--When Goodluck Ebelechukwu Jonathan was elected President of Nigeria in 2011, the likes of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju and Moses Ebe Ochonu never saw ethnic conspiracy in his election. But when Jonathan was voted out of office in 2015 after being a substantive President for six years, his defeat at the 2015 presidential elections is now being attributed to ethnic gang up against him. A major problem that is responsible for the ways Moses and Oluwatoyin reason about political and official elections/appointments in Nigeria is that they consider themselves as coming from minority ethnic groups in Nigeria while at the same time they support ethno-religious background as a merit, and not competence, for elections/appointments at the centre. They hate larger ethnic groups causing them to develop ethnic inferiority complex. On that ground, they promote impunity and mask vital wrongs committed by Jonathan during his six years tenure in office as President of Nigeria with ethnic chauvinism. The Presidency of Jonathan neither translated to prosperity for the people of South-South (including his hometown in Bayelsa State Otuoke) nor for other geo-political zones in Nigeria. He practised ethno-religious balancing by composing an amalgam of ethnic elites who shared available resources of Nigeria among themselves for the purpose of enjoying material comforts produced in USA, Europe and Asia. The Presidential elections of March 2015 was the expiry date of President Jonathan's political and economic lies which had nothing to do with his ethnic origin.
It speaks for itself that it is highly impossible for any herdsman, whether nomadic or settled Fulani to occupy any territory with his cattle by force. Cows in particular are very sensitive to violence and forceful occupation of a land area with them makes them vulnerable targets in an eventual fight over a disputed territory. Just think of it, how many nomadic Fulani herdsmen with a flock of about 100 cows will be required to occupy and defend a land area? Even a propaganda must be believable.
In a presidential election where 73 candidates are contesting, you are propagating for a boycott because of two participating contestants, Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari. In this wonderful world, there are people who believe that beheading self is a good solution to migraine without knowing that a beheaded person automatically becomes a corpse. I tremble for such idea.S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 21 januari 2019 03:37
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Ethnic Victory of 2015 and an Apology
Lets take one by one Kadiri's defense of the Buhari govt in response to Moses' description of ethnocentric motivations that brought that govt to power and that, to a significant degree, sustain it even today.
1. Power Dynamic of Northern Nigeria, the PDP and 2011 Elections and Aftermath
The dominant demographic of Northern Nigeria are the Fulanis and the Hausas, often Muslim. In Nigerian history, as in the 1966 crisis and the civil war, they have been supported by the Middle Belt. That alliance has been destroyed by the escalation of Fulani terrorist colonization activity in the Middle Belt, supported by the Buhari govt and Miyetti Allah, headed by Nigeria's most elite Fulani. Responding to the ethnic cleansing agst his people, 1966 counter coup and Nigerian civil war leader Theophilus Danjuma has indicted the Nigerian army and govt and taken his case to the United nations.
The anti-GEJ thrust of the Muslim North was defined by Atiku Abubakar's threat of violent change bcs a Muslim Northerner, namely himself, was not made PDP 2011 Presidential candidate. Building on this foundation, pervasive across the Muslim North, Boko Haram Islamic terrorism re-erupted after GEJ came to power, restricting their attacks in the first two years of the escalation to govt agents and agencies and Christians, presenting themselves as Muslim warriors fighting an infidel govt, in the process getting both overt and covert support for their mission from a sizebale no of Muslims in the region, with even Bamanga Tukur, PDP chairman, the party of the President, once describing them as freedom fighters.
Even after the tide of public opinion in the Muslim North had steadily turned agst Boko Haram on account of the scope of destruction they were wreaking, this mentality of support for the group was sustained by various Northern Muslim elite, particularly as far as 2013-2014 by Muhammadu Buhari describing the war agst Boko Haram as war agst the North and by Murtala Nyako, Adamawa governor, describing the war agst Boko Haram as anti-North genocide in a letter he circulated to all Northern governors, while the Borno elders played a self destructive game of fighting with central army command in the person of Ihejerika, a move that blunted the effectiveness of the war.
The Northern Muslim PDP base that supported GEJ in 2011 was at variance with the general mood of their region, a disconnection widened by the unrelenting opposition of Boko Haram later built upon by the CPC/AC alliance.
