… The Buharists and their Stockholm Syndrome First, let me quickly make an apology. I apologize for using the term “Buharists” to describe some of those invested in voting for General Muhammadu Buhari in the forthcoming presidential election if he is presented as the flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC). I make the apology duly noting that some of these people who are opposed to the reelection of President Goodluck Jonathan and a lot of who are Buhari supporters have taken to describing those in support of Jonathan’s reelection derogatorily as “Jonathanians”. I mean, it is not in doubt that if you open some of these Buhari supporters’ dictionary, a Jonathanian is that specie of homo sapiens who is so stupid as to not see the virtues of voting for General Buhari, the anti-corruption demigod who is ready to return us to some Eldorado that the Otueke man yanked us from. The revolutionary fervor of these people cannot be challenged. You just have to shut up when they are talking and cursing Jonathan and you, the Jonathanian. Yeah, that’s just the way it is. So, if I must call them “Buharists”, I must apologize, because I don’t want to rouse their anger against me. I’m not worthy. Hehe! Seriously, this article is an adaptation of a response I made to a Buharist, Ben Igiebor with whom I am having an exchange on my Facebook wall. While it is partly a response to his posts in the course of our exchange, I have adapted it into an article that is a broader response to Buharists in the form of a case against the Muhammadu Buhari candidacy for President based on his antecedents. In dealing with the latter, I have opted to be detailed. To that extent, I’ll plead that if anybody interested in reading it finds it too long, they should please forgive me and exercise some patience. I humbly suggest such persons don’t read it all at once. They can take their time to gently read it for days and respond whenever they like or not respond if they choose not to. But, please, I urge everyone to just accept it as part of my continuing contribution to the political discussions surrounding Buhari’s candidacy. Now, before I continue, let me state a caveat. I am not supporting President Goodluck Jonathan because he’s from the South-South just as I know that some Northerners supporting Muhammadu Buhari are not doing so, because he’s from the North. Jonathan contested four years ago and even though I supported and took part in the campaign for him to replace Umaru Yar’Adua as President I did so only because that was what the Constitution required, not because he’s from the South-South. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, as an Ezon, he is as close to me culturally as a Yoruba, Fulani, Bachama or an Idoma or Hausa. The truth is candidates and voters are entitled to come from different or the same section of the country, but what determines if they are being sectional or sentimental is the quality and nature of their arguments in support of their candidacy or candidate. I don’t play that kind of politics and I encourage those who want to engage me not to play that kind of politics too, because once I notice that ethnic politics is your game, I’ll ignore you and move on. Also, I have refrained from making this article into a candidates’ achievement itemization thread. This is deliberate. I’ve had a running debate with some friends who were insisting that I list the achievements of Jonathan or make a case for him to be President all because they felt I have had a lot to say about Buhari and why he isn’t fit to be President, but I have consistently explained to them that I will indeed make a comprehensive case for Jonathan’s reelection at a latter date when he has formally declared and when the APC has finally chosen their own flag-bearer. It might just be that all the attention on Buhari is precipitate, even though most expect him to clinch the APC ticket. The reason I’m doing this now is because Buhari has declared his candidacy and bought his party’s presidential form, so we can at this point take a closer look at him. Anyway, my point was and still is that people have different ideas about how to sell Jonathan as a candidate. For instance, I keep telling people that the election would not be a referendum on performance, but a referendum on the soul of the nation and the future of the country. By this I mean voters would not be judging Jonathan on one or more of his achievements in office, but on whether he or the other candidate is the one more trusted to keep Nigeria one and relatively peaceful and prosperous. In this regard, while some people are not happy with some aspects of Jonathan and his government’s response to the Boko Haram menace, not many people are blaming him for it. In fact, most Nigerians actually blame the opposition for it. Indeed, despite the opposition’s attempt to talk and act with selective amnesia over Boko Haram by giving the impression it all started with Jonathan, Nigerians know that it came to a head under President Umaru Yar’Adua when he attempted to put them down by humiliating them with extrajudicial killings, including the extrajudicial killing of their leader, Mohammed Yusuf. For some of us more informed, we know that it was this episode which was transmitted live around the world that later gave Boko Haram its international ‘credibility’ with Global Jihad, the platform under which it operates today. But ordinary Nigerians, most of who would comprise the voting public, are not very good with seemingly complex analytics. There are those who look at the political situation now and think amongst the opposition are the sponsors of Boko Haram; there are those who think that Boko Haram is the military wing of the opposition and there are those who believe its present campaign is aimed at ensuring a Northern candidate emerges President in 2015 based on some medieval feudalist agenda. Unfortunately, this is the nature