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Why Nigerians Should Take A Second Look At The Enigma Called Buhari By Dr. Wumi Akintide

March 13, 2014

I remember with some nostalgia the struggles of Obafemi Awolowo to establish a truly functioning  federalist Government in Nigeria by first agreeing to serve as the leader of opposition in the Federal since Nnamadi Azikiwe and his Igbo kith and kin and the N.C.N.C did not agree to a coalition Government wth Awolowo and his Action Group.

I remember with some nostalgia the struggles of Obafemi Awolowo to establish a truly functioning  federalist Government in Nigeria by first agreeing to serve as the leader of opposition in the Federal since Nnamadi Azikiwe and his Igbo kith and kin and the N.C.N.C did not agree to a coalition Government wth Awolowo and his Action Group.

To demonstrate Awo’s commitment to working with the N.C.N.C, Awolowo had assured Nnamdi Azikiwe he would gladly serve under him (Azikiwe) as Prime Minister while Awolowo would serve as Finance Minister. If the N.C.N.C/Action Group coalition had come to fruition, the North People Congress under Ahmadu Bello would  have become a very powerful opposition party in Nigeria because the N.C.N.C/Action Group majority in the Federal Parliament in 1959 was razor-blade thin and in the parliamentary system Nigeria had at the time,  the Prime Minister losing one vote of confidence on any issue in Parliament was enough to cause the fall of that  Government, and a call for another election. This observation has happened ever so often in Great Britain and many of the vibrant democratic countries of the world like the tiny State of Israel to just mention one.

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If the N.C.N.C and the Action Group had formed the first Government that obtained independence for Nigeria in 1959, can any of you reading this imagine where Nigeria would have been by now? Singapore, one of the 4 tigers of the Pacific under Lee Kuan Yu a classmate of Obafemi Awolowo in England would have become a distant second to Nigeria in physical and economic development because Nigeria was sitting on a huge reservoir of oil and minerals, she did not know about at the time. All Nigeria needed was a visionary and a dynamic leader to mobilize the country and to properly manage her resources  as envisaged by General Buhari in his recent You Tube interview with Rudolf Okonkwo of Sahara Reporters of New York. General Buhari specifically  admitted that he truncated the Shagari Government in 1983 because he believed, and he still does, that “Nigeria can be mobilized and properly led. He did not think that Shehu Shagari was providing the kind of leadership he believed Nigeria deserved, so he took him out.

As I listened to General Buhari answer many of the questions put to him, I could see some images of Obafemi Awolowo in that man. As a historian, my mind went back to the memory lane of Nigerian history and how politics actually started in Nigeria with the National Movement led by the great Herbert Macauley who on his death bed had picked erudite and handsome Nnamdi Azikiwe as the man to succeed him because he was not thinking of ethnicity or tribalism at that point in our history. It was Nigeria’s finest hour.
The Nationalist Movement was not a tribal institution and was never run as such until the Movement metamorphosed into the N.C.N.C which  was later identified as an Igbo party because Nnamdi Azikiwe, may his soul rest in peace, had made it so. 

If the N.C.N.C had started as an Igbo Party, it could never have made such a huge inroad into Western Nigeria like it did when Yoruba political leaders like late Apara the first Nigerian lawyer, H.O.D Davies, Chief Adeniran Ogunsanya, T.O.S Benson  and other prominent Yoruba leaders like Adelabu Penkelemess of Ibadan, Pa Odeleye of Ilesha and Pa Fanibuyan Adegbola  and Pa Gideon Arowolo of Akure, to mention a few, were staunch members of the N.C.N.C. It was their membership and loyalty to the National ist Movement and later on to Zik and the N.C.N.C that nearly made Nnamdi Azikiwe the first Premier of Western Nigeria  because  the N.C.N.C won at Ibadan. The Yorubas at the time believed they were voting for a party founded and headed by their own kith and kin in Herbert Macauley. It took an Awolowo to let them see the light that N.C.N.C was more of an Igbo party than the nationalist movement from where it got its legitimacy  in Lagos as the seat of Government.

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All Obafemi Awolowo and his comerades in arms in the Action Group which lost by a few seats to the N.C.N.C in the old Western Nigerian Parliament was to remind staunch members of the N.C.N.C  like M.A. Akinloye of the Mobolaje Grand Alliance, an affiliate of the N.C.N.C  and prominent  party men like the current Olubadan, Oba Odugade and few others that  the N.C.N.C was no longer the nationalist movement that Herbert Macauley had founded and led.
Our Igbo brothers are right when they describe Awolowo as a tribal leader because of that historical development but what they would never tell you or acknowledge was that the great Nnamdi Azikiwe was the first to condone and nurture Tribalism in Nigeria when he clandestinely turned the Nationalist Movement handed over to him  to what became the NCNC (the National Council of Nigerian and the Cameroon’s even though the party was clearly dominated by the Igbos, and the party participated in the 1959 election as an Igbo Party but with some members drawn from the old Western Region.

