If Really General Buhari Wants To Be President, By Yusuf Ozi-Usman
General Muhammadu BuhariI was privileged to be in the press corp of General Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign train in the 2003 electioneering campaign, representing Daily Trust, an Abuja newspaper organization. The campaign took us day and night and across the length and breadth of this country.
When he concluded the campaign a few hours to the election, he took us to his Daura country home to fete us.
In the process of interaction freely, the General thanked us and asked a casual question: what is your individual opinion about the campaign, and your guess as to the outcome of the Presidential election being expected to be conducted in a couple of days away?
While every other persons rated the campaign 100 percent successful and swore that he would win the election and become the next President, I was about the only one who, after agreeing that the campaign was excellence, went on to say that, “yes, your Excellency, you will win the election, no doubt, but ‘they’ will not give it to you.”
General Buhari and others around were momentarily surprised at my suggestion. They went pensive, but slowly came to terms with the fact that I could be right, though no one had the courage to ask me to elaborate.
[quote]Unless General Buhari wants to just ‘join’ them as he cannot ‘beat’ them, certainly, there is no way the forces working against him; the forces which ironically are the core engines that hold this country down, will open their eyes and allow him to mount the Presidency even if all the other forces, which are in majority but powerless, vote for him 100 percent.[/quote]
Of course, the reasons I had that time are still very relevant today, and unless General Buhari wants to just ‘join’ them as he cannot ‘beat’ them, certainly, there is no way the forces working against him; the forces which ironically are the core engines that hold this country down, will open their eyes and allow him to mount the Presidency even if all the other forces, which are in majority but powerless, vote for him 100 percent.
From this point, it is instructive to recall that when Goodluck Jonathan won the 2011 Presidential election and shortly after, went to Lagos to address members of the business community, Jonathan thanked the tycoons for standing by him through the election time. They quickly made it clear to him that they should be the one to thank him for making himself available against Buhari who loomed large in the horizon.
The businessmen and industrialists told Jonathan that if he had not made himself available for them to be catapulted to the Presidency, most of them would either have left the country into exile or preparing to do so.
Of course, the import of the message was that General Buhari’s Presidency would have been a call for disaster to their investments, whose foundation and existence was mainly rooted in shady and corrupt ways. This group of Nigerians, who constitute a tiny negligible percentage of the country are the ones that control the nation’s common wealth and would do everything they can to push whoever would challenge Buhari forward, just so that, even though he wins, that he is not allowed to become President.
Another group of powerful Nigerians who depend mainly on the spoil of office and dole outs from the executives and legislatures for the oiling of their systems are the traditional rulers. To them, Buhari’s Presidency is most likely to shut the door on the free quantum of money flowing from the political system and are not comfortable with such situation.
When the traditional rulers across the country began to confer titles on President Jonathan before the 2011 election, it became obvious that they were direcly initiating him, whereas no one ever heard of a single traditional title conferred on Buhari. Those who are schooled in such titles and the mode of conferring them by most of the traditional rulers would tell you that there is more to it than what ordinary eyes see.
In order words, General Buhari may be ‘allowed’ to enjoy the benfit of popular votes for him to be President only if he would bend his head for local traditional rulers to recite strange incantations, using all kinds of strange and wired fetish objects to anoint him in the name of conferring traditional titles. In one word, if he would allow himself to be initiated into cults and societies!
And, above all, America which has pride itself as the police of the world and its allies are determined, hypocritically, not to allow any clean person to mount the leadership of this country. They have shown clearly that rapid development of Nigeria, devoid of corruption, crises, diseases and other vices, are great threat to their strength and the power they weild. If you are in doubt, take a look at what Libya, Iraq and Palestine have been turned into. Look at what they had tried to turn Iran into if it were not the foresight of that country’s leadership.
In other words, the neo-colonialism is taking a strong root in Nigeria fast. It is being implemented, as it was done in Libya and Iraq, using the ignorant and willing citizens of the host country.
America and its allies are enforcing the content of the neo-colonialism on Nigeria so cleverly that the ordinary onlookers would be in a haste to commend them for their kindness.
In a situation as we have found ourselves, where many negative forces connive to deny this country the leadership of General Buhari and a few of his likes, what else can those who want such leadership do other than to pray.[myad]
