Enough Is Enough – A Short Note To General Muhammadu Buhari

I read with concern your decision to contest the election of Governor Umar Ya’Ardua at the Presidential Election Tribunal as well as participate in peaceful anti-election Protest. Please think again.

You stand to gain nothing from the Presidential Election Proceedings but more humiliation more ridicule and more pain. An election Petition in these circumstances is unreasonable, profitless and suicidal. This is not the time for such an exercise. You already established a reputation as a man of his own mind. Don’t allow any counselor to push you into the gutter. Save your immediate family from further embarrassment.

Your decision to run was ab initio errorneous. Wole Soyinka, our outspoken Noble Laureate disrecommended you to Nigerians but tacitly endorsed Gov. Ya’Ardua. He based his attack on your record as a Military Dictator. I do not share all his opinions but there is no gainsaying the fact that it is for human beings to revenge but to forgive is divine. You acted with sincerity and 99 per cent of the Recovery of Public Property (Special Military) Tribunals were right but those on whom the axe fell are still alive although most are dead.To date, no other administration recovered as much as yours did. Your statement that this is the only country Nigerians have and we must stay there and salvage it is still so popular and is almost turning into a National Creed. You took popular but draconic steps to salvage Nigeria (including the attempted abduction of Umaru Dikko) from U.K. but ruined everything by sleeping on duty on 27^th August 1985. Nobody can save you from paying the price of that slip. In fact, if the appropriate Military punishment were to be meted by your successors you would have long been forgotten.

In you (and Tunde Idiagbon – RIP) laid the hope of our generation indeed our country but you let us down. Those whose careers, future and lives you ruined by this singular omission are walking corpses today. The victims of your draconian decrees, official acts and Tribunal Verdicts still hold you responsible(albeit sometimes wrongly) for their travails and may not have forgiven nor forgotten. Wole Soyinka was only saying the obvious. Can you honestly affirm in the secret of your bedroom behind closed doors that Shehu Shagari, Alex Ekwueme, Bisi Akande, Abubakar Rimi, Ibrahim Babangida would campaign for you or endorse your candidature? Are you sure that electing another Military ex-Dictator after General Olusegun Obasanjo is the way to go for Nigeria’s Democracy? Did Obasanjo really stop you?

Couldn’t you see that everything went awry from the beginning? You, yourself complained that the ANPP Political Party whose Presidential ticket you hijacked was a disorganized party. Its Governors refused to support your candidature and the Party couldn’t even fly you around the country! You lost the race before the election! To compound it all you went and picked a Political liability as running mate. (How many votes did he deliver?)

General Buhari, don’t forget that many younger Nigerians like my humble self look upon you for leadership and inspiration as an elder statesman but NOT for Presidency. You inflict great pain on us when you easily jump from your exalted office as MEMBER COUNCIL OF STATES made up of former Presidents to contest election. You have diminished the dignity and authority of that office and embarrassed your eminent colleagues. By your loss on April 21, you lost more that just a Presidential Election. Please, for Gods sake, do not go to the office of the U.S Secretary of State to protest election this time around as you did in 2003.

And if you go out to protest on May 1, you will lose even more. If and whenever a verdict is given by the Presidential Election Tribunal or the Supreme Court you are a loser no matter which way the verdict goes.

DO YOU DESERVE ALL THESE JUST FOR LUST FOR POWER? Can’t you easily see that May 2 would come and Yar’Ardua would (INSHA ALLAH) still be there as President-Elect and that on May 29, Nigeria would have an incumbent NOT an INTERIM President?

Your proposed Election Petition stands no chance at the Tribunal save to embarrass INEC. Tribunal lacks jurisdiction to declare anyone other that Umar Ya’Ardua nor will it inflict injustice on Nigeria by decreeinganother annulment. Your complaint is not that you won but was rigged out. You did not win and you did not meet the Constitutional Requirement. Ya’Ardua won but there were manifest irregularities but they are insufficient to invalidate the whole exercise.

Your Petition is liable to dismissal with costs as frivolous, unfounded and abusive. Assuming, I am wrong and you win at the Tribunal then you will be in real soup because no Nigerian will go out face the agony of another vote. It would then go on record that you truncated our Democracy AGAIN! The day you succeed in upstaging Ya’Ardua you cease to be a HERO in Katsina and the entire North. Fellow Muslims will deal with you according to Sharia for stabbing your younger brother in the back.

The accident you survived is an omen and a divine message. Don’t be a tool in the hands of those who stand to lose nothing if a Constitutional Crises occurs. Help our Military salvage its battered image rather than confirm the falsehood that the Military helped rig election. Help Nigerians lick their wounds and move on. Visit the families of every Policeman (or Serviceman) murdered or killed on duty during election and offer words of consolation. Send a Congratulatory Message to Umar and offer help.Attend his INNAUGURATION and SAY GOOD-BYE TO PARTISAN POLITICS. This is positive leadership sportsmanship and statesmanship and the only WAY TO GO.

GOD BLESS NIGERIA! (AMEN)