THE NIGERIAN NATION AGAINST GENERAL BUHARI BY WOLE SOYINKA

This intervention has been provoked, not
so much by the ambitions of General
Buhari to return to power at the head of
a democratic Nigeria, as by declarations
of support from directions that leave one
totally dumbfounded. It would appear
that some, myself among them, had been
overcomplacent about the magnitude of
an ambition that seemed as preposterous
as the late effort of General Ibrahim
Babangida to aspire yet again to the
honour of presiding over a society that
truly seeks a democratic future. What
one had dismissed was a rash of
illusions, brought about by other political
improbabilities that surround us,
however, is being given an air of
plausibility by individuals and groupings
to which one had earlier attributed a
sense of relevance of historic actualities.
Recently, I published an article in the
media, invoking the possible recourse to
psychiatric explanation for some of the
incongruities in conduct within national
leadership. Now, to tell the truth, I have
begun to seriously address the issue of
which section of society requires the
services of a psychiatrist. The contest for
a seizure of rationality is now so
polarized that I am quite reconciled to
the fact it could be those of us on this
side, not the opposing school of thought
that ought to declare ourselves
candidates for a lunatic asylum. So be it.
While that decision hangs in the balance
however, the forum is open. Let both
sides continue to address our cases to
the electorate, but also prepare to submit
ourselves for psychiatric examination.
The time being so close to electoral
decision, we can understand the haste of
some to resort to shortcuts. In the
process however, we should not commit
the error of opening the political space to
any alternative whose curative touch to
national afflictions have proven more
deadly than the disease. In order to
reduce the clutter in our options towards
the forthcoming elections, we urge a
beginning from what we do know, what
we have undergone, what millions can
verify, what can be sustained by
evidence accessible even to the school
pupil, the street hawker or a just-come
visitor from outer space. Leaving Buhari
aside for now, I propose a commencing
exercise that should guide us along the
path of elimination as we examine the
existing register of would-be president.
That initial exercise can be summed up
in the following speculation: “If it were
possible for Olusegun Obasanjo, the
actual incumbent, to stand again for
election, would you vote for him?”
If the answer is “yes”, then of course all
discussion is at an end. If the answer is
‘No’ however, then it follows that a
choice of a successor made by Obasanjo
should be assessed as hovering between
extremely dangerous and an outright kiss
of death. The degree of acceptability of
such a candidate should also be inversely
proportionate to the passion with which
he or she is promoted by the would-be
‘godfather’. We do not lack for open
evidence about Obasanjo’s passion in
this respect. From Lagos to the USA, he
has taken great pains to assure the nation
and the world that the anointed NPN
presidential flag bearer is guaranteed, in
his judgment, to carry out his policies.
Such an endorsement/anointment is more
than sufficient, in my view, for public
acceptance or rejection. Yar’Adua’s
candidature amounts to a terminal kiss
from a moribund regime. Nothing against
the person of this – I am informed –
personable governor, but let him
understand that in addition to the direct
source of his emergence, the PDP, on
whose platform he stands, represents the
most harrowing of this nation’s
nightmares over and beyond even the
horrors of the Abacha regime.
If he wishes to be considered on his own
merit, now is time for him, as well as
others similarly enmeshed, to exercise
the moral courage that goes with his
repudiation of that party, a dissociation
from its past, and a pledge to reverse its
menacing future. We shall find him an
alternative platform on which to stand,
and then have him present his
credentials along those of other
candidates engaged in forging a credible
opposition alliance. Until then, let us
bury this particular proposition and
move on to a far graver, looming danger,
personified in the history of General
Buhari.
The grounds on which General Buhari is
being promoted as the alternative choice
are not only shaky, but pitifully naive.
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. What the claims of personality
change or transformation impose on us is
a rigorous inspection of the evidence, not
wishful speculation or behind-the-scenes
assurances. Public offence, crimes against
a polity, must be answered in the public
space, not in caucuses of bargaining. In
Buhari, we have been offered no
evidence of the sheerest 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.
Buhari – need one remind anyone – was
one of the generals who treated a
Commission of Enquiry, the Oputa Panel,
with unconcealed disdain. 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. Does
Decree 20 ring a bell? If not, then,
perhaps the names of three youths –
Lawal Ojuolape (30), Bernard Ogedengbe
(29) and Bartholomew Owoh (26) do. 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. Buhari
and his sidekick and his partner-in-
crime, Tunde Idiagbon persisted in this
inhuman 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 that 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 perpetrators 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 revaluation,
leading hopefully to remorse, and its
expression to a wronged society. At the
very least, such a revaluation 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 General 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.