of Nigerian politics where people routinely use their ethnic background and/or professed religion as some form of advantage and selling point in certain constituencies. Buhari has used his Hausa-Fulani ethnic card, his Northern origin and professed religion so effectively that he is today regarded as the biggest defender of Northern political interest as opposed to national interest. Being clearly the biggest beast in the opposition, his mentality is massively reflected in their response to national issues. For instance, in trying to cash in on the Boko Haram menace, the opposition has acted as though this national security issue is a Jonathan problem, rather than a national problem. Amongst them, Buhari has been most vocal in his anti-government stance, which some people are interpreting, rightly or wrongly, as a pro-Boko Haram stance. His antecedents do not help. His loss during the last presidential election led to killings and disturbances up North that claimed over a thousand lives, including the lives of many young members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and people haven’t forgotten that this is something he’s yet to condemn till this day. He has since continued to make inciting statements unbecoming of a statesman over the forthcoming election, quite apart from being one of the loudest voices against government’s approach to the Boko Haram crisis when he says things like government should stop killing Boko Haram members and when he criticizes the army and so on. Unfortunately for him, this is going to be the overall focus of electoral choice. It is my contention that Buhari will lose, because not many Nigerians trust him as a statesman, not many Nigerians think he would do enough to keep Nigeria secular, democratic and united. He’s been contesting for over a decade yet you can’t get anything by way of policy from him or ideas on national security or the economy. It’s just not there! For me, listening to him talk and articulate his ‘vision’ is a painful exercise. He does not have it and there’s no surprise there. He knew very little when he came in as head of state and he’s done nothing since then to show he’s improved himself. Now, some are lapping up the fable that if Buhari comes in, corruption and embezzlement in high places would come to an end. But I think this is like the story of the child and Santa Clause. That reality does not exist now or in the future, because the reality of who Buhari is has been shown to us through his real actions, not by the picture of his spin-doctors and supporters. Should I start with the scandal of the N2.8 billion NNPC money that got stolen under his watch as Petroleum Minister and head of NNPC in 1978? Remember the value of that money in hard currency at the time was more than $3 billion. Under intense public pressure, the Shehu Shagari government, which shortly took over thereafter from the military, set up a Senate probe which traced the money to a London Midland Bank account belonging to Buhari from where the money again got missing. No less than a person of the then Senate Majority Leader and Chairman of the Senate probe panel, Dr Olusola Saraki revealed this in an interview with Vera Ifudu of the NTA. When Ifudu reported this, she was clandestinely sacked by the NTA, but the lady went to court and presented all the evidence and won in a case of wrongful dismissal. Saraki till his death never denied what he told the lady. In the end, they settled Ifudu with a big payout to buy her silence. But the public pressure for the government to release the report of the probe continued and after the Shagari government had made all arrangements to release the probe report, which reportedly indicted Buhari over the missing money after the Christmas and New Year holiday of December 1983 and January 1984, on December 31st 1983, Buhari struck in a coup that ousted the civilian government. I know that it’s common to hear Buhari supporters claim he was never part of the coup that brought him to power, but they can tell that to the marines. No one risks their lives planning a coup only to hand over to others who are not part of it. No, the coup planners always have it worked out before execution those going to occupy what position, not least the position of head of state. Anyone who chooses to believe anything otherwise is free to continue to believe whatever it is they want to believe. Predictably, the first act of Buhari and his cohorts upon seizing power was to ransack the Senate and destroy all the papers relating to the N2.8 billion probe and then they followed that up with indiscriminate arrest of politicians on the ostensible excuse of corruption, considering there was indeed serious corruption at the time and the national mood was against the excesses of the politicians. The Buhari government jailed the politicians and persons they consider threats to their government without due process. It was precisely because there was no due process that the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) of the time boycotted the Buhari military tribunals meant to try the politicians. It was a sad period in our national history as many innocent people were simply put in the gulag and wasted. People like Professor Ambrose Alli and Bisi Onababjo, the former governors of the old Bendel State and Ogun State respectively didn’t last long after they were released before they died. People like Adekunle Ajasin, the former governor of Ondo State, Sam Mbakwe, former governor of Imo State and Olu Awotesu who was the Minister of State for Agriculture lived with life-long health effects from their incarceration until they passed on. People have written plenty on the unfairness of the treatment of the time in terms of how politicians from the North and South were treated by Buhari, something that was exemplified with Shagari being under house arrest and the squeaky clean Alex Ekwueme banged up in Kirikiri