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For three times he has contested the presidential elections and failed, yet Muhammadu Buhari, a retired major-general and former head of state, is not ready to give up on his ambition, but his past deeds are not also ready to stop haunting him

|  By Olu Ojewale  |  May 6, 2013 @ 01:00 GMT

HE IS a classic example of a politician. Having lost in the previous three presidential elections, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired major-general and former head of state, is not giving up yet on his ambition to be an executive president in a democratic setting. Buhari, 70, who had ruled the country as a maximum leader between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985, is a latter day politician, whose appetite to return to power appears to be insatiable.

Thus, for those who have been in a hurry to write his political obituary, Buhari dropped the hint about his ambition to return to the political fray when he addressed members of the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, north-West zone Contact and Mobilisation Committee in Kaduna, on Wednesday, April 17. He promised that he would not disappoint Nigerians if he should be given the mandate to lead in 2015.

Two days after, Buhari was the guest of Desmin Independent Television, DITV, based in Kaduna, where he said that only death would separate him from politics and 2015 presidential contest. But while he was campaigning in the 2011 presidential election, he was quoted as saying he would no longer offer himself for any more contest. Now, he seems to have beaten a retraction after he lost in that election, and is currently singing a new tune. Said he: “On the issue of my ambition to contest the next election or not, many people, especially from my party, are really disturbed. The joyful thing is that I didn’t say I quit politics. I will never quit politics as far as I live. I only said that I will not present myself to contest but my party members said they want me to remain in the race. But I said the new party will follow due process in selecting candidates, right from the ward to the national level.” Buhari said since the CPC would be subsumed into the All Progressives Congress, APC, a conglomeration of about four parties, he would only be an ordinary member, and if after consultations, “they include me among their aspirants I will not reject their offer. This is what I want people to know.” It is obvious that Buhari would like to play the ostrich here to fend off opposition who may accuse him of not being a man of his words.

Besides, Buhari also has the shadow of his past to deal with. Some of those he had wronged when he was head of state appear to be unprepared to either forget or forgive. In a recent publication of a national newsmagazine, Asari Dokubo, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, NDPVF, asked Buhari to forget his presidential ambition for 2015. Dokubo called on those who are trying to polish Buhari’s image as incorruptible as liars.

He asked: “How are they going to make us forget about the 2.8 billion dollars? (Apparently referring to the $2.8 billion alleged to have disappeared from Midland Bank when Buhari was minister of petroleum in 1977. The allegation was later found to be false.) How are they going to make us forget the retroactive laws that killed people who committed offences before he came into power or before his draconian decrees were put in place? How are we going to forget about the cronyism that played itself out in PTF?” Dokubo said that the new APC’s effort to launder the image of the former military head of state with Ahmed Tinubu leading the pack would not succeed. He warned them not to trust Buhari because he would disappoint them. According to him, Buhari could change and be their nemesis.

Dokubo is not the only person who has started campaigning against him. One Japhnet Okoromadu, managing director and chief executive officer of Jok Biz Concept, in his posting on the net, gave 17 reasons why nobody should vote for Buhari. Okoromadu called Buhari a pretentious anti-corruption fighter and that he would not vote for him for his double standards in dealing with national issues and figures. “The way he jailed Lateef Jakande, Jim Nwobodo, Pa Adekunle Ajasin, Ayo Ojewumi on cases that had no foundation and allowed Awwal Ibrahim, the then Niger State governor, who was arrested in Heathrow Airport in London with 14 million pounds sterling and several millions of Niara and dollars to be put only under house arrest is my evidence,” Okoromadu said.

The business mogul stated how Buhari allegedly allowed Shehu Kangiwa, Sokoto State governor, who conducted and supervised the famous Bakolori Massacre of poor peasant farmers, whose parcels of land were appropriated without compensation to remain under house arrest, while the likes of Ojewumi, Ajasin, Ambrose Alli, former governor of Edo State, were imprisoned on false charges. He said it was imprisonment that caused blindness for Ojewumi and Alli, and also led to their early death including Ajasin. “Pa Adekule Ajasin was never the same after his eventual release and remained sickly for the rest of his life. When he died, he never had any property anywhere in the world except the one he had built from his sweat as a long standing teacher and school principal in Owo Township,” Okoromadu said.

He similarly recalled how Buhari, because of ethnic bias, placed former President Shehu Shagari under house arrest inside a palatial mansion in Ikoyi, while he locked up former Vice-President Alex Ekwueme in Kirikiri Prison. “Shagari is Hausa/Fulani like him while Alex Ekwueme is an Igboman,” he said.