2. AC (SW) CPC (Right Wing Muslim North) Alliance
What could have moved Tinubu and the AC, who in 2008 publicly castigated Buhari for declaring that ex-dictator, fellow Northern Muslim and his employer in his govt, Sani Abacha did not steal national monies even as portions of Abacha's unending loot were being returned to Nigeria by Switzerland and yet in 2014-2015 chose to align with Buhari's CPC and present this same figure not only as the new party's Presidential candidate but as an anti-corruption fighter?
What moved Nobel Laureate Wole Soynka to tear up his exhaustive 'The Trouble with Buhari', the most comprehensive anti-Buhari document up till 2015 and endorse Buhari?
What led scholar and writer Pius Adesanmi to put aside his 2008 critique of Buhari for his pro-Abacha declaration and support Buhari?
What led various members of the SW intelligentsia, to which Soyinka and Adesanmi belong, to put aside their earlier critiques of Buhari and support him in 2014-2015?
If they were motivated by the inadequacies of the GEJ govt, did they have to go along with the choice of Buhari as APC flag bearer? Why dd they align their own mission so closely with that of the politicians?
Could Chinua Achebe's final essay and book, deeply pro-Igbo, strongly critical of the West's hero Awolowo, have anything to do with this, along with the convergence of factors including jostlings for power in the PDP as key figures left to eventually form APC?
3. The Ongoing Terrorist Colonization War by Fulani Militia/Politicians/Pressure Groups in the Middle Belt
There exist two major categories of Fulani in the Middle Belt and across Nigeria, the settled and the nomadic, cattle herding Fulani. The nomadic Fulani have been at the centre of increasing conflict with settled non-Fulani communities across Nigeria, increasingly becoming identified with terrorism, extortion and armed robbery, leading to their being described by a Western terrorism monitoring agency as one of the world's top 4 deadliest terror groups, listing their attacks and casualties from those attacksyear by year , these orientations climaxing in an escalation on Nigerian national ruler, the Fulani man Muhammafu Buhar's ascension to power in 2015, an escalation demonstrated in massacres in different parts of Nigeria, occupations of property and land, such as classrooms and farms belonging to others, eventually focusing in a policy of ethnic cleansing, scattering of occupants and occupation of lands in the Middle Belt, while the Nigerian govt not only often refuses to engage them, it works with rather than moves agst the open support of them by Miyetti Allah, and cooks up various schemes to empower them with Nigerians' lands, cattle owners and govt working together in transferring their responsibilities to the govt and working to carve an empire through terrorism and political manipulation, with one of Buhari's spokesmen suggesting that communities should surrender their lands to Fulani herdsmen's demands or face death.
4. Cultures of Corruption
To what degree can the Buhari govt be described as an anti-corruption govt?
What investigations have been made into corruption by its key figures, from Fashola, to Amaechi, to Babachir to Buratai, among others?
How come that budgets presided over by Buhari demonstrate ridiculously huge allocations to Aso Rock?
Even after the massive monies allocated to Aso Rock clinic in budgets in Buhari's tenure, described as being much more money than allocated to other hospitals in the country, why is Buhari's medical tourism a prominent feature of his time in office, leading him to be out of the country for a good no of months during his tenure?
Why are soldiers publicly complaining of being made to fight Boko Haram with inadequate weapons, even as the terrorist group seems to demonstrate tactical superiority over the Nigerian army as some soldiers are deserting rather than face the terrorists?
Message to All : Buhari and Atiku belong to the same terrorist enabling, ethnic supremacist mindset. Boycott elections and and begin the journey to putting an end to a national political and economic system designed for failure.
--On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 at 00:00, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
--Moses Ebe Ochonu has set up a moral tribunal and with a twisted version of recent political events in Nigeria he is putting Muhammadu Buhari on trial for tribal misdemeanour. On the election victory of Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, Moses asserted, "What happened in 2015 was a tribal victory." Since Nigeria contains many ethnicities, one is bound to ask which of the more than two-hundred ethnic groups in Nigeria won the presidential election in 2015? As if he anticipated that that question will be posed, Moses explained a tribal victory thus, "A core group of politicians and intellectuals from the Northern and Southwestern parts of the country repackage a former military dictator who had two years earlier been universally reviled as unelectable." Moses is an intellectual who admits to being a Northerner and a supporter of Buhari in 2015. He is now apologizing for supporting Buhari to victory in the 2015 presidential elections. Although Moses is a northerner like Buhari, they are not of the same tribe. In fact, Northern part of Nigeria contains several tribes. The people of Southwestern part of Nigeria are not of the same tribe with either Moses Ochonu or Muhammadu Buhari. Therefore, attribution of the presidential election victory of Buhari in 2015 to an ethnic group is wrong and fraudulent. Truly, Buhari was a former military dictator but that should not disqualify him from contesting election as a civilian just like the former military dictator, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who ruled for eight years as a civilian president under the platform of PDP.