Maximum Prison. Really, this is not the place to get into the detail of how he unfairly treated Southern opposition politicians of those days as opposed to NPN politicians from the North, but suffice it to say when the Buhari regime was overthrown and the gates of the NSO dungeon was flung open, Nigerians were shocked when they saw over a hundred people come out, a lot of them mere skeletal remains of their former selves, like something from the Japanese World War II prison camp. That is why when sometimes I listen to some young people today eulogizing Buhari, I just wish they knew how the Nigerian people spontaneously celebrated the overthrow of his government, because of how much hell they saw under his yoke! Indeed, it was his unpopularity that General Ibrahim Babangida inversely converted to the huge popularity that initially greeted him and the coup that brought him in. What the Nigerian people must know is that the whole events surrounding the N2.8 billion were part of a high-level conspiracy of corruption by the Nigerian establishment of the day against the Nigerian people. The reason everyone at the top was interested in covering it up was because it was money that was stolen by the military hierarchy as their own ransom payment for allowing the General Olusegun Obasanjo civil rule programme of the Second Republic to commence. There were countless reports that not everyone was happy they were handing over to civilians, but because of the commitment they had made upon the overthrow of the General Yakubu Gowon government and intense international pressure to return to civil rule, they knew they had no choice but to go. But the N2.8 billion was their last hurray! Obasanjo, Buhari, Theophilus Danjuma, Shehu Yar’Adua, Ibrahim Babangida, Aliyu Gusau and all the military top brass at the time were in on it. It was their own ‘settlement’ money; this was their goodbye handshake and the incoming civilians knew this, except Obafemi Awolowo who was dreaded for his uncompromising stance. This was the reason Buhari raided Awolowo’s home at the time, because the military boys wanted to be sure he didn’t have anything to indict them. The only reason the civilian government set up the probe was because of the public pressure, but the military boys under Buhari saw this as a breach of their agreement to look the other way and with a wink and nod from Obasanjo and Shehu Yar’Adua, Buhari and his cohorts struck and declared their government “an offshoot of the Murtala-Obasanjo administration”. While it is true that the December 31st 1983 coup that brought Buhari to power was a conspiracy between serving and retired military officers who wanted to return to power under the guise of cleansing the Aegean Stables, there was one powerful civilian group that comprised the third power bloc in this coalition. This is the Kaduna Mafia. Those conversant with old Nigerian politics would recall that the Kaduna Mafia originally developed as a collection of young civil servants, businessmen, military officers of Northern extraction vehemently opposed to the Major General Ironsi regime in reaction to the January 1966 coup. They were mostly based in Kaduna, the capital of the Old Northern Region and at the time, their thinking was that the 1966 January coup was an attempt by the South, especially the Igbo to lord it over the North. They never trusted Ironsi and always considered him part of the January 1966 coup. To them, the killings and all that happened were aimed at using the army that was dominated at the officers level by Igbo and Southerners as the new power base in response to what the South considered the Northern political domination being entrenched through electoral rigging and a divide and rule tactics in the South, for instance, as witnessed in the Western Region. The Kaduna Mafia first began as the North’s intellectual response to the National Question after that coup, but soon they became the inciters of Northern army officers who planned the July 1966 countercoup as revenge for the January 1966 coup. After the bloody July 1966 countercoup that saw the murders of Ironsi, Adekunle Fajuyi and several Igbo and Southern officers, the North under the intellectual direction of the Kaduna Mafia originally wanted a secession (Araba) from the rest of the country, but on the advice of their British and Western sponsors and supporters in and out of the country, they took over the central government. But considering the poisoned ethnic and religious atmosphere of the time, it was obvious that a government under the coup leader, then Major Murtala Muhammed was nigh impossible; so, they put forward a Northern Christian army officer by the name of Lt Col Yakubu Gowon. It was the events that surrounded the Gowon takeover and the continued pogrom against Igbo and Southerners in the North that eventually led to the Civil War. But under the Gowon regime, the Kaduna Mafia couldn’t wield the overwhelming power they had hoped for, because Gowon, conscious of the effects of the Civil War and desirous of rebuilding trust in the national project, brought in heavy hitters from all sections of the country to run what was essentially a national government under the economic leadership of Obafemi Awolowo, who was considered the most serious-minded politician of his day. Between then and when he resigned from the Gowon cabinet in 1974 following Gowon’s breach of his promise to begin a return to civil rule programme, the Kaduna Mafia elements within the Gowon cabinet as led by Adamu Ciroma and Maitama Sule couldn’t match the coalition of national intellectual forces that Awolowo put together. It is an irony that today, many political neophytes easily fall for the lazy categorization of Awolowo as a Yoruba ethnic leader when in fact, no one has done more to keep Nigeria one and no one has done more to give the minorities North and South the opportunity to stake their claim within the Nigerian