As if that was not bad enough, Ekweme revealed that the 1983 coup was actually targeted at him. “Well, I’m sorry, I’m an affected person. So, it is awkward for me to be the one talking about it. But I know that after General Buhari’s coup of December 31, 1983, Umaru Dikko, (minister of transport in the Shagari administration) gave a press conference. And he said at that press conference that the plotting of the coup was to prevent me from becoming president in 1987. That, that was the reason they had the coup. So, all this talk about corruption and all that, was neither here nor there.”

Apart from his blows on the politicians removed from office, Okoromadu recalled how the regime’s retroactive law led to the execution of three young Nigerians found guilty of drug trafficking. Some journalists who went through the agony of constantly being under the searchlight of the infamous Decree 4, would not forget the Buhari regime of that period. The saga of imprisonment of Ndukar Irabor and Tunde Thompson of The Guardian, who were jailed under the draconian decree, is still a living memory for a good number of journalists of that time and those who must have heard the story told by their senior colleagues. “He had told the Nigerian journalists then that it did not matter whether the story reported was true or not, if his regime did not like it, the writer would go to jail,” Okoromadu reminisced.

Also in the living memory to haunt Buhari is the controversial 53 suitcases brought in by the then Emir of Gwandu and Tahir Waziri, Buhari’s director of protocol in 1984. It was during the time the Buhari government had introduced new currency and ordered the closure of all border posts. He directed that every baggage coming into the country must be thoroughly screened to stop people from bringing in Naira notes old stacked outside Nigeria to exchange for the new currency notes. But when the 53 suitcases arrived at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, Mustapha Jokolo, then a major and Aide-de-Camp, ADC, to Buhari, got the suitcases out without any security checks. By that incident, the Buhari regime was regarded as operating double standards.

For his being part of the infamous regime of the late Sani Abacha is another aspect of the Buhari story that Okoromdau finds abhorrent. “He was in full support of all the atrocities of Sani Abacha against the Nigerian people. There is no single record of his criticism of Sani Abacha during those dark days when Nigeria was on a precipice. It shows that he is a patriot of convenience and as such unfit to lead the country,” he said.

Okoromadu said it would be dangerous to give the management of the country to Buhari. He pointed out that Buhari did a poor job when he served under Abacha as the chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF. “He has never been able to account to Nigerians what he did with the more than N20 billion of the Petroleum Trust Fund,” Okoromadu charged. Indeed, independent consultants who probed the PTF accounts “discovered criminal negligence, cynical fraud, and unprecedented disregard for all civilised standards of prudence and transparency in the disbursement of public funds” and concluded that of the N181 billion that accrued to the PTF in the four and a half years of its existence between July 1994 and July 1999, as much as N25 billion was either stolen or misappropriated. In his defence, Buhari said he was not aware of any fraud of that magnitude and besides, he had not benefited from it. Added to that, sighting of projects carried out by the PTF were said to have been influenced by ethnic bias of the former head of state.

Perhaps another thing that may work against Buhari’s candidature is age. By the time the 2015 elections hold, the former military officer would be more than 72 years old. Some analysts say he would find the rigour of electioneering campaigns very tiring to contemplate. If that does not convince Buhari that he has an herculean task ahead, perhaps the position of some members of the merger group will. It is believed that some members of the mega party are not favourably disposed to his presidential ambition.

This was said to have prompted them to ask the leadership of the party to prevail on Buhari not to run so as not to jeopardise the party’s chances in the next election. They argued that for the APC to be more acceptable, another candidate should be found within or outside the party to contest the presidential election. A source said: “Some elements within the coalition are concerned that the Buhari factor may make or mar the chances of the APC if not properly handled. Because of this, there are already moves to solicit the assistance of those who have considerable influence on the CPC leader to persuade him to agree to support another candidate in the interest of the merger.”

Another source said that although the party recognised that Buhari commands a lot of followership in the North, especially among the masses, the powerful elite, who mould voters’ opinions in their respective constituencies, are not favourably disposed to support his emergence as president. Some people in the merger said they were opposed to Buhari’s candidature because they would not want the party’s candidate to be perceived as having an ethnic or religious bias.