For the Southwestern elite, it was about getting back in power through the backdoor of a Buhari Presidency. For the North, it was obvious: they looked upon Jonathan as a usurper, as the man who had purportedly taken their turn at the presidency - Moses E. Ochonu
Politically considered, there is a big difference between the expressions Southwestern (Nigeria) and North (meaning Northern Nigeria). A quick reflection on our history will remind us that on 27 May 1967, the then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon split Nigeria into twelve states out of the then existing four regions. The twelve States had since trippled into thirty-six states. During the constitutional conferences that took place under Babangida and Abacha, it was the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme that suggested division of Nigeria into six geo-political zones for better economic and administrative purposes. The six Geo-political zones are : North-Central, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-South and South-West. Obviously, the political expressions - Northern Region, Western Region, Eastern Region and Midwest Region had ceased to exist from 27 May 1967 as they have now been replaced with 36 States. The North had ceased to be a single political entity and it is now composed of nineteen states or three geo-political zones just as the west is now composed of six states or a geo-political zone. Out of the six states in the Southwest geo-political zone, Ekiti and Ondo states were controlled by the PDP during 2015 elections and as such, were not part of the APC at the election of 2015. In the South-South geo-political zone, Rivers State and Edo states were part of APC just as the Imo state of the South-East geo-political zone in the 2015 election. Hence, it is mischievous to claim that APC was able to bring Muhammadu Buhari to power because of an alliance between the ethnic Yoruba and ethnic Hausa/Fulani. APC could not have been permitted to participate in the 2015 elections if it was not a national party as required by the constitution and electoral laws.
I now know for a fact that Jonathan was not ousted for being incompetent, weak, or corrupt but for losing the support of Tinubu and Southwestern political elite who consider him their leader. For the Southwestern political elite, Jonathan committed the political sin of neglecting a region that arguably won him the presidency and for focussing his patronage on the Southeast and the North that unequivocally rejected him in 2011 - Moses E. Ochonu.
Jonathan could not have won the presidential election of 2011 if the North had rejected him and if the entire South alone had voted for him. The Presidential election was preceded with the argument, especially from the PDP members from the North, about if Jonathan was qualified to contest in view of the rotational agreement between North and South inscribed in the PDP constitution. They argued that Jonathan was only to complete the remaining two years of the first four years of the deceased Yar'Adua's presidency out of the eight years in which a northerner ought to have ruled Nigeria before it returned to the South according to the PDP constitution. Most Nigerians considered the constitution of PDP subordinate to the Constitution of Nigeria which entitled Jonathan to contest the 2011 constitution, especially as he was the sitting President. It is worthwhile remembering that Atiku had left PDP in 2007 to contest Presidential election on the platform of AC which he lost to Yar'Adua of the PDP that year. But after the demise of Yar'Adua and Jonathan became the substantive President, Atiku calculated coldly that PDP presidential candidate in 2011 elections would come from the North therefore, he abandoned AC to re- join PDP, with confidence that he would win the PDP presidential primary in 2010 against Jonathan. Atiku Abubakar contested the presidential primary election dominated by delegates from the North and failed woefully while Jonathan won it overwhelmingly. The Presidential elections of 16 April 2011 had total registered voters of 73, 528,040, out of which 39,469,484 votes were recorded, but 38,209,978 votes were declared valid. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP won 58.89% of the votes, translating to 22,495,187 votes while Muhammadu Buhari of the CPC won 31.98% of the votes, translating to 12,214,853 votes. During the campaigns for the Presidential elections, Jonathan had told Nigerians that he grew up a shoeless school boy and that he had experienced the same poverty most Nigerians were living under. Elderly Nigerians called Jonathan our son while the younger generations called him our brother. Everybody saw in him a person who knew where the shoes were pinching impoverished Nigerians and for that reason they voted for him. Nigerians did not care about the ethnic origin of Goodluck Jonathan, rather they regarded him as a leader that would turn their impoverishments into wealth. He knew what Nigerians expected of him and that was why he told Nigerians emphatically in paragraph 30 of his presidential inaugural speech on 29 May 2011 thus, "Fellow citizens, in every decision, I shall always place the common good before all else. The bane of corruption shall be met by the overwhelming force of our collective determination, to rid our nation of this scourge. The fight against corruption is a war in which we must all enlist, so that the limited resources of this nation will be used for the collective growth of our commonwealth." In