The argument on which General Buhari is
being promoted as the alternative choice is
not only wobbly but pitifully immature.
History matters. Records are not kept simply
to assist the weakness of memory, but to
operate as guides to the future. Of course,
we know that human beings change.
Public offence, crimes against humanity must
be answered in the public domain, not in
caucuses of bargaining. On General Buhari,
we have been offered no evidence of the
purest prospect of change. On the contrary,
all evident suggests that this is one
individual who remains convinced that this
is one ex-ruler that the nation cannot call to
order.
General Buhari was one of the Generals who
treated the Oputa Panel with palpable scorn.
Like Babangida and Abdusalami, he refused
to put in appearance even though complaints
that were tabled against him involved a
career of gross abuses of power and blatant
assault on the fundamental human rights of
the Nigerian citizenry. Prominent against
these charges was an act that amounted to
nothing less than judicial murder, the
execution of a citizen under a retroactive
Decree.
Who brought about Decree 20 that executed
three youths – 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.
This was an unconscionable crime, carried
out in defiance of the pleas and protests of
nearly every sector of the Nigerian and
international community religious, civil
rights, political, trade unions etc.
Gen. Buhari and partner-in-crime, Late
Tunde Idiagbon persisted in this heartless act
for one reason and one reason only: to place
Nigerians on notice that they were now under an iron, inflexible rule, under governance by fear.
The execution of those youthful innocent for
so he was, since the punishment did not
exist at the time of commission – was
nothing short of premeditated murder, for which the Gen. Buhari should normally stand trial upon their loss of immunity.
Are we truly expected to forget this violation
of our entitlement to security as provided
under existing laws? And even if our
sensibilities have become blunted by
succeeding seasons of cruelty and brutality, if
power itself had so coarsened the
sensibilities also of rulers and corrupted their
judgment, what should one rightly expect
after they have been rescued from the snare
of power. At the very least, a re-evaluation,
leading hopefully to remorse, and its
expression to a wronged society. At the very
least, such a re-evaluation should engender
reticence, silence. In the case of Buhari, it
was the opposite. Since leaving office he has
declared in the most categorical terms that he
had no regrets over this murder and would
do so again.
Human life is inviolate. The right to life is
the uniquely fundamental right on which all
other rights are based. The crime that Gen.
Buhari committed against the entire nation
went further however, inconceivable as it
might first appear.
That crime is one of the most profound
negations of civic being. Not content with
hammering down the freedom of expression
in general terms, Buhari specifically forbade
all public discussion of a return to civilian,
democratic rule. Let us constantly applaud
our media those battle scarred professionals
did not completely knuckle down.
They resorted to cartoons and oblique,
elliptical references to sustain the people’s
campaign for a time-table to democratic rule.
Overt agitation for a democratic time table
however remained rigorously suppressed
military dictatorship, and a specifically
incorporated in Buhari and Idiagbon was
here to stay. To deprive a people of volition
in their own political direction is to turn a
nation into a colony of slaves. Gen. Buhari
enslaved the nation. He gloated and gloried
in a master-slave relation to the millions of
its inhabitants. It is astonishing to find that
the same former slaves, now free of their
chains, should clamour to be ruled by one
who not only turned their nation into a slave
plantation, but forbade them any discussion
of their condition.
Tai Solarin who stood at street corners,
fearlessly distributing leaflets that took up
the gauntlet where the media had dropped it
was incarcerated by that regime and denied
even the medication for his asthmatic
condition. Tai did not ask to be sent for
treatment overseas; all he asked was his
traditional medicine that had proved so
effective after years of struggle with asthma!
Shehu Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria
had already run out of steam and was near
universally detested except of course by the
handful that still benefited from that regime
of profligacy and rabid fascism.
Responsibility for the national condition lay
squarely at the door of the ruling party,
obviously, but against whom was Buhari’s
coup staged? Judging by the conduct of that
regime, it was not against Shagari’s
government but against the opposition.
The head of government, on whom primary
responsibility lay, was Shehu Shagari. Yet
that individual was kept in cozy house
detention in Ikoyi while his powerless
deputy, Alex Ekwueme, was locked up in
Kirikiri prisons. Such was the Gen. Buhari
notion of equitable allotment of guilt and
responsibility.