nation. But all that is another story. For now, what we need to know is that Awolowo was one of those that checkmated the Kaduna Mafia in the postwar era. However, the Kaduna Mafia gained prominence under the General Olusegun Obasanjo military administration through the events that surrounded the February 13 1976 coup that saw the killing of General Murtala Muhammed and Obasanjo’s dependence on the Kaduna Mafia to win the trust of the North and consolidate power. Two members of the Obasanjo military administration were the Kaduna Mafia’s links within the administration. They were Major General Shehu Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s second-in-command and Major General Buhari, the Petroleum Minister. Both were introduced to the Kaduna Mafia by the secretive Mamman Daura who was Buhari’s nephew and son of Buhari’s brother, Alhaji Dauda Buhari. Alhaji Dauda Buhari who was the influential head of the Kaduna Pilgrim’s Board whose removal by the Balarabe Musa administration was to earn Balarabe Musa special ill-treatment from Buhari when he took over government. When on October 18, 1975, General Murtala Muhammed appointed Mamman Daura and Dr Tam David West who was a Commissioner of Education in Rivers State to the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), both struck up a friendship that led to Daura introducing David West to Buhari and later his recommendation for the post of Buhari’s Minister of Petroleum. During the Second Republic, the Kaduna Mafia lost some of the influence it had under the Obasanjo regime when its candidates, Adamu Ciroma and Maitama Sule lost the presidential ticket of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) to Alhaji Shehu Shagari, an old-style Ahmadu Bello acolyte who though was sympathetic to the Kaduna Mafia also dreaded their influence. In fact, the corrupt politics of the Kaduna Mafia had created opposition to them in the North amongst young radical elements under the influence of people like Aminu Kano, Abubakar Rimi, Balarabe Musa and so on and some of them even within the ruling party at the states and national levels opposed the old guard Kaduna Mafia in various political turf wars in the North. Also, the intellectual coalition originally harbingered by Obafemi Awolowo in Tivland, the Niger-Delta, Efik and Ibibioland and in the Midwest and in Borno, all have grown in influence too and were pulling their weight through their various leaders, even as members of the ruling party. Awolowo himself remained fully engaged politically and was the de facto strongest opposition to the influence of the Kaduna Mafia in politics and national affairs. Today, many commentators point to Awolowo’s choice of Muhammadu Kura as his Vice Presidential candidate under the banner of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in the 1983 election as a sign that Awolowo finally compromised with the Kaduna Mafia as a means of gaining the presidency from Shehu Shagari after it was reported that Shagari’s relationship with Kaduna Mafia had soured, especially with Svengalis like Umaru Dikko and Ibrahim Tahir acquiring more powers. They say the man who brokered the Awolowo-Kaduna Mafia rapprochement was the former No 2 man to Obasanjo, Major General Shehu Yar’Adua. But this account is suspect as it was a latter-day story that gained currency at a time Major General Shehu Yar’adua was himself seeking the presidency under the convoluted Ibrahim Babangida transition programme and as a means of winning the vote of the Yoruba. Kura was not a known member of the Kaduna Mafia and in fact, his politics is diametrically opposed to them. Before coming to the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), he was a member of the Ibrahim Waziri Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP) under whose banner he contested for the Bauchi governorship in 1979, coming second behind Alhaji Tatari Ali of the NPN. At any rate, what was not in doubt within the establishment was that the coup that brought Buhari to power was secretly supported by Obasanjo and Yar’Adua who represented retired military officers and also by the Kaduna Mafia who had lost a lot of influence under the Shagari administration due to political infighting with other power blocs within the ruling NPN and who now saw Buhari’s emergence as their triumphant return to the epicenter of national power. The Buhari regime lasted from December 31st 1983 to August 27, 1985. It was a government essentially run by six men. The first two of these six men were Major General Muhammadu Buhari, the Head of State and Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon, the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters and Buhari’s deputy. The next four were all representatives of the Kaduna Mafia - Ambassador Mohammed Lawal Rafindadi, Buhari’s kinsman and the notorious head of the Nigerian Security Organization (NSO), which Buhari converted to his secret police; Mahmud Tukur, the Minister of Industry and Commerce and the man who took over the import licence honeypot previously controlled by Umaru Dikko; Mamman Daura, Buhari’s nephew who was the de facto czar of the oil sector under Buhari (while Professor Tam David West was a figurehead Petroleum Minister) and Major General Mohammed Magoro (now Senator) who was the Internal Affairs Minister then, but a close Buhari associate. Major General Shehu Yar’Adua represented the interest of Obasanjo and the retired generals who supported the coup. Obasanjo at the time could not openly come out to support the regime, because he had to keep up the pretense with the international community that having handed over to a democratically elected civilian government, he was now a convert to democracy. But he secretly nominated his cousin, Onaolapo Soleye who was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan as the regime’s Minister of Finance. The regime’s political programme consisted entirely