office he acted differently and the limited resources of the nation were shared among his political cronies. If according to Moses Ochonu, Goodluck Jonathan's presidency had neglected only the States in the Southwest and had, instead, focussed on infrastructural and economic developments in the South-South, Southeast, North-central, Northeast and Northwest alone, he would have been re-elected in 2015, regardless of whether the people of Southwest states voted for him or not. And if Jonathan had not been corrupt and incompetent in office, it would not have been so easy, not only, for a friend to market Buhari to Moses Ochonu but to seduce his support for Buhari's election victory in 2015. Moses had already been disgusted with Jonathan which was why he allowed himself to be convinced to shift his support from Jonathan to Buhari. It did not make sense to assert that "Jonathan lost the presidency because the North had always regarded him as a usurper who was enjoying the presidential mandate stolen from them," while at the same time claiming that he, Jonathan, invested in economic and infrastructural developments in the North more than in the South-South. The question then is what would a president of Northern stock have done in the North if Jonathan had not usurped the presidency?
When Benue was attacked by armed herdsmen resulting in many deaths, instead of mourning with the Benue delegation which visited him in Aso Rock, Buhari paternalistically and insultingly admonished them to go and live in peace with their neighbours - Moses Ochonu.
I respect Professor Moses Ebe Ochonu a lot which is why I am surprised that he decided to dishonestly quote Buhari out of context. The present Benue State has always been, and is still regarded as, part of the North. When the agitation for Middle Belt Region was intense in the hey days of Joseph Tarka and others, many from that region desired to remain Northerners because it gave educational and employment advantages over the less Western educated Hausa/Fulani majority in the then Northern Region. It was that Northerner epitet which a Middle-belter, Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, exploited on August 1, 1966, when he shoved aside his seniors Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, Colonel Adeyinka Adebayo including nine Lieutenant Colonels who were senior to him by dates of promotion to become Nigeria's Head of State. When riots in the North became abnormal at the end of September 1966, Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon in his noon radio Kaduna broadcast of 1 October 1966, and in which he appealed for cessation of riots said among other things, "God in his power, has entrusted the responsibility of this great country of ours, Nigeria, to the hands of another Northerner." Benue is not only part of the North, it is a part of Nigeria where internal migrations and permanent places of abode have occurred in the last three hundred years across the country. Like many other Nigerians, Fulani herdsmen have moved and settled permanently in many communities across Nigeria and dating back to over a hundred year.
In Benue, Fulani herdsmen have lived there for over a century and they have no other hometown in Nigeria than their place of abode in Benue. For years Benue Fulani herdsmen had grazed their cattle in free growing bushes in the vicinities without problem. Suddenly, Fulani herdsmen were not only declared aliens in Benue, but the State government enacted anti open grazing law that prohibited herdsmen from freely grazing their cattle in free growing bushes as they have done for centuries. To enforce the anti open grazing law, the Benue State government recruited a hoard of what it termed Livestock guards, empowered to seize cattle from herdsmen grazing cattle freely in the bush that none has grown. Clashes between herdsmen and livestock guards in Benue was what Moses erroneously referred to as one-sided attack by herdsmen on Benue resulting in many deaths. Many of the Fulani herdsmen that were suddenly declared alien settlers by those who considered themselves as indigenes of Benue and owners of ancestral forest land, were born and have lived in Benue throughout their lives and even long before Moses Ebe Ochonu himself was born. If a place of birth legitimatizes ones right to claim ancestral land, then Fulani herdsmen born and bread in Benue and elsewhere in Nigeria have the right to ancestral land at any place of their births in Nigeria. Truly, all Nigerians have rights to God created ancestral air, sun, rain and land within Nigeria's geographical space. That was the main reason why Buhari admonished the Benue delegation to live in peace with their neighbours. Buhari did not stop there, he initiated a move immediately to find solution to the problem of herdsmen wandering aimlessly to find grazing sites for their cattle. Incidentally, the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbe, is an indigene of Benue. He came up with the idea of ranching, to be subsidized by the government as it had done for crops' farmers. Intellectual traffickers in lies renamed ranching, cow colonies while character assassins foresaw mosques growing up everywhere in the country if ranching was implemented. Moses Ochonu has imputed meanings that Buhari never intended in his admonition to the Benue delegates, that visited him at Aso Rock, to live in peace with their neighbours, referring tacitly to Fulani herdsmen that have had Benue as their permanent place of abode for centuries.
