By Simon Imobo-Tswam<\/p>\n
The name Muhammadu\u00a0 Buhari is not an ordinary name – it is a brand. And
\nthe man bearing it is not ordinary either: since his advent on the
\nnational consciousness in 1975 when he emerged as the military governor of
\nNorth-Eastern State (now Borno and Yobe), he has continued to engage our
\nattention as minister, coup-plotter, commander-in-chief, high-profile
\ndetainee, religious puritan, politician, and now an elected president and
\nNigeria’s chief medical tourist!<\/p>\n
And, in the corresponding period too, he has acquired the traits of an
\nascetic and the reputation of: a man of truth, known in Hausa language as:
\nMai-Gaskiya. In the Nigerian society, where greed and gluttony are the
\ncommonest attributes in the public space; and where honesty and truth have
\nalmost gone on permanent exile, being an Ascetic and Mai-Gaskiya are
\nunique selling points indeed!<\/p>\n
Today, Mai-Gaskiya has become his title. When you mention Mai-Gaskiya, no
\none asks: who is that? It is automatically known to be Buhari. This is a
\ngreat endorsement from the public. This greatness is better appreciated
\nwhen juxtaposed against the backdrop of other names that the Hausas call
\nformer Nigerian leaders: Barai, Mai-Giya etc!<\/p>\n
But something important must be pointed out: the sobering truth is that
\nwhen people call Gen.\/President M’Buhari Mai-Gaskiya, it is because,
\ncompared to the average Nigerian leader, they reason that he is relatively
\nbetter – not that he doesn’t lie.<\/p>\n
So, Mai-Gaskiya is a really a mob-title, a garland of popular endorsement
\nfrom the masses of Nigerians, especially the Northern hordes of the
\nTalakawas.<\/p>\n
So, what does this mean? It means the title is really without serious
\nscrutiny or interrogation. This is because if we interrogate this title,
\nwe may realize that it applies more in the department of financial
\nintegrity – and no more! And if this uninterrogated public perception is
\nthe main basis of a Buhari resurgence, if this is the sole basis for a
\nBuhari presidency, it means his leadership accent has been uninterrogated!<\/p>\n
As I write this, there is no better reference than the account of Gen.
\nBuhari’s defining\u00a0 exchanges with President Shagari and the civilian
\ngovernor of Old Plateau State, Chief Solomon Lar! The account is preserved
\nfor us by the chief publicist of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Chief
\nEbenezer Babatope, in his book.<\/p>\n
We are informed of how a brave military officer with the 3rd Mechanized
\nDivision of the Nigeria Army had, sometime in 1983, confided in the then
\nGov. Solomon Daushep Lar of Plateau State that Gen. Buhari, then the
\nGeneral Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Division, was leading out his men
\non coup-warm ups in the small hours before daybreak!<\/p>\n
Gov. Lar now dutifully reported the matter to President Shagari, who
\nhappened to be visiting Plateau on a State Visit at the time. The normal
\nthing was for Shagari to order the security agencies to handle it, but the
\npresident chose to handle it his own way – the way he handled everything:
\neconomy, governance, security etc!<\/p>\n
And\u00a0 when, upon return to Lagos, the\u00a0 president summoned Buhari and asked
\nhim, the GOC naturally disavowed knowledge of any coup, even reportedly
\nswearing his innocence on the Qur’an, and offering to resign his
\ncommission i.e. from the army! And Shagari believed him – but which devout
\nMoslem\u00a0 wouldn’t believe a man like that?<\/p>\n
And Shagari, ever na\u00efve (will someone pardon me?), and believing that what
\nhe wouldn’t do, another wouldn’t too, accepted Buhari’s explanation, and
\nstopped him from prematurely disengaging from the army! If Shagari had
\nbeen presidential, if he were commanding like a commander-in-chief,\u00a0 the
\npolitical history of Nigeria would have different! But he did not!<\/p>\n
And although, he didn’t have to, the president further revealed to Buhari
\nthat the allegation of his crime against the State came from Gov. Lar!