of suspension of vast sections of the Constitution and a brutal clamp down on civil society organizations and the civil populace via the suspension of human rights and civil liberties. It proscribed the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS). It promulgated all sorts of draconian and retroactive decrees, for instance Decree 2, Decree 4 and Decree 20. Decree 2 gave the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters the power to detain anyone without trial for up to six months and Decree 4 banned journalists from reporting or publishing any information that is considered embarrassing to any government official. Decree 20 was a retroactive law that imposed death sentence on drug peddlers who were tried in military tribunals, rather than regular courts. Promptly, Buhari’s tribunal condemned three young men - Lawal Ojuolape(30), Bernard Ogedengbe (29) and Bartholomew Owoh (26) to death and had them executed despite a deluge of pleas nationally and internationally to spare them. To make matters worse, Bernard Ogedengbe’s offence did not carry the death sentence at the time of the commission, yet he was executed. Obviously, the political programme did not include any plan to return to civil rule and considering the notoriety Nigerians associated with politicians and how much military propaganda had succeeded in doing damage to anything civilian, the Buhari government played that to the hilt. Politicians became endangered species as they were hounded from pillar to post. The regime’s social programme consisted of what it called War Against Indiscipline (WAI), which was a programme the regime said was aimed at returning the country to the virtues of discipline, cleanliness and anti corruption. True, following from the debauchery that defined the public space in Nigeria from the moment of the excesses of the Udoji Salary Award through to the corruption and social demoralization of civil rule, Nigeria needed some kind of jolt and the regime provided that in the form of WAI. But like everything it proposed, it was not about getting the essence of it, it was about force. Nigeria became one huge prison with military personnel as warders, publicly dishing out degrading punishments to Nigerians of all classes on the highways, in offices, even in their own homes! The programme was simply fear and more fear. In foreign affairs, the manner of the overthrow of the civilian regime, the suspension of human rights, the indiscriminate arrests, beatings and imprisonment all made Nigeria a pariah within the international community. Then the regime’s secret attempt to smuggle Umaru Dikko (a former Minister of Transport in the ousted Shagari government) back from London in a crate sealed the regime’s fate internationally and embarrassed Nigeria greatly in the comity of nations. This affair, which I shall discuss in more detail later, further exposed the vacuousness and viciousness of the regime. The leadership was thereafter seen as thuggish and tyrannical and not many people were dealing with them outside Africa. Economically, the regime exposed itself as totally inept. Obviously, it was unprepared for government and therefore unprepared for the challenges posed by the Nigerian economy. Unlike the Gowon regime, which recognized its limitations by getting some of the most brilliant Nigerian politicians and administrators of the time to set policies and run affairs (which was one of the reasons we prosecuted a civil war without borrowing a dime and also one of the reasons we did not fall into the trap of Cold War superpowers play), the Buhari regime acted as though it knew it all. Now, we are not only talking ignorance in the rudiments of political economy, but an attitude that is revanchist and anti-national in terms of Buhari’s understanding of how to rejuvenate the national economy. For instance, Buhari was and still is of the belief that the South would need to be ‘slowed down’ so that the North could catch up economically and also in terms of infrastructural development. Of course, he never said this directly publicly, but his policies while in public service point to this. For instance, this was the reason he engineered the scrapping of one of the most foresighted policy of the Lateef Jakande civilian government when he took over, which was the desire to improve transportation in Lagos and regenerate the city, which was the federal capital at the time. In 1982, the Jakande government signed a N700 million contract for the metroline project with a French consortium comprising about 19 firms. The Lagos State government was required to pay only 10 percent of this money, while the balance was to be paid by the consortium. After the overthrow of the civilian government, the Air Commodore Gbolahan Mudasiru government in Lagos State set up three committees to look at the viability of the project and all of them recommended it highly. But the next thing the nation heard was that it’s been scrapped and no reason whatsoever was given! Year later, the late Mudasiru spoke publicly about the matter revealing that he had all the intention to continue with it, but that he was specifically directed by General Buhari to cancel it without giving a reason at the time and without consultation with other members of the Supreme Military Council or his cabinet. When Buhari was questioned about this during his last presidential campaign, his spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin initially said Buhari knew nothing about the cancellation of the rail project, as it was entirely the decision of the Madisiru government in Lagos State. But later, Buhari himself contradicted his spokesperson when he addressed his associates thereafter, claiming he indeed cancelled the project, but only did so, because his government did not want to take more loans or devalue the naira. At some other time, he said he cancelled it, because the contract was over-inflated. He