Exit Ribadu ? A Commentary by WOLE SOYINKA

[Mobolaji ALUKO]

December 28, 2007


EXIT RIBADU?


I can only hope that Benazir Bhutto's followers will forgive me for saying this, but the news of Nuhu Ribadu's removal from the anti-corruption Nigerian organisaton known as the EFCC will have, in all likelihood, a far more devastating impact on the psyche of the Nigerian nation than the deadly event that now threatens to further destabilize the tortured nation known as Pakistan, through the assassination of her democratic front runner, Benazir Bhutto. Let me pause here to express my sincere condolences to the people of Pakistan.

What is at stake for us in Nigeria is not much different however: the restoration and consolidation of democracy, not in any sentimental or rhetorical sense, but as a lived reality that restores dignity to the people of any nation and guarantees their day to day security. The precarious socio-political condition into which the Pakistani people have been thrown  echoes, in both parallel and divergent directions, the blow dealt to the Nigerian nation by the 'assassination' of the head of an organization that commenced the process of restoring dignity to a people whose nation has become a byword for the most breath-taking scam in high-places, for endemic corruption, a contempt for accountability and transparency and the abuse of national resources in the pursuit of personal and party power consolidation.

At every opportunity, we have stressed the obvious but ignored fact that the liberalization of political space is contingent upon the moral cleansing of such space. Thus the need to identify and contain – including by punitive means - individuals and organisations that operate on the open nexus easily summed up as : power derives from corruption which in turn fuels and guarantees power.  The battle against corruption therefore goes beyond the walling out of illegal economic advantages. Corruption is the very bedrock of political illegitimacy. The tree of democracy cannot thrive on the compost of corruption. 

This obvious attempt at crippling one of the two anti-corruption crusade agencies of the nation, unarguably aggressive and result oriented on an unprecedented scale, must therefore be read as an assault on the very bastion of democracy. Again, I refer to my earlier indications: that the riddle of most of the political murders in the nation will be solved when the anti-corruption project has attained its ultimate goal of unearthing the hidden.  Let me refer yet again to the notorious case where a presiding judge on a politically motivated murder case threatened early to withdraw from the case. Soon after, he withdrew from the case altogether - the pressure, he openly announced, coming from the most unexpected quarters, had made his task impossible. That judge noted down details of monetary inducements that were offered to make him grant bail to a high-profile suspect. The upward spiral of that political suspect since his 'acquittal' says much about the umbilical cord that trails from material to political corruption.

The ruling party of Nigeria, the PDP has proved yet again that there is no reformist agenda possible within its ranks. The presidential incumbent bears the primary and ultimate responsibility for this grotesque reversal of the nation's frustrated push towards possible redemption, but it is the ruling party itself, the PDP, that continues to suffocate the nation in its folds of corruption, negating every attempt to rid her of this incubus, since that party has exhibited itself, again and again, as the very quagmire of corruption, nurtured on corruption, sustained by corruption and dependent on corruption for its very survival. 

Let all sophistry be abandoned - the removal of Nuhu Ribadu  is not about the removal of one individual. We are talking about signals, portents for future conduct, about the erosion of credibility, abandonment of principle, all of which of course transcends any individual. The timing, when viewed with the recent call to re-open the case-files of unsolved political murders, will be regarded as a coincidence only by starry-eyed innocents from space  – good luck to them. Those of us who have the slightest knowledge of behind-the-scenes manipulations since the trail of detection moved ever closer to the very apex of governance under the past regime, know that the nation was being brought closer and closer to the dismantling of one of the most sinister and corrupt governance machines that this nation has ever confronted – including even the incontinent reign of Sanni Abacha. 

Ribadu's removal is therefore not an individual predicament. The situation here does not permit of the familiar cliche of any one individual being less than an institution or agency – no, that is not the issue! The issue is that an effective agency has been tampered with, unnecessarily, but with transparent motivations that constitute an assault on the corporate integrity of the nation. The trust of the nation has been abused - that is the issue. Instead of reinforcing the autonomy of an organization that is clearly dedicated to probity and political integrity, notice has been sent to all four corners of the nation, and to the international community that, at the slightest threat to the hegemony of corrupt rule, the credibility of even the most laudable institutions will be eroded.

Is this the last word? Is Nuhu Ribadu yet another sacrificial lamb on the altar of success and promise of more and more success?  If so, the nation has indeed been brought to an abysmal low. Confusion has been deliberately and liberally sown. The reign of vanishing files, denied directives and ambiguous legal advices has begun where dubious Attorney-Generals fill the vacuum created by high level movements of personnel in multiple directions where those in the most sensitive and knowledgeable places vanish into the bureaucratic maze, with hardly a trace of the rewards of their long dedicated industry.  Technical extensions of cut-and-dried prosecutions will now lengthen into eternity and of course – oblivion. 

What a dismal, contemptuous New Year gift to the nation! Again, I lament with the democratic people of Pakistan but, even in the midst of your grief, spare a moment of pity for that land of eternal missed opportunities and blighted hopes, that clay-footed giant sibling on a continent to your West, known as – Nigeria.


Wole Soyinka

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
   

[Kennedy Emetulu]

 

 

While I deplore the cynical way Nuhu Ribadu is being unseated at the EFCC, I do not think this threnody by Professor Wole Soyinka is appropriate. Indeed, there’s no basis to compare, even tangentially, the man’s constructive sack with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Yes, Nuhu Ribadu was feared by those he was set against, but those he worked for were rolling in muck under his very nose and not only did he do nothing about it, he defended them vehemently. While the man faced his job with seemingly singular courage, the carnage of lawlessness, impunity, selectiveness and abuses of process he left in his wake also had their negative impacts on our national psyche. Only the wilfully ignorant will deny the obvious fact that Nuhu Ribadu became as much a liability to our democracy as he was celebrated.

 

Of course, Soyinka is entitled to feel bad over his removal - after all, Ribadu was one of the few public officials that openly worshipped him. But Kongi should not be telling us, directly or impliedly, that his removal has anything to do with the opening of files of unsolved political murder cases. Ribadu was not the Inspector General of Police and even his silence in the case Kongi himself mentioned is testament enough to his irrelevance in that area. Ribadu did not call in the judge in the said case to question him further about those he alleged were trying to suborn him neither did he care to investigate the fabled fortune of the reported beneficiary of that murder. We have watched Ribadu look the other way when the matter concerns the real sacred cows in our country and have seen him spring to action, almost unwholesomely, when it concerns little fries or those who’ve fallen out of favour with his big bosses. At any rate, if Kongi fears for the worst just because one man is redeployed from one position in an organization, then it is more a statement on the failure of Ribadu that he has not made the EFCC institutionally strong enough to survive his exit. We need to begin to wean ourselves off this tendency to constantly hero-worship persons who try to run institutions in their own image.

 

Let’s be clear what has happened here. Those who appointed Ribadu as their own very Cerberus have used him and are now dumping him, as is usual in this business. He’s enjoyed his time playing the feared enforcer of selective justice and his bosses have grown tired of his constant tendency to play God. His sack has nothing to do with Ibori or his reported unwillingness to investigate Iyabo Obasanjo. This is simply about Yar’Adua seeking to appoint his own man to a very sensitive position and using a vengeful police hierarchy to do the dirty job. Ribadu is the last of the top Olusegun Obasanjo’s appointees still standing. It was only a matter of time before he was sent packing. He cannot complain. If the reports are true, he made the application to go to Kuru in pursuit of the position of IG at the direction of his godfathers; but now he’s being cynically granted his wish when the vacancy is no longer available! Even if the fact is that he’s being forced to go on the course by those who want him out, is he in a position to complain after reaching the position of AIG (having been shot up the ladder, above his professional superiors, by his godfathers) without undertaking the requisite promotion-related courses? Ribadu simply has to take it on the chin and move on. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that he made himself available to be used by Obasanjo and his cohorts makes him part of the ruling establishment that’s been disgracing this nation. He has only lost out in a high-level power game and should count himself lucky that they aren’t wheeling him out in contrived disgrace or indeed in a body bag!

 

 

Kennedy Emetulu

 

 

 

 

Mobolaji ALUKO <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

---

Sent from Yahoo! - a smarter inbox.

[Ikhide]

"While I deplore the cynical way Nuhu Ribadu is being unseated at the EFCC, I do not think this threnody by Professor Wole Soyinka is appropriate. Indeed, there’s no basis to compare, even tangentially, the man’s constructive sack with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Yes, Nuhu Ribadu was feared by those he was set against, but those he worked for were rolling in muck under his very nose and not only did he do nothing about it, he defended them vehemently. While the man faced his job with seemingly singular courage, the carnage of lawlessness, impunity, selectiveness and abuses of process he left in his wake also had their negative impacts on our national psyche. Only the wilfully ignorant will deny the obvious fact that Nuhu Ribadu became as much a liability to our democracy as he was celebrated."

 

- Kenmeth Emetulu

 

I agree with Citizen Emetulu. The good professor Wole Soyinka is being overly dramatic about an individual that is obviously dispensable, for good or for bad. One gets tired of watching our African Big Men wearing Nigeria like it is an under-sized agbada. This fight ought not to be about an individual; rather it ought to be on sustainable structures and processes. There are more Ribadus where that man came from.

 

What I learnt from watching Mr. Ribadu at work is that there is hope for Nigeria once its rulers start respecting structures and processes. However, Mr. Ribadu was a monster created out of malicious necessity by Mr. Obasanjo, the Grand poobah of malice. Mr. Ribadu was highly effective - at hounding those who had fallen out of favor with Mr. Obasanjo. Mr. RIbadu seemed eager to assure us that he possessed set of blind eyes when it came to holding Obasanjo and his goons accountable. Eight years of Obasanjo and Atiku will go down in history as easily the worst years in our history when you adjust for our inflated expectation of the dividends of "democracy."  It is my fervent hope and prayer that two two characters (Obasanjo and Atiku) will meet their own Ribadu soon, very soon.

 

I admire Professor Soyinka but he is trying to make sense out of nonsense, trying to sew logic out of illogical fabric. It is understandable; he and Ribadu love each other, in fact this past October, Ms. Ngozi Saromi, Special Assistant to the Executive Chairman of the EFCC (Ribadu) bragged in an op-ed piece that Professor Soyinka has done work for the EFCC ("for free." she was quick to add). That is nice, but Nigeria is bigger than all of us and our friends. It is a lesson we all seem to ignore to the detriment of our country. We shall see how long Nigerians can take this charade. Doris Lessing once said of Zimbabwe that it is said that a country deserves her leaders, but she was not sure that Zimbabwe deserves Mugabe. I know that Nigeria does not deserve the present crop of "leaders." I would like to close with the words of Wole Soyinka ringing in my head: We were sent the wrong people. We asked for statesmen and we were sent executioners." [A Dance of the Forests]

 

- Ikhide 

[Mobolaji ALUKO]

Ikhide:


For me, if there is logic and an ingenious device in sending Nuhu Ribadu to Kuru despite his legally-protected four-year tenure as EFCC Director, then the same logic should be used to send Maurice Iwu of INEC to Kuru and save us from his impunity at election-management.

Yes, Nuhu has a mixed record, but Iwu has a thoroughly un-mixed disastrous record from the April 2007 elections.  Yes, they are individuals each of who head certain institutions,  but their records show that while a particular institution (EFCC) can still be looked at with some small level of respect even by its detractors, the other (INEC) is spat on with ridicule even by its friends and beneficiaries - the prime one of who is Yar'Adua himself who declared the elections - ostensibly including his own, to the chagrin of his own defense lawyers -  "flawed."

There I stand.


Bolaji Aluko

[Ikhide]

Bolaji,

 

For me, Mr. Iwu is BENEATH CONTEMPT. All those who have sought to whitewash this dung heap of a man should hang their heads in shame. Even for Nigeria, Iwu has been a disgrace to his race.

 

By the way, Bolaji, I just had this brain wave: I may be the new Executive Director of the EFCC. No, wait, don't laugh. Please stop laughing. My good friend UMYA knows how much I love him (UMYA, Hugs and Kisses! Smack!) He knows how much I detest Aremu Obasanjo and how much I adore Kongi. He gives me the contract, er the job. I make life hell for Obasanjo to UMYA's private delight, Kongi gets to keep his pro-bono job with the EFCC (along with free access to tinted-car convoys) and somehow with this brilliant act by UMYA. Pakistan becomes a real democracy! Wow! Wow!! Wow!!! Brilliant! Simply brill!!

 

Ikhide! Ikhide!! Ikhide!!! How many times have I called your name? Allah, you are a genius!

 

- Ikhide

Mobolaji ALUKO <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ikhide:


For me, if there is logic and an ingenious device in sending Nuhu Ribadu to Kuru despite his legally-protected four-year tenure as EFCC Director, then the same logic should be used to send Maurice Iwu of INEC to Kuru and save us from his impunity at election-management.

Yes, Nuhu has a mixed record, but Iwu has a thoroughly un-mixed disastrous record from the April 2007 elections.  Yes, they are individuals each of who head certain institutions,  but their records show that while a particular institution (EFCC) can still be looked at with some small level of respect even by its detractors, the other (INEC) is spat on with ridicule even by its friends and beneficiaries - the prime one of who is Yar'Adua himself who declared the elections - ostensibly including his own, to the chagrin of his own defense lawyers -  "flawed."

There I stand.


Bolaji Aluko

Mobolaji ALUKO <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Gemini]

Iwu's position is a creation of the Constitution, and his position is guaranteed by the Constitution.  The EFCC Act (I do not have the legislation to hand) may use the same language, but it is a creation of statute.  Ribadu is ostensibly being sent on leave because he is a police officer (Bolaji is right in remarking that he could not have been receiving promotions within the Nigeria Police Force from the Police Service Commission and at the same time - despite his public position - not been a police officer, although please note that his latest promotion(s?) came at a time when there was no Commission), even though as Chairman of the EFCC he reports to the President.  Maurice Iwu is not in the same position.

 

However, although Ribadu's position is one created by statute, it remains the law, and one expects that the President, who has been mouthing 'rule of law' at every opportunity (without necessarily grasping that it means something rather more than his gracious decision to comply with court orders when he chooses to do so) will abide by the provisions of the relevant statute.  Let him come out openly and say that he has decided to remove Ribadu and be done with it.  Or is the position to remain occupied in an acting capacity because - if one is on study leave - one presumably expects to return to occupy one's substantive position once the study is completed, not so?  Even worse, has the President thought through what this means for other holders of high office with terms fixed by statute?  Maybe the Governor of the CBN will be sent on study leave next?  Will it be possible to just dispose of all such people simply because of wanting to 'put his own man' in place?  While one accepts that Ministers hold office at the pleasure of the President, what sort of professionals is one likely to attract if what looks like fixed term guarantees turn out to be worth nothing?

 

Last point, drawing from the former National Human Rights Commission Secretary's travails during the Obasanjo administration: at the end of the day, the human rights community huffed and puffed, but the object of their agitations ... accepted his redeployment and preserved his career in the Ministry of Justice.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Here is a response I posted in another forum. I have recalibrated it for this emerging discussion on Soyinka's intervention.