Salihu Lukman, human rights activist and one of the leaders of the ACN in Kaduna, has warned that his decision to contest the 2015 presidential election is ill-advised and could boomerang against the party. In a public letter to the former head of state, Lukman said in part: “To strengthen opposition parties in Nigeria would require a strategy that would throw up completely new candidates at all levels in 2015 including the presidential election. Your moral authority to serve as the facilitator of this will engrave your name in the sands of Nigerian history as one nationalist who sacrificed everything, including his personal aspirations to ensure that the monster called PDP is defeated.”

But Rotimi Fashakin, spokesman of the CPC, said Buhari would be the right candidate for the new party. In a recent press interview, Fashakin said Buhari would make himself available for the 2015 election and hoped that “he will be accepted by the new arrangement. If he is not accepted, he is a democrat; he will not force himself on the party.” He insisted that the one-time All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, presidential candidate, was electable and that the CPC would want him to contest the 2015 poll in the new party. The CPC, ANPP, Action Congress of Nigeria and a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, are currently engaged in an arrangement to formalise the merger and get their members to contest elections on the APC platform.

The new party, it is hoped, would be a strong platform to wrestle power from the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP. Fashakin expressed optimism that Buhari would be accepted by the APC because of his high electoral value. “There are not many of these northern elements that have the kind of popularity that General Buhari has. The electoral value of General Buhari is never in doubt. It is a fact. He has created a niche for himself,” he said, adding that the CPC wanted Buhari to contest the next presidential poll because the former head of state would provide a transparent leadership for the country.

Expressing a similar support is Osita Okechukwu, a member of the APC merger committee and national publicity secretary of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP. He dismissed the suggestion that Buhari’s ambition poses danger to the success of the new party. Okechukwu said internal democracy was strong enough to decide the fate of anyone who may be interested in any position. “The most prominent thing that the members and supporters of the APC have put ahead is to save the country, to save our democracy and even save our constitution which the PDP has bastardised. So, the song is to redeem the country because if there is no country, there is no ambition to talk about,” he said.

Some of the associates and members of the parties contacted by Realnews said it was too early to react to Buhari’s ambition to lead the APC in apresidential election. Even Yinka Odumakin, former spokesman of Buhari in the last election, said he had no opinion on his decision to contest the next election but he would prefer to watch events unfold. “I have no opinion at the moment. I would rather watch events unfold before I say anything on the matter,” Odumakin told Realnews on phone.

However, Realnews could not get a clear picture of what other parties in the merger think about having Buhari as the presidential candidate of the APC. Lai Mohammed, spokesman of the ACN, refused to pick calls from Realnews or answer a text message sent to his phone, but Ayo Afolabi, spokesman of the party for the South-West, said in a telephone interview that the issue of presidential and vice-presidential candidates had not been discussed by the parties in the merger. He said after other parties must have ratified their membership of the new party, they would now sit down and work out the modalities to adopt for picking both the presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the party. Afolabi said what the merger parties were doing at the moment was to iron out any area that might still cause friction among the parties. “All those who are talking about presidential and vice-presidential candidates are only making permutations based on the past experience. We can only talk about that after all the parties in the merger have become members,” he said.

Making Buhari the APC presidential candidate does not seem to bother the ruling party. In fact, Bamanga Tukur, national chairman of the PDP, said in Abuja that Buhari’s “ambition will tear the APC to rags.” Speaking to journalists recently, Tukur said, “Don’t worry; this is not the first time Nigerians would hear about merger. Let elections come and everyone will see the problems within them. They will be torn to rags because of ambitions.” He said notwithstanding the current in-fighting in the PDP, the ruling party “is a united party, even when we disagree; we are able to reconcile our differences because of our belief in the unity of Nigeria as an indivisible entity.”

Doyin Okupe, senior special assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on public affairs, regards Buhari and Ahmed Tinubu, leaders of the APC, as liabilities to the new party and not an asset. Reacting to statements by Buhari and Tinubu, Okupe, told journalists at a news conference in Lagos, that the administration would not be distracted by their ‘empty’ criticisms. Tinubu had, at the ACN convention in Lagos on Thursday, April 18, said: “The current government’s trademark is to throw empty words and hollow actions at our problems,” while Buhari vowed that the APC would resist any move by the PDP to rig elections in 2015.

Okupe said Buhari and Tinubu as leaders of the new party, lacked “the antecedents that support their claim of possessing what it takes to move Nigeria forward.” He noted that the APC revolved around the two personalities, and added: “Unfortunately, both are heavily-burdened political liabilities.” The Presidential aide described the new merger party as an “incongruous alliance of political weaklings, dysfunctional Lilliputians and repeatedly frustrated political power mongers.” He said that the promoters of the APC were desperate to “supplant the Jonathan administration, forgetting that one million giant ants can never muster the required strength to lift a concrete pole much less of a nationally entrenched pillar and structurally established institution like the PDP.”