presented no evidence whatsoever for this claim and could not explain why the cancellation of this project ultimately cost the government about $100 million comprising money already paid by the Lagos State Government as part of its commitment to the deal and also monies paid in damages and compensation to the French firms as a result of legal wrangles over the cancelation. That tells us the extent Buhari would go to pursue an agenda to deprive Lagos or the South what he thinks would give it economic advantage, even where the value can be clearly seen by all. Today, 30 years after, we are still discussing the metroline for Lagos. Ultimately, when the Buhari government could not come up with any viable economic programme, it resorted to the politicization of its economic ignorance by selling the notion that the government was a bulwark against the imperialist Bretton Woods institutions. But that can only take you so far, because while fighting the international community and international financial institutions over differences in policies that could have been resolved with a better and more intelligent engagement with all national and international stakeholders, the austerity measures the regime introduced made it quite impossible for the manufacturing sector to procure raw material in the face of the international capital market being closed against Nigeria. Industries were closing, left, right and centre and capacity utilization was below 18 percent and at every point, the government was seeking scapegoats for its woes in the form of politicians, illegal aliens, smugglers and currency traffickers, etc. But the reality was there for all to see in workers being retrenched in every sector and even in the public sector. I remember at the time how drastically our lives changed as university students as we dramatically witnessed the rise in the prices of fees, feeding, accommodation and procurement of books, even as the lack of these books became the norm. Inflation hit the roof and essential commodities became scarce. The regime’s key economic policy in response to all this was to resort to the medieval counter-trade economic policy. But this became the new corruption point for the regime presided over by the new import licence czar, Mahmud Tukur. Attempts by some bold journalists to report on the corruption in the counter-trade deals were met with unprecedented brutality. They were picked up and threatened with charges of economic sabotage as a warning to their other colleagues. For those who keep talking of the Buhari regime as being anti-corruption, why don’t they ask themselves what the Buhari government had to hide by promulgation of Decree 4, which required that journalists simply don’t publish anything that would embarrass public officials and against which truth is no defence? Note that there was no Decree banning public officials from doing things that would embarrass Nigeria and Nigerians, but there was one punishing members of the Fourth Estate for reporting anything that would embarrass them. The truth is elements of his government routinely breached most of the Decrees his government made. Was it not Buhari that made a law against anyone below the age of 18 going on hajj only for the nation to see Idiagbon’s 14-year old son return with him from Mecca at the time of the coup that toppled them? The same impunity was witnessed over the 53 suitcases affair. The story was that in April 1984, against the prevailing law at the time, Buhari sent his aide-de-camp, Major Mustapha Jokolo to go and forcefully clear without Customs’ inspection 53 suitcases belonging to Jokolo’s father, the then Emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Haruna Al-Rasheed who was coming in from Saudi Arabia. The Customs Area Administrator at the time was Abubakar Atiku who alerted the press and the nation to this. Now, over the years, different accounts have been given about what happened, but there are facts not in doubt, basically because these are the things admitted by the principal participants in the affair. I believe no matter what one believes, if we honestly piece the facts or admitted facts together, we would get a reasonable idea of what happened or what likely happened and no matter how we dice it the facts did not exonerate Buhari. The background to this was one retroactive law that the Buhari regime made at the time – The Exchange Control (Anti-Sabotage) Decree (1984), which was seemingly an update of a former law - The Exchange Control (Anti-Sabotage) Decree (1977) – but, which in this new incarnation was a retroactive law punishing supposed offences as far back as October 1, 1979. But in this instance, it was not the retroactivity in issue, but it’s actual implementation for an offence suspected at that moment. At that time, as part of rigorous implementation of the law, stricter guidelines for inspections of luggage at the airport for departing and incoming passengers were being implemented and no one was to be spared. Coincidentally, on the day of the incidence, an order to close the borders had been issued by the Buhari government, because Nigeria was changing currency supposedly as part of the effort to beat counterfeiters and to force politicians suspected of hiding huge amounts of stolen naira to bring them out to change so they can be nabbed or not change them and lose them and so on. On a flight to Nigeria from Saudi Arabia on the day was the Emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Haruna Al-Rasheed. Buhari’s account was reported in The News of July 5, 1993. He said Jokolo didn’t even want to go and meet his father at the airport originally, but he had to prevail on him to go: “I said, Mustapha, your father is coming back today, would you not go and meet him, he said no sir. I said you have to go and meet your father, he is your father, and he went. Unfortunately there was a misunderstanding between the customs officers