Tunde Idiagbon was not around to see it. And if he were to still be here but didn’t see it life he would have doubted all breaking news about it. But it happened. Mohammadu Buhari (who with Tunde Idiagbon once overthrew democracy and held Nigeria with iron-stiff hands) ‘bathed’ us with tears recently. I tell you, Tunde Bakare would have had an uphill task convincing Tunde Idiagbon, his namesake and ‘predecessor’, that Buhari first sailed away in thought while addressing the world, then the whole head plummeted, and before he was done with giving vent to the troubled inside man his papers and viewers were already wetted with his tears, and could only moan thereafter!
But very seriously: why did Buhari sob before 150 million Nigerians and the entire world? What altered and changed the solid frame of this Idiagbon’s principal. What made the military strongman not to dey kempe like OBJ, his former boss but rather was anything except to be able to say: I dey laugh. It is the phenomenon called Jonathan; the political hurricane that changed all political calculations on the board!
Or, what do you think happened to Buhari that he welled up? Was it not because he has seen – given this overwhelming political hurricane – failure stamped and sealed far ahead? That was why he wept. And if this is so, why should it turn to blood-letting of innocent citizens in the North, destruction of properties and another attempt to overthrow democracy?
Buhari wept because he reasoned that after failing many attempts at making it to Aso Rock, he is again face-to-face with another – in a contest actually presenting itself as his worst outing with a sweeping Jonathan as co-contestant– and the tears streamed out uncontrollably. As if that was not enough he saw the only strategy that can marginally up his dream and give some faint hope – i.e. the talk with ACN – irredeemably crashing down, and the inner pain enlarged the passage for those tears. And as if that was not still enough he heard that the national borders will be closed. ‘Oh! Which kine thin bi dis?’ he seems to ruminate and cogitate, and that pensively, and the vents went more ‘elastic and supple’! And even while he was already being additionally battered that APGA and Labor Party are going with Jonathan, he got a whisper that an already soaring Jonathan just had the endorsement of 46 parties. Buhari thought of his age, and knew this can only be his last attempt at the presidency. And yet here he was glued to failure with all its beckoning signs on every side, and the emotions completely went out of control.
Buhari wept because the handwriting was clear. He wept because he saw himself in a political cul-de-sac without comparison, without solution and yet do not allow for retreat at this point for shame! That is why it baffles one that after a wholesome and wholesale defeat by Jonathan, Buhari could result to mischievous allegation of election rigging, incitement, not of his children and other members of the leadership of the CPC in the North but, of some to-be-pitied and not-well-brought-up children who could both afford to heed the dangerous invitation to empty self of reason and humanity and to actually go playing Mephistophelian duties!
Or could it really be that there was another reason why we saw those tears on that day. If they were not tears that anticipated failure at the polls could they be tears to prepare in advance the emotions of youths other than the children and grandchildren of the elite class in the North loyal to him (Buhari)? Were they tears meant to prepare these and to take them to the streets in the event of his defeat; his own present way of overthrowing democracy? Remember that he was even to go a step further later when he reportedly said that if the votes do not translate to his winning the election (this being the actual import of his very careless statement) that all that is happening in North Africa put together will be a child’s play in comparison with what will happen in Nigeria.
Having set the stage for the demonized outing of those youths Buhari has since said that he considers their acts dastardly. Really! Of course, Atiku Abubarkar who started this clarion call of making the country ungovernable if Jonathan runs the presidential race has, even before Buhari did, condemned the killings and the destructions. Uhn! Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) that created the coast for all this has also condemned the carnage. If the recent comments of all-three sound reasonable to them, certainly they don’t to this writer. Can they now pretend not to know the genesis of all this? Can they deny their roles at the beginning? And can they say they do not know the cause and effect relationship between that beginning and the present? And lastly, can they deny that they were the catalysts and fertile ground for this crime against humanity that took a very horrible frenzied dimension, such as only spirits strange to man and abhorrent to God can sponsor, coordinate and execute? To deny these will be clearly splendide mendax: nobly lying or splendidly false! Without Atiku, ACF, Buhari and their actions we wouldn’t have heard and seen what we heard and saw took place in the North after the serious electoral bashing of Buhari.
We read that the man Buhari (though he said it is his party, as though there is any difference here) wants to go to court to challenge the presidential election result. Though this may be a better route than killing all of us since the armories and the army boys are no more within his beck and call to now again completely overthrow democracy, I may still however want to note the following for onward passage to his conscience lest he unnecessarily overheat the polity and try to weaken by distraction governance or the hand of government with that most unreasonable law suit:
That Buhari saw his defeat coming and told the story with tears is already global knowledge; that the eventual election and the result it produced did not only confirm those ‘prophetic’ tears of the general but has been adjudged by the international community as the best so far in Africa for freeness, fairness, transparency and credibility; that Buhari was expecting a magic in the South East and South South where he is neither known nor even made himself to be known and a region all the parties collapsed their structures for Jonathan despite the fact that the PDP already firmly controls the two regions could make a bestselling fiction story; that he already knows what happened to him in the South West and so need not be tutored; but that in case he is wondering what hit him in the Middle-Belt or North Central: This region decided to do for the South (because of a wonderful candidate in Jonathan) what the South East and South South have been doing for the North over the years; that his CPC party in the South East has said the election in the East was square (and fair) belies his rigging allegations that have only succeeded in taking too many of us to the slaughter houses in the North; and that if the above will make no meaning to Buhari the governorship election results that almost erased CPC from politics at that level across the nation should.
Except Buhari wants us to see more of his tears he will do well to leave our honorable justices alone. Because the facts on ground and which certainly will make their ways into the hands of the good men of our hallow chambers can only but hit the general so hard with the result that those vents for tears can only become floodgates of tears. We do not want to see this boss of our two Tundes end up wailing. Because we have had enough of the tears we do not want to see any more, let alone the floodgate version. It is better to say ‘I am sorry’ than to completely now breakdown before all of us. Apologies and not tears!
Buhari must be sorry for overthrowing democracy once upon a time, and for this second attempt
at it! He must be doubly sorry. And he should do that publicly. The Nigeria he claims to love asks for this. The Nigeria that he introduced the military boys – IBB and Abacha – to, and who came to thoroughly rubbish us and our common treasuries over the years, which pains we still feel (and which Buhari perhaps thought of coming to heal having created the environment for it in the first place) asks for this. And the Nigeria that was unnecessarily and questionably made to shed the blood of its untold citizenry in the North recently because of him asks for this.
