique dripping with venom and vitriol. The old literary lion does not take hostages in these matters. But anybody who has watched Nigeria’s descent into political infamy over the decades would side with Soyinka’s angst about the fate of his beloved country.
What seemed to have drawn Bishop Kukah’s particular ire was Soyinka’s damning conclusion that nothing good could come out of the Nigerian state as it was constituted. It is interesting and intriguing that Soyinka’s response to Kukah was a mixture of puckish humour and elderly irritation. Subsequent events seem to have proved the Nobel laureate right.
Thereafter, certain changes in Kukah’s public personae became noticeable as he moved closer and closer to the sanctuary of state power. An imperious swagger seems to have been added to the bouncy gait even as a pompous and pomaded puffery became the order of the day. A moody irascible brio and prickly condescension became the sine qua non of Kukah’s public engagements. The bishop’s secular beatitude was in full progress.
But such beatitudes do not beautify, and neither do they ennoble in the tumultuous and turbulent context of a postcolonial nation roiling in crisis and contradictions. In such circumstances and situations, it is the bounden duty of all men of god to speak truth to secular power and not to become carpetbaggers and reactionary rearguard rallying points for the retrogressive and anti-progress rump of a failed ruling class.
The current pope is an outstanding exemplar of this sacred moral responsibility to the powerless of the earth; and so was the old much admired and revered Polish pope, the illustrious Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. We dare say that in the last decade and a half beginning with the Oputa Panel, Bishop Kukah has been rather remiss in that historic and sacred duty. If it is not too late, this gifted priest should find his route back to public restitution and redemption.
TheNation
Poor Mathew Hassan Kukah! He has had it up to the nape of his cassocks. The torrents of abuse have now transformed into a tsunami of vilification. It was just as well that the week ended with the congregation of Catholic Bishops removing the ground from under Bishop Kukah by wholeheartedly supporting President Buhari’s anti-corruption hurricane.
Never in Nigeria’s public history has a hitherto respected man of god tumbled so fast in public esteem. Never has a man so widely admired for his cutting intellect become a master of pompous equivocation and fatuous obfuscation. Never has the implacable Nigerian intellectual lynch mob been so fast and furious in dismembering and devouring its victim.
It is a sad spectacle, and a consuming Nigerian tragedy to boot. Many of us who consider ourselves friends and admirers of the gutsy and cerebral Bishop of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese can only watch in pained silence as the man of god appears to unravel in a drama of self-demystification. But in revolutionary situations, everybody must answer their fathers’ name and one must be ready to drop a friend because of principles rather than drop principles because of a friend.
These must be revolutionary times in Nigeria indeed. It is only in revolutionary times that people lose total respect for priestly cassocks and other symbols of traditional authority. It is only in revolutionary times that the sacred become desacralized in bitter profanity and people move from hero to zero. The man of the people becomes the enemy of the populace. The dark night does not recognize sacerdotal distinction. As the mob brays in implacable distemper, the expiring ruling class that has held Nigeria hostage must note this development.
Bishop Kukah’s superiors in the Nigerian Catholic nomenklatura must be clicking their tongue in sagely relish. A child can have as many new clothes as an elder, but he can never have as many rags. Many of the superiors of the Sokoto Bishop must be rubbing their palms in smirking satisfaction. Only the barely discerning would not have noticed a certain froideur, a chilly discomfort among the Catholic hierarchs as Kukah rose to secular apotheosis as a liberating theologist and friend of the rich and powerful at the same time. As the Yoruba will put it, nobody must stop a youngster from climbing the hill of Langbodo.
In retrospect, perhaps it will be said that the Sokoto bishop chose the wrong time to cross the Homeric frontline between the Nigerian powerful and the teeming powerless; and between whistle blowing against the powerful or becoming a loud and brash megaphone of its rearguard rally. Not even the most gifted and proficient trickster knows when the trick will fail, and in revolutionary situations one cannot be too careless in his choice of enemies.