The former military leader has severally tried to disabuse the minds of the Nigerian populace against their negative perception of him. In the DITV recently, he said: “Seventy percent of soldiers in Nigeria when I was in the service were Christians and those under my platoon never accused me of discriminating against them on religious and tribal basis.”

And in a newspaper interview, Buhari defended his record as military head of state, saying he never took any unilateral action in his decisions. According to him, “There was nothing like 53 suitcases. What happened was that there was my chief of protocol; he is now late. He had three wives, and I think about 12 children. He was in Saudi Arabia as Nigeria’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was in Libya before, as ambassador and later, he was posted to Saudi Arabia. And then, I appointed him as my chief of protocol and he was coming back… And then, by some coincidence, the late Emir of Gwandu, the father of Jokolo, who was my ADC then, was coming back with the same flight…Atiku (Abubakar) then was the Commandant of Customs at the Murtala Muhammed Airport. And that day, we were playing squash. Jokolo, my ADC, and I. At some point, I said to him, ‘Mustapha, is your father not coming back today again?’ He said, ‘yes, sir, he is coming.’  I said, ‘what are you doing here? Why can’t you go and meet your father?’ He said yes, sir. He went to wash in order to go and meet his father. I am telling you, there were no 53 bags or suitcases. It was a bloody lie. It was a bloody mischief.”

On the issue of retroactive law which led to the killing of three drug barons caught for using the country as a transit point for cocaine trade, Buhari said he did not make the law alone. He said based on recommendations, the Supreme Military Council agreed to make a retroactive law to deal with the deadly issue at hand. “There was no dissenting voice in the sense that majority of the members agreed that this thing, this cocaine, this hard drug was earning Nigeria so much bad name in the international community because Nigeria was not producing it, but Nigerians that wanted to make money didn’t mind destroying Nigerians and other youths in other countries just to make money. So, we didn’t need them. We didn’t need them,” he said. Buhari said he did not listen to pleas by eminent Nigerians and international outcry over the decision to kill the drug offenders, because they had insisted that laws must be obeyed. He added: “Pleas, pleas; those that they destroyed did they listen to their pleas for them not to make hard drug available to destroy their children and their communities?” he asked.

The former head of state said that the infamous Decree 4 became necessary because the press was embarrassing civil servants in their publications. “What we did was that you must not embarrass those civil servants.  If you have got evidence that somebody was corrupt, the courts were there. Take the evidence to the court; the court will not spare whoever it was. But you don’t just go and write articles that were embarrassing… Those who did it, the editors, the reporters, we jailed them. But we never closed a whole institution, as others did. We investigated and prosecuted according to the laws, because shutting down a newspaper, it is an institution and we lose thousands of jobs.” he said. In all his actions during his military regime, Buhari expressed no regret, insisting that all the regime’s actions were based on the laws by the Supreme Military Council which he headed.

Buhari became the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, after a successful military coup d’etat that overthrew the civilian administration of President Shehu Shagari on December 31, 1983. Buhari, who was then head of the Third Armoured Division Nigeria Army, Jos, said he did not participate in the coup and never heard about it until it was carried out. The late Tunde Idiagbon, then a brigadier, was appointed Chief of General Staff, Supreme Headquarters and the de facto number two in the administration. His regime introduced War Against Indiscipline, WAI, which aimed at eliminating some social ills in the country. Some aspects of the WAI campaign included public humiliation of civil servants who arrived late for work, while military armed guards could whip people into line at bus stops to ensure orderliness.

The Buhari/Idiagbon administration, as the government was christened, was also infamous for trying to smuggle Umaru Dikko, former minister of transport in the Shagari regime, out of Britain in a crate marked for shipment to Nigeria in 1984. Through a tip-off to the British police, Dikko was found drugged in the crate at the airport. This caused a diplomatic row between Nigeria and Britain.

During his time as military leader, there was no mistaken the fact that Buhari hated politicians with passion. But having become one himself, thanks to the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, the military radicalism seems to have mellowed. But whether the ghosts of what he had done or failed to do as head of state will stop haunting him is another story. The road looks long, and the journey to 2015, is even longer if, indeed, Buhari wants to go to Aso Rock.

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