his piece below was first published in my column in the LEADERSHIP of December 29, 2010 when the 2011 general elections were building up. But it was titled: “I won’ play with Buhari again”. You will find out why I withdrew my “playship” in the first place. And why I have changed my mind to resume playing with him, come May 29, 2015… that is if he would have time to play with anyone at all. The reason being that the people’s General has also changed his mind and resolved to do what he is famous at doing best… tackle corruption, beginning with the controversial $20bn oil cash that developed wings. You will still find the piece worthy of your precious time.
Enjoy.
I won’t play with you again’ is a declaration common among kids after a minor tiff. But why should an adult like me descend to this infantile level just to hit at Gen. Muhammadu Buhari? I will tell you. Last week, the awesome anti-corruption czar shocked his uncountable admirers both at home and abroad when he announced that he would not probe past regimes if voted president in the 2011 elections. I expected an instant denial from the general’s lips but none has come till date. So I take it that the general has turned coat… an instance of if you can’t beat them, you join them? Or has the shining star been mellowed by age? It is the shocking volte-face that stirred up the tiff between the general and me and prompted me to make the declaration that I will not play with him again.
I remember the radical Buhari of the early 80s complete with stone-face Tunde Idiagbon whose final summons was announced more than a decade ago. The duo took the Nigerian democratic scene by storm and sent corrupt politicians to the calaboose. That no-nonsense regime created a record that has remained unmatched let alone surpassed: thieving politicians were awarded jail sentences ranging from 100 to 150 years. Although the penalties were unheard of and even laughable to many, the monster known as corruption was cowered and held in captivity for about 20 months that the fearsome two held sway.
Why would Buhari pardon corrupt past leaders if voted president? Is he learning from the mistake of the late sage, Papa Awo, who was denied presidency in 1999 because he swore to cancel tea imprests… a move that did not go down well with tea-loving civil servants and tea producers around the globe? You don’t count your chicks when the eagles are hovering around. You have to chase the predators away first.
That is what the sage should have done. Sages are human after all. I am not sure of what happened in 2003, but many believed that the people’s General won the 2007 presidential election which the Supreme Court eventually awarded to the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua ‘in the interest of the nation’.
Buhari arguably is the last man standing in the battle to rid Nigeria of the invidious crime known as corruption. But Nigeria has not been as fortunate as Ghana which produced the junior Jesus… a euphemism for Jerry Rawlings. The hot-headed half-caste did not only seize power from corrupt politicians but also executed no fewer than five former leaders despite pleas for clemency from the international community.
After that cleansing, Ghanaians, men and women, young and old, have distanced themselves from corrupt practices inclusive of electoral misconducts like doctoring of figures, ballot box snatching and organised gangsterism. When junior Jesus succeeded in putting corruption to flight, the fugitive monster hovered around the west coast for a long while. Togo and the Republic of Benin denied it asylum. But the Nigerian border guards sold out and threw our doors open after collecting a mouth-watering bribe. The political class could not believe their (Good) luck. The rest is now history.
A couple of years later, Buhari and Idiagbon, pissed off by the level of corruption in the land, stormed the scene and fought the monster relentlessly for close to two years. But the political class with the active connivance of its military collaborators took sides with the fiend and terminated the War Against Corruption (WAC) and War Against Indiscipline (WAI) prematurely.
The political class that feeds on corruption has been the major obstacle to Buhari’s (second) coming as a leader. In the 2003 and 2007 general elections, they used religious sentiment, accusing him of being anti-Christian just to rob him of the Christians’ votes. However, the bottom fell during the 2007 presidential polls which he was widely believed to have won. The rest, too, is a familiar story.
Now that Buhari has assured those who worship at the altar of corruption that he would forgive them and ask them to sin no more if voted as president in 2011, will they trust him and give him their votes? Prior to Buhari’s volte-face, I had assured myself that the moment the General is declared as the president in 2011, all corrupt politicians and sleazy civil servants would go on voluntary exile.
Whether or not I will play with Buhari again depends on the outcome of the next presidential joust and his disposition towards corrupt folks in our midst, if he wins. Well, all I can wish for now is: Good luck to Buhari, good luck to you, good luck to me, good luck to everybody and good luck to Nigeria. And who knows, may be some day, God will raise our own junior Jesus or another junior Mohammed (which Buhari stood for) to continue from where the General was stopped… and eventually rescue this hapless nation from the stranglehold of the monster. Who knows; who knows.
