What Buhari should not have said in his CNN interview

Gen. Buhari is brushing up his image with a series of interviews, the latest being with the CNN. Good for him and bad for him too. It will sound so good and soothing until it becomes so bad and abhorring. He’s getting ready to do just that, just as he’s getting ready to terminate his political career. Questioned on his human rights record as a military dictator, he replied, “All those things you mentioned were done under military administration; if we did not suspend the constitution then, it would have been difficult for us to operate under those circumstances. So I do not think I should be judged as an individual for those things that happened then.”

But exactly that, that’s how he should be judged: as individual. When you suspend the constitution, it’s the individual that’s left. When people are elected, it’s on the basis of who they are. To showcase his true person, he opted for draconian decrees. That’s the individual: the one who suspended the people’s constitution not being asked to so do. Consequence: The way the people chose to live was halted and replaced by the way the man chose. For him, it’s my way, the way; my wisdom, the wisdom. If they hadn’t suspended the constitution, it would have been difficult for them to operate those circumstances that easily coerced the people. Nigeria came back to the same spot 17 years after going through the pangs of the tyranny of man. All sorts of people became leaders of sorts and entered into the history book that’s no history.

Whoever said President Shagari who Buhari chased out was perfect? Shagari merely began a process of learning; both he and we were learning the democratic rough tracks. Mistakes were expected. But a Mr. Know-All came and punctuated the process. He said he came to correct. Today, we’re tottering between the brink and abyss with those corrections. He launched a ‘war against indiscipline’. See our discipline. Just to get a position, a politician crisscrosses four political parties, dropping values, taking up virulent others and in the end having none. Even Buhari himself had once wept for Nigeria just to be president, but on failing he turned his advocacy to making Nigeria ungovernable. How true then is this individual? Put in pix where we could have been if our democracy had continued uninterrupted since 1983. See the throes and troughs experienced since 1999: Far from perfection, yet moving. Maybe, another ‘wise’ man in a hurry may condemn all that’s done as they do of Jonathan. All sorts of talk-downs devoid of knowledge of a process until they do what Buhari did to take us to zero. Bizarre still, Buhari has not said why he did what he did. Up to giving him the opportunity to do so, he turned it down. Without clearing the first, he wants the second. That happens only here.

That reminds me of his endorsement by Obasanjo. Obasanjo meant well for Yar’Adua; when Yar’Adua died, Obasanjo became a villain. He means well for Buhari, he regrets having ever looked eastwards to bring in Jonathan, but Buhari will start with him: the heap of naira-currency at the floor of the National Assembly that came and went with neither origin nor destination; his phony investments in NEPA that brought darkness; the 2nd Niger Bridge contract awarded shortly before he left office that was not; his privatization process that created mass poverty and few barons, etc. By the time Buhari gets selective leaving these known instances, another tumour is up. Jonathan, in his usual ‘thank you papa’ attitude, has left these heinous misses unvisited. This is why Obasanjo is loudest in the ‘Jonathan is pro-corruption’ advocacy. He tore his PDP membership card in hate. It’s not about Nigeria as he posits. Jonathan may have hurt his business interest or ego. That’s where to look at. Obasanjo said Buhari will tackle insecurity but not question why he opted to make Nigeria ungovernable. Is the threat less evil than its ensuing terror?

Behind all these is a dead strategy: APPEASEMENT. OPC rebelled, Obasanjo came; Niger Delta rebelled, Jonathan came; now Boko-Haram is rebelling, Buhari should come, but he won’t. Give 60 reasons why it won’t be Jonathan, give red endorsements by the ex-s, contrive conspiracies, BUHARI WILL NOT COME. 

Already, something like a conspiracy is playing out. Obasanjo hits Jonathan with hate, Danjuma hits the Niger Delta militants with calls for arrest, though he should first be arrested for the same offence in dire dimensions. Ask history how General Ironsi died, not as a threat but as a direct mortal strike, then Buhari enters with a rebuff to his past to act the sump for hate, but it’s all a dead-end.