 

 

 

Hats off to Kenn and Ikhide for their clear-headedness; for keeping their focus on the real issues; for refusing to be emotional about this issue; for pointing out how, ultimately, Ribadu might have done more damage to the anti-corruption war than his recent redeeming actions are capable of repairing.

I mean, here is an intelligent, courageous, and incorruptible young man who could have used those talents to etch his name in gold by resisting any political pressures on his investigative and prosecutorial powers but chose to put career, personal loyalty, and personal glories above the fight against graft.

I lost faith in Ribadu when he declared Obasanjo clean; when he declared Bode George innocent (alas, one of Ribadu's aides indicted George in court recently!); when he declared that the EFCC was only loyal to OBJ--a position which he has now repudiated in favor of a National Assembly-controlled EFCC; when he admitted that his so-called list of disqualified candidates in last April's election was altered in the presidency but still defended it and saw nothing wrong with such partisan executive meddlesomeness and apparent political persecution; when he did nothing against Andy Ubah and Obasanjo in the presidential jet cash smuggling scandal; when he stood by and looked away when Obasanjo gorged on the national treasury, buying 200 million shares in Transcorp, which he proceeded to award choice state assets, expanding his farm all over the country, building a 40 billion naira university, building a hill-top mansion and a 50-room five star hotel, acquiring controlling shares in several companies, and dolling out billions in bribes to secure a third term.

Here is a man who knew about the Iyabo contract scandal as far back as 2003 (when the EFCC first recieved a petition on the matter) but dismissed it as a mere business dispute. Here is a man who was so thoroughly politically compromised that he interjected himself into every major political battle of his benefactor, Obasanjo.

Kenn is absolutely right that Nuhu was as much a burden on the anti-corruption war as he was a catalyst.

For the most part he wasted his courage on a murderous, tyrannical, and corrupt benefactor, Obasanjo. But he will be remembered as someone who put anti-corruption in the Nigerian public's consciousness. I give him credit for that. So strong is this legacy that no political dispensation can endure in Nigeria in the coming decades without proclaiming, at least rhetorically, the mantra of anti-corruption as a political platform.

Soyinka may be right that Yar'Adua and his people may want Ribadu out of the way to get those who brought him to power off the judicial hook. We'll soon find out the veracity or otherwise of this postulation. But Soyinka is wrong in asserting that the EFCC's effort against corruption is unprecedented. Murtala and Buhari achieved much more in six months and 2 years respectively than Ribadu acheived in more than four years. Yes, those were military regimes, but with OBJ's support, Ribadu's EFCC operated like a Gestapo organization with extra-judicial powers and a tyrannical president providing political cover. Even if you make allowance for the difference in regime orientation--the military/civilian distinction--Ribadu still falls way short of previous efforts against corruption both in terms of achievements and commitment.

Ribadu's selectivity was counterproductive and even injurious to the war against corruption in that it gave rhetorical ammunition to the corrupt, who curried public sympathy by simply pointing to Ribadu's blatant partisanship and selective investigation. Such undeserved public support for corrupt politicians must be recognized as one of the legacies of Ribadu.

With such a thick cloud of suspicion surrounding Ribadu's sack and with conspiracy theories finding friendly reception in the Nigerian public, Yar'Adua would be stupid to confirm these theories and suspicions by impeding the anti-corruption effort. If anything, his advisers should be telling him to urge Ribadu's successor to move more aggresively than Ribadu did. That's the only way Nigerians will come to accept Ribadu's removal as a wise decision. In spite of all the reservations we have about the grandstanding, politically compromised AIG, an incompetent and compromised successor would make the Ribadu era seem like a revolution.

 

 

--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Ghandi

[Tony Agbali]

Good analysis. But we have also seen to be so much suspicious the role of a Minister of Justice. Aondooka in trying to mitigate and mutilate justice in favor of some of the most acclaimed political actors and leaders of the current dispensation, especially the military class. Is the removal of Ribadu also likely to be tired to the steadfast emphasis of the EFCC to bring these elememts to justice? While Aondooka want these governors off the hook in every respect- Ibori and Alamieyesegha cases, and the altercation between the Minister and the EFCC on jurisdictional territories on the corruption issues- Ribadu's EFCC wants them rein in. Today Joshua Dariye, Orji Kalu, Rev. Nyame, George Akume, and others are walking stellar free even when someone like Nyame allegedly confessed about his stolen largesse from the Jalingo State's public fund.

 

Within the mode of Nigeria, it seems that the while the scapegoating of Ribadu's EFCC was an ethical lapse in both judgement and administration of justice, the fight needs to begin somewhere, and even I suppose that scapegoating must have done a lot of good, stemming the tide of massive sipphoning of the Nigeria's public funds abroad.  Ribadu is definitely not a saint, but he was surely a determined fellow who found himself with his confreres in a very tight and complex situation.  The point has correctly pointed out is that the EFCC as a public entity must not revolve around one person, as if indispensible, but upon ensuring the permanence and efficient functionality of institutional structures over time, with improved effective ability to transcend internal constraints and contradictions in serving the overall public good. If the EFCC continues to ensure and discharge its constitutional functions beyond Ribadu's exit, then surely Ribadu also is to be credited for it. 

 

What is troubling here is not just the removal of Ribadu for studies, but moreso the mode the Police force he is a member is going about his reassignment. This is a force whose two former Inspector Generals-Balogun and Ehindero- have been accussed of massive corruption, accumulation of millions of dollars, and acquisition of choice properties across the country and beyond, I wonder why there is nothing in the loop that  the current police chief finds threatening?

 

There would always be some "ifs"....and "why nots" in the Ribadu unfolding drama, but nonetheless what is significant is that in spite of the EFCC's limitations, Nigerians have come to associate with the leadership of Ribadu of that entity as important for their democracy and as a crucial instrument in ensuring public social responsibility and accountability.

Even this much consciousness is a significant hallmark and attestation to the determined leadership Ribadu has offered.  Therefore, I think that Soyinka's impute on this issues should not be conceptualized academically only. Soyinka knows something about how Nigeria works, at least as the erstwhile chief of the Road Safety commission, he possibly understands that initial leadership and continuity is essential to the elongation of a vision in gaining institutional permanency in Nigeria. Today, all of us knows that the Road safety marshalls and the "Egunje Olopa" are much more now than before like twins in "Oga wetin you carry!"

---

Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

[Gemini]

I would say that the long term effect of Murtala's wholesale sacking of civil servants without due process actually, by removing their security of tenure (i.e. non removal without a fair hearing) sewed the seeds of the all-embracing corruption that has engulfed Nigeria since it taught civil servants that it was better to secure their future while on the job, because there was no certainty about that job, and that being clean was no protection against being sacked.  It depended on who your enemies or rivals were, and how convincing or close they were to the regime in power.  You would only be sacked, and derided while you waited and begged for charity until your gratuity and pension were processed.  As for Buhari, the effort was as selective in its way (although with more of a North-South element), as the Obasanjo one.  He was an NPN supporter who understood that it was vital to demolish the perception of UPN achievement in order to justify the military takeover.  Quick fixes in both military dictatorships looked good and may have been popular, but there aren't many quick fixes that have translated into long term solutions.  Neither of these did.

 

As for the EFCC, while we have the depressing precedent of the National Human Rights Commission, we may also remember in history that when Richard Nixon got rid of one Special Prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair because he seemed 'overzealous', the replacement was equally ferocious.  Now that may not be Yar'Adua's goal.  He may indeed want to replace a tiger (of sorts) with a pussy cat.  But events may force him to select another tiger after all.

 

Ayo

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu

To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 2:58 PM

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Exit Ribadu ? A Commentary by WOLE SOYINKA

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ayo:

 

I hope you're not suggesting that everyone who was caught in the Murtala anti-corruption dragnet was an innocent, honest civil servant. This cannot be true. Yes, due process was not followed in the gale of sacks and property confiscations that marked the Murtala effort against corruption. But MOST of the individuals sacked were civil servants who had acquired wealth and properties far above their legitimate incomes. Properties and ill-gotten assets were traced to them--suggesting but not proving that they were corrupt. The clearest evidence of this is the government confiscations and the post-Murtala outcry by the stripped and sacked civil servants to have their multi-million naira properties returned them. For several years, their agitation went unheeded until IBB came to power. In one fell swoop, the regime that is universally credited with institutionalizing corruption in Nigeria returned the siezed properties of folks like Ogbemudia (apologies if I have the name wrong). They all became instant multi-millionaires and political heavyweights in their respective states as result of the reclamation of their dubious wealth. All this information is in the public domain.

 

Since your premise that the affected civil servants were honest people who lost their honest earnings and their entitlement cannot be right (as evidenced by the seizure of their properties and the subsequent return of those properties), your argument about how Murtala's populist and fiat-based anti-corruption campaign created the "secure my future" syndome cannot be correct. If the premise is faulty, the argument will also be flawed.

 

Your allegations against Buhari-Idiagbon's war against corruption are very serious. This is the first time I have heard them. Do you have any proof that Buhari was an NPN supporter? I'd appreciate it if you would provide such evidence. How exactly was Buhari's war against corruption selective along a North/South contour? I ask this because politicians from all sections of the country were sent to jail and subjected to the military tribunal justice of the regime (Rimi, Kangiwa, Akinloye, Okilo, Nwobodo, Mbakwe, Aku, and others). Please provide proof of your weighty allegations or I'd simply regard them as your own jaundiced anti-Buhari-Idiagbon bias, which is not an indictment against you since most Nigerian intellectuals harbor that same bias.

 

I cannot dispute the finer details of your submissions on Buhari (I was in primary school when he took over) but I was well aware of the national spread of his outrage against the political class of the second republic.

 

I share your legal sensibilities and commitment to the rule of law, but we can all agree that, on that scale, the Ribadu-OBJ anti-corruption effort, despite purportedly operating in a democratic environment, was almost as draconian as the Murtala and Buhari efforts. I am sure Ribadu's EFCC, too, violated your sense of legal propriety.

 

We can agree that neither the Murtala/Buhari military approach nor Ribadu/OBJ's insincere, selective, and shamefully politicized effort against corruption is capable of having a lasting impact on governmental graft in Nigeria. Nor do they approximate what you and I would recommend as a strategy for combating corruption. We can agree that both are actually counterproductive in the final analysis.

 

But let me confess, since we don't live in an ideal world, that if given a choice between between the Murtala/Buhari approach with all its illegalities and the Ribadu/OBJ vareity with all its illegalities, politics, and selectivity I'd choose the Buhari/Murtala approach because the return on effort in terms of asset recovery and punitive example was greater under that approach than it was in the Ribadu/OBJ effort.

[Mobolaji ALUKO]

Ayo:

I submit that where there is no conflict between them, a statutory word is not inferior to a constitutional word.  Thus as far as Iwu and Ribadu's tenures are concerned, I believe that I am on solid ground if I imply that if one (Ribadu) can be temporarily sidelined by any ingenious device, the other (Iwu) too can be.

The only difference then is the supplementary authority to which Ribadu seems to be subject - the NPF.  But since the NPF is under the direction of the (executive) Presidency, saying that Ribadu receives an order that is NOT countermanded by the President is saying that he has received an order from the President.

Yar'Adua is hiding behind the shirt (I almost wrote "skirt") of Okiro, which belittles the position of a president, even one struggling for legitimacy.



Bolaji Aluko

[Ikhide]

I apologise folks, I tend to get emotional when the name of that unrepentant villain Murtala Mohammed is mentioned in civilized company. Sometimes I just want to holler. Only in Nigeria would folks celebrate a man like Murtala who supervised the slaughter of the men of Asaba during the civil war, sacked and pillaged the Central Bank of Nigeria in Benin City and was such a deadly buffoon during the civil war he had to be recalled from the theatre of war. This man as a reward for his acts against humanity has an international airport named after him and his criminal face adorns our currency. That my people is the most visual evidence of how a-historic our people are. Mr Murtala Mohammed supervised one of the worst forms of ethnic cleansing in our country's history. But things are so bad, we still hold him up as a model of moral rectitude.

 

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/max-siollun/the-roller-coaster-life-of-murtala-moh.html

 

And have we forgotten how that deadly couple Bhari and Idiagbon humiliated the populace in the name of discipline and anti-corruption? Have we forgotten so soon, how those two clownd created a decree that retroactively found youths guilty who were in turn executed (murderd) in cold blood by these two goons? I say to all of you that the war that is coming is pregnant and nursing a baby, mark my words. I pray that all of those who have helped shape Nigeria today get theirs in the long run. Every one of them. We should probably start a list. So our children may not forget those that hurt them so.

 

- Ikhide

Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Dr. Valentine Ojo]

“ I pray that all of those who have helped shape Nigeria today get theirs in the long run. Every one of them. We should probably start a list. So our children may not forget those that hurt them so.

 

- Ikhide”

 

And for whom are you speaking then, when you invoke “We should probably start a list…?” Whose “”children?

 

Moses Ochonu in his presentation would appear to hold views diametrically opposed to yours for example – and he is definitely not an isolated [position.

 

Therefore, who is “We” – if I may ask?

 

And my second question:

 

Could you please name one or two people who have ruled in Nigeria - military or civil - that you would consider being close to your idea/ideal of “model leadership”?

 

Dr. Valentine Ojo

Tall Timbers, MD

[Tony Agbali]

Moses,

I just read this piece, and I saw the name of Shehu Kangiwa as among the governors sent to jail. Wasn't Kangiwa dead before the Buhari era, playing polo, but yet how come you included his name among the political actors sent to jail, especially the notorious Kiriki? Maybe you are right, and I am wrong on this one.

Anthony Agbali

Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

---

Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ikhide:

 

I don't mean to diminish the Asaba massacre or whatever personal, familial or social trauma is continues to cause for you. I empathize. I however wonder why Murtala deserves more moral outrage for his conduct in the civil war than, say, Obasanjo, Gowon, Danjuma, Adekunle, and others who equally commanded the ravaging of the civilian populations of their respective theaters. Is it because Murtala is not alive to commission someone to write his own  My Command to discursively fumigate and sanitize his war record?

 

I must clarify my position. My preference for the Murtala/Buhari approach to anti-corruption over the OBJ/Ribadu approach is not a wholesale endorsement of their regimes or their policies and pronouncements in other sphere of governance. This caveat is quite important. I believe one can do a nuanced, issue-by-issue assessment of a political dispensation without being misunderstood as wholly endorsing that dispensation.

 

That caveat advanced, let me also say that my memory of Buhari/Idiagbon was one of order and discipline, even if a forced, humiliating one. Again, since we don't live in an ideal world, If I had to choose between Buhari's militarized order, with its zero tolerance for corruption (the real one) and its emphasis on public morality, and the choatic, wasteful, democratized stealing field of the OBJ/Yar'Adua era I'd choose the former.