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.
So Tai Solarin is already forgotten? Tai
who stood at street corners, fearlessly
distributing leaflets that took up the
gauntlet where the media had dropped
it. Tai who 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!
Nor must we omit the manner of Buhari
coming to power and the pattern of his
‘corrective’ rule. Shagari’s NPN 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 Kiri-kiri
prisons. Such was the Buhari notion of
equitable apportionment of guilt and/or
responsibility.
And then the cascade of escapes of the
wanted, and culpable politicians.
Manhunts across the length and breadth
of the nation, roadblocks everywhere
and borders tight as steel zip locks. Lo
and behold, the chairman of the party,
Chief Akinloye, strolled out coolly across
the border. Richard Akinjide, Legal
Protector of the ruling party, slipped out
with equal ease. The Rice Minister,
Umaru Dikko, who declared that
Nigerians were yet to eat from dustbins –
escaped through the same airtight
dragnet. The clumsy attempt to crate him
home was punishment for his
ingratitude, since he went berserk when,
after waiting in vain, he concluded that
the coup had not been staged, after all,
for the immediate consolidation of the
party of extreme right-wing vultures, but
for the military hyenas.
The case of the overbearing Secretary-
General of the party, Uba Ahmed, was
even more noxious. Uba Ahmed was out
of the country at the time. Despite the
closure of the Nigerian airspace, he
compelled the pilot of his plane to
demand special landing permission, since
his passenger load included the almighty
Uba Ahmed. Of course, he had not
known of the change in his status since
he was airborne. The delighted airport
commandant, realizing that he had a
much valued fish swimming willingly
into a waiting net, approved the request.
Uba Ahmed disembarked into the arms
of a military guard and was promptly
clamped in detention. Incredibly, he
vanished a few days after and
reappeared in safety overseas. Those
whose memories have become calcified
should explore the media coverage of
that saga. Buhari was asked to explain
the vanished act of this much prized
quarry and his response was one of the
most arrogant levity. Coming from one
who had shot his way into power on the
slogan of ‘dis’pline’, it was nothing short
of impudent.
Shall we revisit the tragicomic series of
trials that landed several politicians
several lifetimes in prison? Recall, if you
please, the ‘judicial’ processes undergone
by the septuagenarian Chief Adekunle
Ajasin. He was arraigned and tried
before Buhari’s punitive tribunal but
acquitted. Dissatisfied, Buhari ordered
his re-trial. Again, the Tribunal could not
find this man 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 and
refusing to knuckle under Shagari’s reign
of terror.
The conduct of the Buhari regime after
his coup was not merely one of double,
triple, multiple standards but a cynical
travesty of justice. Audu Ogbeh,
currently chairman of the Action
Congress was one of the few figures of
rectitude 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 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.
Shall I remind this 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
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 a treatment that could
only be described as a head masterly
chastisement of errant pupils. 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 strictures imposed on the
overall polity, especially on any issue
that seeks to establish a policy for public
well-being.
The story of the thirty something
suitcases – it would appear that they
were even closer to fifty – found
unavoidable mention in my recent
memoirs, YOU MUST SET FORTH AT
DOWN, written long before Buhari
became spoken of as a credible
candidate. For the exercise of a
changeover of the national currency, the
Nigerian borders – air, sea and land – had
been shut tight. Nothing was supposed to
move in or out, not even cattle egrets.Yet
a prominent camel was allowed through
that needle’s eye. Not only did Buhari
dispatch his aide-de-camp, Jokolo – later
to become an emir – to facilitate the
entry of those cases, he ordered the
redeployment – as I later discovered – of
the Customs Officer who stood firmly
against the entry of the contravening
baggage. That officer, the incumbent
Vice-president is now a rival candidate to
Buhari, but has somehow, in the
meantime, earned a reputation that
totally contradicts his conduct at the
time.
Wherever the truth lies, it does not
redound to the credibility of the dictator
of that time, General Buhari whose word
was law, but whose allegiances were
clearly negotiable.
Professor Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian
playwright and poet. He is the first
African to be awarded a Nobel Prize in
Literature (1986).
This article was first published in January
2007 on Sahara Reporters with the title,
The Nigerian Nation Against General
Buhari.
The opinions expressed in this article are
solely those of the author.