Buhari and the 2015 polls (2): By Douglas Anele Such approach is usually justified with the biblical formula, “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Modern educators and experts in the psychology of learning have discovered that the biblical case for corporal punishment as a method for inculcating discipline and good behaviour in children is overstated; that in most cases, the fear and hatred of authority induced in the child or learner produces long-term psychological damage which outweighs attitudinal benefits derivable therefrom. Furthermore, such method provides a sado-narcissistic outlet for the craving for power or vengeance, and for venting frustrations arising from thwarted fundamental emotions. Thus, there is little to gain by resorting to largely ineffectual atavistic methods as a means of inculcating what Gen. Buhari mispronounces as “dis’pline.” Gen. Buhari displayed a high degree of bias and favouritism in his treatment of prominent politicians when he seized power in 1984. For example, whereas former President Shehu Shagari was kept under house arrest in Ikoyi, his second in command, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, was thrown into Kirikiri prison. In 1984 when his government closed the country’s borders shortly after the coup, it set up roadblocks nationwide ostensibly to prevent corrupt politicians of the second republic from escaping “justice.” However, it appears that Buhari’s dragnet was porous after all, judging by the manner in which stalwarts of the ruling National Party of Nigeria, including Uba Ahmed and Adisa Akinloye, escaped from it. If Buhari could not stop ordinary civilians from escaping his so-called airtight security network, how can any sensible person believe he can liquidate the rampaging deadly Boko Haram? Nigerians should not forget for one moment the deliberate humiliating treatment, of Dr. Tai Solarin, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Adekunle Ajasin, the Emir of Kano and Oni of Ife by Gen. Buhari’s regime. Dr. Tai Solarin’s case is very pathetic indeed. Here was a fearless atheist who showed by example that one can lead a simple life of probity, integrity and intellectual honesty without the obscurantisms of organised religion. He did nothing wrong; yet, he was incarcerated and denied access to medication for his asthma. Also, security operatives raided the house of Chief Awolowo and seized his passport, which prevented him from going abroad for medical check up, for no good reason, whereas Chief Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who was never part of Shagari’s government and did not steal any money, was imprisoned without justification. No matter how assiduously Buhari and his henchmen want to deny it or explain it away, Buhari’s tenure was a celebration of selective injustice. At a time when his government decreed that nothing comes in or goes out of the country until the changeover of our national currency had been completed, Buhari proved he was still tied to the apron-strings of the feudalist Northern establishment. Prof. Wole Soyinka’s description of the fifty-three suitcases saga is relevant in this regard: “Not only did Buhari dispatch his aide-de-camp, Jokolo – later to become an emir – to facilitate the entry of those cases, he ordered the redeployment – as I later discovered – of the Customs Officer who stood firmly against the entry of the contravening luggage.” That officer, Atiku Abubakar, seems to have forgotten his ordeal in the hands of Buhari: he has chosen to support the former maximum ruler after losing out in APC’s presidential primaries – a big mistake, in my candid opinion. Buhari has never hidden his unalloyed support for the introduction of sharia law in a pluralistic society such as ours. On several occasions, he was unequivocal that Islamic law should be implemented in Southern Nigeria as well. Every reasonable person knows that it would be disastrous for Nigeria as we know it if Buhari’s puritanical Islamic predilections were actualised. Some media commentators living in cloud cuckoo land argue that religion should not be an issue in the coming elections. That argument cannot hold water, because Nigeria presently is a faith-intoxicated society in which religion plays a prominent part in people’s lives. Besides, shortly before the 2011 elections when Buhari was quoted in the media as enjoining Muslims to vote for Muslims, he definitely made religion an important criterion for electoral choices. Nor should Nigerians ignore the implication of the fact that Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, proposed Buhari as one of the few “trusted” Nigerians he would be willing to negotiate with in any ceasefire discussion with the federal government. When the Buhari camp presents him to the public as a man of integrity or as a detribalised Nigerian who stands by his words, I wonder whether they were referring to the former military dictator or to someone else whose surname is also ‘Buhari.’ I have argued elsewhere that Buhari’s repudiation of his earlier pledge not to contest the presidency for an unprecedented fourth time is a negation of his reputation as a man who keeps his word. Now I want to reinforce the argument by his critics that Buhari is an ethnic jingoist who looks at national issues with rigid North-tinted spectacles – if Buhari is elected, he would likely see himself as President for the North, before seeing himself as the leader of Nigeria. For instance, Buhari’s Supreme Military Council was decidedly pro-North: of the sixteen members, eleven were Northerners while five were from the South. As Chairman of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund, over seventy percent of PTF’s projects were executed in the North, despite the fact that crude oil was extracted from the South, particularly the Niger Delta area. Buhari affirmed sometime ago, without providing any iota of evidence, that the Boko Haram phenomenon was a strategic plan by President Jonathan’s government to destroy the North. Also, in an interview aired by Radio Liberty of Kaduna, Buhari demanded that the federal government should stop fighting Boko Haram, and that its members should be rehabilitated like the Niger Delta militants, without considering that funds for implementing the amnesty programme were derived from the Niger Delta, and the wide difference between the agenda of the two groups. In his own words: “They [the Niger Delta militants]were trained in some skills and were given employment, and the ones in the north were being killed and their houses were being demolished.” Thus, it is very unlikely that Buhari would be willing to crush Boko Haram if he were elected President. Now, there is nothing wrong for Buhari or any Northerner to fight for the interest of the North. What we demand is that other parts of the country should not be treated unfairly just to satisfy Northern interests. Anyway, whose interests has the ruling Northern elite of which Gen. Buhari is a prominent member been protecting since independence? Answer: the bulimic interests of conservative and feudalist Northern establishment, not those of the toiling masses, the talakawas and almajiris. From the foregoing, it can be inferred that projection of Buhari as a suitable replacement for the incumbent President cannot succeed because of his grievously flawed anti-democratic antecedents and puritanical orientation. Now, I want to address two other aspects of the Buhari candidacy to which APC supporters have responded in a manner that actually leaves level-headed Nigerians shocked with profound disbelief. It is pathetic to read Dr. Dele Sobowale of Sunday Vanguard and Babtunde Fashola, out-going governor of Lagos state disparage President Jonathan’s educational qualifications as if his possession of a doctorate degree is totally meaningless. Dr. Sobowale made the ridiculous claim that Zoology, the discipline in which the President got his doctorate, is an unimportant inferior course of study relative to medicine and pharmacy, thus betraying his ignorance of the intellectual advantages writing a successful PhD thesis confers on the individual. To be cocluded tomorrow νDr. Anele teaches at the University of Lagos Original link Read More goo.gl/WqfSNi (y) ✍comment ☏share
Posted on: Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:17:46 +0000
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