As for the fight against corruption, it is appalling that some renowned intellectuals are deodorizing 16 years of PDP corruptions while spraying insecticide on APC for talking about PDP's corruptions that have brought the nation into the economic ruins the country is now suffering from. Booty sharers who crossed over from the sinking ship of PDP now turn around to say that Buhari has caused what they term *money drought* in Nigeria because government money is no longer raining into their pockets. They accused Buhari of not carrying them along and when Buhari jokingly asked them to come and sit on his shoulders, quack Doctors from the backpage of Tribune diagnosed him for dementia for not understanding that it is people's money they want him to share with them. In the same vein, Moses Ebe Ochonu came with a hashtag a while ago tagged, #Bring BackOurCorruption in which he argued that corrupt officials who loot the national treasury, spend looted funds which eventually trickle down to the pepper sellers by the road side. On the contrary, when corrupt officials loot, they purchase private jets, buy series of exotic cars, and buy mansions in Dubai, London, New York and California. And as such, trickle down effects of spending by Nigerian looters occur abroad and not in Nigeria. While one cannot guarantee that there are no corrupt people in Buhari's administration, it is nearly 100% certain that Buhari is personally honest. Before joining, in 2015, a delegate led by Abdulsalam Abubakar to meet President Buhari for the purpose of pleading to him to soften his corruption enquiries into the government of former President Jonathan, Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah warned Buhari in a transcript speech published in the online Sahara Reporters. Parts of the speech read, "President Buhari is not new on the block. He came and saw but we all know the story. In declaring a war against corruption, he lost his job. It is quite interesting that none of all of those who have suddenly become vocal now in the war against corruption went out on the streets to condemn the overthrow of their hero. If Nigerians were so convinced about the war against corruption, why did they all cross to the other side of the street where President Babangida was already offering them decaffeinated form of war by stating that the overthrow of Buhari had become necessary because, in his words on August 27th, 1985, 'Muhammadu Buhari was too rigid and uncompromising in his attitude to issues of national significance?' ..//..AS I have indicated earlier, he (Buhari) was overthrown when he embarked on his war against corruption and indiscipline. None of us went out on the streets to show solidarity with him. We embraced Babangida...." (http://www.saharareporters.com/2015/10/07/excerpt-bishop-kukah-speech-lagos). Sentimentally, Sowore, Moghalu and Ezekwesiele are worthy presidential candidates but realistically and effectively, only Buhari has the strength and will to deal decisively with the problems of corruptions that are obstructing the industrial and economic developments of Nigeria.S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 18 januari 2019 01:16
Till: USAAfricaDialogue
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Ethnic Victory of 2015 and an Apology--The Ethnic Victory of 2015 and an Apology
By Moses E. Ochonu
It is now quite clear that what happened in Nigeria in 2015 was not a revolution but a scam of historic proportion. To be more specific, it was, as University of Texas Professor and Punch columnist, Adunni Adelakun, put it, a "tribal victory." How so?
A core group of politicians and intellectuals from the Northern and Southwestern parts of the country successfully repackaged a former military dictator who had two years earlier been universally reviled as unelectable. A man whose only distinction up to that point was his draconian approach to governance as Head of State in the 1980s as well as his belief that repression and coercion represented an all-purpose solution to all of Nigeria's problems.
How they were able to successfully re-inflict him on Nigeria and give the rebranded dictator purchase with Nigerians will preoccupy future historians who will extend their inquiry beyond Buhari's own personal con in declaring himself a born-again democrat.