Aminu Kano started his own NEPU in the old Northern Region as an affiliate of the N.C.N.C rather than merge with the N.C.N.C because he was hoping that N.E.P.U could provide an alternative to the N.P.C by becoming the Opposition in the North. He, Aminu Kano did not have any doubt that the N.C.N.C was an Igbo Party who could not win in the North. That was why he started his own Talakawa Party in Kano on an ideology totally different from the Caliphate ideology and precept which presented the Fulanis as “the born to rule” class in Nigeria. That is why all the big Hausa/Fulani states in the North from Daura to Kano and from Sokoto to Ilorin are ruled by the Fulani princes who are all direct descendants of Uthman Dan Fodio including Ahmadu Sardauna Bello who would rather become the great Sultan of Sokoto than become the first Prime Minister of Nigeria.

It was probably the bad blood that existed between Zik and Awo at the time that led to the Azikiwe preferring to form a coalition Government with Ahmadu Bello to form the Federal Government in 1959 with Tafawa Balewa becoming Prime Minister and learned Azikiwe becoming a ceremonial President. The bad blood was not the only reason. The Igbos and Zik had figured it out that a coalition Government with the Hausa/Fulani would benefit the Igbos more because the northerners lacked the educational foundation to compete with the Igbos for all of  the other positions in the public and private sectors of the Nigerian economy. They thought the Yorubas are equally as educated if nor more educated and they were not going to take a chance.

That was why Samuel Ladoke Akintola used to castigate and joke about the Igbos about being too greedy and having too much book knowledge “Mbadiwe” in Yoruba language means “I could turn to a book in a heartbeat.” Akintola used to tease the Igbos by calling them the “Mbadiwes of Nigeria.“ The Chairman of the Nigerian Railways Corporation at that time was a gentleman named “Ikejiani”. Akintola, a Yoruba orator who spoke Hausa fluently, turned that name in Yoruba to “Iketa ani” and “Ikerinani” etc to show that the Igbos were just “too greedy”, his words not mine. Akintola then rhetorically asked the Yorubas and the northerners that if the Igbos have 1,2,3,and 4, what will be left for the rest of Nigeria to share. Akintola’s own mission was to dislodge the Igbos from their coalition government with the Hausas/Fulanis and to replace them with “Demo” the Yoruba Party he had formed after breaking ranks with Awolowo and the Action Group.

Akintola said Awolowo was too rigid a politician to appreciate that the northerners are not as dumb as Awolowo thought. He told Awolowo that if the Yorubas could not beat the northerners, they should join them. Awolowo said “No” on principle. So Akintola accompanied by Fanikayode left the Action Group to pitch their tents with Ahmadu Bello and the N.P.C. That was how men like Richard Akinjide and others too many to recount in this article became Federal Ministers. One of the first things Richard Akinjide did as Federal Ministers of Education was to successfully tackle the imbalance created by the Igbo domination of the Federal Public Service and the Parastatals. I was in the Public Service when Richard Akinjide was actively pursuing that policy.

You could say all you want about Samuel Ladoke Akintola, he arguably had a method to his so-called madness or betrayal of Obafemi Awolowo. The solution that he espoused in the political configuration of Nigeria was what finally won. Once the Military took over Nigeria, it made no sense for the Yorubas to still continue to resent the northerners as illiterates.” Kaka ka dobale fun Gambari ka kuku ku” Awolowo once said meaning that “it is better for the Yorubas to die than to take orders from or kowtow to the Hausa/Fulani”. Many of the Yorubas bought into the Awolowo stereotype of the Hausa/Fulani for a long time before we began to see that Akintola was not as crazy as we thought he was. He sure had a point on hindsight.

Once Awolowo himself agreed to serve as as Commissioner for Finance and Deputy Chairman to General Gowon, another northerner in the Federal Executive Council, you could say with some justification that Akintola had won the debate to make peace with the North for all of the 38 years of military rule in Nigeria. Some Yorubas like to rubbish Akintola as being a traitor to the Yoruba cause. I am not one of them. Akintola may have done a few things wrong in his political calculus and disagreement with Obafemi Awolowo, but everything he predicted about the need to work with the Northerners and to be less contemptuous of the Hausa/Fulani as a powerful brokers in Nigeria have become the conventional wisdom, if the truth must be told. I will forever love and cherish Awolowo till I die, but I would be the last person to not appreciate the sterling qualities and talents of Samuel Ladoke Akintola. He was a great politician in his own right any way you slice it.