 

I am afraid I don't share the puritanical, at times textbookish, approach to legalism and human rights discourses that is the methodological staple of the human rights intellectuals of Nigeria. The interest of Nigeria and Nigerians, for me, supercedes any philosophical commitment to abstract libertarian ideals. And to the extent that most ordinary Nigerians (not intellectuals) recall the Buhari/Idiagbon days with a functional nostalgia because of the the duo's decisive effort against corruption and public imorality, I'm aligned with their sentiments. To do this is not to erase the price Nigerians had to to in personal liberties, which I recall (even as a primary school age kid) folks didn't mind that much as they began to see a restoration of morality in governance and public conduct.

 

In a nutshell, like most ordinary Nigerians, I don't have an irreconciliable philosophical disagreement with Nigerians giving away a little of their personal civic liberties if the endpoint is a genuine patriotic commitment to stamping out corruption, which deprives Nigerians the basic infrastructural benefits of government. Even the Obasanjo/Ribadu effort against corruption was permitted several extra-legal latitudes initially because Nigerians felt that that was a small price they had to pay to fight the evil of corruption. Only when OBJ took permission for licence and turned the EFCC into a personal instrument of political persecution and protection did that public indifference to instrumental illegality wane.

 

I hope my position has become clearer, if perhaps more nuanced.

[Gemini]

No, Moses, I am not suggesting that every civil servant caught in Murtala's dragnet was innocent.  Unfortunately when I said that not all those who were punished by Murtala were corrupt, you misread that as my having said that all those punished by Murtala were innocent.  Of course, I said no such thing.  What I intended to convey, was that apart from their own consciences to keep them honest (as continued to be the case for many), civil servants no longer had the assurance that being honest and non-corrupt was protection against unceremonious dismissal.  And that we can see that some who might otherwise have remained honest, reasoned that they had nothing to lose by joining the pack and securing their futures in dishonest ways.  Your own premise about my premise is therefore, I'm afraid, itself flawed.

 

However, it's always comforting for the guilty to know that there are innocent ones caught up along with them - precisely because the lack of due process (and I do need to stress that whatever legalistic hurdles it appears to present, especially when we lawyers get involved, the purpose of due process is to ensure that a fair hearing precedes any finding of guilt and imposition of punishment) means that it is impossible to be sure that all those who are sacked are in fact corrupt.  So it's better to follow due process in the attempt to ensure that it is the guilty who are punished, rather than have the dragnet because that is the excuse then used by the guilty to loudly (though falsely) proclaim their innocence.  It's a bit like the way that Ribadu's '32 governors are corrupt' without naming any, allowed all of them to proclaim that he wasn't one of the 32!  General condemnation (all politicians are corrupt etc.) though comforting, doesn't really take us very far.  I mean, in a democracy, we are supposed to make a choice and to in fact 'settle the precedence between the flea and the louse' (to misapply Dr. Johnson's axiom as I have so many times before).

 

The Murtala formula for confiscation by the way, was that no person should own more than one government-sold property, even though the acquisition of more than one of such was not illegal at the time, and whether or not it was purchased from honestly-earned money.  Such confiscation did not in itself result in dismissal as it was recognised that having more than one property didn't ipso facto mean corruption, but it didn't mean that everybody who was dismissed was in fact corrupt.  I don't make any excuses for the Babangida returns of confiscated property, it was largely an exercise for the biggest big men, not for the ordinary civil servants most affected by the Murtala/Obasanjo exercise.  I wouldn't describe Ogbemudia and his ilk as civil servants.

 

As for Buhari, I am only a legal practitioner.  I remain unsure what an intellectual is on this forum, but if one - as such - is expected to use one's mental faculties to look beyond immediate remedies, then I remain biased in favour of the thought-out solution that is good for today and good for tomorrow.  While often, when I sing the national anthem at a public event, or am in a queue where queue jumpers are challenged I remember that this is part of the Buhari/Idiagbon legacy, I think that when it comes to matters of crime and punishment, quick fixes are to be deplored since, as we have been noting in this particular thread, good governance comes from strong institutions.

 

But of course, as a legal practitioner, I was a junior in the chambers of G.O.K. Ajayi, lawyer to Obafemi Awolowo, and the second case that I was involved in after my NYSC was Awolowo's election petition against Shehu Shagari's election victory of 1979, and on top of that, my dad was a staunch Action Group man, so I don't pretend neutrality in the political issues of the 1980s.  Which however, does not make me an manufacturer of false facts.  Doing election petitions in support of the NPP in Plateau State against the 'moonslide' victory announced in favour of the NPN in the 1983 elections, it was common knowledge that the local army commander had instructed the soldiers under his command to vote for the NPN.  I can't say more than that because this is what I was told (and would therefore fall foul of the hearsay rule in terms of admissible evidence), and was complained of by the NPP supporters in the state (who were our clients).  But for whatever it is worth, that local army commander was Muhammadu Buhari.

 

As regards the North-South issue, again, you read absolute black and white where I aimed at nuance.  I said 'with more of a North-South element', not that no northerners were locked up, tried or convicted by Buhari.  But it is certainly true that most of the northerners against whom that regime moved were not NPN supporters - Rimi, Lar etc.

 

In the end, I wouldn't choose the Buhari/Murtala approach, but that is because I would prefer a system that (however much abuse the Ribadu/OBJ approach might offer) - since there is a Constitution and a system of laws that at least pretends to offer protection to those whose rights to due process are abused - can be checked, corrected and perhaps built upon.    And I'm afraid that the Babangida years are the living proof that in reality, very little in terms of punitive example, was achieved.  As for asset recovery, perhaps Babangida was able to get away with reversing it because there was enough to justify claims that the Murtala method had punished some innocent ones.  As I said, the guilty always love blanket generalisations.

 

Ultimately, I do believe that part (and Moses, I am only saying part, not the only) of the reason that Nigeria's democracy is so stunted, and our institutions - particularly our electoral ones - are so lacking in credibility is because of military interventions for quick fixes.  I can remember how many of us who were not NPN supporters were so happy on December 31st 1983 when what turned out to be the Buhari/Idiagbon regime took power.  The outrage of that 'moonslide' would be wiped out at a stroke!  Late Tai Solarin ran from his house in Ikenne - elated - to celebrate the news with Chief Awolowo (don't know if Awo thought it reason for celebration or not).  But a more prescient friend with whom I was seeing in the New Year shook her head - Nigeria was returning to the starting blocks - again - and we would end up regretting it.  Again.  After that, I knew better than to celebrate, or even expect anything good for Nigeria from a military quick fix.  And so - up to and including the era of the militicians - it has proved.

[Ikhide]

" I don't mean to diminish the Asaba massacre or whatever personal, familial or social trauma is continues to cause for you. I empathize. I however wonder why Murtala deserves more moral outrage for his conduct in the civil war than, say, Obasanjo, Gowon, Danjuma, Adekunle, and others who equally commanded the ravaging of the civilian populations of their respective theaters. Is it because Murtala is not alive to commission someone to write his own  My Command to discursively fumigate and sanitize his war record?"

 

- Citizen Ochonu

 

Citizen Ochonu:

 

Thanks for the clarification. I would have to go through my reams of scholarly essays to delete instances where I sang to the high heavens the praises of Obasanjo (!) Gowon, Danjuma, Adekunle et al ;-)

 

It should not be that hard for us as a people to eschew a culture of low expectations - one that says a mass murderer and bank robber should not have his yeye face adorning our currency unless said currency is toiler paper. Or that said criminal should not have his yeye name on our international airport. How low can we get, my brother? And by the way, the ethnic cleansing that occurred in Asaba should not shock just me on a personal level. That would be sad for our people.

 

By the way, I am sure that there are penniless Nigerian "academicians" on the lunatic fringe who consider mass murderers and bank robbers paragons of leadership. I don't count you as one of those yeye people, fret not ;-)))))

 

Happy New Year ojare, I am tired of thinking too much. I have just come back from my intellectual pursuits at McDonalds, thrown away my apron and I am  already relaxing this evening with my Heineken, my cognac, and my ever present bowl of goat meat peppersoup. My dog siddon_look, PhD, Tall Timbers, MD, is playing fetch with bones from said goat meat. Life is good! I nor come Amerika come crase!

 

Citizen Ochonu, e go better for you this coming year! Ise! If na pikin you want, na double! If you play lottery, ten percent of the million na my own! We go clap you, you go clap for us! Ise! I don pray for you O!

 

Larer bo!

 

- Ikhide

 

[Adeniran Adeboye]

Dear Ebe Ochonu,

Many thanks for this piece. Your positions have always been nuanced on practically any issue. The inherent objectivity has helped a number of us to appreciate incidents in Nigeria's history which you may have witnessed but which we did not. While on this issue and assuming that each regime was committed to fighting corruption, to what extent did the military nature of Buhari/Idiagbon regime allow greater efficacy in anti-corruption activities than would be available to a civilian IBJ/Ribadu regime? Put differently, how well can a civilian President Buhari (with or without an Idiagbon) match the achievement of his military government in that arena?

Best regards,

Adeniran Adeboye

[Qansy Salako]

Moses,

I had waited for Ayo’s response to yours.

She did good, but I’d like to add some comments to the following query paragraph from yours.

            Your allegations against Buhari-Idiagbon's war against corruption are very serious. This is the first

time I have heard them. Do you have any proof that Buhari was an NPN supporter? I'd appreciate it

if you would provide such evidence. How exactly was Buhari's war against corruption selective

along a North/South contour? I ask this because politicians from all sections of the country were

sent to jail and subjected to the military tribunal justice of the regime (Rimi, Kangiwa, Akinloye, Okilo, Nwobodo, Mbakwe, Aku, and others). Please provide proof of your weighty allegations or

I'd simply regard them as your own jaundiced anti-Buhari-Idiagbon bias, which is not an indictment against you since most Nigerian intellectuals harbor that same bias.

 

Ayo was right in her original assertion regarding the North-South sentiments that the Buhari-Idiagbon provoked during their own fire-and-brimstone era in office.

It is true that they clamped politicians from across the country in jail in their quick-fix program for the country.

However, many senior politicians from the North were not arrested at all let alone detained and of those detained, many were released months earlier than those from the South who spent eternity in prisons.

I don’t remember specific names anymore, but for example, I think Shagari was merely held under house arrest in his Sokoto residence while Ekueme was held in a gaol somewhere in the Middle Belt where he spent several months before release.

 

Many million Nigerians actually liked the “no-nonsense” attitudes that characterized the Buhari-Idiagbon regime.

Indeed, many more wanted all those good-for-nothing profligate NPN money bags thrown in the Niger River, as opposed to merely being detained, for their crimes against the Nigerian state.

However, the shoddy way in which the Buhari-Idiagbon handled the Northern politicians betrayed Buhari’s innate sentimentality to the North.

To make matters worse, Tunde Idiagbon claimed Fulani extraction from Ilorin in those days.

That their “commission of inquiry” declared Shagari innocent of all the election rigging, economic bankruptcy fallen standard of education in the country during the NPN republic, was the first straw that broke the last camel’s back with the people on Buhari-Idiagbon.

 

This issue mainly contributed to their falling out of favor with the public (at least the South) very fast.

So nobody shed tears for the duo when odious Babangida came shooting his way into his evil regime.

I believe, this period in time is still dogging Buhari in the South till today over his repeated interests to rule the country.

 

If you need more specific names and details, check the newspapers of the time plus including some books that were written on their regime.

 

Qansy Salako

---Mohandas Ghandi <BR

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ayo:

 

Thanks for clarifying your position on Murtala's war against corruption. Your point about some honest civil servants getting caught in the dragnet and the message that that communicated to serving honest servants is taken. But I have to differ from you in the causal and analytical weight to be placed on this unfortunate fact of the Murtala campaign. The honest civil servants who got caught up in that campaign were a small minority, so I would hesitate to credit their victimization with the subsequent growth of corruption in government. The "secure the future" syndrome does not explain Nigeria's corruption problem, and because the civil servants that may have imbibed it are small in number, I wouldn't give accord it it much analytical significance. Moreover, there is no judicial system that is foolproof; even those undergirded by democratic constitutions and institutions occasionaly fail innocents. This cannot analytically be elevated above the MAJORITY of cases, in which the guilty are caught and punished. It comes down to the weight of numbers.

 

I respect your lawyerly revulsion at the possibility of an innocent suffering for a crime they did not commit and the impact of that on the conduct of other innocents, but Nigeria's corruption has always been nurtured by greed, inpunity, and the absence of institutionalized,  consistent, preventive and punitive safeguards against corruption. The "securing the future" factor is a minor element.

 

Thank you for "confessing" your political bias against Buhari. I would not want to dignify what you yourself describe as hearsay evidence in regard to Buhari's alleged NPN sympathies, so let's leave that in the realm of hearsay, as we do many such political old wives tales. No need to contruct a serious discussion around a rumor. The claims you spun around that rumor are not borne out by the historical evidence. 

 

I do not agree that Buhari's northern victims were mostly non-NPN governors by design. First, the governor of my own state, the late Mr. Aper Aku, went to jail. He was an NPN governor. I mentioned Nadama, whom I believe was also NPN. I am sure there were other NPN folks too that were detained. But it must be pointed out that there were not that many NPN governors in the North to begin with. Plateau was NPP, Kano PRP, Borno and Gongola GNPP, and so on. So statistically, there could not have been many NPN governors going to jail from the North. And, of course, not all non-NPN northern governors went to jail.

 

I don't believe that the IBB era is necessarily an indictment of Murtala and Buhari's "quick-fix" approaches to anti-corruption. IBB created a different political and cultural environment than the one created by Murtala and Buhari. In IBB's political universe, inpunity was the name of the game. This is the root of the corruption problem under IBB, not the failure of the "quick-fix" approach of Buhari/Idiagbon. The quick-fix, shock approach has its uses. But its gain needs to be consolidated in lasting institutions by subsequent dispensations. Unfortunately the administrations that followed Murtala and Buhari's didn't do this. I've heard Ghanaians express similar arguments about the failure of Rawlings's succesors (which includes him) to consolidate the universally praised gains of his first coming, which had a cleansing, if draconian, impact on Ghanaian society.

 

There are no guanratees in life, so it is rare for genuine military/corrective regimes (these tend to be few) to be followed by visionary civilian/democratic ones. By the time of Babangida's coming, the gains of the Murtala and Buhari era's had been lost, not because those gains could not be sustained but because the regimes that followed had no intention of fighting corruption. This is the bane of most noble policies and events in African politics. Regime turnover and the unwillingness to build institutions can erode even the most profound of reforms. This is not an argument against temporary quick-fixes or revolution-style cleansing. The fate of such efforts often depends on how their aftermaths are managed.

 

When Abdusallam Abubakar took over, we all celebrated it as a lesser evil than Abacha; we celebrated more when he decided to organize elections and hand over power. Those reactions belie the puritanical and uncompromising opposition to coups and military regimes that you are implying. I don't share it. If a brief military interregnum is followed by a purposeful civilian government, the gains of  the "shock" approach can be harnessed into more lasting processes and institutions. Of course, we all know that the government that succeeded Abubakar was disappointing in many respects and betrayed the hopes placed on that transition. Was it Abubakar's fault that OBJ misbehaved and set us back on several fronts? We can't blame Murtala or Buhari's anti-corruption approach for the rot of the Shagari and IBB and OBJ eras. That's a causal stretch. Historical causality is not so linear and teleological. 