The last straw, it seems, is Kukah’s stirring at the behest of the controversial Peace Committee. Let it be bluntly and baldly stated that this committee is not about peace at all. It materialized as a last ditch ruling class initiative to force General Buhari to accept dishonorable defeat and hence to stave off the revolutionary turmoil and anarchy that would have accompanied electoral miscarriage. It is a wearisomely familiar Nigerian ploy to impose “peace” in the absence of social and political justice. But they misjudged the mood of the nation and the fact that Nigerians have had it with their ilk.
Bar a few misguided ones who are glad to be dredged up from peat bog of political oblivion and the odd naïve do-gooders, most of our newly minted peaceniks are compromised scoundrels working for the old regime and traditional mischief-makers on a typical pay day. Available reports indicate that some of them were already privately gloating about the inevitability of a Jonathan victory. They came to bury Buhari and not to praise him. But it bombed spectacularly. Perhaps this is one of the “spectacular” things that Jonathan did which Kukah referred to with deliberately oblique disingenuity.
Having failed in their core mission, they have now transformed into a “peace” council to disturb the peace of the nation, and to stalemate the inevitable sanitization of the polity. They have gone about endlessly chattering about due process and the fact that this is a democracy and not a military order. One wonders how democracy and due process would have fared had they succeeded in suborning the sovereign electoral will of Nigerians. Let this be the last time President Buhari will give them a decent hearing.
Kukah’s attempt to defend the motive of the peace council has brought a gale of angry denunciations on the internet and social media with many of them charging the Catholic supremo with perfidy and betrayal. This columnist read about three hundred of these angry rebuttals and only a few were willing to stake their integrity on the integrity and honesty of the bishop. It was redolent of pent up fury and misgivings, as if they have been waiting for Kukah to cross the line.
Kukah’s attempt to correct a purportedly mischievous slant that gave the impression that the council went up to President Buhari to bargain for a soft landing for the disgraced and discredited Jonathan drew even more tempestuous tirades. And then in the unkindest cut of all, a shadowy and hitherto unknown organization going by the name of CUPS came out to directly impugn Kukah’s integrity and claims to probity in a well-detailed allegation of sleaze and corruption.
This column will refrain from publicizing the salacious and insalubrious details, but they go to show how far Bishop Kukah’s stock has fallen. It is a remarkable development and no matter his public grandstanding and defiance of the gravitational pull of seamy scandals, the plucky priest must be having some anxious private moments. Even if they remain at the level of mere allegations, that they are ever broached at all shows how public perception can be influenced by the power and putrescence of offensive associations. The bishop’s cup is full and it overflows indeed.
It may well be too late to ask the august catholic prelate to return to base. For a man of such calm and deliberate mien, such choices are not lightly made in the first instance. As we have said, everybody must answer to his patronymic in these perilous times. Like a savage hawk remarkable for its hunting prowess and ferocious precision, the Nigerian ruling class knows the particular moment to home in on its intended prey and which foibles and personal peccadilloes to zero in upon.
In a postcolonial society infamous for its political dysfunctionality , the transition from civil society activist to state actor is a very precarious affair indeed. In Nigeria, only few people, if any at all, have been able to manage the transition without major scars. This is because inchoate and disadvantaged civil society feels abandoned and neglected by one of its own. Like vultures waiting for the ethically deceased, they bid their time waiting to take their pound of flesh or carrion and the quiet hysteria of private abandonment soon gives way to the public hullabaloo of angry and messy divorce.
The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese seems to have had it coming for quite some time. There might have come a time when a practical patriot like Kukah might have come to the conclusion that it might be better and more nation-rewarding to remonstrate with the Nigerian powers that be at close proximity than to demonstrate against them from a far distance.
As a minority scion of the most minority of ethnic formations, Kukah might have concluded that he stood no chance raising hell among the hell-bound majority monsters—as he himself once memorably dismissed Nigeria’s major ethnic formations. It may well turn out to be a bridge too far, but in the brutal power calculus of Nigeria’s political coliseum, innocence is not a virtue but a symptom of suicidal naivety.
