Tag: selfless

When they took power, the soldiers, matched out on a straight path towards their vision of a good society, but the mission became more elusive, the closer they came towards it – Robin Luckman.

The Action Group at its Executive and Parliamentary Council of July 1953 attended by Bode Thomas,  SLA Akintola, Rotimi Williams, Obafemi  Awolowo, Anthony Enahoro and others agreed  that the ‘extreme confederalist eight-point demand of the north be accepted in order to guarantee the independence of the regions and allow the north to discover secession doesn’t pay’. Enahoro and Okodudu had argued against confederal arrangement.  Awo, a federalist who however toed his party line reasoned that the problem of the country was not regionalism but the interference of the centre in the affairs of the regions. That became a self-fulfilling prophesy in 1962 when Ahmadu Bello, who according to Trevor Richard, at the height of his power presented a gift of a horse to Zik and the Holy Koran to Tafawa Balewa declaring, he has like his great grandfather, divided the country among his trusted children, coerced the duo to remove one leg of the tripod that had held our nation together. This was done through an illegal declaration of state of emergency in the West and imposition of SLA Akintola who had been disciplined by his leaders as Premier without election. He also had the backing of the centre when he went on to declare himself premier against the wishes of the majority of his people in 1965. Rioting and violence quickly followed.

That was the excuse an ill-equipped albeit patriotic Nigerian military politicians who saw themselves as custodians of our constitution that was under attack needed to intervene ostensibly to save Nigeria from self-serving politicians who had betrayed the spirit of our constitution. Without requisite educational training, the needed compass in the management of society, the soldiers tried to navigate an unfamiliar terrain. As Luckman observed above, their disastrous outing in January and July 1966 were missions in self-destruction.  From 1967 to 1970, they plunged the nation into a civil war. The achievements credited to the military under Gowon like the Lagos second bridge, the Onitsha Bridge, expansion of net work of roads were all conceived before independence in 1960.

The bungling soldiers, burning with patriotic fervour once again descended upon themselves in 1975. This time around, ill-informed and ill equipped Murtala  Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo destroyed our universities and the bureaucracy, the two institutions that sustain society.  And tragically, instead of looking at 1962 when the rain started beating us, we simply replaced the parliamentary system inherited from the British with American Presidential system ignoring the fact that our problem was not the constitution but the men who would operate it. Obasanjo, playing god has since publicly admitted supporting the presidential bid of Shehu Shagari whose ambition was to be a senator in 1979. By 1983, Shagari smoked away while Akinloye and NPN wheelers and dealers once again brought the nation to it’s knees through profligate consumption.

Babangida, Gusau and Abacha, as ex-President Shagari has since revealed, carried out the coup against his government and only brought in Buhari because of his integrity. But Buhari took responsibility for the crudity of his ill-informed military junta’s retroactive laws that resulted in the murder of some Nigerian drug pushers and the obnoxious Decree Four that led to the imprisonment of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor of Guardian newspapers for reporting and publishing the truth that they claimed embarrassed government. And without understanding the forces at play in our society, the junta went all out for politicians without making a distinction between governors who used state funds to build universities for their youths, governors who expended state resources to build new houses and marry new wives, and those governors who took foreign loan which never got to Nigeria but kept in banks in Europe. As it was in 1966 and 1975, they waged war against their superiors.

But once again in the night of many knives, Buhari was deposed by those who put him in power. He was clamped into prison for three and half years. From prison, he had an opportunity to watch, obviously in disbelief as members of his junta now at the helm of affairs released jailed journalists, appointed others senior advisers and ministers. He watched as those who only yesterday supported his rejection of Nigeria membership of OIC, the IMF loan and its conditionalities  declared ‘there was no alternative to SAP’ (Structural Adjustment Programme) which later resulted in ill-advised privatization and the sharing of the nation’s wealth among soldiers and their fronts. He watched in pain as Babangida and Abacha took the nation through a fraudulent 13 years of ‘transition without end’. And he has since 1999 observed from close quarters how PDP pillaged our land like a conquered territory.

Motivated more by a desire to serve, he contested the presidential election as the candidate of the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) in 2003. He was defeated by President Olusegun Obasanjo.  He didn’t have money to buy justice. Before the end of 2007, nearly all politicians who rode on his back to power had deserted him for PDP. Again in 2007, he was outfoxed. Frustrated, he abandoned ANPP and in 2010 formed CPC, according to him “as a solution to the debilitating ethical and ideological conflicts in the former party.” In 2011, the over 12million votes he garnered without money and a national platform but just on account of his integrity was not enough to match Jonathan’s over 22million votes. And realizing elections are never won on the basis of righteousness, he joined forces with ACN, ANPP, a faction of APGA and a faction of PDP, groups he would have ordinarily dined with using a long spoon. He secured an historic victory by defeating incumbent ex-President Jonathan in four of the country’s six geopolitical zones on March 29.

To paraphrase Joanna Baillie, a 19th century British poet, ‘there is always a survivor in the destruction of a noble line’. Buhari seems to have been specially prepared for the task ahead. By an irony of fate, Buhari once confessed that but for Ahmadu Bello who in the cause of his selfless service to his people picked him up from the village without any connection, he would never have had the advantage of joining the military. Fate beckons on him today to see where our nation derailed in 1962. He is adequately equipped for the onerous task. Joking during his recent visit to Prime Minister Cameron of Britain about those the junta he headed jailed unjustly 30 years ago, he had made reference to his own unjust incarceration.  He has been betrayed by his military colleagues. He has equally been betrayed by politicians. He has been a military governor, a minister of petroleum and a Head of State. Unlike 1984, he today has a deeper knowledge of Nigeria and her diverse cultures. He is conscious of the baleful legacies of the Hausa Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba parasitic elites who were only out to serve selves rather than provide services to the people. He can attach weight to the advice coming from Obasanjo, Danjuma, Babangida and others who have been beneficiaries of an aberration we call a federation. Nigeria is the only federation in the world where the centre gets involved in education, health, agriculture, and decides how local councils manage the affairs of their remote communities.

Of course Nigerians that voted for Buhari have faith in his ability to ensure those who stole the country blind through fraudulent fuel subsidy deals, crude oil theft, and fraudulent privatization and monetisation policies return their loot. But the major challenge lies in the political will to tamper with the structure that supports and sustains self service as against selfless service as we once had it. As Edmund Burke, in a manner of speaking says, we cannot climb the palm tree from the top. Unfortunately that exactly is what Nigerian politicians and their young multi-billionaires’ fronts have been doing. If the current system where politicians without character in Abuja decide who from Daura secures admission into the military school in Zaria was in place during the first Republic, President Buhari  by his own admission would have remained a herdsman in Daura and the cause of history would have been different.