by Olusola Temowo on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 1:31am
In my books, Buhari is a pretentious anti-corruption fighter. The trajectory of a man's journey in public life matters. For the follwoing reasons I can not vote for Buhari
1. He is an oligarch who does not believe in equality before the law. The way he jailed Lateef Jakande, Jim Nwobodo, Ambrose Ali, Pa Adekunle Ajasin, Chief Ayo Ojewumi on cases that had no foundation and allowed Awwal Ibrahim, the then Niger State governor, who was arrested in Heathrow Airport in London with 14 million pounds sterling and several millions of Niara and dollars to be under house arrest is my evidence. He also allowed Shehu Kangiwa, Sokoto State Governor who conducted and supervised the famous Bakolori Massacre of poor peasant farmers whose land were appropriated without compesation to remain under house arrest.
1(a) Ayo Ojewumi became blind as a result of his imprisonment over false charges and died shortly after.
1 (b) Prof. Ambrose Alli also became blind as a result of this false imprisonment. When he died, he had only one undeveloped plot of land to his name.
1© Pa Adekule Ajasin was never the same after his eventual release and remained sickly for the rest of his life. Whe he died, he never had any property anywhere in the world except the one he had built from his sweat as long term teacher and school principal in Owo township.
2. He put in place a retroactive law that killed three men, innocent men in my book, by public execution. He left untouched an alleged well known drug baron in Ibrahim Babangida who later overthrew his government.
3. He jailed Ndukar Irabor and Tunde Thompson of the Guardian on stories that were factually true under Decree 4. He had told the Nigerian journalists then that it did not matter whether the story reported was true or not,
4. He supervised the smuggling of 53 suitcases filled with cash througth the MMA against the protests of General Tunde Idiagbon and ironically, Abubakar Atiku, the then Director General of the Customs who later became the Vice President and a compromised politician himself. This smuggling of the suit cases were supervised by his ADC, Col. Mustapha Jokolo.
5. He jailed Fela Anikulapo -Kuti on trumped up charges under emergency law which prompted the sentencing judge to confess that he was ordered to do so and apologised to the late musician. It was Buhari's administration that said it has "decided to deal with this Fela problem once and for all."
6. He convinced all the northern political leaders against allowing the National Identity Card program because according to him, this would unravel the myth of Northern population majority
7. He is an Islamic fundamentalist, the Bin Laden of Nigeria, who told his northern followers never to vote for anyone who was not a muslim.
8. He is a coup plotter.
9. He has never been able to account to Nigerians what he did with the 20 billion Naira of the Petroleum Trust Fund of which he was the chairman under Sani Abacha.
9(a) He has not been able to point to any project that he prosecuted outside the Northern Nigeria with the so-caled trust fund.
10. He was in full support of all the atrocities of Sani Abacha against the Nigerian people. There is no single record of his criticism of Sani Abacha during those dark days when Nigeria was on precipice. It shows that he is a patriot of convenience and as such unfit to lead the country.
11. Buhari, as part of his tribalistic practices placed President Shagari under house arrest inside a palatia mansion in Ikoyi while he locked up Shagari's Vice, Alex Ekwueme in Kirikiri Prison. Shagari is Hausa/Fulani like him while Alex Ekwueme is an Igboman.
12. Ikemba Emeka Ojukwu, another Igboman who returned from 13years exile just a little over a year then was as well locked up in Kiri Kiri Prison by meanhearted Buhari.Up till today we are not told what was Emeka's offence.
13. Busari Adelakun died of ulcer because Buhari refused him to be taken out of prison for immediate medical attention.The then Governor of Ogun State,Bisi Onabanjo suffered similar fate which we were told led to his untimely death.
14. Buhari ransacked the house of our late sage, Obafemi Awolowo and confisticated his International passport. Which civilized democratic society would elect the likes of Buhari as President,the same individual who overthrew an elected President? Never!