Shall we revisit the tragicomic series of trials
that landed several politicians several
lifetimes in prison? You may recall the
judicial processes undergone by the
septuagenarian Chief Adekunle Ajasin. He
was arraigned and tried before Gen. Buhari’s
punitive tribunal but acquitted. Frustrated,
Buhari ordered his re-trial. Again, the
Tribunal could not find Chief Ajasin guilty of
a single crime, so once again he was
returned for trial, only to be acquitted of all
charges of corruption or abuse of office.
Was Chief Ajasin thereby released? No! He
was ordered detained indefinitely, simply for
the crime of winning an election.
The conduct of the Gen. Buhari regime after
his coup was not merely one of double,
triple, multiple standards but a cynical
travesty of justice. Audu Ogbeh, former PDP
Chairman was one of the few figures of
morality within the NPN. Just as he has done
in recent times with the PDP, he played the
role of an internal critic and reformer,
warning, dissenting, and setting an example
of probity within his ministry.
For that crime he spent months in unjust
incarceration; guilty by association? Well, if
that was the motivating yardstick of the
administration of the Gen. Buhari justice,
then it was most selectively applied.
The utmost severity of the Buhari-Idiagbon
justice was especially reserved either for the
opposition in general, or for those within the
ruling party who had showed the sheerest
sense of responsibility and patriotism.
Do we need to remind the Nation of Buhari’s
deliberate humiliating treatment of the Emir
of Kano and the Oni of Ife over their visit to
the state of Israel? I hold no brief for
traditional rulers and their relationship with
governments, but insist on regarding them as
entitled to all the rights, privileges and
responsibilities of any Nigerian citizen. This
royal duo went to Israel on their private
steam and private business.
Simply because the Gen. Buhari regime was
pursuing some antagonistic foreign policy
towards Israel, a policy of which these
traditional rulers were not a part, they were
subjected on their return to an unjust
treatment. Since when, may one ask, did a
free citizen of the Nigerian nation require
the permission of a Head of State to visit a
foreign nation that was willing to offer that
tourist a visa?
One is only too aware that some Nigerians
love to point to Buhari’s agenda of discipline
as the shining jewel in his scrap-iron crown.
To inculcate discipline however, one must
lead by example, obeying laws set down as
guides to public probity.
Example speaks louder than declarations, and
rulers cannot exempt themselves from the
disciplinary structures imposed on the overall
polity, especially on any issue that seeks to
establish a policy for public well-being.
On the theme of double, triple, multiple
standards in the enforcement of the law, and
indeed of the Decrees passed by the Gen.
Buhari regime at the time, let us recall the
notorious case of Triple Alhaji Alhaji Alhaji,
then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of
Finance. Who was caught, literally, with his
pants down in distant Austria. That was not
the crime however, and private conduct
should always remain restricted to the
domain of private censure.
There was no Decree against civil servants
proving just as hormone driven as anyone
else, especially outside the nation’s borders.
However, there was a clear Decree against
the keeping of foreign accounts, and this was
what emerged from the Austrian escapade.
Alhaji Alhaji kept, not one, but several
undeclared foreign accounts, and he had no
business being in possession of the large
amount of foreign currency of which he was
robbed by his overnight companion. The
media screamed for an even application of
the law, but Gen. Buhari had turned
suddenly deaf.
By contrast, Fela Anikulapo languished in jail
for years, sentenced under that very
draconian decree. His crime was being in
possession of foreign exchange that he had
legitimately received for the immediate
upkeep of his band as they set off for an
international engagement. A vicious sentence
was slapped down on Fela by a judge who
later became so remorse stricken at least
after Gen. Buhari’s overthrow that he went
to the King of Afro-beat and apologized.
These were not exceptional but mere sample
cases from among hundreds of others,
victims of a Decree that was selectively
applied, a Decree that routinely penalized
innocents and ruined the careers and
businesses of many.
What precisely was Ebenezer Babatope’s
crime that he should have spent the entire
tenure of Gen. Buhari in detention? Nothing
beyond the fact that he once warned in the
media that Gen. Buhari was an ambitious
soldier who would bear watching through the
lenses of a coup-detat. Babatope’s father died
while he was in Gen. Buhari’s custody, the
dictator remained deaf to every plea that he
be at least released to attend his father’s
funeral, even under guard.
But then, speaking the truth was not what
Gen. Buhari, as a self-imposed leader, was
especially captivated of enquire of Tunde
Thompson and Nduka Irabor both of whom,
faithful to their journalistic calling,
published nothing but the truth, yet ended
up sentenced under Gen. Buhari’s Decree.
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