 

It seems that our difference can be summarised thus: you're more committed to processes and I am more commited to outcomes and results. One should not be sacrificed for the other. Of what use are processes if they do not produce desired outcomes, and how permanent are desirable outcomes if they are not embedded in normalized rules, regulations and processes? I believe that the ideal approach to anti-corruption needs a little bit of the quick-fix, result-oriented approach and the more precedurally entrenched approach preferred by judicial purists.

 

I take your point about the theoretical availability of rights under the flawed OBJ/Ribadu approach/anti-corruption moment, but it is precisely the dissonance between the illusion of rights and legal protections and their actual paucity on the ground that makes occasional brief periods of cleansing desirable, even necessary (making huge allowances, of course, for the fact that cleansing itself can become an alibi for all kinds of evils). For when the system fails completely (ironically this happens mostly in civilian, democratic regimes), there may be a need to administer some shock discipline to the system to make it receptive again to the appeal of processes and institutions. Unfortunately even some of those who genuinely seek to administer this shock treatment overstay their presence on the scene, and those who quit are succeeded by visioneless civilian political contraptions.

 

Finally, please don't regret celebrating Buhari's coup. It is not your fault that he became a human rights monster and that he was succeeded by IBB, who did not believe in moral uprightness in governance. There was no way you--or anyone else celebrating at the time--could have foreseen such outcomes. We also celebrated when OBJ took over in 1999. Look how it turned out and where we are now. These things cannot be analyzed neatly in a civilian-military binary. Again, there are no guarantees. The superiority of democracy over autocracy and miliatry regimes--at least theoretically--is that the electorate can periodically correct their choice if that choice turns out to be unwise, and they can continue to do so until they get it right. That, I am afraid, is about the only attraction of democracy in Africa. As a result-focused person, I haven't seen a Nigerian civilian regime that is substantially (as opposed to rhetorically and precedurally) better than a military one.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Qansy:

 

The debate has left you behind, having progressed beyond the unfounded allegations you parrot, following Ayo. Ayo has responded to my query, admitting that she has no solid evidence of Buhari's pro-NPN bias except for, in her own words, "hearsay" rumor she heard while working in Jos on election petitions and in her supposition that because more non-NPN governors went to jain from the North than NPN governors, Buhari must have been biased in favor of the NPN. Her extrapolation that if Buhari favored the NPN (which as I argue could not have been true) then he must have been against the Western-dominated UPN is a huge logical leap. Even if the premise were right, such a wild extrapolation would still be a leap of logic. A simple arithemetic would disprove the assumption/premise of pro-NPN bias in the detention of Northern governors. There were almost as many non-NPN governors in the North as there were NPN governors. Not all NPN governors were jailed and not all non-NPN governors were jailed. The same was, I assume, true of the East and West, but I may be wrong.

 

Please educate yourself a little about the North; that you don't know the prominent second republic politicians who went to jail or were pursued does not mean they didn't exist. Rimi and Lar and Nadama were/are as big as they come. There are other names that I cannot come up with right now. Uba Ahmed was one of the most powerful  NPN politician in the North. Umaru Dikko was, by many accounts, more powerful than Shagari. Both escaped to Britain and were the subjects of unssuccessful repatiation plots. One was even crated and almost shipped to Nigeria. The intentionality was there. Certainly the duo would have been jailed had they not fled to the UK. Politicians from the South also fled to the UK to avoid detention (Akinloye for example).

 

On Shagari, the man was, by all accounts, not corrupt even though he governmed in an unmistakable climate of corruption. He never stole, a fact evidenced by his survival on political charity and patronage since leaving power. However, he was so incompetent that his associated and aides from North and South stole to their heart's content. Also, it is well known, at least in the North, that Shagari was a very relunctant candidate; he belonged to the old school--not hungry or desperate for political power and largely indifferent to electoral outcomes. The unfortunate result of that is that his aides and associates, due to their own political interests and investments in a Shagari presidency, rigged Shagari into power--some say twice. Shagari's "crime," like Yar'Aduas, is that he didn't condemn the rigging and benefitted from it, accepting what many saw (certainly in 1983) as a flawed mandate.

 

So, to both Northerners and Southerners, Shagari being found not guilty by Buhari/idiagbon was no surprise. In fact there were no protests from either corner of Nigeria against the verdict.

 

Shagari, it must be said, still commands enormous respect for his incorruption, although his regime is also a model for an incompetent, lameduck, corrupt, and clueless presidency.

 

That you could not back up your assertions about Buhari's partisal bias or the section basis of his clampdown on politicians speaks volumes. Ayo was more honest about her political biases against the man and certainly more modest about her lack of convincing evidence for his bias. You'd do well to take a cue from her. Assertion does not equal demonstration. The weightier your allegations, the higher the evidentiary treshold.

 

Finally, Buhari's recent electoral problems in the South cannot be explained within your simplistic, reductive primordial paradigm. His sharia advocacy is one important factor. Another is that his party, the ANPP, is essentially a Northern party with no base of support in the South. Yet another reason is that politicians of all regions, regardless of their differences, are wary of the prospect of a Buhari presidency. This is because he is perceived rightly or wrong as someone still steeped in a military, no-nonsense mentality, unable to forge the  moral compromises and consensuses necessary in a democracy. Don't also forget that after 2003 when the political map of the West was electorally redrawn to favor OBJ, the new influential political class of that region worked against Buhari because of their PDP/OBJ loyalties.

 

This analysis of Buhari's political travails is not exhaustive, but it contradicts and complicates your simplistic, narrow explanation of his troubles in the South being a backlash against his purported anti-Southern clampdown in the second republic, a clampdown which was very national in scope and expression.

 

I can't comment on the veracity or otherwise of Idiagbon's embrace of a Fulani identity(as opposed to a general perception of his--and most Ilorin people's--ancestry), but that is not consequential to this discussion unless you're saying that an embrace of a Fulani identity--which many Ilorin people do on account of the ethnically convoluted history of the town and its historical connections to the Caliphate and to Northern Nigeria's politics--proves Idiagbon's administrative and policy bias against the Southwest. Such a  claim would take the cake for pedestrian inanity.

[okwy okeke]

Qansy,

 

Very fair comments, just to add to them:

 

Ayo was right in her original assertion regarding the North-South sentiments that the Buhari-Idiagbon provoked during their own fire-and-brimstone era in office

Yes, their was the sentiment, but what do you expect when Buhari/Idiagbon announced an initial Supreme Military Council without a single Igbo military officer (hope no one will throw the gratituous joke that was Chike Ofodile, Buhari's Igbo lawyer that defended him against the charges of embezzlement at NNPC, because he was a civilian member of the council and not in the sense of the super perm secs).

 

However, many senior politicians from the North were not arrested at all let alone detained and of those detained, many were released months earlier than those from the South who spent eternity in prisons.

Of the opposition presidential candidates, I do not recall any inconvenience suffered by those from the north, whereas, Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe had their freedom limited, the former suffering several undignified run-ins with that regime

 

I think Shagari was merely held under house arrest in his Sokoto residence while Ekueme was held in a gaol somewhere in the Middle Belt where he spent several months before release.

 

Alex Ekwueme was held at Kirikiri (see his memoir - From State House to Kirikiri)

 

Best of the New Year.

 

Okwy Okeke

 

 Qansy Salako <ka...@netzero.com> wrote:

---

Support the World Aids Awareness campaign this month with Yahoo! for Good

[okwy okeke]

Dear Ebe Achonu,

 

Murtala Mohammed was a criminal, no ifs, no buts, and no caveats, period!

 

The malicious mass slaughter Murtala started in 1966 remains an orgy in progress as his modern day inheritors re-enact same tragedy in our national lives under different guises in fulfillment of Trevor-Roper's prophetic words (see Hitler War Directives) that tardy imitator will imitate nihilists in mockery of their demise .

 

Murtala should actually be singled out as the first man that gave the routine killing of non-indigenes of the North in that region the military imprimatur that elevated it to statecraft (read May 1966 "riotings," July 1966 coup and the accompanying bloodbath aka the Nigeria/Biafra war). Mr. Mohammed is the undisputable Tyrannosaurus Rex of the cannibals that wrecked Nigeria.

 

I want you to recall that Mohammed and Buhari's coups were not ideological driven experiments. Babangida and Abacha's coup were power grabs by those that could take it with minimal resistance from the sitting governments, however, if Buhari's 1983 intervention was a thinly veiled ethnic power grab, Mohammed's first coming (July 1966) was the celebration of bloodthirstiness with the dubious prize of being the bloodiest in the history of African and non-African coup plots both in military and civilian casualties, and as if the killings of hundreds of thousands in the north by Mohammed's gangs were not enough, he proceeded to kill innocent civilians at Asaba this time himself (see Blood on the Niger by Emma Okocha) as if for the sake of posterity lest another contest with him the perverted honor of being the leader of the first black on black genocide.

 

Mohammed and Buhari, the twin devils of military crassness in Nigeria are known or at least accused of huge financial crimes and enrichments. Mohammed was a self-convicted thief, returning properties he acquired with the stolen commonwealth is crap to say the least, even Alams, Mbadinuju, Tafa, or any common thief will do same, so if you are swayed that a robber returned some of his loot after assuming the mantle of leadership good for you, but this re-writing of history by the rump of Mohammed's regime that retained power should not hold sway in an informed group.

 

It is actually Mohammed that has benefitted most from revisionist history over and above the surviving ex-dictators because of the tendency to accept his canonization by a different man that happens to be from another section of the country as if criminality wear tribal marks.

 

That Nigerians have a single kind word for Mohammed after July 1966 may be a reflection of a lack of outrage that is a bane of our abbreviated existence, to attempt nit-picking from his deeds in order to "more accurately" assess him is a mockery of the memory and dance on the grave of his innocent victims.

 

Did Adolf Hitler not restore the German industrial might, or can anyone deny the massive gains of the German people under his rule, yet his name is spoken in contempt, only had in infamy?

 

I run the risk of losing it each time some apologist (I do not lump you with this group as yours appears more from a sincere though inaccurate position - judgement mine) tells the repeated lie that is Mohammed as if highway bandits have not returned portions of their loot, or even donated to charitable causes with same. Ask Alams, Ibori, etc if they will not willingly give up their known Nigerian real estates in exchange for the presidency.

 

Mohammed is evil by any standards and what is evil is simply so, Evil.

 

I will not bother with his systematic emasculation of the civil service because that will be akin to asking if the ceiling of a fallen house survived.

 

Enough for now, fortunately materials abound out there for any that is willing to seek the truth about our miserable past.

 

BTW, all I remember about Mohammadu Buhari's government was the absence of "essential commodities." I went without toothpaste, bathed with PH-9 rated "key soaps" went without toilet papers though I had money in my pockets, not to bother with the thousands of families he threw into misery by the unlawful sack, and detention of their breadwinners for the length of his regime without as much as charging them to courts. Or maybe I remember more - he locked up politicians that never won elections nor served in any capacity while the overthrown president was under "protective house arrest" not minding that his vice was locked up in Kirikiri maximum security prison, do you want me to joggle my memory any further? 

 

Have a great 2008 as we piece together the broken pot.

 

 

Okwy Okeke

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Danjuma, David Mark, Gen. Adekunle, Gowon, and others played ignominious, criminal roles in the civil war, as did Awolowo, the architect, by all accounts, of the "hunger as the weapon of war" doctrine that caused the starvation of countless Biafran children. Is Awolowo not on our currency? Where is the outrage? The man redeemed himself many times over. Murtala didn't get a chance to do that.

 

My concern is that, while these other criminals have interlocutors and lived to rehabilitate their image, Murtala never had a chance to do the same either directly or through proxies. I don;t in any way rationalize his Asaba campaign or other war atrocities he may have commanded.

 

We shouldn't be selective in our outrage. I will never defend Murtala's murderous Asaba adventure. But I won't let others who have even benefited from their roles in the civil war off the hook either.

 

You claim that Murtala and Buhari enriched themselves corruptly. This is a strange accusation--the first time I've heard this. Even the enemies of these men credit them, sometimes too romantically, with incorruptibility. Please provide evidence of your allegation. This kind of discursive recklessness should be beneath us. If you're going to throw around allegations that are not already part of the popular perception about these men, at least come up with evidence, even circumstantial ones, to make your case.

 

Murtala never even built a personal house in Kano at the time of his death. Buhari lives in a very modest, somewhat dilapidated house in Kaduna till this day despite having served as oil minister, head of state, and PTF chairman.

 

Let's not allow our resentments against these men to blind us to their incorruptibility, which to my admittedly presentist eye, is a priceless commodity today as it was then.

 

Having watched as politicians of this era gorge themselves on our treasury, depriving the citizens of basic infrastructures and dignities of existence, my appreciation for incorruptibility has soared. As a result, I have come to appreciate the moral uprightness of these two former military rulers. This, again, does not mean that I endorse their conduct in the civil war or in other spheres of governance.

 

 

 

L

[Qansy Salako]

Moses…Moses…

Your language was unfriendly and downright rude.

But it is a new year, so I won’t do a like-for-like that would have robed you in colorful prose, more pungent than yours.

Besides, one of my new year resolutions is to be less reactionary to visceral rejoinders.

 

No, your debate with Ayo did not leave me behind.

My comments were merely add-on to her thoughts.

Which claims Ayo was able to or not support has nothing to do with which claims I can support.

Do you understand that?

Regardless of your acerbic sophistries, one social reality of the Buhari-Idiagbon era was that the duo provoked

a North-South sentiment in the country during their era and by the time they left.

It was the hard reality of the time….I wish I could help you out in some way over this, but I couldn’t.

This claim of mine has since been corroborated by another forumite….Okwy Okeke has reminded us of the issue of Igbo-free SMC composition under Buhari-Idiagbon.…health condition of Owelle, etc.

Made me wonder where you were at the time and didn’t know all this.

 

I didn’t say that NO Northern politicians were detained, my text read “many senior politicians from the North were not arrested…………….and of those detained, many were released months earlier than those from the South who spent eternity in prisons.”

You probably read me in a hurry and didn’t see that.

In yours below, you tossed out 4 names (Rimi, Lar, Nadama and Uba) but in your rage still failed to

prove my statement above wrong, especially in comparing the length of time in jail of those from the North with those from the South.

I gave you examples of Shagari and Ekwueme and now I am remembering more names like Jakande, Onabanjo .…… and maybe even Akinloye, Akinjide….but without necessarily their being in the UPN.

Dikko was even outside the country at the time, so no one really knew what would have been his fate in the long run beyond the initial excitement of his being crated in, if they had succeeded.

 

Your analysis on Shagari’s situation is a good fodder for polemics.

It is true, many people agreed that Shagari was more guilty of incompetence than corruption.

But do you think that in itself absolves him of culpability over the kind of government he presided over?

Do you remember the twelve two third red herring in favor of Shagari back in 1979?

