Buhari: Between Blood And Iron! By Ozodinukwe Okenwa
Comrade Omoyele Sowore and former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd), were days prior to the Yuletide released from the Department of State Services gulag. Sowore had spent months (having been abducted from a hotel in Lagos in the early hours of August 3, 2029) with the DSS for calling for a violent-free ‘revolution’ by the masses. The word “revolution” was misinterpreted mischievously by the powers-that-be to be tantamount to a call for President Muhammadu Buhari’s ouster.
For Dasuki, the celebrated ‘Santa Sambo’, he was accused of looting millions of dollars meant for the procurement of armament for our armed forces fighting the Boko Haram terrorism up North. Instead of doing the needful however, Dasuki simply elected to divert the funds using same criminally to ‘settle’ the GEJ and Peoples Democratic Party acolytes.
Of course the ‘crime’ of the former National Security Adviser during the Goodluck Jonathan ill-fated presidency was a weighty one bordering on national security and security of lives and properties of Nigerians. Yet, he was arrested and charged and tried accordingly and was granted bail upon bail but the Buhari regime conveniently chose to ignore the judicial edict for his conditional freedom.
For the Publisher of Sahara-Reporters and notable pro-democracy activist, his patriotic desire to see a better nation devoid of poverty, unemployment and ubiquitous insecurity prompted him to call for mass action only for him to be picked and locked up. Sowore was charged and tried but the bail granted him by courts of competent jurisdiction was equally flouted by the Buhari regime.
The deliberate failure of Buharism to obey court orders generated huge controversy nationally and internationally. Democracy everywhere has rule of law as its primary objective. Any government that treats the judiciary with disdain cannot command the respect of the international community.
Democracy derives its powers and beauty straight from the constitutionally-guaranteed separation of powers, freedom of association and expression. The executive, therefore, must do their job executively leaving the judiciary and the legislature to do theirs. Otherwise embers of anarchy could be fanned by such abuse of power.
We have had cause in the past to argue that Buhari’s military antecedents constituted a sure source of concern for democracy in Nigeria! A retired military general who constantly remembers nostalgically his infamous martial past regretting the democratic obligations cannot be trusted with a nascent democracy as ours.
A whole lot of Nigerians are still languishing in the Buhari gulag for months and years awaiting justice. Sowore and Dasuki are currently enjoying their freedom but what about others? We must not forget their case this new year.
Buhari’s first four-year democratic baptism of fire was bad enough socio-economically and politically. And his manipulated second coming alias ‘Next Level’ could well turn out to be worse!
The former Defence Minister during ‘Babacracy’ and oil magnate, General Theophilus Danjuma (retd), had recently during a book presentation event in Ibadan, Oyo State, sounded a despondent note of warning to Nigerians as we face a dictator baring his old and tired fangs. For Danjuma, Nigeria was “in a big hole”. He declared ominously that if he revealed what he knew going on in the Buhari embattled presidency then insomnia would be ours for the asking!
Pray! Are they looting the nation dry? Or had Danjuma just discovered that the so-called famous “Jubril from Sudan” was inside Aso Rock and not the Buhari we had known? Or were there plans to Islamise or ‘Fulanise’ Nigeria?
Whatever Danjuma knows that we never knew remains in the realm of imagination, pregnant as it were with palpable fear. Suffice to say that it was unpatriotic and patently irresponsible for an elder statesman of Danjuma’s status to manifest certain fear in speaking truth to power and telling us whatever was wrong with our abused federation. Baba Obasanjo would have spoken his mind and damned the consequencies were he in Danjuma’s shoes!
President Buhari is misruling Nigeria and democracy under his brutal command is seriously threatened. With poverty spreading like wildfire across the federation, insecurity galloping and unemployment rife, one wonders what the Buhari presidency could lay claim to as achievements for the past five years. The lanky bespectacled man from Daura we hold unapologetically, is turning himself into a primitive dictator and his regime into fascism!
The notorious cabal in Aso Villa (Mamman Daura, Kingibe, Kyari and co) must tell their principal that the rule of law constitutes the bedrock of democracy – whether in Nigeria, United States, Great Britain or Botswana. He must be told that his martial method of blood and iron as solution to the issues of the day cannot produce the dividends of democracy Nigerians are yearning for.
Adieu 2019! Welcome 2020!! Peace to our world of war!!!