Who will then speak and speak up for the Nigerian minority ethnic subaltern? As a devoted watcher of Nigeria’s volatile and explosive political gymnasium, this columnist entered into a private correspondence with the father who art in Kaduna then over his seemingly seamless transition from civil society activist to state actor. Yours sincerely wanted to know whether the transition was conscious or seemingly unconscious. It was a particularly illuminating exchange whose details must remain private and confidential.
What did it for this columnist was Kukah’s out of proportion reaction to a Soyinka piece detailing the ills and ailments of the Nigerian postcolonial state. As usual with the implacably agonistic Nobel avatar, it was a merciless and astringent critique dripping with venom and vitriol. The old literary lion does not take hostages in these matters. But anybody who has watched Nigeria’s descent into political infamy over the decades would side with Soyinka’s angst about the fate of his beloved country.
What seemed to have drawn Bishop Kukah’s particular ire was Soyinka’s damning conclusion that nothing good could come out of the Nigerian state as it was constituted. It is interesting and intriguing that Soyinka’s response to Kukah was a mixture of puckish humour and elderly irritation. Subsequent events seem to have proved the Nobel laureate right.
Thereafter, certain changes in Kukah’s public personae became noticeable as he moved closer and closer to the sanctuary of state power. An imperious swagger seems to have been added to the bouncy gait even as a pompous and pomaded puffery became the order of the day. A moody irascible brio and prickly condescension became the sine qua non of Kukah’s public engagements. The bishop’s secular beatitude was in full progress.
But such beatitudes do not beautify, and neither do they ennoble in the tumultuous and turbulent context of a postcolonial nation roiling in crisis and contradictions. In such circumstances and situations, it is the bounden duty of all men of god to speak truth to secular power and not to become carpetbaggers and reactionary rearguard rallying points for the retrogressive and anti-progress rump of a failed ruling class.
The current pope is an outstanding exemplar of this sacred moral responsibility to the powerless of the earth; and so was the old much admired and revered Polish pope, the illustrious Cardinal Karol Wojtyla. We dare say that in the last decade and a half beginning with the Oputa Panel, Bishop Kukah has been rather remiss in that historic and sacred duty. If it is not too late, this gifted priest should find his route back to public restitution and redemption.
TheNation
The Muhammadu Buhari Odyssey
Muhammadu Buhari’s most vivid childhood memory, which he still recalls hitherto was falling off a horse (a strawberry roan) on his way to the village well. He still recalls the fright he felt lying down between the feet of the enormous animal. He could see the horse’s big belly heaving and the five-stripes on its forelegs flashing before his eyes. At that instance, he thought to himself that the beast could kick or trample him to death. Still in pains, he hurriedly stood up, dusted his clothes, remounted the horse and continued his journey to the well
In Homer’s Greek poetic masterpiece, The Odyssey, the hero, Odysseus, was, by and large, depicted as a man of outstanding endurance, courage, wisdom, eloquence, loyalty, honour, magnanimity and skill. From his heroic feat during the Trojan War to his wandering travails, which lasted for 10 years as he struggled to return home after the Trojan War and reassert his place as rightful leader, Odysseus’ bravery and skill are represented throughout the epic.
Every so often, through the ages, providence points out a person with the conclusive resolve, features or personality traits of a great leader.
In the case of Muhammadu Buhari, his odyssey started from birth, continued through his career and did not end after his retirement.
The name Muhammadu Buhari means different things to different people. Some erroneously claim he is an Islamic fundamentalist, while others say he is an ethnic bigot. However, the vast majority of the Nigerian people regard him as one of the most incorruptible individuals in the country and the man that can pull the country back from the precipice of self-destruction to which it is heading. This pervasive impression is founded on the performance of the military administration he once headed almost a generation ago. During election times, his person and reputation are consistently targeted. In other words, he is viewed in some quarters as one who loves his religion, Islam, and is proud of his Hausa/Fulani ethnic identity. But that does not automatically mean that he has an aversion to other religions or ethnic groups. As is usual, when trying to get a better understanding of people, it is important to look back at their origins.
