EVENTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF BUHARI AS HEAD OF STATE, VERY STRAIGHT FORWARD AND UPRIGHT LEADER. -Buhari made it very clear he would not be doing any business with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and had no need of their bogey loans which are in reality, bosom traps (IBB would later gladly take them). Buhari instead, advocated for barter and direct countertrade with Brazil and other nations of the Third World. He was more interested in bartering oil for technology, spare parts and raw materials. Naturally, that pitched him against the West even if that meant good news for the economy of the worlds most populous black nation. However, this move was severely criticized by people like General Olusegun Obasanjo and Major-General James Oluleye. -Clamping down on the press: It was not funny at all for journalists during the Buhari regime. Decrees upon decrees ensured that if your pen danced too much, you will go and sing the rest of your Awilo in jail. The Guardian, which was one of the most liberal newspapers at that time had many of their writers imprisoned. Some of the decrees (like the obnoxious Decree 4 of 1984, called the Public Officials (Protection Against False Accusation Decree)) were quite ridiculous in the sense that you will go to jail if you write and publish a story that was embarrassing to the government, even if that story was true, as it was in the case of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor of The Guardian when they wrote article about military officers sent to diplomatic posts overseas. For me, that is excessive, you dont need to put stew on jollof rice na...lol! -Restriction of freedom and deprivation of fundamental human rights: According to the Decree Number 2 (1984), the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree, the Chief of Staff (Idiagbon) had the power to detain, without formal charges, anyone deemed to be a security risk for up to three months. Ha! When we are not living in Pyongyang...lol! But please note that this decree has been existing since the time of Ironsi. Using the instrumentality of this decree, journalists were hounded and jailed while about a dozen press houses were closed down (Beko Ransome-Kuti, Tai Solarin and Haroun Adamu were all jailed under this decree). The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) were proscribed. Lobatan! Also, industrial actions were banned, demonstrations were not allowed and if you organize public protests, you will sing ohun oju mi ri lAlagbon more than Orlando Owoh. But how was the dictatorial regime of Buhari able to do this? There was the National Security Organization (NSO), Nigerias first secret police service, which was on hand to intimidate, harass, detain, punish protesters/demonstrators, students, lecturers, critics, activists and civil servants who dared embark on strikes. It was so bad that by October 1984, about 200,000 civil servants had been retrenched. -Corrupt civilian governors and ministers under the Shagari government were all rounded up by Buhari and jailed but without trial. IBB would later release them in droves...lol! Funny kontiri. President Shagari himself and his vice, Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme were slammed with corruption charges. -Expulsion of foreigners: About 700,000 foreigners, especially from Ghana and other West African nations were expelled from Nigeria following an announcement on the 15th of April 1985. The Internal Affairs Minister dropped the bombshell and illegal immigrants had to scurry to meet the deadline of 10th May. The exodus was massive but it was not the first time it would occur. -Death sentence for drug mules: The Buhari regime is also notorious for sentencing to death those convicted of drug trafficking with Decree 20. However, nothing caused more uproar than the retroactive application of the laws even though this has been disputed. Bartholomew Owoh, Bernard Ogedengbe and Lawal Ojulope were made to face the firing squad. Some argue that Owoh was the only one arrested BEFORE the promulgation of the decree. In April 1985, six Nigerians were convicted by a Special Military Tribunal headed by Justice Adebayo Adesalu and condemned to death for drug trafficking: Mrs. Sidikatu Tairi, Miss Sola Oguntayo, Oladele Omosebi, Lasunkanmi Awolola, Jimi Adebayo and Gladys Iyamah. I remember clearly one of the women fainting upon hearing the death sentence and prison officials had to come to her rescue. Gladys Iyamah, locked up at the Federal Maximum Security Prisons in Kirikiri, Lagos, was a crippled mother of two and was the first woman in the history of Nigeria to be sentenced to death. The Federal Military Government knew the implication of executing a paralysed mother of two and the sentence was secretly approved. But thankfully, it was never carried out. -War Against Indiscipline (WAI): On the 20th of March 1984, the Buhari/Idiagbon regime launched this programme that many Nigerians will remember biting their fingers and desperately preventing a tear from dropping ….lmao! Not a few will forget the koboko (horse whip) lashes that lacerated their backs when they became unruly at bus-stops or littered the environment. And if you fail to do the environmental sanitation activities at that time, you don enter one chance be dat. Just pray that a miracle will occur and Idiagbons WAI Brigades (set up in each state under the Ministry of Information and Culture) do not catch you. The essence of WAI was to instill discipline and order in a society that has now all but broken down as far as morality and etiquette were concerned. Today, indiscipline and entropy reign in the Nigerian society. Even while outside the country, quite a lot of Nigerians are thoroughly indisciplined, shouting at airports, making noise inside the aircraft (or refusing to switch off phones or use seat belts), fighting over things that will leave you smh..ing, not obeying simple instructions in their host countries and all sorts of abanilojuje behaviour. Nigeria surely needs a new version of WAI, with vigorous implementation from the Presidency downwards because the level of entropy today is alarming. Soldiers beat up policemen, civilians are regularly harassed by uniformed men to the point that many bloody civilians think it is a normal