15. Plus Buhari having Sam Mbakwe in jail, went for one of Mbakwe's wives. He established himself again for what he was/is letting Mbakwe receive in jailhouse news of the death of another of Mbakwe's two wives. One (I can't remember his name now; Odenigbo?) also died in jail.
16. Buhari's henchman and sponsor, CPC governorship candidate for Kano State, is Mohammed Abacha, the same person that had/ran a personal killing squad, co ordinated the killing of Kudirat Abiola & attempted to kill Ibru; and also stashed money in underground tanks, all less than 13 years ago....Nigerians have very short selective memory. Shame!
17. Buhari discriminated against persons from other ethnic groups/faiths; and that as PTF Chairman, he employed an overwhelming number of Fulani/Hausa/Moslem people at the detriment of other groups and concentrated PTF projects in the North. If in doubt read El Rufai's testimony where he wrote about Katsina boys who used the money they made at PTF to bankroll Yar'Adua's election in 1999.
18. Buhari is unforgiven. When he "took over" by coup in 1983, even remembered an article written a very very long time ago by Bisi Onabanjo ('The Mallams are coming') and a later one in which Onabanjo wrote that people should watch out for that "gangly officer from the north" after Buhari gave a no holds barred speech at some Army function where he was reported to be very openly pro Fulani and pro Islam to the exclusive of all else and also talked about termination of democratic rule. For that, Onabanjo got one of the harshest jail terms and treatments.
19. Buhari intolerance is worse than Obasanjo's. When he was adopted as the ANPP's candidate on the night of the party's Primaries without prior warning to the other candidates and a few of them protested, Buhari got up and made a speech that those people must be disciplined. I subsequently saw him on BBC's "hard talk" and he frightened me and the interviewer with his archaic and fundamentalist intolerant views. His understanding and articulation is very much in doubt.
20. The evil genius, IBB and his crew similarly ran rings around Buhari. On the 10th anniversary of Abacha's demise, Buhari said that Abacha stole nothing from Nigeria! Despite millions of Dollars recovered from banks around the world and the Abacha family signing a formal agreement to return over $1 billion dollars, Buhari still said that Abacha's stealing remains an unproved allegation!!!! Why? Because Abacha set Buhari up like an emperor and let him use oil money from the Niger Delta to develop the North without supervision or questions.
21. Buhari snubbed the same Nigerians he now wants their votes by refusing to appear before Justice Oputa Truth and Reconciliation Panel. Despite the fact that Buhari knew how inportant reconciliation is to the stability of democracy. Buhari has never apologised at anytime.
22. Buhari executed Lawal Ojuolape (30), Bernard Ogedengbe (29) and Bartholomew Owoh (26). To put it quite plainly, one of those three – Ogedengbe - was executed for a crime that did not carry a capital forfeit at the time it was committed. and At the time Ogedengbe committed the crime it did not carry that punishment. If we must live as civilised citizens we must go by the rules. Article 11.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: "No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission WHICH DID NOT CONSTITUTE A PENAL OFFENCE, under national or international law at the time when it was committed. NOR SHALL A HEAVIER PUNISHMENT BE IMPOSED THAN THE ONE THAT WAS APPLICABLE AT THE TIME THE PENAL OFFENCE WAS COMMITTED. Killing people with retroactive laws is not the civilised thing to do - and for as long as we will have people who refuse to see the truth only because their heroes are inching to rule when they have not purged themselves we will continue to wallow in misery.
If Nigerians reward dangerous, insensitive, dishonest, mean, cruel, partial, egoistic, religious, fundamendalist, conscienceless human being like MOHAMMADU BUHARI with the presidency of Nigeria with his kind of track record, then why do we still wonder why Nigeria has not and will not make it?
I can not in good conscience support Buhari's candidacy on the above grounds. I wish we have intelligent people who know what democracy means. I wish we have civilized minds. However, I am 100 percent sure that Buhari will never again rule Nigeria.
For the good of Nigeria, vote any other candidate, but SAY NO TO BUHARI!!!
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