General Muhammadu Buhari was born on a Thursday, the 17th of December, 1942 at house No 14 Waziri road in Daura town, Katsina State, Northern Nigeria to a Fulani father and a Hausa mother. His mother was the daughter of Musa Sarkin Dogarai (Head of the Daura Infantry) who was also the son of the Kauran Daura Lawal (Head of the Daura Armed Forces) during the period of fierce battles between the Hausas and Fulanis for dominance in Daura in the early 1800’s. His maternal great grandfather, Mallam Adamu, was the son of a Kauran Kukawa, who was the head of the army during the fierce battles with the Rabe of the old Borno Empire. So it could be said that soldiering is in his blood. At the time of his birth, the world was still reeling from the horrors of the Second World War. On that day in December, 1942, the Allies issued the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations. This was the first time the Holocaust was publicly acknowledged.
Unlike many other Northerners who were born into aristocratic or royal families, and rose to prominence by riding on their family names and prestige, Buhari was born into a noble but humble family. Having lost his father, Ardo Adamu Buhari at the age of three or four, there were limited opportunities for the young Buhari as he was the 23rd child of his father and the 13th and last child of his mother, Zulaihat. His mother was a widow with seven children before she went on to marry his father.
Muhammadu Buhari lost his father early in his life at the age of four. All he could remember of his father was that he was tall and fair in complexion. Though his father was the Ardo of Dumurkol Village near Daura, the title didn’t have much bearing on his life, neither did it elevate his status in any way. At the time the only feasible alternative was to be a cattle herdsman. Muhammadu Buhari, not being one to cower in the face of adversity strove hard to excel in primary and secondary school.
During his childhood, Muhammadu Buhari was fondly nicknamed and called “Leko.” This was due to the fact that he was born after a set of twins that died. Leko was the Hausa nickname given to a child born after twins who died. He spent his early childhood days playing around the dusty lanes and tree-lined roads of the vibrant Daura Township. Muhammadu Buhari’s most vivid childhood memory, which he still recalls hitherto was falling off a horse (a strawberry roan) on his way to the village well. He still recalls the fright he felt lying down between the feet of the enormous animal. He could see the horse’s big belly heaving and the five-stripes on its forelegs flashing before his eyes. At that instance, he thought to himself that the beast could kick or trample him to death. Still in pains, he hurriedly stood up, dusted his clothes, remounted the horse and continued his journey to the well.
He commenced his primary education at Mai Adua Primary School in 1948-1952, where his senior brother Mal. Dauda Daura was the head teacher of the school. As a child Muhammadu Buhari was known to have a childhood disdain for going school and this resulted in naughty and mischievous behavior that often got him into trouble. Consequently, his break time was usually forfeited as punishment. According to his nephew, Mamman Daura, who is two and a half years older than Muhammadu Buhari and was also his senior in primary and secondary school, “Buhari was above average academically and more than usual naughty.” Similarly, Muhammadu Buhari himself also adds; “I was a truant in primary school. I spent a lot of my time playing around, but when I went to secondary school, I changed.” His classmates in primary school still fondly remember him as a fast runner and the centre-forward for the school’s football team. Another major attribute of his, which he was known for since primary school and which has stayed with him is that he is always very smartly dressed and neatly turned-out.
He later attended Katsina Middle School in 1953-1955, Katsina Provincial Secondary School (now Government College, Katsina) 1956-1961.
His uncompromising knack for sticking to his principles no matter what, go as far back as when he was in secondary school. A story was related of how the young Buhari became a lone ranger of sorts when he refused, on a matter of principle, to join in a strike of his classmates despite the fact that he was the youngest and the smallest in the class.
Some of his classmates recall some of his glowing attributes: Malam Mukhatri Zango, a former classmate of Muhammadu Buhari once stated, “He used to baffle me. He was strong-willed and principled. He always stood his ground and would not follow the crowd.”
Another childhood friend of his, who grew up with him in Katsina before they joined the Military and rose through the ranks together, and who was the Deputy head boy to Muhammadu Buhari, the late former Vice President, General Shehu Musa Yar’adua also opined that, “He was reserved. He was one of the few boys in the school that was trusted by his classmates and who was quite dependable.”