and the soldiers there. These people never refused their bags to be checked.” Mustapha Jokolo’s latter-day account was given in the Sun Newspaper of 17 December 2011. He corroborated General Buhari’s account that he ordered him to go and welcome his father, but with a little more detail: “I have said several times in the last twenty something years that I was innocent of everything. Now, it has turned round that somebody like Prof. Wole Soyinka wrote a book saying that I was smarter than Vice President Atiku. It was wrong of Wole Soyinka to say it happened in Kano. Look, in 1984, my father traveled to London for medical check up. He had an entourage of about 13 people. After his operation, he moved to Saudi Arabia for Umrah, the lesser hajj. On his way back, he was on the same flight with Ambassador Dahiru Waziri who was the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia for six years. “He was appointed State Chief of Protocol and so, was moving back with his entire family. So, he decided to come with them on the same aircraft. Around that time, there was currency change because of the poor economy of the country and the naira was all over the place. We had no control over our economy. The government planned a secret operation to change the colour of the currency. All borders were closed and that was the time when this aircraft was landing. When it came in, I remember we were about to play squash with Buhari, Idiagbon and others. “Then Buhari asked me if my father was not coming back that day. I said ‘Yes sir, we have already sent people to bring him back. He said ‘Are you not going to receive him? I said ‘No sir and he said I should go and receive him. He gave me orders to go and receive him. “So, I asked Captain Maitama who was the Commander of the Brigade of Guard to accompany me. So, two of us drove to the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos. While there, I saw some officers who were going on course to the United States. Colonel Walbe was the one who arranged that course. “While we were there, I was told that the aircraft had landed and was also told that they had some problems at the baggage area. When I went with Captain Maitama, I saw some Customs officers with some of our people and I asked what the problem was. They said that the Customs said that they were not allowed to check the luggage. I asked why, every luggage here should be checked. They said those ones on the ground had been checked, but that there were some that were taken away from the aircraft itself in a truck direct from the State House without coming through the customs area. I said whose luggage were they and they said it belong to State Protocol. “One ASP Saidu Gella who also was from Adamawa state like the Chief of Protocol was the Luggage officer in the State House. He was the one who went with Maigari to collect the luggage direct from the aircraft without coming through the Customs. I said ‘Is there anyway you can call them? Unfortunately, we do not have the mobile telephone at that time. I asked if they had walkie talkie and they said they had none. “So, I said I was not here for him and asked if they had cleared these ones and he said they had cleared them. ‘Can we go? and they said ‘You can go. I swear to Almighty Allah, if there is anything other than this, may God strike me dead. May he not forgive me my sins. That was all that I knew about all that happened. The following day, we read in the newspapers that there were 35 suitcases that passed through Customs without clearance. “The Emir did not come with 35 suit cases. It was the Chief of Protocol, Dahiru Waziri, whose luggage were taken away from the aircraft straight to his house without going through customs. The Emirs baggage were not more than 12. All of them had one piece each because they had landed them there. Whatever shopping they did before, they transported them from London in an aircraft and they received them. So, we had cleared their luggage before. At this time, they were in London when there was this ban. When they finished, before they left, there was this border closure. “They had nothing to do with the 35 suit cases. When we cleared their luggage, they had not closed the border and so, they came with single baggage of their dresses. We did not allow what was going on. Then, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the present Vice President was Area Administrator at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport. He was the one who came on air to say it was an Emir from the North who brought not 35, but 53 suitcases. Onalaope Soleye was the Finance Minister. To date that I am talking to you, nobody has asked me to answer anything. “I think there was power play at that time and there were many interest groups. There were people who were trying to bring Buhari down. Buharis half brother was on the Emirs entourage who was father to Alhaji Mamman, same mother with Buhari. People knew about it. So, he was the target. Then, they started mentioning the Emir of Daura, but it was Buharis brother who was in the group. Now, Ambassador Dahiru Waziri was colleague to Ambassador Rafindadi who was the Director General of NSO. On their own part, they were trying to cover the Ambassador. “Another angle to it was that Atiku was aiming to be Director of Customs, while Abubakar Musa was Director of Customs. If he was painted in bad light, if Atiku presented himself as the champion of the discovery, Abubakar Musa being from Sokoto, would be painted black and possibly he would be removed and automatically, Atiku would be made Director of Customs. So, you see, there were three interest groups. One, people who are trying to paint Buhari black by referring to the Emir of Daura in the accusation. There was a mention of the Emir of Daura, but they knew it was Buharis brother, but they didnt have the courage to mention Buharis brother, Alhaji Dauda. There are people like