On the political side, the most recognizable faces of this ethnic coalition were Bola Tinubu and Nasir El-Rufai. On the intellectual side, there was an army of Northern and Southwestern intellectuals and learned folks who strategically but disguisedly lent their persuasive intellects to the cause and obscured its essentially ethnic character.
This ethnic collective then successfully coopted many intellectuals and politicians and youths from all regions and religions of Nigeria into the project, advancing it as a last-ditch effort to wrestle the nation from 16 years of the PDP's predatory rule, never mind that the emerging coalition was animated and financed by disgruntled PDP members.
The ethnic battalion behind then candidate Muhammadu Buhari manipulated the naïve youths of Nigeria and the opportunism and naivety of intellectuals and politicians from other regions, harvesting their energies into the political effort that ousted Goodluck Jonathan. Their rhetoric of revolution, reclamation, and their fiction of integrity and ethical cleansing found a receptive audience desperate for change and thus willing to overlook the contradictory records of the messengers.
The core of the 2015 coalition remained decidedly ethnic in composition and ideology. The inner circle never believed in changing Nigeria. They only believed in changing its leadership. For the Southwestern elite, it was about getting back in power through the backdoor of a Buhari presidency. For the North, it was obvious: they looked upon Jonathan as a usurper, as the man who had purportedly taken their turn at the presidency. They wanted back in. This was the foundational premise of regime change in 2015. Everything else was a sophisticated marketing gimmick. But it was gimmickry at its most disarming.
Buhari had proclaimed publicly that late dictator Sani Abacha had not stolen any money from Nigeria and has not retracted that claim despite Nigeria taking possession of multiple streams of Abacha's cash stash. In spite of that, and in spite of presiding over a cesspool of corruption and waste at the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund, the ethnic coalition settled on the theme of integrity as their point of departure for their campaign.
Even Buhari's record of parochial insularity was magically transformed into a story of redemptive self-reinvention. He had learned from his failed previous effort to secure the presidency on the misguided premise that support from the north alone could deliver it to him, we were told. This presidential run, the ethnic propagandists claimed, was different from previous ones. They claimed that Buhari was cultivating a broad based national coalition, had shed his northern provincialism, and had embraced a cosmopolitan, ecumenical agenda.
And yet the evidence of Buhari's dangerous, obstinate investment in parochial endeavors and claims was inescapable.
It was Buhari who said an attack on Boko Haram was an attack on the north. It was he who said Boko Haram was fighting injustice and that it was wrong to unleash the military on them while conferring amnesty and patronage on Niger Delta oil militants.
It was Buhari who encouraged Northern Muslims to vote only their kind. It was he who led a delegation of Fulani leaders to former Oyo State Governor Lam Adeshina, asking him "why are your people killing my people?" It was Buhari who declared that he would work for the implementation of Sharia, the Islamic legal system, across Nigeria in disregard of Nigeria's plural religious heritage.
This was the same Buhari who ruled with an iron fist as military dictator, locking up journalists and critics and presiding over an inept and misguided pseudo-nationalist economic policy that worsened scarcity, drove up inflation, and killed economic ingenuity.
This was the real Buhari. But the ethnic coalition capitalized on disenchantment with Goodluck Jonathan's corruption-ridden administration to claim otherwise or to cast him as remorseful for his past misdeeds, a wiser old man with a different temperament.
Many Nigerians outside the core ethnic constituencies of the coalition fell for this scam. The youths of Nigeria, betrayed by decades of misrule, of which ironically Buhari was a part, fell even harder. They went all in on the sexy message of change.
Ensconced in power, it did not take long for old, familiar Buhari to reemerge. Within a few months of winning the election, both his ethnic insularity and his governing deficits were on full display.
Even before he was sworn in, he introduced a new, quantified doctrine of 97/5 percent into our political lexicon, indicating that the Igbo, who in his reckoning supplied only five percent of his votes totals in the election, should not expect to be treated in the same way as the regions that gave him "97 percent." The mathematical fallacy of 97/5 aside, Buhari signaled that he was the same old retired dictator whose only post-retirement claim to fame had been a series of insensitive and downright chauvinistic statements privileging the north and Islam above other regions and religious communities.
More reiterations of Buhari's provincial insensitivity followed. Asked about the Igbo complaints of marginalization in a televised interview, Buhari screamed, "What do the Igbos want?" and proceeded to patronizingly lecture IPOB Biafra agitators about his role in the civil war and about how, as small boys, they had no understandings of the danger of war.
