Pendulum : Now That Buhari Has Cowed Nigerians, What Next By Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, let me take you back to the year 1998, the 7th
day of the month of July to be precise. Chief Moshood Abiola had
just been pronounced dead, just like that, and everything, and
everywhere, was topsy-turvy. We were numb beyond words. A new
leader had taken power the month before, after the sudden death of
the maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha. How can two antagonists die
in similar fashion, one month apart, we wondered, ponderously.

Anyway, as with everything Nigerian, life soon moved on, without
much ado. A few irate students, led by Omoyele Sowore, ranted and
raved but their fireballs soon disintegrated and dissolved into
ashes. Those of us in exile were left stupefied. In all honesty, we
had all individually and collectively given our best to the
struggle, but our best was simply not enough. Man and God had
contrived to deprive us of our greatest democratic moment as a
nation. It does not appear that our democratic nous and ethos will
ever reach the dizzying heights of those glorious days! We lost
Abiola and we lost the mandate freely given to him by the good
people of Nigeria. So, we were back to square one.

Tokunbo Afikuyomi and I offered ourselves as Guinea pigs and
meandered our way back home the same way we had navigated our ways
through the forest of a thousand daemons to escape from the Gulag
and what appeared at the time a the most brutishly ruthless
dictatorship in Nigeria. What we found out on our return was
unbelievable and shocking. Our politicians had barely waited for
Abiola to be interred before they started their stock in trade,
jostling for power and lucre.

We returned to London, very frustrated about our experience at
home. What we suffered through the labyrinth of madness called Seme
border is another matter entirely and a story for another day. Back
in England, some of our compatriots were still blowing grammar.
Saying we must fight the military. We no go gree, like students’
union leaders love to chant every now and then, during Aluta
struggles in our diverse universities. The difference was we were
not students, and this was real life, off campuses.

We decided to tell our elders in the Diaspora the gospel truth.
Those at home were not in sync with those fighting from abroad. The
exposure and experience we had all gained during our sojourn and
desperate struggle for truth and justice seemed totally lost on our
compatriots at home. Our vision and mission were quite clearly
totally divergent. One thing led to another and many of the NADECO
Chieftains agreed to return home. It was over, as simple as that.
That was the reality.

The regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar decided it would hand
over government to a civilian government under one year and it
stuck rigidly to its transition timetable despite serious
temptations to extend its set tenure. If we thought the military
reign was reaching its terminal end, we were dead wrong. The
military was merely beginning to prepare for tenure elongation
albeit in civilian toga. The first election was therefore won by a
retired military General, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. And it became
obvious that the military establishment was not yet ready to relax
and reduce its iron grip on Nigeria’s jugular. Most of those who
paraded the corridors of power were military men in civilian garb.
Four years later, President Obasanjo sought another term and got
it. Meanwhile, throughout all this, there was no provision for the
inclusion of the NADECO fighters as reparation for the dastardly
acts against Abiola and his supporters.

Let’s fast forward a little. After a controversial third term
attempt for President Obasanjo by some political jobbers fell flat,
a brother of a former military General, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua
was brought on board to take over the reins of power. It was like a
change of baton in an exclusive relay race by the military. By
sheer act of providence, President Yar’Adua took critically I’ll
and died in office. This was how fate threw up a complete stranger
to the military establishment and virtual lone ranger on the
balcony of power, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, as President.

It was obvious some members of a most powerful cabal were not
happy about the emergence of Jonathan, a man from one of the
politically disadvantaged and handicapped regions of Nigeria, the
South South. The Ijaw heritage of Jonathan was meant to be his
Achilles heel but the man trudged on till he completed the tenure
of his departed boss. Of course, against all odds, he contested for
his own term and won. That was in 2011. I was privileged to have
been a Presidential candidate at that time.

President Jonathan’s tenure was marred by many turbulent
upheavals, the worst being the Boko Haram menace. There were also
instances of reckless looting of the national treasury and well
documented profligacy by his PDP apparatchiks. President Jonathan
shot himself in the foot and incurred the wrath of the people when
in the midst of horrendous poverty, he sharply increased prices of
petroleum products, astronomically. That was the moment many felt
he had goofed beyond repair. I was one of those who participated in
global protests against his government. I wrote copiously, granted
interviews and generally became a thorn in the flesh of the
Jonathan administration along with several others. Jonathan was so
derided and became butts of jokes everywhere. It was only a matter
of time before Jonathan and his motley crew of pillaging merry men
would be sacked from power.