Some of his classmates at Katsina Provincial Secondary School included the former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Umaru Abdullahi as well as the former Inspector General of Police from 1993 to 1999, serving under the military governments of Generals Sani Abacha and General Abdulsalam Abubakar, Ibrahim Comasie. Inspite of this evidence of fact, during the campaigns that preceded the 2015 elections, it was alleged that Muhammadu Buhari did not attend or finish secondary school.
General Muhammadu Buhari is one of the most decorated Generals in the Nigerian Army. He is the recipient of numerous awards such as the Defence Service Medal, National Service Medal, General Service Medal, Republic Medal, Loyal Service and Good Conduct Medal, Forces Medal, Independence Medal and Congo Crisis Medal.
‘Coming soon,’ a thoroughly gripping and intricate insight into the full journey of a fascinating patriot; born to lead a nation towards positive change, the services he rendered to his country in various capacities, the challenge that saw him rise above incarceration, suspicion, defamation, persecution, to show the strength of character to be the ‘change’ he desired for his country, the ideal upon which he built a movement that, once again, gave a people a reason to believe.
It is the odyssey that defines the calling of General Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR from military leader, to head of state, to military/political prisoner, as well as the long political struggle that saw him, against all odds, emerge as the 16th president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
How the rot in the army started — Gen Ishola Williams
By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor & Gbenga Oke
General Ishola Williams was at peace with himself that Friday afternoon when the Vanguard team arrived at his office, in the Iju area of Lagos.
This was the man who made news in 1993 when he walked out on the army and General Sanni Abacha on the premise that the army takeover was immoral. Far removed from the life of pleasure and putrid abundance that is the lot of many other retired generals, the Vanguard team met the general engrossed in his research work in peace and conflict studies.
General Williams, erstwhile head of the Nigeria chapter of Transparency International, is presently on the faculty of the Pan African Strategic and Policy Research Group, a forum he is using to espouse issues that generate conflict in Africa among other development issues.
Given his exchange with Gen. Abacha and another squabble when as a colonel he queried a chief of army staff, General Williams was asked whether he considered himself a troublesome officer. In responding to the contrary, he nevertheless admitted that he may be controversial. Undoubtedly so, as is revealed in this interview during which he spoke on the rot in the army, the fight against corruption among many other issues. Excerpts:
What have you been doing since leaving the army in 1993?
Since I left the army, I have been engaged in the running of an organization that was initially into peace and conflict issues in Nigeria, West Africa and Africa for some few years. We are also looking at how Economic Community of West African States, (ECOWAS) can situate itself in a very good position to be able to mediate conflicts happening in Liberia, Sierra Leone at that particular time.
When President Carter left as the President of the United States, he created the Carter Centre and he started coming into African nations. His centre went into two major areas; health and democracy and governance issues. He came to discover some of the challenges of governance, elections and elements leading into conflicts and after looking at the studies that were conducted by so many compatriots, he discovered that there was need for Africans themselves to study those conflicts to be able to cover the gaps and for Africans themselves to be re-involved in mediating those conflicts.
At the time, African countries were dependent on the United States academically, intellectually and even for mediating its own conflicts.
So they told us that if we are not very careful, our own people will believe we cannot resolve our own conflicts and we must not get ourselves into such situations. So we were advised to form a group of people that can do these studies since several Nigerian students then studied in the universities abroad.
We then formed a group with some people from the Institute, some of them at the universities and with some few military officers interested in West Africa.
Did your group envisage the crises gripping the country now?
(Cuts in) No, no, no. You did not even need to envisage that because I was in the military when we had this Maitasaine all over the place and the Army had to call in the Air Force to bomb places like Kano even within the urban areas. As we were dealing with them in Kano, they were coming up in Maiduguri, Yola and other places. Maitasaine taught us a lesson but did we adopt the lesson? And even if we did, did we make use of the lesson? Some few years after that, when I was Commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), I wrote a letter to the commandant of the Nigerian Defence Academy, (NDA) and the Minister of Defence then that we need to learn a lesson from Maitasaine. We were lucky to overcome them then because we had far superior arms and the people of Kano did not like Maitasaine. The rich people living in Kano then could not understand what Maitasaine was about, they were wearing expensive wrist watches and couldn’t accept their teachings of don’t do these or that.