With all the 4-year national waste, 1983 election riggings and the follow-up strife/deaths, etc, are you making the case with your pontifications that Nigerians have forgiven him in the court of public opinion?

What looked like Shagari commanding “respect’ in the country was less his “incorruption” as you have boasted, but more due to the manner of dignity with which he has conducted himself out of office.

Shagari rarely made public pronouncements since he left office more than 24 years ago.

For your information, the sad auto accident that took 2-3 of his children in a single day sometimes in the 80s got him a lot of sympathy and understanding from many a hard heart among Nigerians.

If my commentary sounded simplistic, what would you say yours made of you, naïve?

 

Your analysis of Buhari’s acceptability problems in the Southwest and seeming minor issue of Tunde Idiagbon’s Fulani retorts betrayed your king size ignorance in Southwest politics.

With all your arrogant language, I don’t believe you fully comprehended that the North-South political sentiment reached an anti-climax during the Buhari-Idiagbon regime.

It was Babangida who came to diffuse it with his “equal opportunity buy-out” personal style of  governance until he out-dribbled himself and fell down on June 12^th.

Then, Abacha came along and jacked the dichotomy back-up.

Then Abdulsalam/Babangida diffused it once again with the Obasanjo shenanigan arrangement to the

chagrin of the Southwest.

My brother, don’t quit your day-job to go work as a publicist or campaign manager for Buhari anytime soon.

 

Ironically, I am actually in favor of your writings more than you realize.

My last commentary to yours was in fact more of a simple addendum than a challenge to you.

So relax…cut out the fretting.

It is quite okay to disagree here and there with each others’ opinions.

Just tone it down, ok?

You know how challenging new year resolutions can be…especially when you’re still on Day 1!

 

Happy New Year to you and yours.

 

Qansy Salako

[Tony Agbali]

"As for Buhari, I am only a legal practitioner.  I remain unsure what an intellectual is on this forum, but if one - as such - is expected to use one's mental faculties to look beyond immediate remedies, then I remain biased in favour of the thought-out solution that is good for today and good for tomorrow.  While often, when I sing the national anthem at a public event, or am in a queue where queue jumpers are challenged I remember that this is part of the Buhari/Idiagbon legacy, I think that when it comes to matters of crime and punishment, quick fixes are to be deplored since, as we have been noting in this particular thread, good governance comes from strong institutions.

 

But of course, as a legal practitioner, I was a junior in the chambers of G.O.K. Ajayi, lawyer to Obafemi Awolowo, and the second case that I was involved in after my NYSC was Awolowo's election petition against Shehu Shagari's election victory of 1979, and on top of that, my dad was a staunch Action Group man, so I don't pretend neutrality in the political issues of the 1980s.  Which however, does not make me an manufacturer of false facts.  Doing election petitions in support of the NPP in Plateau State against the 'moonslide' victory announced in favour of the NPN in the 1983 elections, it was common knowledge that the local army commander had instructed the soldiers under his command to vote for the NPN.  I can't say more than that because this is what I was told (and would therefore fall foul of the hearsay rule in terms of admissible evidence), and was complained of by the NPP supporters in the state (who were our clients).  But for whatever it is worth, that local army commander was Muhammadu Buhari."

 

Ayo Obe  presents here something that needs to be focally thought about relative to the modes of "intellectuals" engagement per se, in terms of the neutrality of their social positionings, produced and implicated by our different social classes, gender, "cosmoperience"(experience of the universe) political interests and economic struggles, as well as other forms of projective imagining, aspirations, and disavowals. 

Ayo, therefore, has expressed eloquently what has often escaped multitude perspectives on issues relative to issues of vested interests, social compass, and self-positionings.  Many a times our articulated positions are critical products of our vested interests, social positions, and internalization of nuanced perspectives. 

Therefore, Moses Ochonu's interpretations of social realities might differ from say mine, though certain facts would ever remain incontrovertible shedded from core of interpretative bracketing. Hence as Heiddegar the German philosopher/phenomenologist notes, we are "Dasein"- "Being in the world" and more properly 'Being of and embedded in History' within the vastness of the cosmos and of constitutive human history our stances would ever remain varied based upon our divergent positionalities.  Therefore, the experiences of our small little cosmoses often influence the way we shape our the realities of our wider cosmo as we transverse and bump in transmigrative bumps of shared encounters.

True, we are all Africophiles but are our politics and intellection regarding historical and social events all the same, or ought to be so linearly regimented as monolith? I doubt that given the different blueprints along which social realities can be mapped and read, divergent exegetical inscriptions would always be a part of our understanding of such issues, without a definitive end to contravening perspectives devoid of forcing any monolith interpretive perspectives.

Therefore while can the "intellectuals" who acolytes western intellection and contradictions from a citadel of renown and coronation of significance not able to understand that even the same social events can be so diversely perceived and articulated along different angles? 

Social realities are interesting facts that often embeds utopia in their interpretations, as they embody diverse allusions, alludes to different shades of meaning, and privileges diversity of thoughts.  Even the effect of the same social events can vary depending upon the cultural codes of their deciphering within differential geospatial receptors and among varying range of actors. How a Kikuyu would probably react to the same event of a 2007 Kenyan election declaration of Mwai Kibaki may vary significantly from that of a Luo supporter of the candidacy of Raila Odinga, along those lines of ethnic affinity. 

Do intellectual not nurture biases that sometimes latently or manifestly, subtly or overtly masqueraded as "objective interests"?  We've seen the muting of some American professors when they offered their perspectives on the political happenings- be it September 11th, President George Bush, and the Iraqi war- but whose emasculation came as a warning for others to be in line of the imperial imagination? Therefore, when do the disclosure regarding these biases, even within the multiplicities of our modal acting and actions, help to shad what we espouse, what we write, and how we go about this?

I think Ayo's articulation that her perspectives is shaped, constructed, and even nuanced by her historical trajectories and where she sees herself within those trajectories of history, and those that make history, represent a significant way in which we can understand, frame, and re-reifiy various forms of social, political, and "intellectual" engagement.  Well like the Grasmcian stance, isn't Ayo also calling us to understand that everyone in their own right is an intellectual even without the privilege of the socratic method, and the pedantic aula magna didactic indoctrinations and pedagogic illusions, in some very factual sense; and that every class interest-group manufacture and possess their own specialized intellectuals in safeguarding specific interests?

Therefore, the question more focally is what interests and motivations propel our positionalities and interpretations of social realities, of which I am afraid do not often all reflect monolithic perspectives, given that social realities are often not of the stripes of the dogmatic or imperial strain, even if they at times resonate ideological nuances.

 

 

Qansy Salako <ka...@netzero.com> wrote:

[Tony Agbali]

Moses,

I think that some of your perspectives regarding the events of 1983/1984, including earlier ones are critically flawed. You will do well to revisit and revise some of your thoughts herein.

One question Quansy asked was why was Shagari more or less freed, and Ekwueme had to suffer the indignation of detention, in whatever form including being at one time in Kirikiri? I think too we need to go back also as Quansy has noted to the newspapers and books of that era. One of the notable example is that of the late Bola Ige then serialized about his detention experience in the Vanguard newspaper around 1988 or so. I recently came across one of my saved clipping, but cannot readily find it now, given that I had it filed far away just not long ago.

On this issue of duplicity, I think Wole Soyinka has since and continues to express his discountenance.  The issue of Umaru Dikko and Buhari, and other members of the military class was not one of north versus north. No, the clear issue was that Umaru Dikko had during a party somewhere between 1982 and 1983 insulted some members of the northern military class, Buhari included that they never forgot.  It was Dikko's arrogance more than anything else that provoked the coup, and he was targetted more because following the overthrow of Shagari, a memo he wrote requesting the retirement of the core generals in the 1983 coup was found on Shagari's desk.  The book Kaduna Mafia clearly articulates how these class interests for the north, and its contradictory intra-class and intra-regional struggles were played out.

I am afraid that though a historian that some of the overt claims you are asserting relative to that political era is not so water-tight, at least as far as facts rather than interpretations are concerned.

There is no missing the point that people like the late Kano governor (August-December 1983) Senator Alhaji Barkin Zuwo, Professor Ambrose Ali (1979-1983 of Old Bendel State); and Aper Akuh died shortly as a result of their maltreatment in jail. While they were admixture involved in the tribe of the detained one has to treat each case for its merit. Calling Lar, a northern politician detained as a big fish also understandably delimits and underscored the nature of the entire politics of the second republic, and the fact that Lar himself belonged to a political party that was considered as antithetical to northern interests. It is no secret that the late Dr. Alex Fom, the Secretary-General of the defunct Nigeria People Party (NPP) who was a torn in the flesh of the National Party Nigeria (NPN)    and its political intellectual arrowhead especially in the north was perceived as trying to ensure the autonomization of Plateau from the north. This conception and understanding of the Plateau politics was responsible for the reason why the NPN ensured it won the 1983 ill-fated election there, which as Ayo Obe noted was critically challenged at the time. Unfortunately, the coup of 1983 (december 31st) did not ensure a clear verdict to some of those electoral challenges, unlike the case of Chief C.C. Onoh and Chief Jim Nwobodo, fought uptill the Supreme Court.

Therefore, in the Middle Belt, while folks like Senator J.S. Tarka, following his earlier antagonism with Cheif Awolowo in the 1960s- remember the treason charges of 1964- which involved Tarka and Patrick Dokotri, where both were acquited, a signal to what the north could offer its own, if submissive-turned the tide in 1979 in opting for the NPN.

So just because Shagari was a reluntant candidate he should be better treated than other politicians of his tribe? Just where is your perspective regarding the horn for a just Nigeria, often articulated by you herein?

Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Tony:

 

With all due respect you may have been swayed by the discursive emotional blackmail of Qansy and Okwy--their invocation of the most egregious and repulsive legacies of the Buhari and Murtala regimes.

 

First, you cannot dispute that these accusations of Buhari's sectional bias is a fringe one. In many years of discussing Buhari with people from ALL parts of the country, I had never encountered it. Qansy is from the Southwest but his sentiments do not approximate those of other Southwesterners on Buhari. I have discussed Buhari with many people from that region. Many have issues with Buhari, as I myself have. But this UNPROVEN, sectional charge in relation to his anti-corruption clampdown is a low blow. There are many minuses in Buhari's record, some of which Soyinka eloquently articulated. But even Soyinka accuses Buhari of cronyism and nepotism, not ethnic or regional bias. I believe these are different vices.

 

It is because these allegations are novel and strange that I asked for proof. Instead of getting proof, we got more demagogic anti-Buhari vitriol from Qansi. Ayo was classy and modest, qualifying and modifying her accusation and even backing slightly away from it because she recognised the limits of the analytical utility of her anecdotal evidence. She also confessed her political bias against Buhari, a discursively honorable thing to do. I can debate with such a person. But someone who claims a memory that embodies the collective remembrance of a whole section of Nigeria regarding the Buhari era cannot be sincere. And when one asks for evidence for their more striking assertions, one gets shoutdowns and charges of lack of knowledge of Western politics. This thing is recent history, and we all have access to the books and newspapers. I was also old enough to remember some of these events.

 

FACT: Buhari/Idiagbon sent politicians from ALL regions and ALL political parties to jail. The minor disproportionate distributions don't explain much unless it can be proven that they were intentional. No convincing proof has been supplied or argued. 

 

FACT: Politicians from all regions and political parties also got off.

 

Now that these facts have been established and conceded, the argument has now entered the realm of the length of time spent in detention and the political clout and pedigree of those who were punished from each region. How atomistic and pedantically reductive can a debate get? What's next? Are we going to start discussing the religions of those who got jailed and those who got off in order to salvage the accusation of bias against Buhari? This debate is frustratingly circuitous. And increasingly meaningless.

 

You wrote:

 

"So just because Shagari was a reluctant candidate he should be better treated than other politicians of his tribe? Just where is your perspective regarding the horn for a just Nigeria, often articulated by you herein?"

 

You misread the aim of my intervention. My aim was to offer a possible explanation for why Shagari was acquitted. Hence my argument that Shagari was not guilty of anything other than incompetence and accepting a disputed mandate, an argument which which is a national truism and which Qansy conceded. Buhari and co. would have found it quite difficult to convict him of corruption or election rigging. Election rigging comes from political desperation and an inordinate desire for political power. Shagari was not desperate for power. He was pressured to run for president and he accepted reluctantly. This is a documented fact. Many of his NPN people rigged the election to get him into power so they could benefit. The man himself was aloof. I hope you now understand why I advanced that small piece of Shagari's political biography.

 

This debate started from the province of anti-corruption and probity. It is in those domains that I can confidently stick out my neck for Murtala and Buhari. Their clampdowns on corruption and corrupt politicians were not selective. That is my informed opinion. Others can differ. I agree with most other criticisms of the two former rulers' records.

 

In the course of this debate we've even encountered outright falsehoods--like Buhari and Murtala enriching themselves; and Buhari's era witnessing shortages of essential commodities--wasn't that a second republic phenomenon?

 

Murtala may have been a war criminal, but experts in the field of foreign policy credit his regime with articulating the most robust, proactive, and Africa-centered foreign policy in Nigeria's post-independence political history.

 

Should we dismiss these experts' opinion simply because Murtala, like OBJ, Danjuma, Gowon, Awolowo, has a case of criminal conduct to answer in regard to the civil war?

 

I thought nuanced, informed, and fact-based discourse was still a respected quality of public intellection.

 

 

---Mohandas Ghandi

[okwy okeke]

Moses,

 

There is no doubt your charge that there were more criminals in Nigeria besides Mohammed is valid, but the discussion here is Murtala Ramat Mohammed, bringing other parties to distract our focus is akin to throwing sand into our eyes, I believe you did not set out to so do.

 

I will take you on a little trip on what happened from 1977 through 1985 because I was involved.

 

First, you claim not to have ever heard of Mohammed and Buhari's corruptibility, right? You may actually regret penning those words, or maybe you are the only visitor to Nigeria.

 

Mohammed returned houses he had acquired under Gowon's regime on assuming the mantle of leadership after the later's overthrow, that was the moral highground (if he could ever claim that) for seizing the properties of other members of the ruling junta especially the governors. Properties that Babangida returned in the last days of his government. I am surprised that you don't know this considering the drama it created in your then Plateau-Benue state.

 

On Buhari, he was never oil minister, but chairman of NNPC, he has been unable to defend the N2.8B charge against him, only to turn around to make his lawyer - the Onitsha-born Chike Ofodile attorney-general, beyond that, what about the 58 suitcases of currency that came into the country at the height of the currency change in 1984?

 

Then Shagari. Had you paid closer attention, you would have observed that the "big parastatals" did not roll up under Alex Ekwueme as the others, why? Because Shagari was part of the Olusola Saraki BNP Paribas loan to NPN payback arrangement for which reason he carved out the top parastatals outside the VP's office for payback. You can easily get further details on this in Diplomat Baggage or a NewsWatch edition captioned "Saraki spills Fougerolle Affair on Shagari" and for your information, Fougerolle won the contract to construct Ajaokuta.  