I must confess that at the height of our stupidity and naivety,
in retrospect, we threw caution to the winds. We wrote off Jonathan
despite occasional flashes of genius and inspiration by some
members of his team. In the meantime, former Nigerian Head of
State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (RTD.) was repackaged to
smell like roses and we all fell for the promise of Eldorado he
seemed to hold at the time. I was one of those who jumped on the
bandwagon to describe him as a born-again Democrat, despite some
strident and persistent warnings by then Governor of Ekiti State,
Ayodele Fayose and others. Perhaps we were fooled by the fact in
quick succession he had picked Pentecostal pastors in his running
mate in Pastor Tunde Bakare in 2011 and Professor Yemi Osinbajo in
2015. Those who told us that our Hallelujah Choruses were premature
and that a leopard can never change its spots were castigated and
hounded by those of us who had been converted to what we believed
was the new Buhari. We sang in unison that anyone but Jonathan. The
rest is history.

Step forward, President Buhari, and take a bow. You rode back
triumphantly to power, 30 years after you were sacked by General
Ibrahim Babangida. What a feat! The world rejoiced at the final
collapse of the PDP behemoth. Our Messiah had come. Most of our
prominent challenges would soon evaporate and vamoose. Praise the
Lord.

Let me not bore you with how those four years were spent, again,
just like that. I leave the judgment of what happened to fellow
Nigerians. Excuses became the art and science of governance. The
past governments and its ruling party, PDP, was blamed for
virtually everything under the sun. No worries. We didn’t expect
Buhari to fix the accumulated problems of 16 or more years in a
short while. Initially, we thought he would eventually settle down
and make inroads into the problems that he had inherited. In any
event, we also didn’t expect him to add more to those problems. The
little we expected was for Buhari to bring stability to the polity.
Again we were wrong.

Everything fell apart and the issue of security which was
supposed to be easy meat for our President being a respected,
respectable and retired General has become an albatross for the
government. So, again, foul. We goofed. I don’t know how to put it
any better. With excellent performance, no one would have taken
note of a few human rights infringements here and there. We would
have tolerated it as the price we probably needed to pay for the
stellar performance that we are getting. However, the converse
became the case. There are more and more human rights abuses and
less and less convincing performances.

Slowly but steadily, a supposed Democratic government began its
relentless assault on what our Constitution had enshrined as a
government of separation of powers. President Buhari took up the
role of an avuncular leader and school headmaster. He simply
encroached into territories that were clearly not his to tamper
with. If Jonathan had tried a small fraction of this, hell would
have known no bigger fury. Yet most of our leaders and elders have
disappeared from the radar without as much as a whimper.

You brood of hypocrites! Jonathan was our whipping boy and we
trounced, thrashed and trashed him mercilessly. But now, we have
lost our voices, it is not just that our criticism has become
muted, they have become practically non-existent because the
Presidential trolls have been relentless in the way and manner that
they have traduced the few honourable critics. Our pen tigers have
stopped writing. Our loquacious activists have since absconded and
abdicated their once noble responsibilities. Such is life. The
oppressed, according to Paulo Freire, only fears and respects his
oppressors. We have all seemingly been cowed (no pun intended) into
submission. Heaven forbid! That is neither the Nigerian spirit nor
psyche!

Was this the Democracy we fought for with sweat and blood. When
our human rights crusaders were preaching and pontificating and
condoning extrajudicial treatment against the so-called sinners and
looters and a few of us pleaded for caution, we were attacked as
supporting and promoting corruption. When the government goons went
after the judges in the dead of the night and we raised alarm, we
were called by names our parents did not give us at birth. When the
hooded ones invaded the National Assembly in order to obliterate
their sworn enemy, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, they said we have
been bought and should shut up. But today the chickens have come
home to roost.

Our dear friend, Omoyele Sowore, has been captured, detained and
is about to be guillotined for using a word that was just one in
the arsenal and vocabulary of this government when it was in
opposition. The impugned language is one APC leaders have all used
in the past, indeed they have said worse. They have rallied, railed
and planned a road demonstration that they had joined openly in the
past without any repercussion. The lesson in this for me is that we
must all stand firm for the rights of every man at all times, be it
saint or sinner. The resort to jungle justice and rabid impunity is
what has made it possible for any government to pounce on Omoyele
Sowore, a man whose tongue is sharper than razor blade and a pen
mightier than atomic bomb but who in reality can never carry a
physical weapon and has not encouraged anyone to do so in this
‘revolution’ that he has called for. Indeed, it is only those who
are blood-thirsty that would see what is said as anything other
than a clamour for a peaceful and democratic change in government
within constitutional means. As a matter of fact, the revolution
Sowore called for, whatever your interpretation, was not as popular
on the streets until a panic stricken government elevated and
catapulted it to a dizzying height, a free and cheap publicity that
was unsolicited by the conveners.

Now we have succeeded in diverting attention from the killer
herdsman who have been on rampage. Is it not an irony that Sowore
was arrested for doing virtually nothing bigger than what he and
many of us did to support Buhari when he was still one of us. Let
us hope in the spirit of this Sallah, that the Federal Government
will change its mind, and possibly its style, of killing flies with
a sledgehammer…

Barka de Sallah to all our dear Muslims…

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