\nBuhari returned to Jos to rudely and angrily confront Lar. A shocked Lar
\nhandled it as best as he could, and the matter died a natural death. Or so
\nit seemed.<\/p>\n
As it were, President Shagari did not relieve Buhari of his command of the
\nDivision; and neither did he even transfer him out of Jos; but what made
\nthe matter worse was that the matter didn’t even reach the Nigerian
\nSecurity Organization (NSO), the ancestor of the present SSS, for
\nfollow-up!<\/p>\n
But this was Buhari that had, without authorisation from either his
\nCommander-in-Chief nor his Chief of Army Staff, invaded Chad in 1982 or
\nthereabouts to, as he is often quoted, “teach the Chadian soldiers a
\nbitter lesson.”<\/p>\n
President Shagari had not shown leadership then – under a different
\ncommander-in-chief, that would have been the end of Buhari’s military
\ncareer, and whatever promises it held. And in this sensitive Solomon Lar
\nissue too, Shagari didn’t show leadership.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, it would seem these leadership omissions or presidential
\nweaknesses formed the basis upon which Brigadier Sani Abacha would accuse
\nShagari, in his first coup-speech, of “ineptitude!”<\/p>\n
President Shagari wanted a second term, and his focus was on the UPN, and
\nits organizational wizard, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He forgot that there
\nwere really only two political parties then: the NPN and the Army! But in
\nhis naivety, he focused on the party that was the weakest i.e. the UPN, a
\nparty without guns or even gunpowder!<\/p>\n
Well, a few months later, Abacha made his infamous announcement, toppling
\nthe reelected government of Shehu Shagari; and who became the Head of
\nState? The innocent Gen. Buhari! And Buhari’s Fulani mind remembered
\n(recall Nasir\u00a0 el Rufa’i and his theory?): the new Head of State kept the
\nmild-mannered ex-President under comfortable House Arrest, but made sure
\nSolomon Lar received special attention of a different kind! (But then, who
\nwouldn’t?).<\/p>\n
But it is interesting to note that nature is not blind, and what goes
\nround, as they say, comes round. And so, by and by, it was pay-back time.
\nBrig. Abacha was close to Gen. Buhari, but even much closer was Gen.
\nIbrahim Babangida, popularly known as IBB – the dashing and daring
\nOgbomosho armoured-corps\u00a0 officer, who had adopted Niger as his state, and
\nbecame a Northerner, in consequence!<\/p>\n
Security reports also indicated that IBB was plotting a coup against him;
\nand Buhari too asked “Ibrahim” about it, but the wily IBB denied it! (who
\nconfesses? Ask: Gen. Madiebo, Col. Ifeajuna, Col. Banjo, Gen. Diya….) It
\nwas the classic case of a “conny man” pitched\u00a0 against another “conny
\nman!”<\/p>\n
In fact, IBB, after his avowals of innocence and pledges of eternal
\nloyalty, took permission from Buhari, his Commander-in-Chief, to tour
\nmilitary formations across the country. And it was during these tours that
\nIBB, ironically, put finishing touches to the coup!<\/p>\n
So, the IBB coup was what some people may term: Opendential! Today, we can
\nsay it was the first coup-tour in our history or the history of
\ncoup-making in the country!<\/p>\n
And after his ouster, Buhari swore that he “would never forgive
\nBabangida,” but Shagari, another fellow-Moslem, moved on after Buhari’s
\nlie and treachery – believing that “Allah permits everything!”<\/p>\n
If Buhari made peace with IBB after 30 years, it is not because his Fulani
\nheart suddenly became forgiving or it got larger – it is because political
\nconsiderations made it imperative! And it paid off handsomely.<\/p>\n
And Gen. Buhari promised, after 2011, that he would never vie for the
\npresidency again, but he did. And he neither alluded to the broken promise
\nduring the 2015 campaigns nor explained to the people the circumstances
\nthat necessitated his dramatic change of mind. But a broken promise is
\nanother name for a lie!<\/p>\n
Today, Mai-Gaskiya is in the UK, may be he is even England… where we are
\ntold he is holidaying. And we are further told that he is “hale and
\nhearty,” but he needs our prayers to recover! (As if we can or we need to
\nrecover from good health!).<\/p>\n
And he is not in the hospital, but he is undergoing so serious medical
\ntests that he dares not return home to his country and people and mandate!<\/p>\n
There are breaking stories of how he routes his international flights
\nthrough the United Kingdom so he can see his doctors there without
\narousing public\u00a0 suspicions over one medical tests too many! Today, the
\nbiggest irony is that Mai-Gaskiya, Nigeria’s paramount campaigner against
\nmedical tourism, has become the nation’s\u00a0 paramount medical tourist!<\/p>\n
Politics or political incumbency has a way of demystifying human heroes,
\nespecially heroes that are derivatives of hasty, even emotional,
\nmythographical construction. The overwhelming realities of political
\noffice make super-men become ordinary fellows; it turns demagogues or the
\ndesperadoes of yesterday into stammerers of excuses, and rabble-rousing
\ncritics into just what they are: rabble-rousers! And, we may add,
\nopportunists!<\/p>\n
If Buhari didn’t become president after his\u00a0 lame-duck ouster by the
\nambi-dexterous coup-planner -IBB, he would have entered history in the
\ngolden fonts and heroic prints of Gen. Murtala Muhammed – that fiery
\ngeneral who took Nigeria by storm in 1975, but left too soon 200 days
\nlater in the wake of gunpowder; too soon for Nigeria to form an honest
\nopinion; and whose ultimate intentions are now permanently entombed in the
\nrealm of speculation, if not romantic fantasy!<\/p>\n
This is the Mai-Gaskiya, our Mai-Gaskiya!