When Benue was attacked by armed herdsmen resulting in many deaths, instead of mourning with the Benue delegation which visited him in Aso Rock, Buhari paternalistically and insultingly admonished them to go and live in peace with their neighbors. He then followed it up by absolving the armed herdsmen of blame, saying that their grazing routes had been blocked. The coup de gracewas his declaration, repeated in a recent television interview, that more people had been killed in Zamfara than in Benue and Taraba states combined. This was a macabre, self-indicting comparison of questionable veracity and an insulting trivialization of deaths outside his natal Northwest zone.
Buhari's problem is not merely one of cultural insensitivity but one of a lifelong immersion in the comfort of familiar ethno-religious surroundings and a concomitant aversion to associating, except when duty and ambition required it, with people, ideas, and influences from Nigeria's other regions.
On the economic front, old Buhari reemerged with a vengeance as though he had unfinished business from his truncated dictatorship. As soon as he took over, he decreed a ban, 1984-style, on the importation of tens of goods and declared that the naira must be defended at all costs, including by imposing restrictions on foreign exchange and raiding reserves to prop up a currency weakened by falling oil prices and the resulting slowdown in the economy.
This was economic stupidity underwritten by Buhari's old 1980s brand of economic nationalism, which sees the economy as yet another realm of national life to be tightly controlled, disciplined, and leveraged for national pride. In this backward, outmoded economic thinking, it did not matter that such a policy of tight controls in a monoculture economy is usually the fastest route to a recession. Predictably, Buhari took an admittedly weak economy into a severe, prolonged recession, with double digit inflation, 11 millions jobs lost, and thousands of bankrupt businesses as the outcome.
He had promised to never pay subsidy on petrol but to fix the refineries to provide access to cheap and abundant fuel. He reneged on that promise. Instead, he increased fuel price by about 70 percent and yet his administration now pays more in subsidy than the Jonathan administration ever paid when fuel sold for 87 naira a liter. By what mathematical logic is this subsidy figure possible when crude prices have tumbled? We are told that somehow, between 2015 and 2018, Nigeria's fuel consumption jumped from about 9 million metric tons to about 15 million metric tons! When challenged to account for this abracadabra, the Buharists' answer consist of two words: Next level.
Other promises made during the grand ethnic deception of 2014/2015 lay in ruins, disowned and disavowed by the president and his henchmen.
We are told that the Federal Inland Revenue Service now generates more than 5 naira trillion in revenue, and that the Customs for its part adds several more trillions to the federal treasury. However, in 2018, despite Nigeria making about 12 trillion naira from crude oil sales, at least 7 trillion from taxes and duties, and an undisclosed amount from non-oil exports, the country still borrowed 1.6 trillion naira to support a 2018 budget of N9.12 trillion naira!
This arithmetic sleight of hand is the latest evidence of the gargantuan corruption proliferating in Buhari's administration. The difference is that much of this corruption occurs through the legal appropriations process.
But that's not to say that it's the only form of corruption. Buhari has not only tolerated graft, he even wrote to the national assembly in the case of his ex-SGF Babachir Lawal to argue his exoneration only to be trumped and shamed by the overwhelming evidence against the man. Although relieved of his position, Babachir has yet to be prosecuted in accordance with the report of the National Assembly panel that investigated his shady dealings. In fact, he continues to work informally for the president, boasting recently that he has unfettered access to the Buhari and is helping his reelection campaign.
Buhari superintended and approved the reinstatement of pension fugitive, Abdulrasheed Maina, and has failed to order and investigation into corruption allegations against his chief of staff, his army chief, and his minister of internal affairs — the last two accusations involving the acquisitions of properties overseas.
It did not take Buhari long before Buhari's intolerance for criticism and contrarian views manifested. The Shiites, hundreds of whose members Buhari's forces massacres are still crying for justice with their leader, Sheikh El-Zakzaky, still in detention and undergoing a secret trial on trumped up charges of murder. Buhari publicly defended the massacre of the Shiites, proving himself comfortable with the gross human rights abuses for which he was known prior to his 2015 political makeover. Sambo Dasuki, the NSA of the previous administration, remains in detention despite several court orders granting him bail.