The situation was like that of governors who wanted to introduce Sharia, of course the rich Muslims in those states didn’t want it.
I remembered in my letter to the military authority then, I told them that we must learn from it. The thing about us is that we don’t look at events from outside and how they can affect us. We have not been having thinking governments. What we have are governments that only live for today, so if there is a problem, government cannot deal with it because there are so many issues that have been swept under the carpet.
I will give you an example. See the Ogoni issue that President Buhari has just assented to. How long ago have they submitted that report? Why was it neglected? Something that is as important like that and the Ogoni people have been protesting about it and even said they will not allow Shell in, nobody cared. One sentence, ‘I will do it’ and that was all.
See the victims of Boko Haram in the North East. The Federal Government promised to contribute N5 billion. What is a N5 billion in a trillion budget? How can you delay that kind of thing when your fellow human being is suffering? So in countries where people are thinking and people are compassionate, once such reports come, you act. So sometimes I do not believe those in government are human beings, it is either they come from Mars or they come from Venus.
There is no system for incubating good ideas in Nigeria. No system at all, how much more to want to talk of the future. Why? Because once you become a permanent secretary, what you are thinking of is how to make money, you think of when to retire and you don’t want to retire a poor man. So in putting that first, you will first think of things that will bring money for you that will enable you to retire comfortably. And if you are a permanent secretary and you have two children studying in Ghana or United Kingdom and you require about $30,000 or $40,000 to pay school fees, put that to naira, where does he or she get that from? These are the dynamics of corruption. So even if you see what is good that can benefit us today and the future, you don’t care because you are more concerned in your pocket first. It is just like a popular saying in Nigeria when people ask what is there for me.
So, why did the army not respond to your letter?
As a Commander of TRADOC, I looked at the situation and said, see, we need to restructure the Army such that it will be able to tackle such problems in the future and we need to change our ways of thinking before the civil war to a new type of war that we have to face in the future. But instead of them to look at the letter, they pushed the letter aside and that was the end of it. What did the retired Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh say recently when leaving office? How can a whole Chief of Defence staff of a country talk about its own military like that?
Some would have expected him to have resigned. Why do you think he did not resign?
Integrity. It is an integrity matter.
What do you mean?
Integrity is simple. When you see that your boss wants you to do something that is wrong, you tell him sir, you are going the wrong way, then you put in your papers. But that is not common in Nigeria.
If you were in his situation, what could you have done?
(Cuts in) I could have left. That was the situation I was in 1993 when General Sanni Abacha came into power through a coup and I said no, it was wrong for us to have a coup d’état and he said, no don’t worry. It took me three days to leave, the coup happened on the 24th and on the 27th, I just left.
When you were putting in your papers, did you not have pressures from family, friends and colleagues?
It was not the business of my family; it was the Army that was putting pressure on me not to go. Even General Abacha himself wrote me a letter not to leave but I said no because I believed the coup was wrong and I knew we were heading for a disaster.
Did you respond to Abacha’s letter?
No I did not respond to him.
Did he speak to you or did you call him to tell him what he did was wrong?
There was no need to call him. He understood why I left because I worked with him at the Ministry of Defence, with General Diya and he understood my position.
It was very clear. He knew there was no way he could change my mind. I left the Army with an empty bank account. I left because I told myself I must leave and thirdly, I must use my head to find a way.
So how did you and your family cope?
My wife was lecturing at the university then. So we were able to manage through. Once you don’t get used to the life army wants to provide for you, you will not have any problem.
Are there men of such minds still in the military?
That is what I am saying that there is no organization in the world where you don’t have some thinking people but unfortunately, those thinking people don’t get to the top. Life is very interesting and that is why you have this word people call “destiny”.
Have you asked this question that what kept driving President Buhari over four times for over 16 years? What kept driving him and eventually ended up winning. And how many people have attempted before him and had given up? That’s life.
Do you think President Buhari is a thinking man?
I don’t know because I have never worked with him.
