By Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji
I have been in the war
front of Nigeria’s political contests for the 2015 general elections now for
about four weeks.
While I am working for the election of Chief Dr. Chekwas
Okorie as the next president of Nigeria, the vicious nature of campaign attacks
on the person of General Muhammadu Buhari, backed by petro-dollars that has
origins in our common patrimony, has been such that demands the outrage of
patriots.
By the time Major General
Mohammadu Buhari came to power as Military Head of State of Nigeria on December
31, 1983, I was already in the third year of my university education in the
United States of America.
I did not live in Nigeria under his leadership and as
such have no personal experience of life under him and his regime. But I
followed developments in my home nation as one had mixed feelings over the
return of the Military to government.
The pride we, as Nigerian students
abroad, had in telling our school mates that Nigeria was the third largest
democracy on Earth (behind India and the USA) was interrupted as a result of
that intervention by the Nigerian military.
In 1995 I was approached by
the late Major General Joseph Nanven Garba to consider publishing what would
turn out to be his last intellectual offering on issues concerning Nigeria. Fractured
History: Elite Shifts and Policy Changes in Nigeria by Garba, was published
later that year under the Sungai Books imprint, which I own.
The launching of
that book in Nigeria brought me together with Buhari for the first time.
General Sani Abacha was in power at the time and he was not particularly fond
of books critical of him and the military government, which Fractured
History was.
General Buhari chaired the launching of the book at the
Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, a fact that gave us
protective cover for the intellectual event. The then Military Administrator of
Lagos at the time, Major General Marwa, stayed away from the event.
I had the opportunity of
sharing moments with Buhari and Garba in the room where we sat and waited
before we proceeded to the auditorium. He commended my service and what he
called “courage” in publishing the book at that time, which he had read
preparatory to the launching. He expressed happiness with the book design and
print and joked to Garba that “if only the book was as good as its cover.” We
all laughed. As I often do, I told him that I would like to publish his own
works or memoirs if he ever got to writing any. “We will see,” he said in his
brief and brisk style.
I did not meet the man
again until the August 2004 convention of the World Igbo Congress, which was
held in New Jersey. He came in a surprise visit to the gathering of the apex
Igbo organization in the Diaspora. I was a member of the Board of WIC at the
time and one of the closest advisors and allies of the then Chairman of
WIC, Dr. Kalu Kalu Diogu. In Diogu’s suite with some of us, the WIC chairman
was visibly rattled at the news of Buhari’s arrival at the convention. Diogu’s
anxiety was grounded in the knowledge of the controversy that former Governor
Abubakar Rimi’s surprise visit to WIC’s convention in Dallas, Texas in 2000
generated among Ndi Igbo at the convention.
I was among those who
counseled that an unscheduled reception and meeting should be held to welcome
Buhari, a former Head of State, before the formal opening of the convention. He
was the second former Head of State, after General Emeka Odumuegwu Ojukwu, to
attend a WIC convention.
After I drafted Diogu’s “welcome address” (speech) to
Buhari, the chairman calmed down and we proceeded to the reception. In the
speech, WIC was cordial to its prominent guest, who clearly was preparing for
another run for president of Nigeria in 2007.
We told him that it was
impressive that a man, who had taken arms against Ndi Igbo during the
Nigeria-Biafra War, had come to break bread with survivors of that fratricide
in the Diaspora. We also noted to him that it was also commendable that a man
who had overthrown a democratic government in 1983 was now himself a democrat
seeking power and service in a democratic environment.
We hoped aloud that
he would commit himself to neither of those incidents happening ever again in
the life of Nigeria and Nigerians.
The officer and gentleman
addressed us. And after his remarks, he took questions from those of us who had
gathered. His answers were direct and he showed no discomfort in the midst of
folks whose sentiments towards him were ambivalent at best.
The next time I met General
Buhari was during the election period of 2007. I had returned to Nigeria as the
USA coordinator of VOA (Vote Obasanjo Atiku) to participate in the last three
weeks leading up to the elections. I ran into him at the Abuja Airport, in the
VIP Lounge. He had just finished a rally in Abuja or in a neighboring state and
was heading to Kaduna.
I was on my way to Owerri, Imo State. He remembered the
face but was not sure from where. I reminded him that the initial acquaintance
was made at Garba’s book launch in 1995. Then he remembered that he had bought
additional copies of the book at the New Jersey convention of WIC in 2004. He
missed Garba, he said. He liked “the Diplomatic Soldier,” he referred to Garba.
Diplomatic Soldiering was the title of one of Garba’s previous books.
I present this background
in order to address some of the unprecedented attacks on the person of the APC
candidate for president.
One criticism of Buhari is
the perception that he operates from a born-to-rule mentality. In essence, the
knock is about his ethnic identity of Fulani, which is criticized as a whole
for a sense of entitlement in the realms of power. I have always been against
the lazy idea of group stereotypes, which the Igbo (of which I am one) have
been a long-standing victim.
There is nothing about Buhari that suggests that he
has more ethnocentrism or ethnic chauvinism in him than other politicians or
“leaders” who have used ethnicity as lever and leverage to power. I return to a
long held belief that we are all African people, the realization of which
should allow us to break down the walls erected by these stereotypes.
This is
among the reasons the Igbo put aside their feelings about the role of Goodluck
Jonathan’s Ijaw ethnic group in the Nigeria/Biafra war to support
overwhelmingly the incumbent president’s 2011 run for president.
Buhari is also said to be a
fierce adherent of Islam who prefers Sharia law to the more liberal Nigerian
secular law that is itself based on British common law, which in turn is based
largely on Christian ethos. He is in essence a practicing Moslem who takes his
religion very seriously.
My description of him in previous writings as a
conservative politician standing on the platform of a reportedly progressive
party was based on this characteristic of his. As a would-be president of
democratic Nigeria, Buhari will have no tools with which to make Sharia the law
of all Nigeria. Nigeria is simply too complex and sophisticated for that kind
of adventure.
In my neck of the woods,
Buhari’s military activities during the civil war have been disingenuously used
as a wedge issue by PDP operatives. Yet the same operatives had worked for the
election of General Olusegun Obasanjo as a civilian president, a man who more
than most, has used the defeat of Biafra as a calling card. Buhari was a young
officer ordered to war by superior officers, and by the standards and
expectations of the Nigerian Army, conducted himself professionally.
There are legitimate
criticisms of Buhari based on his tenure as Head of State and his stint as
Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund. But even this legitimate criticism has
been extended to making things up about the man and giving him undue credit for
evils that took place after he had left office.
I am not supporting Buhari
for president. I am working for Chekwas Okorie, a man I believe to be more
progressive than Buhari and Jonathan. Nevertheless, having immersed myself in
the current struggle for power at the center, and having witnessed the
onslaught of negativity against him, I feel an obligation to state that General
Buhari is no boogeyman.
He is a patriot and if he wins, I am certain that
Chekwas Okorie will congratulate him without equivocation, as he (Okorie) would
do if Jonathan wins.
Dr. Ugorji O.
Ugorji, is currently the Director General of the Chekwas Okorie Presidential
Campaign Organization (COPCO). The views expressed here are his, and not
necessarily the view of COPCO.
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