The advertisement in most national dailies some years ago entitled “Can Buhari be trusted to stop Repression?” showed that some highly placed people were long afraid of General Buhari. The Buhari phobia can be diagnosed in a particular group of people- those haunted by the past. His administration, to many morally analytical minds, was one that brought sanity into the country. But to the morally bankrupt and lethargic "indisciplinarians", it precipitates nightmares.
Even though dictatorship is no longer fashionable (was there really a time it was?), we must not throw away the values gotten from some of them. Every government, military or democratic has its own beneficiaries and victims. In Buhari’s case, I think the masses benefited most in terms of values and discipline and the politicians, the victims, because of their involvement in high level of corruption. In the present administration, the professional politicians are the beneficiaries while the masses are the victims.
I wish to illustrate this point by figuratively classifying the Nigerian polity into three segments of people (not Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba). They are the living, the dead and those about to die. The living are the Nigerian version of the elite, the politicians and their cohorts, relatives and stooges. The dead are those who were sacrificed on the altar of the system while those about to die are the masses that have been destabilized by the past system and have no hope on the present or future system. Each of these groups has shown significant presence in both the military and civilian governments.
For instance, in Obasanjo’s government were those who were sacrificed on the altar of the system by either being murdered during such invasions and riots in Odi, Zaki Biam, Jos, Kano and Kaduna or shot at various police checkpoints over N20 bribe in the country. They were either those murdered in their bedrooms by hired assassins such as Arc. Layi Balogun, Chief Bola Ige, Ogbonna Uche and most recently the ANPP governorship aspirant in Borno State or those killed by avaricious and deadly armed- to- the- teeth robbers prowling the streets day and night. The dead belong to the group that were either exterminated by bomb blasts in Abuja and Niger Delta or eliminated by AIDS and road accidents caused by bad roads.
Buhari’s government was not devoid of the dead group. Even though they seized power through a bloodless coup, there were those who died from being imprisoned and given jail terms five times their age for corrupt practices. There were the hardened criminals executed in their village squares and a few who opposed the military government. They included those publicly executed for drug related offences.
Those about to die in the current dispensation are those beaten by stagnant frustration as a result of hunger, joblessness, lack of basic needs and infrastructure. They are both those the system denied the right of education and graduates that the epileptic economy forced into bus driving, Okada riding, armed robbery, dangerous nocturnal societies and political thuggery. They are those who were relieved of their duties because they either opposed the government or exposed its corrupt practices.
In Buhari’s dictatorship, they were those whipped in the streets openly in 1984 for running across the road where pedestrian bridges were provided, those who urinated openly into the gutter, broke traffic rules and those punished for failure to participate in the monthly sanitation exercise. They were those who “ate from the dustbins” caused by the prevalent economic predicament as predicted earlier by Alhaji Umaru Dikko and those imprisoned for stealing the nation’s eyes out.
The living in this nascent democracy are the politicians, the least of whose annual salary is over one million naira. They are the career politicians who have served in almost all the governments, dictatorial and democratic. They are those who have the power and machinery to perpetuate themselves in power, the most valuable legacy they inherited from the military. They are those who have access to the treasury and evacuate its content times without number in “Ghana –must-go” bags.
The living have more money than most countries in Africa and have accumulated more money than will be needed by their next ten generations when their kinsmen are dying in abject poverty. They are those who are not affected by ASUU strikes, Doctors’ strikes and both artificial and genuine fuel scarcity. The group is made up of those above the law who cannot be probed because they are either covered by constitutional immunity or official security.
Not too long ago the living were angry that some of “the enemies of the government” declared Nigeria the second most corrupt country in the whole world. By the way, it is only the military that arrests, convicts and imprisons politicians for corrupt practices. And by God’s grace we are not in the military era. So there is definitely no cause to be afraid except for monsters such as Buhari (her male specie, Idiagbon is dead) that devour politicians. Was it not only in the administration of Obasanjo that an Auditor-General was sacked for giving an authentic report? Is it only in Nigeria that a civil servant can become a millionaire overnight with nobody raising an eyebrow? It happened in Singapore too!
Not too long ago, about five serving civil servants conveniently raised one billion naira at a dinner with nobody asking for the source of such money. This rather made headlines in national dailies and the recipients were not expected to use such money to pay workers’ salaries but to bribe voters.
Who ever says that journalists cannot be liberated from the shackles of decree 4 to join in the “Ghana-must-go” bag spree? Even though the transactions do not take place under kleiglights, the results appear clearly in the subjective reports. By the way, most of them have earned themselves enviable positions such as special advisers, ministers and commissioners from those in power who have benefited immensely from their “patriotic” columns. I noticed recently that a popular magazine associated with the interest of the masses has become the propaganda organ of the PDP government while objective columnists such as Pini Jason and his likes now look like priests in a whorehouse.
If executing armed robbers and drug pushers, imprisoning corrupt politicians and instilling discipline in the society have today turned to be “repression”, maybe in future, high level of assassination of political opponents, embezzlement, bribery, election rigging and other forms of corrupt practices would be “patriotism”. I however thank the Committee for Democracy for evoking our conscience to know those still haunted by the past but it is a pity that this faceless group have a limited idea of democracy and freedom otherwise they should have known that democracy is respect to the rule of law and that freedom starts where law ends.
The greatest patriot and statesman will be the man or woman who could bring sanity into this country in a democratic dispensation. This means bringing to book corrupt officials, eliminating undue influence in the media, installing discipline within the polity, addressing the problem of the basic needs, raising the hope of the youths and improving the economy and not being a political fag. Muhammadu Buhari tried such in a military era. His greatest undoing is to try it again in a democracy where the victims are political leaders and their surrogates. It is like a suicide mission. That’s why Buhari, being the best candidate with Tunde Bakare backing him may not win in this election. He is the only candidate who will commiserate with us on the dead, raise the hope of those about to die and curtail the excesses of the living.
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