\nI only hope that regular politics doesn’t demystify him further!<\/p>\n
I write in terms of hope because nothing has really CHANGED in the
\nPresidential Villa since the corrupt Jonathan left, and the clean
\nMai-Gaskiya took over: the budget is still being hopelessly padded, and
\nGrasscutters have joined the Villa wildlife; N75m goes for Aso Rock Rent,
\na Villa Gatehouse is costing N250 million, Food is still in excess of
\nN1billion, the State House allocation of over N3billion is bigger than the
\ncombined vote of all of the nation’s Teaching Hospitals….And on top of
\nthese, Refreshments and Honoraria in the Villa are pegged at over N700
\nmillion!<\/p>\n
One is tempted to ask: What is going on in the State House? Is the place
\none big banqueting hall of endless wining and dining?<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 solemn truth is that Mai-Gaskiya’s own leadership is an
\nuninterrogated leadership – it was born of wild emotionalism, and the same
\nuntamed emotionalism sustains it….<\/p>\n
There were issues on ground: the skewed stewardship at Petroleum Trust
\nFund (PTF), where projects went to the South, especially the South-East,
\nby administrative default or executive error;\u00a0 the provincial
\nsuperintendence of pastoralists and the ill-fated storming of Lam
\nAdesina’s Government House to protest the “maltreatment of my people,” and
\nthe important trip to Zanfara, in a Field Marshall’s uniform, to boost the
\nmorale of freshly mobilized troops to protect Fulani cattle against
\nrustlers while neglecting to visit scenes of gruesome Fulani terror
\nagainst hapless and helpless farmers!<\/p>\n
And there is the not-too-recent Zamfara Declaration by him that “Muslims
\nshould vote for only Muslims!”<\/p>\n
(Although it must be conceded that in the case of the primordial religious
\nappeal, Buhari is not the first culprit as the National Party of Nigeria
\n(NPN) candidate in the 1979 presidential election, Alh. Usman Shehu Aliyu
\nShagari, had\u00a0 made the same appeal to the Old Sokoto State electorate in
\n1978! And in both cases, the targets of these electoral versions of
\nreligious fanaticism were Southern Christian-politicians, to wit: Chief
\nJeremiah\u00a0 Obafemi Awolowo (UPN) and Chief Matthew Akikiola Aremu Olusegun
\nObasanjo)!<\/p>\n
There is even the issue of the number of\u00a0 his cows as he is reported to
\nhave consistently declared it: 150 since 2003! In 2003, he declared 150
\ncows. After four years i.e. 2007, the cows were still 150! In 2011 i.e.
\nanother four years, their number was constant at 150! And still the same
\n150 in 2015 i.e. In the space of 12 years, the President’s cows did not
\nmultiply; and none died! What is more, Buhari did not kill any for meat or
\ngive any out as a gift!<\/p>\n
This constant number of his cows has prompted snide remarks about whether
\nhis cows are into birth control or barren! Till today, the correct figure
\nof Mai-Gaskiya’s cattle is a matter of conjecture!<\/p>\n
If to the above cocktail of leadership minuses we add the lingering issue
\nof his mysterious O’Level certificate; not to talk of his graduating from
\nsecondary school at age 11 at that time, the Buhari brand becomes very
\nnotorious, rather than famous; and, consequently, accumulates many
\nnegative points indeed!<\/p>\n
But I still pray for Mr. President, my dear President – the truth being
\nthat we did not elect an angel: we have never had angels on the ballot!
\nBut it is not too late….it is never too late!<\/p>\n
My prayer is that God will have mercy on Mai-Gaskiya; that God will bring
\nhim home safely\u00a0 so he can commence the salvage-mission: the redemption of
\nhis name, his reputation, his myth, his mystique, his person, his persona,
\nhis promises and the promises of his presidency….<\/p>\n
We must halt this wholesale unravelling! By necessity, we must have
\nsomething, someone, in our Hall of Heroes! As we say in the Tiv-Country,
\n“Kareagh doo\u00a0 ga!”<\/p>\n
Imobo-Tswam, a media consultant and public affairs analyst, writes from
\nAbuja. He can be reached at: simonpita2008@yahoo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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