 

Shagari, Buhari and Mohammed are touted as relatively incorruptible compared to Babangida/Abacha/Obasanjo/Abubakar, not corrupt-free, read inbetween the lines.

 

You claim Lar was detained, so what, he was a governor I should think, but it goes beyond that. Two books may help you here - Shagari's Beckoned to Serve and Kayode Soyinka's Diplomatic Baggage.

 

The former detailed how Lar through his sister-in-law almost cost Buhari his life. Shagari trying to explain his innocence about the coup (remember that when the obvious is over-emphasized it becomes suspicious) by giving a blow-by-blow account of many incidents including when Lar told him of an impending coup during the former's state visit to Plateau state. Lar was tipped off by his wife's sister that was married to another conspirator (the name escapes me right now, but the book is there for you to read), so Buhari had a personal beef with him.

 

On Umaru - that is too documented to rehash but I will indulge you in the spirit of the new year. Dikko had kept tabs on the top military personnel because he was alive to the struggle within the ruling class, especially their antipathy towards the agreed power shift that was bound to happen in 1987 though many had expected so in 1983 (now you can understand the feeling of deja vu when same crisis erupted in 2003). The chant of Adisco87 was rife though Alex Ekwueme was convinced he had a chance at getting the NPN slot come '87 as enshrined in the tenets of NPN as written by Chuba Okadigbo.

 

Back to the story - Buhari had been reposted to Jos instead of Lagos Garrison Command on Dikko's prompting, this led to a row between Shagari, Wushishi, and Buhari. At the end, Shagari cautioned Dikko not to meddle but acceded to Wushishi's advice to uphold the Jos posting, the rest we say is now history - but there was a twist in the tale.

 

Buhari almost did not emerge as the head of state, IBB almost did, because Buhari's commission was at risk following his invasion of Chad without presidential clearance, but that is story for another day, I have only taken time to point out the reason for Dikko being a marked man as he had charged Buhari with treason and for good reason, the other man that made such error - Ebenezer Babatope paid dearly for it, though he never held any government job.

 

You talk about "resentment of these men" and I ask you which men, was Mohammed any more guilty than your kith and kin at Makurdi that stopped every train that was freighting an already dispossessed, brutalized and sometimes dead people back to their ancestral home for the final solution, or should I assume your omission of that fact as "mere an oversight?" Has any Benue man or woman made any statement about the complicity of that population in the massacre of Igbos and other Easterners/Southerners that were headed home through their neck of the wood? A massacre made the more gruesome because it ran for several months, with more people killed in that tract of land than any single city in the country. Don't talk about what you don't know before you are reminded of your father's debt my people say, so once again, let's focus on the subject - Mohammed.

 

Cheers,

[Qansy Salako]

The Atta of Agbali,

Thank you, my brother, for supplying more names, facts and figures to Moses Ochonu on this thread.

Glad someone in the house has a better archive than mine.

Yours below just unhinged the dam on my memories of the era.

I was a Lecturer 2/Lecturer 1 in Unilag in those Buhari-Idiagbon days and was quite aware and involved in the goings-on.

You’re so correct, the Dikko crate saga was more a vendetta thing with Buhari-Idiagbon than a fight for national sanity on behalf of Nigerians.

We probably would never know which actions of the duo were truly on behalf of the people.

 

A number of issues are a source of frustration for me with Moses.

Moses is a good analyst. Reminds me of when I had time and used to write up to 4 opinion articles a week on the Naijanet discussion group of old, specifically between 1994 and 1998. One of the lessons I learned in those days was that no matter how solid ones’ views are, no view can be all encompassing when it comes to discussing the impact of governments on peoples. Sometimes, we brandish our classroom theories too tight as tools for viewing social events on the streets. But what moves government and citizen activities are peoples’ outlooks which are often mundane compared to convoluted strings of academic jingoism.

These mundane outlooks are in fact the kind you hear in the barber shops, hairdresser salons, army officers’ mess, etc.

 

This is why it is unfortunate that Moses appears to dock his views rather irrevocably.

Imagine his effrontery in challenging people to produce evidence of some aspects of his subject that he was

not aware of.

And when the evidence is produced, he became enraged.

Reminds me of Obasanjo who challenged Nigerians to produce proof that Babangida was corrupt.

In a heartbeat, Nigerians submitted tomes of affidavits revealing bank account numbers, contract numbers, names, dates and addresses of deals against his beloved financier.

Obasanjo became enraged and cowardly just redirected that “anybody who had problems with Babangida” to go sort it out with IBB.  Well, who wan die? No one wanted rather receive a letter from Babangida.

So the so-called national drive against corruption just died a natural death, until resurrected in the form of EFCC, etc.

 

Moses has a right to keep his focus on the war against indiscipline (WAI) of Buhari-Idiagbon.

Everyone loved WAI, just as we all loved the mystics of Murtala, imagining that he could show up in our local post-office or our mechanic yard anytime.

But WAI alone did not make Buhari-Idiagbon’s regime.

That’s all we are saying, and Moses should have the courage to accept that.

 

Take for example the Murtala issue that he, Moses, was grappling with in parallel on another thread.

Only God knew how many Biafra wars we fought on Naijanet in those days!

Almost always it was between SE and SW, the few Northern netters among us would just simply clench

their chin and watch us each time the Ore battlefield became lit up.

I am sure folks are still shooting canon fires and dropping bombs on the issue till today on Naijanet.

In one of such battles (probably 1995 or so), I was like Ochonu shooting bazookas along with others in defense of Murtala’s heroic leadership and nationalism.

Then this issue of Murtala’s Biafra war crimes came up and people were very passionate about it.

Initially, I was holding the position that war is fought to be won not lost, but soon I realized that I had to accommodate people’s passion on this aspect of Murtala’s life in my views on him.

So I wrote that he was a good post-war leader for Nigeria and that if he was forgiven of his war crimes by his Creator, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

But if he was not forgiven, then he would surely have to answer for them before his Lord.

I still remember how that simple acknowledgement calmed some frayed nerves from the other side of the debate.

That was some 12 years ago.

You can imagine how well I understand Moses’ sentiments on the two generals.

 

Happy New Year, Atta.

Would have called you, but my telephone bill was high last month!

Smiles.

Qansy Salako

Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.</a

[Tony Agbali]

This debate is frustratingly circuitous. And increasingly meaningless.

 

You wrote:

 

"So just because Shagari was a reluctant candidate he should be better treated than other politicians of his tribe? Just where is your perspective regarding the horn for a just Nigeria, often articulated by you herein?"

 

You misread the aim of my intervention. My aim was to offer a possible explanation for why Shagari was acquitted. Hence my argument that Shagari was not guilty of anything other than incompetence and accepting a disputed mandate, an argument which which is a national truism and which Qansy conceded. Buhari and co. would have found it quite difficult to convict him of corruption or election rigging. Election rigging comes from political desperation and an inordinate desire for political power. Shagari was not desperate for power. He was pressured to run for president and he accepted reluctantly. This is a documented fact. Many of his NPN people rigged the election to get him into power so they could benefit. The man himself was aloof. I hope you now understand why I advanced that small piece of Shagari's political biography.

 

This debate started from the province of anti-corruption and probity. It is in those domains that I can confidently stick out my neck for Murtala and Buhari. Their clampdowns on corruption and corrupt politicians were not selective. That is my informed opinion. Others can differ. I agree with most other criticisms of the two former rulers' records.

 

Dear Moses,

I appreciate the time you take to get engaged and sometimes very informative regarding these issues. Nonetheless, facts cannot get muddled up simply for the sake of convenience- call it circutious, pedantic, and all adjectival clauses.  The popular case involving Jokolo shows how selective Buhari was. I do not care whether Quansy is from the moon, that has nothing to do with the issues. You have not gotten your facts regarding the Nigerian politics of the second republic clear. They were areas of vindictiveness, vendetta, and others that at some level was very regional and biased.  Yes, Buhari, a saint? Incorruptible, right? Look he used Abiola's money to come to power, then ill-treated Rafindadi of the former NSO (now SSS) what was at the root of it? What led to the death of Col. Bello in Abuja in 1983? Those whom you talking with offers you the whole fact, I would suppose.  Buhari as GOC in Jos was not very clean, the issue of his Daura farms continued to be an issue that he did not want raised, neither was the journalistic investigation into the NNPC $2.3million naira episode, that led to the jailing of two journalist under decree no. 4? So, who is fooling who? The Jokolo affairs was another instance of a saint, hey?

Well, I would really want to get into more detailed analysis of these varying points but right now unfortunately I am in the midst of more pressing issues, hence the brevity of this point. However, Professors Toyin Falola and Julius Ihonvbere, The Rise and Fall of Nigeria's Second Republic 1979-84 (London, UK: Zed Books, 1985);  Bill Dudley, An Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982); Bala Takaya and Sonnyi Gwanle Tyoden (ed.), The Kaduna Mafia: A Study of the Rise, Development and Consolidation of a Nigerian Power Elite, (Jos, Nigeria: Jos University Press, 1987), and even Jolly Tanko, That we May be One: The Autobiography of Nigerian Ambassador Jolly Tanko Yusuf as told to Lillian V. Grissen, Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1995), and in fact Matthew H. Kukah, Religion and Politics in Northern Nigeria (1993) among various others would provide more better and illuminative insights to this period.

The Nigerian second republic represents one of the most enriched and complex era of Nigerian social and political history.  Corruption was rampant and in a Presidential system of government, how can Shagari be aloof and not contaminated, when that system entails that the bulk ends with him, whether he was successful and a failure the bulk still ended with him. Therefore, whether you are noting incompetence or corruption, Shagari was the man at the helm when folks like Umaru Dikko and Uba Ahmed were running amok, gaining from Thai rice imports, and import licensing schemes, not to talk of oil deals for NPN cronies. In as much as I do not want to go into details here is what Jolly Tanko notes about the Shagari era, Tanko himself was an NPN man:

"With a government that readily promoted Islam at the expense of Christianity and encouraged corruption, my agitation grew....Before I resigned I did have the opportunity to tell the President, in the presence of two friends and special assistances to the president, that army would ome back again if corruption were not curtailed, President Shagari's close friends surrounded him and formed a very powerful caucus that controlled his politics. They regarded as crime any opposing political opinion or any advice against corruption and vices in government.

When news of my resignation reached the public, what was expected happened. People were really concerned, and this disgust exploded in many areas. Many people insinuated that I should not blame the President for what was happening in Nigeria. But they were blind; they did not see the handwriting on the wall. They did not see that he was leading Nigeria to disaster." (Jolly Tanko, That we may be one, p.92).

Summatively, Ambassador Tanko was a respected NPN and northern Christian leader, from Takum, in today's Jalingo state. He was no UPN man, from the southwest, he was an insider, a knowledgeable actor and a political colosus within the Middle Belt and across northern Nigeria. 

Having noted this, you said Shagari was a relunctant President? How? This fact did not add up simply because he contested vigorously for the chance to become a presidential candidate within the erstwhile NPN,alongside other candidates presented by the so-called Kaduna Mafia. Shagari's emergence as candidate over the two cardinal candidates of the conservative house of the Kaduna mafia rather reflected an intra-regional, internal sectional interests struggles within the Kaduna mafia (Tyoden, 1987, Kaduna Mafia, 78, Ujo in Kaduna Mafia), it was this internal struggles within the Kaduna mafia that produced Buhari in 1983/1984 as Head of State. This was after the political alliance between one arm of the Kaduna Mafia and the UPN under Chief Awolowo did not stymie Shagari's emergence for a second term in 1983. More fundamentally, this Kaduna Mafia wing that helped to accentuate the 1983 coup were focally afraid of the intrudes of folks like Chief Ojukwu, who was trying to come to Lagos by all means, within the Senate. This threw out the prolonged electoral tribunal warfare between Ojukwu and Onwudiwe, the NPP candidate for the Nnewi Senatorial zone Ojukwu was contesting. This inordinate fear was underscored by the NPN zoning formulae that assigned the presidency to the East in 1987, after Shagari's third term.

Therefore, at what level then is the corruption issue not appropriate to the interests of oligarchic domination? Why was state patronage and it clientelle system so significant through issuance of importation licenses, thai rice importation and shipment contracts?

At the assumption of Buhari/Idiagbon whose interests did he protect as was so evident in the case of the Emir of Gwandu and the 53 suit cases? So what is corruption and corruptibility about?

Another point made by Professor Tyoden (1987, Kaduna Mafia) lucidly illuminates Buhari's corruptibility: "The Buhari era, as pointed out above gave the mafia the opportunity to reassert themselves as a group once more on the country's political scene. They did not only emerge as occupants of strategic offices, but it is alleged that they were the most beneficiaries of the allocation of import licenses during this era; an issue that is said to have lead to loud grumblings by some retired military personnel on behalf of the southern bourgeois group." (page 80).

There are so many instance in different writings and news footages of the time, that paints Buhari as corrupt.  Hence, I would, without being overbearing be interested in knowing those whom you talked to about this era across the broad spectrum of Nigerians and what time frames; since later renditions could be a product of strategic rewriting and myth-making for political advantages. Or simply, the diminishment of memory that is so often a Nigerian staple, when crowd action fumigates historical facts for convenient interpretations and embellished  mythologizations.

I rest my case for now, but would love to continue but for the sake of time and other commitments. However, the issue of Nigerian corruption is complex and intertwined to political interests of domination and hegemony within, between, and across same or divergent class purviews. Therefore, it would not also be suprising that other discrete spheres like religion can be easily implicated, through the use of patronage and state resources, in furthering domination of one kind or another, as some have assumed was the case with the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, within his northernization and Islamization schemes within northern Nigeria and parts of the Cameroons.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Okwy,

This angry tirade is baffling, but at least you
focused on issues. You accuse me of digressing, but
you loaded your response with so many tangential
matters that it is hard to know what to respond to
without derailing the discussion. I'll make a few
remarks.

Your point about Murtala's alleged corruption (his
acquisition of houses he returned) BEFORE he came to
power is taken. But it does NOT invalidate my
contention that there is no evidence in the public
domain that he enriched himself as head of state. That
assertion has yet to be disputed. Please dispute it if
you have the facts to do so.

The 53 suitcases belonged to the Emir of Gwandu, not
to Buhari. Their entry, we now know, was facilitated
by, of all people, Atiku, following the intervention
of Major Jokolo, Buhari's ADC. Is that evidence that
Buhari was corrupt as head of state?

On 2.8 billion naira, it is interesting that you're
seeking to bring Buhari's name into it when all public
naratives and reportage of the scandal, including
published accounts, mention two people: OBJ and Shehu
Yar'Adua. In any case, what did Buhari do with the
loot since he is practically a pauper today? Unlike
Buhari, Shehu Yar'Adua and OBJ retired into a life of
opulence and multi-million naira investments. Being
chairman of NNPC during the scandal does not mean that
he benefitted from the loot or facilitated it, if
indeed 2.8 happened. Even Buhari's most uncharitable
critics do not reach so far as to link him with 2.8.
And, believe me, it would have been very good fodder
for his detractors and would be in the public domain
if there was any shred of evidence linking him to it.