Atiku who were out to get the Director of Customs and there was Rafindadi, the Director General of NSO who was trying to protect his own friend, the State Chief of Protocol whom he brought to Buhari. “He never knew State Chief of Protocol and since I was there, my father was not the victim, but me. To get access to Buhari, they had to get me first. This is all part of power play and the whole thing was like that. It was being sponsored within the military itself. For example, when Chief Awolowos house was searched, Buhari never knew about it. He read it on the pages of newspapers. It was carried out by a group of military officers who arranged for Chief Awolowos house to be searched. They knew Buhari would not come out to say ‘I didnt order it. So, it was power play and I had no opportunity to defend myself because I was not allowed to speak”. At some other time, he said this when questioned about the incident: “…I have thrown enough light that the sun itself will be extinguished by the light that has been thrown on this issue. If you believe it, you believe it. If you don’t, you don’t. No matter what I say it will not change anything. But I will like to say just one thing. That thing happened when Buhari was the Head of State and the people who were involved in it were the people close to him. I was his aide-de-camp. The next persons were his Chief of Protocol, Ambassador Dahiru Waziri who is late; the Director General NSO Rafindadi who is also late and Alhaji Abubakar Atiku, the former Vice President. Atiku was the one who fired the salvo. After they said it was 35, he said 53. The man who brought these 53 suitcases was Dahiru Waziri. He was from Adamawa State”. Now, a truly honest review of the facts would show that it’s not a case of whether or not we believe Buhari and Jokolo; it’s the fact of what they admit. There is no argument that in the same flight with the Emir of Gwandu were Buhari’s brother, Alhaji Dauda Buhari (who was father to Alhaji Mamman Daura, the chap I had mentioned as one of Buhari’s links to the ‘Kaduna Mafia’), Buhari’s newly appointed Chief of Protocol, Alhaji Dahiru Waziri and right there at the airport was Alhaji Lawal Rafindadi. Now, why was everyone so quick to point the accusing finger at Alhaji Dahiru Waziri? Why was the head of the nation’s secret service, a man who would have been privy to the government’s order, be quick to tell the world that he was the one trying to cover up for a friend while at the same time, Mustapha Jokolo sent there by the head of state and a supposed witness of everything ordered not to speak? Why did Rafindadi take this rap on behalf of Alhaji Dahiru Waziri and why was he not sacked for this, but instead rewarded with more power? Why would people be scared of mentioning Buhari’s brother as claimed by Jokolo? Does it now matter if it was 35 bags as indirectly claimed by Jokolo or 53 as claimed by Atiku who was the official on the spot and the man more likely to know? Atiku has insisted ever since that they were 53 bags and that they belonged to the Emir of Gwandu. But whether Jokolo and the pro-Buhari people contest this or not is irrelevant, what is relevant is that the Buhari’s Chief of Protocol was admitted by the Buhari people as the chap who took the bags (35 or 53) uninspected through Customs and at a time when the media was filled with stories that the bags contained foreign currencies. As the Chief of Protocol in State House, he had no immunity and as a Nigerian ambassador at that moment on Nigerian soil, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) does not grant him immunity, so if this was the case as it was, why was this man not questioned? Why did Buhari just allow him to resume as his Chief of Protocol without giving Nigerians any reason for his action? Why were the bags not searched even after? And more crucially, why would the head of the NSO be involved in such a shady business? Why would he admit to such a thing and still get no query? The answer is obvious, whether the bags were 35 or 53 or whether they belonged to the Emir of Gwandu or Alhaji Dahiru Waziri, the Buhari administration’s handling of the affair and the dramatis personae involved shows the government fully had a hand in it. Indeed, Jokolo’s attempt at an analysis and his conjectures merely confirms, even if inadvertently, that the Buhari government had a hand in it. First, his conjectures about Abubakar Atiku couldn’t have been true, because the man was no near the hierarchy of the Customs at the time. He was only the Customs Area Administrator based at the Lagos Airport Customs Command. At that place, he was not a threat to Abubakar Musa, the then Customs boss. True, he did rise to the position of one of six Deputy Directors in 1987 and was said to have left in April 1989 when he was overlooked for the headship of the organization, but that timeframe is totally out of our consideration. The point is in April 1984 when the incident in question happened he was not in a position to aspire to head the Customs. In his account by his biographer, Onukoba Adinoyi-Ojo, Atiku maintained his position and claimed he was under tremendous pressure to deny the incidence after, but he refused. What saved Atiku at the time was that one of the regime’s godfathers, the late Major General Shehu Yar’Adua (ret), was also his own godfather. At any rate, the Abubakar Musa angle has no bearing on the issue, except if Jokolo isn’t telling us the whole truth. I mean, he was the Custom’s boss quite alright, but there was no mention of him in the saga. He was not at the airport and was not on the scene on the day neither is anyone saying he had been told before hand what was to transpire. So, why would Atiku doing anything as part of his duty as a Customs officer affect his own position in any way? (Cont) …
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 00:35:17 +0000
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