By Sonnie Ekwowusi
Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter dated 23rd January 2018 axing President Muhammadu Buhari has further drummed home the point that President Buhari is an unfit and incompetent person to be the President of Nigeria. Come to think of it, there is nothing really new in the aforesaid Obasanjo’s letter.
Buhari is an open book accessible by all. The paradox, however, is that Nigerians have refused to learn from painful history. When will we learn? Prior to the 2015 Presidential Elections Campaign, we were warned that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was an unfit and improper person to be the President of Nigeria yet we ignored the warning. For instance, in his article entitled:” The Nigerian Nation Against General. Buhari”, Prof Wole Soyinka stated, inter alia, “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?”
During the 2015 presidential campaigns, we were again warned that Buhari would not make a good President, yet we ignored the warning. At that time, newspaper advertorials with reverting titles such as “Buhari is a Soldier: Once a Soldier always a Soldier”, “Buhari is not qualified to rule Nigeria”, “Buhari cannot be trusted” were constantly inserted in our daily newspapers. In his response to the clamour for Buhari by some Nigerians in 2014, Prof Wole Soyinka said: “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.” Even a seemingly inconsequential and unpopular body such the Association of Witches and Wizards in Nigeria warned Buhari to perish his thought of ruling Nigeria because the witches and wizards in Nigeria would not allow him to rule Nigeria.
Eminent journalist and editor of THISDAY, Saturday Newspaper, Shaka Momodu, penned down a series of articles bothering on the unfitness of Buhari to rule Nigeria yet the people did not listen to Momodu. Emir of Kano and former Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has been crying wolf about the foreign exchange corruption under the Buhari government yet we refused to listen to him. Hear the Emir: “we created billionaires from oil subsidies in the past.
We are making the same mistake with Forex…as an Emir, I can seat in my garden and make phone calls to access $10 million at N197 per $ then sell it off at nothing less than N300. With just a phone call, I’m making a profit of over a billion Naira.
That is what people are doing now…Any system that allows you sit in your garden and make a billion Naira without investing a kobo is a wrong system”. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has consistently shown his displeasure for President Buhari’s lack-lustre performance in government. Even President Buhari’s wife Aisha Buhari has since passed a vote of no confidence on her husband.
So as I said earlier, Buhari is an open book accessible by all to read. The problem is that the ordinary Nigerians are enmeshed in deep followership crisis. The emergence of Buhari as a President of Nigeria, for me, bespeaks the political followership crisis in Nigeria.
The ordinary Nigerians who are now complaining on WhatsApp, Face book, Twitter etc that corrupt politicians have ruined Nigeria are accomplices in the making of the corrupt politicians ruining Nigeria. For example, if the Nigerian electorate had voted wisely in the last presidential election, and thereafter followed up their votes to their ultimate destination Buhari would not have emerged.
The choice of Buhari in 2015, it is said, was a Hobson choice in the sense that instead of re-electing Good luck Jonathan whose government was knee-deep in corruption Buhari was a preferred option. But as Prof Soyinka rightly queried, why clamour for the same dictator who had turned Nigeria into his slave kingdom and even forbade any freedom from such slavery?
So, Nigerians are the architects of their own ruin. Our woes in Nigeria, if you like, are self-inflicted woes. For example, when a Gani Fawehinmi presents himself for election he is rejected on the pseudo-rationalization that a Gani cannot successfully rule Nigeria. When a Pat Utomi presents himself for election he is also rejected on the flawed argument that he lacks the “political base” or “political platform”. But when a Buhari presents himself for election he is enthroned as a king.
Therefore the ordinary Nigerians should blame themselves for their predicament. Obasanjo’s letter, in my view, calls for self-chastisement. If Nigeria were a country where the voters use their heads and hearts during elections, none of the failed politicians responsible for the abject poverty in Nigeria would have been voted to power.
As Obasanjo rightly suggests, we have to make a clean break from our ruinous past. We have to look beyond the PDP and APC in 2019. The voters should be discerning in 2019 presidential election. They should not be carried away by mere fanatical impulse and sentiments.
The Presidency is the central focus of power and responsibility in presidential democracy. Therefore it is essential that the Presidency functions effectively in presidential democracy. If the President is incapacitated both in intellect and health the presidential democracy will be incapacitated