The rest of your post raise many tangential issues
that do not really invite a response that enhances
this discussion.

For the record, I have NOT defended, rationalized, or
belittled Murtala's war crimes. All I ask is: why
single him out, and why let other criminals off the
hook?

I don't know what I wrote to launch you into this
bizarre, hateful tirade quoted below, but since you
mentioned the Makurdi massacres, and since we're now
taking stock of suffering and atrocities of the civil
war, could you please explain to me how the Biafran
airforce straffing of Benue (and now Kogi) towns and
villages along the Nigeria-Biafra border (Agila,
Orokam, Otukpa, etc) and around the Igala/Nsukka
corridor, which killed thousands of defenseless
Nigerian civilians and made many refugees in Otukpo,
Makurdi and other "safe" cities, is any less a war
crime than the massacres at Makurdi?

As you do so, let me warn you that I have participated
in debates on the civil war and they are never pretty.
I have a very strong sympathy for Biafran suffering
during the war (a fact that I strongly impressed on an
undergraduate, whose thesis on the subject i recently
supervised), but sometimes that requires me to suspend
moral judgment on Biafran atrocities in the areas I
mentioned and in the botched attempt to invade Lagos.
That's because my intellectual and academic
socialization leads me to believe that the violence
and crimes of an underdog are sometimes justified and
do not rank on the same scale of atrocities as those
of the dominant party to a conflict.

"You talk about "resentment of these men" and I ask
you which men, was Mohammed any more guilty than
your kith and kin at Makurdi that stopped every
train that was freighting an already dispossessed,
brutalized and sometimes dead people back to their
ancestral home for the final solution, or should I
assume your omission of that fact as "mere an
oversight?" Has any Benue man or woman made any
statement about the complicity of that population in
the massacre of Igbos and other
Easterners/Southerners that were headed home through
their neck of the wood? A massacre made the more
gruesome because it ran for several months, with
more people killed in that tract of land than any
single city in the country. Don't talk about what
you don't know before you are reminded of your
father's debt my people say, so once again, let's
focus on the subject - Mohammed."

=== message truncated ===

____________________________________________________________________________________

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[G. Ugo Nwokeji]

Without seeking to drown the issue of prewar genocide and war crimes
against the people of southeastern Nigeria, particularly the Igbo, I
must express my amazement at how reluctant many Nigerians are to
credit Buhari with anything positive and how they sometimes raise
peripheral or invalid issues to rubbish him.

Although Professor Okeke's intervention has spurred my response, a lot
of what I have to say is directed to Buhari's critics generally than
to him in particular. This is because his critics are
seemingly--inexplicable to me--so many, and a lot of the criticism
seem to lack rigor. Buhari's critics often strain to convince
themselves that nothing good could emanate from him. One example of
this is the tendency of some to speak of the "Buhari regime" when
referencing the arbitrary detentions and draconian laws of his regime
while they speak of the "Buhari-Idiagbon regime" to refer to the
anti-corruption fight and the War Again Indiscipline (WAI) of the same
regime.

Buhari was of course the principal, but if he is to be held
responsible for his regime's arbitrariness, he should also be given
credit for whatever that regime tried to do well, again, because he
was the principal. We can either call that junta the "Buhari regime"
or the "Buhari-Idiagbo regime" and be consistent with whichever term
we chose and not to switch from one to the other that better serves
the purpose of denying or condemning Buhari.

To address some of the issues raised by Professor Okeke: Appointing
your lawyer attorney general is not in itself a corruptive act and
does not necessary suggest a disposition for corruption. If Professor
Okeke knows more than meets the eye, I beg him to please share.

The 2.8b naira that ostensibly vanished from NNPC's coffers when
Buhari was the chairman of that corporation is just another example of
the tendency unfairly to characterize Buhari. Nigerians seem to forget
that, mandated by the Senate, the Shagari administration in 1980
appointed a judicial commission of inquiry to probe Nigeria's crude
oil sales and all contracts between January 1, 1976, and December 31,
1979.

My understanding is that the tribunal, chaired by Justice Ayo Irikefe,
found the allegation to be phoney. Contrary to the rumor that gave
rise to the tribunal, no such money was found to have ever been
withdrawn from NNPC's then sole foreign account at Midland Bank,
London. Nobody came forward with evidence to substantiate the rumor
either. I understand that the Punch, which had originally published
the "scoop," actually published a retraction and an apology.

I witnessed an interesting media controversy in Nigeria sometime in
1995-96 when I was on extended visit in Nigeria. Buhari thought it
necessary to address a newspaper report about a brand new Peugeot 505
(I believe it was) found in his garage, which detractors held as
evidence of his purported corruptive indulgence at the Petroleum Trust
Fund that he then chaired. He explained that the car was a gift from
the Abacha, who gave the same model to every past head of state.
Buhari stressed that he had asked nobody for any car.

I derived a number of ethnographic lessons from that episode. Which
other past Nigerian leader would bother to address an allegation
involving an ordinary 505? I would imagine that an "ordinary 505"
would have been completely anonymous in the fleet of cars of any other
past leader--apart from perhaps Gowon--which was why nobody seemed to
notice the ones apparently delivered to Obasanjo, Gowon, and Shagari.

I should perhaps close by declaring that I have never met Muhammadu
Buhari; nor have I even been in contact with him in any way
whatsoever, but I believe that a country like ours that is so mired in
corruption, indiscipline, rabid greed, and debauchery should
acknowledge the few, like Buhari, who have made notable efforts to
rise above the mess. It could be a good way of encouraging people.

G. Ugo Nwokeji

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Thank you, Bro Nwokeji, for that fortright submission. It is instructive that those who seek to force the corruption label onto Buhari strain so hard and stretch logic and credulity to far that the exercise comes out forced and unpersuasive. Their real grouse, often, is his awful human rights record and assault on free press and free speech. And they think that by acknowledging his incorruptibility and the efficacy of WAI, they would dillute their attempt to rubbish him. The two issues can be analytically de-linked. And perhaps should.

 

All that I have seen so far as "proof" of Buhari's corruption are suggestions, innuendoes, and at best circumstancial coincidences that have been given evidentiary valence through flawed extrapolations. Some of these are contained in books written by corrupt politicians who were Buhari's victims, who have since the second republic been looking for an "aha!' moment of corruption against Buhari and have resorted to grasping. These books and their specious conclusions are now unfortunately being quoted to "prove" that Buhari is corrupt. Just look at Tony Agbali's submission, which relies entirely on these attempts to re-write the history of Buhari's government to the exclusion of what MOST Nigerians praise and remember him for.

 

That one must preface or conclude one's ackowledgment of Buhari's heroic effort against corruption and national moral decay with a declaration that one is not in any shape or form endorsing his entire regime and that one is not associated with him or his political interests in any way is itself an indication of how cynical Nigerian intellectuals have become on the matter of corruption in Nigeria and of how resentful of Buhari they still are. Supporting his anti-coruption campaign and WAI is still a risky thing to do among Nigerian intellectuals. But it is a risk that must be taken, if for nothing else as an encouragement to others who have similar courageous and moral visions for the country.

---Mohandas Ghandi

[Mobolaji ALUKO]

Dear Ugo Nwokeji & Colleagues:


Buhari is perhaps the most maligned and dumped-on "non-political" politician in Nigeria's history. His short 18-month co-rulership with Idiagbon succeeded by  8 years of IBB rule and propaganda cemented a bad reputation for Buhari, followed by his almost "blackmailed-to-participate" spell as PTDF director under Abacha.  He also did not make it easier for himself by never responding in a timely manner about accusations against himself, until he entered into electoral politics, and he started having to respond DIRECTLY to many unfounded charges against himself.  Standard accusations are

- his brutality (high imprisonment terms; death sentence to robbers/financial criminals; Dikko capture);
- his rabid Mohammedanism (claim that he said "don't vote for non-Muslims");
- his ethnicism/favoritism (Sultan's airport bags that went through; selective jailings/detentions; geographically-biased PTDF development), not to talk about
- his closet kleptocracy (PTDF).


Personally, a scrutiny of all the above shows that only the first accusation can be upheld.

Nevertheless, I do not believe that he will ever be an elected President of Nigeria, but he will continue to be a lightening rod for disciplined leadership and integrity in the country.



Bolaji Aluko

[Gemini]

Moses, the fact that some information comes by way of reports does not in itself reduce it to 'mere rumour'.  If I were swearing an affidavit on a matter for example, I could introduce the evidence by the formula 'I was told by Mr. Moses Ochonu and I believe him, that Murtala Mohammed ate figs for breakfast.' and a court could use that affidavit as proof of the fact.  But I couldn't give oral evidence of it in a court of law because it would fall foul of the hearsay rule which requires oral evidence to be direct - what you saw, heard or peceived directly.  So while you may not wish to engage on the issue the reports about Buhari's instructions to soldiers under his command indeed merit being dignified with consideration.  Now, because of the perception (even if this was nurtured by the then largely Lagos-based press) that the UPN governors, with Awolowo to answer to, had performed better than governors of other parties, any military coupist might need to make the UPN a primary target in order to support the justification for their coup with proof of civilian uselessness/corruption.  The brouhaha of Tunde Idiagbon's press conference to announce the 'confessions' by UPN governors showed how important the duo considered puncturing the UPN myth to be.  (Although Awolowo punctured back when he announced - without counter - that the UPN governors had not even been questioned, let alone confessed!)  But it strengthened perceptions of a pro-NPN bias on their part.

 

Let me add that when Afenifere indicated that it would welcome Tunde Idiagbon into its political fold I remember challenging my law partner (who is what the media here call 'an Afenifere chieftain') about how they could even contemplate such an alliance in view of the past history.  Idiagbon's death put an end to that, but when the Democratic People's Alliance (which considers itself one of the true repositories of the Afenifere legacy) declared that it would not present any presidential candidate itself but would support Buhari for president, I raised the same challenge, adding to the old history, the fact that surely we'd seen one soldier claiming to be (politically) born again, and we knew what had come of that, and that as others on this forum have pointed out, effectiveness as an arbitrary military dictator is a great deal easier than effectiveness in a civilian system that aspires to subject itself to the rule of law.  I'm not sure I got more from my challenges than that as Palmerston via Jim Nwobodo would say, in politics, no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interest.

 

So much for that - Qansy, Tony and others have taken up other issues raised by the Murtala/Buhari digression from the Ribadu theme, though I will say that I am afraid that I will always regret imagining for one moment that a military coup was going to improve things in Nigeria.  True, it was Sani Abacha who announced the coup, and Buhari 'emerged' later, but the truth is that I was celebrating because of what was being displaced (the moonslide NPN government), not because of a proper consideration of what was coming.

 

As to Murtala's quick-fix military cleansing, I think the point is that there was in fact no judicial process for the affected civil servants, not that there was a judicial process which proved imperfect because some innocent persons suffered (I'm not sure that any lawyer can remain a true believer in the perfection of the legal system, however much of a judicial purist they may be but undue cynicism I think, would lead to disaster).  So it is realism, and enlightened self-interest thta makes me say that I am not more committed to process than to result, only that experience and history show that better process leads to better results in the long run.  When things are uncertain and arbitrary (lacking in process?), people have to rely on themselves - that is human nature. I guess that the reason why humans joined together and formed society and organised rules for themselves was to provide the secure space for human advancement.

 

Anyway, the holiday season is over, it's back to the grindstone, but it's also been nice to have had a bit of time (just a bit) to engage with this forum as more than a mere consumer of the always informative, often entertaining and eternally stimulating content.  A very Happy New Year to all and sundry.  Yeah yeah yeah, I know, can one honestly say that in view of the current desperately depressing (or infuriating) condition in which our continent - and frankly, our world - entered into 2008, and whatever our personal circumstances may be, I suppose that part of the reason for our engaging in this forum is that our happiness is never complete while there is so much wrong that could be righted.  But still sha, Happy New Year all.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Bolaji:

 

Like you, I believe that only the charge of high-handedness and disrespect for civic rights and legal and constitutional processes can stick to Buhari. But to make of an issue of this is to pretend that he wasn't a military dictator. For his victims, of course, his record in this department overrides anything else he did or didn't do.

 

I believe that he did say that Muslims should vote for muslims. I don't believe he was misquoted as some of his defenders now claim, but the Lagos-Ibadan press certainly gave the statement more valence than it had. He was urging a gathering of largely Hausa-Fulani muslims to elect "good muslims," whom he believed rather naively would be better leaders than Christians and "bad muslims." Sani Yerima and other "good muslims" would later stand that outrageous logic on its head through their misgovernance, deception, and corruption.

 

I also believe, like you, that he waited too long to define himself for Nigerians, allowing the press to define him and his administration for so long that it is now impossible to overcome the negative PERCEPTIONS (which differ markedly from reality) created in the media about him.

 

As a result, it is doubtful if he could ever win a national election. But with the kind of candidates routinely thrown up by the political system, who knows?

> of tenure ( i.e. non removal without a fair hearing) sewed the seeds of the

[kla...@aol.com]

Another view on the Ribadu Matter: Published in the Sun Newspaper.

Why Ribadu must go, by Col Umar
By KENNY ASHAKA, Kaduna
Thursday, January 3, 2008

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu Photo: The Sun Publishing

More Stories on This Section

Former Military Governor of old Kaduna State, Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (rtd) has stirred further controversy on the redeployment of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Umar said the EFCC Chairman should quit the job because his appointment was irregular in the first place.
He said although Ribadu would deliver on any task assigned to him, his low level experience needs the guidance of an honest leader.

“I am sorry to say that such environment was most lacking when Nuhu was prematurely appointed as Chairman of EFCC on the insistence of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar; definitely due to their common geographical extraction”, he added.

The former Military Governor made this assertion while fielding questions from newsmen in Kaduna in what apparently was his first reaction to the EFCC saga .
Why Ribadu must go
While many say that the decision to post Nuhu Ribadu out is aimed at frustrating the ongoing trial of the President’s former governor colleagues, Umar thinks otherwise, anchoring his belief on the exigencies of the time.

According to him, “Nuhu found himself operating under the tutelage of a most dishonest boss, President Obasanjo. He was under the false impression that Obasanjo was sincere in his fight against corruption. And who would not be deceived considering the saintly image of Obasanjo up to the point of his first election in 1999 and the beautiful rhetorics and declarations he delivered in his inaugural speech in which he promised to restore the years the locust had eaten, to step on toes and have no scared cows in his war against corruption. When therefore Nuhu was appointed, he accepted the challenge with great zeal, some will even say overzealousness
“But very soon, it became apparent to most observers that former President Obasanjo had some other plans for setting up the EFCC and such plans ran counter to the fight against corruption.

“Instead, the EFCC was slanted to fight against the opponents of former President Obasanjo and to also use the institution to cover up Obasanjo’s monumental corruption. I have it on good authority that the EFCC Chairman was troubled and thoroughly embarrassed by Obasanjo’s hypocrisy and double standard. I still cannot understand why Nuhu couldn’t take the honourable path of resignation once he became aware of the President’s antics. I was shocked that the chairman could bear false witness that Obasanjo was not personally corrupt.