And you never crossed his path in the Army?
No we never crossed each other’s path. Buhari was an infantry officer and I was in the signals. So we never crossed each other’s path.
Can you compare the military of your time and that of now?
What has been happening in the military is very sad. Like everything in Nigeria, it has been very wasteful.
I was in charge of research and development in the Ministry of Defense for about three years, every proposal that I put across was killed. Even to produce ordinary military uniform, I got the textile firms to do some research for the type of uniform our military will wear, we will have only one textile material and the colour will be different for the various services, we don’t need to import anything at all.
I was taken to Panama by the United States Army to go and see how they test the materials used including camouflage.
I wrote the report and came back and gave it to a textile firm in Nigeria and they were ready to produce it, that could have saved this country millions of dollars but no, they refused.
General Ishola Williams was at peace with himself that Friday afternoon when the Vanguard team arrived at his office, in the Iju area of Lagos.
General Ishola Williams
General Williams, erstwhile head of the Nigeria chapter of Transparency International, is presently on the faculty of the Pan African Strategic and Policy Research Group, a forum he is using to espouse issues that generate conflict in Africa among other development issues.
Given his exchange with Gen. Abacha and another squabble when as a colonel he queried a chief of army staff, General Williams was asked whether he considered himself a troublesome officer. In responding to the contrary, he nevertheless admitted that he may be controversial. Undoubtedly so, as is revealed in this interview during which he spoke on the rot in the army, the fight against corruption among many other issues. Excerpts:
What have you been doing since leaving the army in 1993?
Since I left the army, I have been engaged in the running of an organization that was initially into peace and conflict issues in Nigeria, West Africa and Africa for some few years. We are also looking at how Economic Community of West African States, (ECOWAS) can situate itself in a very good position to be able to mediate conflicts happening in Liberia, Sierra Leone at that particular time.
When President Carter left as the President of the United States, he created the Carter Centre and he started coming into African nations. His centre went into two major areas; health and democracy and governance issues. He came to discover some of the challenges of governance, elections and elements leading into conflicts and after looking at the studies that were conducted by so many compatriots, he discovered that there was need for Africans themselves to study those conflicts to be able to cover the gaps and for Africans themselves to be re-involved in mediating those conflicts.
At the time, African countries were dependent on the United States academically, intellectually and even for mediating its own conflicts.
So they told us that if we are not very careful, our own people will believe we cannot resolve our own conflicts and we must not get ourselves into such situations. So we were advised to form a group of people that can do these studies since several Nigerian students then studied in the universities abroad.
We then formed a group with some people from the Institute, some of them at the universities and with some few military officers interested in West Africa.
Did your group envisage the crises gripping the country now?
(Cuts in) No, no, no. You did not even need to envisage that because I was in the military when we had this Maitasaine all over the place and the Army had to call in the Air Force to bomb places like Kano even within the urban areas. As we were dealing with them in Kano, they were coming up in Maiduguri, Yola and other places. Maitasaine taught us a lesson but did we adopt the lesson? And even if we did, did we make use of the lesson? Some few years after that, when I was Commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), I wrote a letter to the commandant of the Nigerian Defence Academy, (NDA) and the Minister of Defence then that we need to learn a lesson from Maitasaine. We were lucky to overcome them then because we had far superior arms and the people of Kano did not like Maitasaine. The rich people living in Kano then could not understand what Maitasaine was about, they were wearing expensive wrist watches and couldn’t accept their teachings of don’t do these or that.
The situation was like that of governors who wanted to introduce Sharia, of course the rich Muslims in those states didn’t want it.
I remembered in my letter to the military authority then, I told them that we must learn from it. The thing about us is that we don’t look at events from outside and how they can affect us. We have not been having thinking governments. What we have are governments that only live for today, so if there is a problem, government cannot deal with it because there are so many issues that have been swept under the carpet.
I will give you an example. See the Ogoni issue that President Buhari has just assented to. How long ago have they submitted that report? Why was it neglected? Something that is as important like that and the Ogoni people have been protesting about it and even said they will not allow Shell in, nobody cared. One sentence, ‘I will do it’ and that was all.