Activist and Buhari critic, Deji Adeyanju, languishes in Kano prison on a farcical charge for which he was acquitted several years ago, the latest victim of the arbitrary detention and harassment rampage of the police and the DSS under Buhari. Dino Melaye remains in detention despite having been earlier detained and granted bail while he underwent trial. Several journalists have been detained, harassed, and intimidated by Buhari's security forces. The recent invasion of the premises of Daily Trustis the latest saga in Buhari's war on the media. It is 1984 all over again.
These are all evidence of the old Buhari reasserting himself and refusing to act according to the script written for him by the 2015 ethnic coalition. The selective morality, the exoneration of corrupt loyal allies, the bigotry and parochialism, the economic illiteracy, the intolerance for criticism and dissent, the absence of intellectual curiosity, the malicious insensitivity to Nigeria's complex ethnoreligious mix, and the lack of a national frame of sociopolitical frame of reference. All these tendencies never went away. They were cleverly disguised behind the rhetoric of change deployed to harness the nervous, desperate energies of unsuspecting citizens in 2015.
This is a rather circuitous way of saying that Buhari's ethnic coalition got away with arguably the biggest political scam in Nigeria's history, managing to recruit many unsuspecting Nigerians into what they knew to be an ethnic agenda to capture power.
I was one of those who almost believed their pitch. I maintained a studious, skeptical neutrality until the last few weeks before the election of 2015, having previously declared that I could not support the profligate and weak administration of Jonathan for another term and that I had too many concerns about Buhari, based on his history. I interrogated the rhetoric of the Buhari coalition and pointed out the incongruity between it and Buhari's own record, his history.
Then, when the election was weeks away, some of my social media followers urged me to get off the fence and take a stance because, in their words, that election was too important to be neutral.
I am ashamed to say that I allowed myself to be persuaded by these pleadings and my own emotional, a tad irrational, desire for Nigeria to chart a new course away from that path it was on. In this emotional state, I stated that as a diaspora Nigerian I did not have a vote but that if I could vote I would hold my nose and vote for Buhari, but only as a gamble for change since there was nothing in the man's record to inspire confidence.
Mine was a tepid, reluctant, and half-hearted endorsement if you could call it that. It was a non-endorsement endorsement. But it still was a public declaration of reluctant hypothetical support.
Even for this weak, late, and qualified acceptance of a deeply flawed candidate, I am now ashamed and feel a need to apologize to my inner, skeptical self, and to my compatriots who are now groaning under the jackboot of the resurgent dictator.
I should have maintained my neutrality. As a historian and as someone who had written on Buhari's extensive baggage prior to 2015, I should have known that it was almost impossible for an old man to leave his checkered past behind and reinvent himself in both temperament and capacity. I should have known that, as the popular cliché says, the past is usually a prologue to what to expect, what is to come.
In shedding my usual skepticism and critical distance, I became one of those who unwittingly joined and bolstered what has now unraveled to everyone's notice: an ethnic coalition that produced an ethnic victory, leading to disillusionment among those who were coopted, seduced, or otherwise tricked into believing in the genuineness of the change movement.
I now know for a fact that Jonathan was not ousted for being incompetent, weak, or corrupt but for losing the support of Tinubu and the Southwestern political elite who consider him their leader. For the Southwestern political elite, Jonathan committed the political sin of neglecting a region that arguably won him the presidency and for focusing his patronage on the Southeast and the North — the north that unequivocally rejected him in 2011.
Jonathan lost the presidency because the North always regarded him as a usurper who was enjoying a presidential mandate stolen from them. When these two forces converged, Jonathan could not survive the resulting onslaught. Support from the countervailing ethnic constituencies of the Southeast and South-South was simply not enough to keep him in power. That is the story of 2015, stripped of the pretentious rhetorical nonsense.
Many of those who did not join the coalition for ethnic reasons have since deserted it. Others who remain in the camp have replaced their initial aspirations with opportunistic self-interest. This latter group is small, however. What remains of the 2015 ethnic coalition is largely the original ethnic nucleus of Southwestern and Northern elites — political and intellectual — united only by their thirst for power and its perks.
As for me, the lesson has been internalized for future referencing. I was never a Buharist in the traditional sense but I should have done more to puncture the case for him in 2014/15. More importantly, I should never have yielded to pressure to abandon my neutrality in favor of an endorsement of Buhari, however qualified and half-hearted that endorsement may have been.
I am sorry.
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