He vouched for the integrity of Obasanjo at a time when he had caused to be stolen well over 50 billion dollars through highly inflated contracts, illegal duty waivers and concessions, mismanagement of the Federations Account and scandalous NNPC transactions and a most criminal, opaque privatization of public treasures to his business associates and cronies. When Obasanjo embarked on total genocidal war against his political and business opponents, the EFCC became the most useful and loyal force that was used.

It acquitted itself disregarding all the recognized war conventions. A good example was the corruption advisory list issued on the instruction of President Obasanjo and his party, the PDP which led to the illegal disqualifications of all strong opposition members. It is a measure of the extent of that illegality that many election results are being reversed by tribunals including those of five state governors and still counting”.

Where Ribadu failed
In assessing the EFCC, Umar said although the anti graft body had carried out the anti- corruption war with some measure of seriousness, it does not deserve the credit being showered on it.
Asked if the prosecution of a former Inspector General of Police and former Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State and the recovering of over N500 billion from criminals were not laudable achievements, the former Military Governor shot back, beginning with the case of the former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Tafa Balogun.
Umar said the culprit in the case was not Tafa Balogun, but President Obasanjo who he said aided and abetted the former IGP to embezzle the funds.

“I ask you what was the Police Force annual budget for the whole period that Balogun headed the force? How was it possible for the IGP, working directly under the President who declared war against corruption, to embezzle over N17 billion without the knowledge of the same President? Tafa Balogun was used as a scape goat. He served Obasanjo’s purpose which explained his ridiculously light sentence of six months mostly served in hospital and his house.

“The case of the former governors of Bayelsa State and Plateau goes to prove our claim that the EFCC was used to torment the opposition. They were only victims of the Obasanjo-Atiku feud since they remained loyal to the Vice President. Otherwise, how come they were the only two governors targeted in any serious manner in the fight against corruption?
“I ask you why was Bode George not prosecuted by the EFCC? The president prevented this from happening. In fact, even when Nuhu established a prima-facie case against Bode George, the president threw back the report on the pretext that the EFCC was not specific in identifying individual culprits. The EFCC Chairman was forced to exonerate Bode George by ridiculously claiming that Bode was only a Board Chairman and not the Chief Executive of NPA and could therefore not be held responsible for any contract fraud, as if he is unaware of the powers of the board in contract awards which of course are higher than that of the management.”

Speaking on the monies recovered from those found guilty, Umar said it is yet uncertain how much has been retrieved. He, however, called on the EFCC to expose those from whom such monies have been recovered, saying he is reluctant to praise the anti-graft agency.
He referred to the CNPP’s allegation that over N2 trillion perished under Obasanjo’s watch and wondered what the N500 billion recovered by the anti-graft body means to Nigerians.
Obasanjo’s hypocrisy, Ribadu’s gain
Umar’s response to the question on the coincidence of Ribadu’s redeployment and the prosecution of former governors? He said Ribadu’s appointment was irregular in the first place going by the Act which set up the EFCC. Quoting from the Act, the former military governor said: “the Act provides for a Chairman and Chief Executive and Board members representing the security services.

“The representative of the Police must be of the rank of an AIG. But when Nuhu was appointed, he was only an AC, meaning he was too junior in rank and therefore expected to attended many police and other professional courses if he is to remain in police service. The NIPPS happened to be a requirement for promotion to the top echelon of the security services. So, the exigencies of the police service require Nuhu to proceed on course. Please do a check on the seniority of Nuhu in the police.

It is Obasanjo that catapulted him to the rank of AIG over his mates and some of his superiors so as to unduly exaggerate the achievements of EFCC under him in its war against corruption. It is all part of Obasanjo’s dishonesty and hypocrisy. He decided to decorate his generals after being routed in a war. He surrendered to corruption, but he still has to publish another book on His Command.”
Why Obasanjo’s policies must be reversed

People also see the removal of Nuhu Ribadu as one more evidence that Yar’Adua is intent on reversing all the policies of Obasanjo’s administration. Could this not be true?
To answer the question, Umar went down memory lane, enunciating some of the policies of the Obasanjo administration. In his estimation, Yar’Adua’s government in incapable of reversing all the policies of that administration.

“But there is real and urgent need to reverse all those bad policies and they are so many. You must remember that the main reason Obasanjo was elected in 1999, against all odds, was to pull this country back from the brink. It was expected that with his saintly image which has since been debunked, he would restore the years that the locust had eaten.

He would reverse the rot. Luck played into his hand. The nation witnessed an unprecedented rise in its finance, thanks to the high rise in oil revenue. It was like God had blessed us with manna from heaven. What did our messiah do? He decided to restructure the nation on a very weak and shaky foundation. Our social, political and economic structure has been built on cronyism, nepotism and greed.

His policies have encouraged primitive and criminal appropriation of public wealth by a few to the detriment of the many. Obasanjo’s policies have pauperized majority of Nigerians. Over 70 percent of the people have fallen below poverty line while less than two percent of the population controls over 60 percent of our nation’s wealth. He has pushed the nation further on the precipice. It is therefore in the best interest of the nation that such policies are reversed.”

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[okwy okeke]

Moses,

 

I know to exit a conversation that has degenerated.

 

Just a parting comment: To compare the action of a population or a material segment of the population over months to that of a military raid planned and carried out by a handful of combatants is to stand logic on its head.

 

It is tritely referred to as comparing apples and oranges. You tried to confuse the issue with adding to the list of human right violators to which you were reminded of "your" soft belly which drew a most ludicrous counter-charge.

 

Even if it becomes established that THOUSANDS of middle-belters died of Biafran air raids (I will not ask you for proof) was it as a result of the action of a significant section of the Biafran population, was it an act of war carried out after formal declaration of hostilities, and was it repeatedly over a long period that can only be sustained by a acquiescing population as against the act of infamy committed at Makurdi rail station for several months?

 

Was any returnee middle-belter (military or civilian) waylaid before the outbreak of war? This is strictly for the purposes of other readers.

 

You may want to read Half of a Yellow Sun where the author, an Igbo lady detailed to very wide applause including mine and a popular reviewer Ikhide Ikheola (http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/ikhide-r.-ikheloa/a-blazing-sun-the-story-teller-re-5.html), that carnage was not limited to one side during the war, however, the atrocities at Makurdi before the war was unprecedented in the history of Nigerian conflicts - systematic decapitation of a fleeing people, so when next you write a list, make sure to include your kith and kin.

 

BTW, I will not respond in kind by tarring you with the actions/pronouncements of a handful of middle-belters like David Mark, Awoniyi, Abdulrahman Okene, etc., like they say, it is a season for large heartedness.

 

I exit this conversation. 

 

Okwy Okeke

> wrote:
> Dear Ebe Achonu,
>
> Murtala Mohammed was a criminal, no ifs, no buts,
> and no caveats, period!
>
> The malicious mass slaughter Murtala started in
> 1966 remains an orgy in progress as his modern day
> inheritors re-enact same tragedy in our national
> lives under different guises in fulfillment of
> Trevor-Roper's prophetic words (see Hitler War
> Directives) that tardy imitator will imitate
> nihilists in mockery of their demise .
>
> Murtala should actually be singled out as the
> first
=== message truncated ===



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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ayo:

 

Happy new year to you. Your argument that history bears out the postulation that better processes produce better results in the long run is not entirely correct, I am afraid. There are examples of better results emanating from better processes and bad results emanating from good processes. History is also replete with examples of good results emanating from not so good processes. All in the long run. Historians who study things in the long duree have since realized the folly of reading outcomes from processes.

 

History is actually a much more convoluted and less linear progression than your postulation suggests. There are no guarantees in history, and you cannot predict outcomes and results from processes. That's what historians fancifully call contingency. People with training in other fields and epistemologies may have more faith in the deterministic capacity of processes, but even they admit of what they might call exceptions or aberrations. History actually shows that those "aberrations" and "exceptions" are actually as common as what people regard as the normative causal sequence between processes and outcomes.

 

My opinion is that in cases of institutional and procedural collapse, such as we had in the second republic, people lose faith in processes and institutions. Nigerians did in the second republic, with many who could afford it leaving the country and those left behind sorely disillusioned and dispirited. Since it takes human beings to build or rebuild institutions and processes, Nigerians needed to have their faith in the country restored and to be motivated yet again to believe in the country as a first step to rebuilding the collapsed processes and institutions of the second republic. For what it's worth, Buhari/Idiagbon performed this task of national restoration and moral regeneration. This was a prelude to institution-building and the entrenchment of enduring processes, for which I am not sure they were equipped and which IBB, their successor, certainly was neither equipped for nor willing to undertake.

[Qansy Salako]

Brothers Tony & Okwy:

Indeed it’s time to quit the debate with Moses.

The discussion has lost its color and purpose.

Issues have become recklessly tangled and Igbo, Yoruba, Tiv and Igala babies have become mixed up in the labor ward.

Moses has become refractory and impervious in sincerity over the course of this debate.

I salute you Tony for taking the troubles – you did the research required, you quoted from old newspapers and books including their titles and authors (just as I’ve recommended) - but all we have is extemporaneous rationalization after rationalization.

Yoruba: a ki tori awijare kito o gbe lenu (one doesn’t because of the need for vindication talk until one runs out of saliva).

It’s been fun.

We won’t tire of shining light on dark corridors around here.

Till another time, soldiers of truth.

 

Citizen Moses Ochonu:

You can handle your views.

But you can’t handle the truth.

You have not been honorable in the twin threads of debate that you started on Murtala and Buhari.

You thoroughly mishandled simple counter-facts that ought not have taken much away from your original intentions in your views on those 2 Nigerian generals.

The irony of Buhari’s unpopularity with Nigerians for another presidential service is lost on you completely, given all your laborious contentions in his defense.

Was it you who argued that peoples’ perception of a person is not more important than who s/he truly is?

You couldn’t be more wrong?

In Corporate America, you better pay attention to peoples’ perception of you otherwise you ain’t gonna get nowhere fast, if at all.

 

You didn’t need to keep issuing out several curious illogical contentions atop one another as responses.

Shagari was not corrupt, he just simply presided over outrageously corrupt government. NPN rigged

elections for Shagari, he had nothing to do with it, he just simply presented himself for the

swearing-in and took his mandate. Historians have found that right outcomes often result from wrong

conducts. So Shagari remains un-culpable, un-indictable and meritorious through it all, ehn? After all,

that was why Nigerians didn’t demonstrate when the nepotistic Buhari-Idiagbon duo found him innocent of running the country aground during his 4 years in office as president. What is the plight of the many citizens who died in election riots as a result of his so-called 1983 moon slide election victory (a la 2007 Kenya’s Kibaki)? So enduring good can come from bad, huh? A honest society can emanate from a dishonest people? Egalitarianism can be achieved from a society steeped in inequality and iniquity? Really, Moses Ochonu?  All because you must “win” argument over two bloody army boys, who are dictators anyway? If this kind of thought makes sense to you, I don’t know what to tell you. Na una.

 

Your two supporters didn’t help your situation, either.

Take for example, one of them describing Buhari as “non-political?”

Somebody was a military dictator head of state of a country, then later campaigned as a civilian for the position of “President” in two democratic elections and is still being described as “non-political!”

What an inferior statement?

And then citizen Ugo Nwokeji using the story of a Peugeot 505 gift to Buhari to make a case for Buhari’s incorruptibility. He said since Buhari didn’t ask for the gift from anybody, he saw no big deal in Buhari holding a press conference to clear himself.  So if Ugo was a local bank manager and he got home one December day and met a new car and a xmas goat in front of his house as gifts, he would chop these 2 gifts since he didn’t ask anyone to for them in the first place? Was it Ugo too who said there is no big deal in a president appointing his private lawyer to become the federal attorney general? What else do they call conflict of interest, people?

I tire for you people o.

            Ochonu I don taya re

            Nwokeji I don taya re

            Me I taya for de thing den dey call…

 

Moses, the following are simple things you could have done in the course of this debate:

1.      You could have just defined the views you have expressed on your two subjects as your own views, rather than stressing so hard to ram them down your readers’ skulls.

2.      On the issues of war crimes against Murtala, you could have simply acknowledged it, then calmly restated that he really succeeded in becoming a national hero to millions of Nigerians by the time he died 6 years after the war. The issue of his being corrupt is even easier to handle because all you needed do is say that he redeemed himself and lived by example by giving all his riches away when he got to the number one leadership position. You probably didn’t know (or forgot about) this until Okwy told you. But by the time you did, it was too late. Your saying so just simply got lost in your hitherto inflexible attitude of hammering everything to a pulp, like a quarry supervisor.

3.      On the ills of Buhari, all you needed do is acknowledge very simply that you know he has those problems with Nigerians, even though you like him. 

4.      Stop writing in absolute terms, copy my style in your writings – use a lot of “some,” “most,” “probably,” “would…” And oh, Moses, whatever you do, don’t ever dare Nigerians to produce evidence for anything you are not aware of.

 

In closing, Ochonu my brother, our path will cross again.

I know so because I would continue to read you because I like you.

It is most probable that I’ll see some views/statements from your writings that would make me challenge

you again.

So I have a feeling we would come this way a few rounds more.

Not to worry, we would become friends in the end.

Most likely by the time we are through the 5^th round, all Tony Agbali would need do is use his fork to turn you around, you should be well-done.

 

Bye for now.

 

Qansy Salako

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[Mobolaji ALUKO]

Qansy:

Only those who don't know you personally probably don't know how you argue.  In fact, you deal in absolute terms (a criticism that you levelled against Moses Ochonu), most often from a strictly and fanatically Muslim AND Southern Nigerian point of view,  and actually quickly become " refractory and impervious in sincerity over the course of (ALMOST ANY) debate."  I doubt if your mind has EVER been changed by ANY debate.

You can also be disingenuous.  For example, I wrote:

QUOTE

Buhari is perhaps the most maligned and dumped-on "non-political" politician in Nigeria's history.

UNQUOTE

and then you write to Moses Ochonu:

QUOTE

Your two supporters didn't help your situation, either.

Take for example, one of them describing Buhari as "non-political?"

Somebody was a military dictator head of state of a country, then later campaigned as a civilian for the position of "President" in two democratic elections and is still being described as "non-political!"

What an inferior statement?

UNUQOTE

I am that un-named "one of them" - and you know why you would not name me.  But if mine is an "inferior statement", yours might be described as a dishonest comeback, first, because I actually described Buhari as a "politician" (without the quotes) but qualified him as '"non-political"' (with quotes) because he did not play the politics like traditional politicians do - with hemmings and hawings and subterfuge.

Take care.

Bolaji Aluko

[okwy okeke]

Ugo,

 

Thanks, not for the comment but the promotion to professor, it usually happens when one hangs out with good people like you.

 

I modestly aspire to becoming assistant shift-head to Ikhide at the Mickey D at 13th & U, not a professor, not yet, whosai, na yam?

 

Hopefully this posts at the third time of asking (else I will forever hold my peace), some things are just that important.

 

Regards,

Okwy Okeke

"G. Ugo Nwokeji" <u...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

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