General Muhammadu Buhari, former Head of State and a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, is once again in the news for what can only be described as un-statesmanlike utterances. Buhari, who once told the world during a BBC Hausa interview that, “If what happened in 2011 should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood,” has, in effect, accused President Goodluck Jonathan of declaring war on Nigeria. As political grandstanding goes, Buhari has set a new unenviable record for himself.
Although Buhari tried to conceal his partisanship with the toga of “elder statesman”, his tendency to invoke blood, in whatever context, whether ill-intentioned or not, gave away the former military dictator’s penchant for inciting violence. He said, “I, along with many other patriotic Nigerians, fought for the unity and survival of this country. Hundreds of patriotic souls perished in the battle to keep Nigeria one. The blood of many of our compatriots helped to water the birth of the democracy we are all enjoying today.” This may well be the truth, but Buhari needs to search his conscience whether his utterances before and after the 2011 Presidential Election did or did not encourage the violence that led to the shedding of the blood of many Nigerians after that election.
It is commendable that Reuben Abati, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, swiftly reacted to Buhari’s uncharitable accusations against President Jonathan. It is also noteworthy that, in contrast to Buhari’s obsession with invoking blood at every turn, Abati’s statement read in part: “President Jonathan remains true to his declaration that no political ambition of his is worth the life of a single Nigerian.”
Lest Buhari’s unfounded charges go unanswered, Abati also said, “The President has definitely not declared war on his own country or deployed federal institutions in the service of partisan interests as General Buhari falsely claims. Neither has he been using the common wealth to subvert the system and punish the opposition, as the former Head of State inexcusably asserts.”
Abati did not stop there. He reminded Buhari that Nigerians have not forgotten his record as Head of State. According to Abati: “President Jonathan has never at any time ordered that any Nigerian should be kidnapped or that anyone should be crated and forcefully transported in violation of decent norms of governance. We therefore urge General Buhari to tarry a while, ponder over his own antecedents and do a reality check as to whether he has the moral right to be so carelessly sanctimonious.”
Indeed, for all his claims to statesmanship, Buhari’s record speaks volumes. It is a matter of public record that General Buhari is a former military dictator who allied himself with soldiers who truncated a democratic government. It is a matter of public record that Buhari’s Decree No.4 remains one of the most draconian laws against press freedom that the entire world has ever seen. It is a matter of public record that Buhari’s regime incarcerated Nigerians without trial.
Moreover, it is also a matter of public record that today General Buhari has allied himself with former Lagos State governor and another national leader of the APC, Bola Tinubu, who was reported to have said, “It will be rig and roast,” in reference to the just-concluded Ekiti election during a speech at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State on April 24, 2014.
Nobody needs a PhD in Semantics to understand that, when taken together, Buhari’s “the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood” promise and Tinubu’s “rig and roast” exhortation paint a clear picture of a very violent leadership of the APC, the political party that Buhari hopes to use in actualising his dream of presiding over Nigeria again.
Such is the APC’s predilection for violence that not only well-meaning Nigerians but foreigners as well have expressed their concerns. A case in point: the United States Consul General, Jeff Hawkins, recently said, “the sponsorship of violence and intimidation, and the rhetorical threat thereof, are utterly unacceptable in a democratic society, and need to be expunged once and for all from the Nigerian polity and discourse.”
So, beyond the rhetoric and posturing as a newborn “elder statesman”, Nigerians need to see Buhari’s ungracious utterances against Jonathan for what they are: sheer hypocrisy from a former military dictator whose records of human rights abuses and other offences against human decency and decorum far overshadow whatever pretensions to statesmanship that he may exhibit.
As Abati said in his counter statement: “It may well be time to pull the brakes, as General Buhari says in his statement, but it is he and others who have resorted to idle scapegoating and blaming President Jonathan for their self-inflected political troubles who need to stop their inexcusable partisanship and show greater regard for the truth, democracy, constitutionalism, the rule of law, peace, security and the well-being of the nation.”
A word, as the clichéd but still true admonition goes, is enough for the wise.
Written by Femi Ayelabowo.
Femilabowo@gmail.com
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