See the victims of Boko Haram in the North East. The Federal Government promised to contribute N5 billion. What is a N5 billion in a trillion budget? How can you delay that kind of thing when your fellow human being is suffering? So in countries where people are thinking and people are compassionate, once such reports come, you act. So sometimes I do not believe those in government are human beings, it is either they come from Mars or they come from Venus.
There is no system for incubating good ideas in Nigeria. No system at all, how much more to want to talk of the future. Why? Because once you become a permanent secretary, what you are thinking of is how to make money, you think of when to retire and you don’t want to retire a poor man. So in putting that first, you will first think of things that will bring money for you that will enable you to retire comfortably. And if you are a permanent secretary and you have two children studying in Ghana or United Kingdom and you require about $30,000 or $40,000 to pay school fees, put that to naira, where does he or she get that from? These are the dynamics of corruption. So even if you see what is good that can benefit us today and the future, you don’t care because you are more concerned in your pocket first. It is just like a popular saying in Nigeria when people ask what is there for me.
So, why did the army not respond to your letter?
As a Commander of TRADOC, I looked at the situation and said, see, we need to restructure the Army such that it will be able to tackle such problems in the future and we need to change our ways of thinking before the civil war to a new type of war that we have to face in the future. But instead of them to look at the letter, they pushed the letter aside and that was the end of it. What did the retired Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh say recently when leaving office? How can a whole Chief of Defence staff of a country talk about its own military like that?
Some would have expected him to have resigned. Why do you think he did not resign?
Integrity. It is an integrity matter.
What do you mean?
Integrity is simple. When you see that your boss wants you to do something that is wrong, you tell him sir, you are going the wrong way, then you put in your papers. But that is not common in Nigeria.
If you were in his situation, what could you have done?
(Cuts in) I could have left. That was the situation I was in 1993 when General Sanni Abacha came into power through a coup and I said no, it was wrong for us to have a coup d’état and he said, no don’t worry. It took me three days to leave, the coup happened on the 24th and on the 27th, I just left.
When you were putting in your papers, did you not have pressures from family, friends and colleagues?
It was not the business of my family; it was the Army that was putting pressure on me not to go. Even General Abacha himself wrote me a letter not to leave but I said no because I believed the coup was wrong and I knew we were heading for a disaster.
Did you respond to Abacha’s letter?
No I did not respond to him.
Did he speak to you or did you call him to tell him what he did was wrong?
There was no need to call him. He understood why I left because I worked with him at the Ministry of Defence, with General Diya and he understood my position.
It was very clear. He knew there was no way he could change my mind. I left the Army with an empty bank account. I left because I told myself I must leave and thirdly, I must use my head to find a way.
So how did you and your family cope?
My wife was lecturing at the university then. So we were able to manage through. Once you don’t get used to the life army wants to provide for you, you will not have any problem.
Are there men of such minds still in the military?
That is what I am saying that there is no organization in the world where you don’t have some thinking people but unfortunately, those thinking people don’t get to the top. Life is very interesting and that is why you have this word people call “destiny”.
Have you asked this question that what kept driving President Buhari over four times for over 16 years? What kept driving him and eventually ended up winning. And how many people have attempted before him and had given up? That’s life.
Do you think President Buhari is a thinking man?
I don’t know because I have never worked with him.
And you never crossed his path in the Army?
No we never crossed each other’s path. Buhari was an infantry officer and I was in the signals. So we never crossed each other’s path.
Can you compare the military of your time and that of now?
What has been happening in the military is very sad. Like everything in Nigeria, it has been very wasteful.
I was in charge of research and development in the Ministry of Defense for about three years, every proposal that I put across was killed. Even to produce ordinary military uniform, I got the textile firms to do some research for the type of uniform our military will wear, we will have only one textile material and the colour will be different for the various services, we don’t need to import anything at all.
I was taken to Panama by the United States Army to go and see how they test the materials used including camouflage.
I wrote the report and came back and gave it to a textile firm in Nigeria and they were ready to produce it, that could have saved this country millions of dollars but no, they refused.
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