thing...and so on, and so on. WAI was first launched in Kano by the late Major General Tunde Idiagbon. As far as the Buhari regime was concerned, indiscipline was the major obstacle to Nigerias social, political and economic development and that if national development was to be made, then Nigerians must (whether they like it or not) accept discipline as a way of life at a personal, government, corporate and institutional levels. Even if they made some mistakes, they were right about that one, and today, our society still stinks to the high heavens with indiscipline. Yes, and a megadose of corruption. The WAI programme was executed under five phases: -Queue culture (it really annoys me when I get to an ATM and we cannot form just a single line. We just crowd round the whole machine and start saying Ehs, Aunty, Ayudilastpesinondilayn? Please ayam at your back then you go sit down or hang somewhere and have yeye gist with a friend, wasting precious time of national productivity. I am yet to get to an ATM and see Nigerians queue up neatly in a line, not to talk of campus bus- stops, iyen tie worse or filling stations. So much chaos everywhere). -Work ethic (unless you threaten civil servants with query and sack, many will not arrive punctually or prefer to sell all sorts of things in the office, from Tianshi herbal tea to GNLD vitamins. But honestly, can you really blame them?) -Nationalism and patriotism (for where? Nbo? Pa kini? Kilonjebe?) If a slave ship berths today at Apapa and the sailor calls that it is a slave ship going to America, it will be full in less than 30 minutes. -Corruption and economic sabotage (dat one na one a per-second basis) -Environmental sanitation (go and tell that one to Governor Theodore Ahamefule Orji, the Ochendu Ibeku, the Ohazurume of Abia South and the Utuagbaigwe of Ngwaland (our leaders and megalomania of pathological proportions sha). Just make sure that tourists do not see those mountains of dirt and refuse in Aba. Ariaria International Market nko? Make I no talk sef). Same goes for Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State. This one that they haff opened Soprait and many pipu will go and do som sopin, I just hope that the Mount Kilimanjaro of refuse in Ibadan do not become an Everest overnight. Ajumodoti o kin shey inkan toda o...lol! #JustSaying...lol! Not that other states are extremely neat too o...lol! Buhari and Idiagbon focused on these five areas with their WAI policy. They no doubt had good intentions to instil a cultural revolution and value reorientation into the psyche of the Nigerian but it was not to be. And it remains so, as you read this. -Also, General Buhari dealt mercilessly with religious fundamentalists during his era. In February and March 1984, the Maitatsine sect under the leadership of Musa Makaniki unleashed terror on the populace in Yola, Adamawa State and about 1,000 lives were lost. Buhari had to send in federal troops to crush the extremists. A similar event would occur in 1985 under Buhari. -On the 3rd of February, 1984, members of the National Security Organization (NSO) arrested an American businesswoman, Mrs. Marie McBroom at gunpoint. The lady was on Nigerian soil during the December coup and decided to stay behind and finish her business deals involving food material and petroleum for her import-export enterprise that she just opened. She was not the only one arrested, there was another female tycoon, Dorothy Davies and both of them were accused of trying to buy crude oil without getting a licence for export. Both were bundled to an interrogation unit at the NSO headquarters before being flung into the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons. Davies spent 40 days and 40 nights...lol in jail before she was released while the American woman languished in jail for nine good months before she was arraigned before a military panel made up of four members on the 30th of November, 1984. Probably more than any other body in the nation, the NSO was granted incredibly wide powers of arrest and detention and decrees were handed out to back this. There was the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree Number 2 of 1984, under which the NSO could detain anyone they feel is a security risk. Under this obnoxious and tyrannical decree, one can be detained for three straight months in two tranches which could be renewed. There was also the authoritarian Decree 4 under which it was a punishable offence for anyone to publish any material that was deemed as embarrassing to any government official. On the 11th of April, 1984, operatives of the NSO arrested two journalists: Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, of the Guardian newspaper and before you could spell KAI, they were brought before a Special Military Tribunal led by Justice Olalere Ayinde and accused of falsely accusing public officials even if what the journalists wrote was on point. on the 2nd of June, 1984, a summon from the tribunal was sent to the accused and it read: Form 2 Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree No. 4 of 1984 summon to accused. That you Tunde Thompson and Nduka Iraboh of The Guardian Newspaper, Limited, Rutam House, Isolo on April 1, 1984 at Rutam House, Isolo in Lagos, did publish “False statement contrary to section 1(1) of the Decree No. 4 of 1984. You are therefore summoned to appear before the Tribunal mentioned above sitting at Federal High Court on the 4th day of June at the hour of 9.00 a.m in the forenoon to answer the said complaint. Their employer, Guardian Newspapers Limited was also accused. -The Umaru Dikko Affair: On the 5th of July, 1984, a team of Nigerian security operatives (led by Major Mohammed Yusufu) and Israeli katsas (field intelligence officers from the MOSSAD, Israels national intelligence agency, also called the worlds most efficient killing machine) were on hand to kidnap and bundle back to Nigeria, a former minister of transportation during the Shagari era (as Shagaris in-law, he also had extreme influence in the government). His name is Alhaji Umar Dikko. After Shagari was overthrown, Dikko vanished into the thin air only to resurface in the United Kingdom where he stayed in exile.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 16:47:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015