I make this little digression to Akintola as a back drop to my hypothesis on Buhari and my clarion call to Nigerians to take a second look at Mohammadu Buhari’s endless presidential ambition in Nigeria. I am happy that most northerners who were hell-bent on stopping Obafemi Awolowo from becoming President of Nigeria are now going thru the same pains that Awolowo had endured. What goes around comes around. I am sure that Buhari is now in a better position to appreciate the pains and the struggles of Obafemi Awolowo who knew what he could do for Nigeria but was frustrated from doing it by the Hausa/Fulani and the Igbos working together to stop Awolowo by blackmailing him a tribalist. 

The Igbos and some elements of the Yorubas are doing the same thing to Buhari today by calling him names, blackmailing him and and saying his ultimate goal was to make an Islamic state of Nigeria. Some have even described  him as being the brain or the master mind behind Boko Haram. That was all a big lie. It came out of his television interview with Rudolf Okonkwo that Buhari was was seen by Boko Haram as one of their implacable enemies. He, General Buhari described Boko Haram in that interview as  “neither Christian nor Muslim”.. As far as he was concerned “they are terrorists.” I cannot think of any Nigerian leader, not even the current President who could be that bold to describe Boko Haram in that kind of language.

General Buhari is the kind of leader Nigeria needs at this point in our history because his track record either as a military Governor of the old Northeastern State, and Head of State for 20 months and Chairman of the Petroleum Task Force for 5 years have all proved he is the only credible Nigerian leader right now who can wrestle Corruption to the ground. I don’t trust all of the recent decampees to the A.P.C. like Atiku Abubakar. If the A.P.C picks Atiku  as their presidential candidate, his Government is not going to be too different from the P.D.P. Government he just left. I am saying so because of his track record in power. The future began from yesterday and today I might remind those who still think that the Atiku leopard is going to so quickly change his color.

I am not saying that General Buhari has to be the only candidate the A.P.C. must put forward for President. All I am saying is that those who want to rubbish him are being dishonest. The guy is a good leader. I respect his staying power in politics and the fact that he is not willing to give up that easily. Like Awolowo before him, he has now run for President for three  going to four times and he is not yet ready to quit. If the A.P.C. can find a new blood with enough experience and  track record to qualify them for President, bring them out and let’s see who they are.

The A.P.C. must show Nigerian voters how it is different from the P.D.P. and President Jonathan who has clearly shown he is not up to the job as far as I am concerned and from all we are able to see. I strongly believe the P.D.P. has lost all its credibility to be re-elected in 2015. Let Nigerians give the opposition a chance for whatever it may be worth. If they don’t measure up, Nigerians should reserve the right to vote them out after 4 years. It is that simple.

The A.P.C. still has a long way to go to convince Nigerians that it is not going to be a carbon copy of the P.D.P. The party  is beginning to do that with the manifesto it has just put out but drawing up a manifesto is a far cry from implementing a manifesto for the benefit of the country. Awolowo was the first politician in Nigeria who has delivered on what he promised in the old Western Region. He did it again when he managed the Nigerian economy during the civil war and he did not have to borrow a penny to prosecute the war. Murtala Mohammed did the same thing for the 200 days he was Head of State. Buhari tried and almost did the same thing but his tenure was cut short after 20 months in office. He was going to retire Ibrahim Babangida and his cohorts in the Military but I.B.B got wind of it, and he preempted the move by staging his own coup..

General Buhari is not the monster he is being made out to be. He is a good man and a good leader who can clean up the Augean stable of  Corruption in Nigeria, if given the chance.

I am so glad that he agreed to do the interview with Sahara Reporters and he took pains to answer most of the questions put to him with the exception of where he defended Sani Abacha who according to him was never found guilty of any corruption in the Court of Law. If Abacha was not corrupt, where exactly did he find the money seized from him and repatriated back to Nigeria? I was surprised that Rudolf Okonkwo did not ask a follow-up to that particular question. I reject the blackmail that Buhari is an Islamic apologist or radical. He is a good Muslim and that should not be a disqualification for him to be a good President just like Murtala Mohammed. That he could nominate Pastor Tunde Bakare as a running mate tells me loud and clear he is not a religious zealot he has been called.

I urge Nigerians to take a second look at his presidential ambition. If you agree and believe in this admonition, say a loud Amen.

 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters

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