It is note worthy that a judicial commission set to investigate the alleged theft found Buhari very innocent of the allegation.
Please, do not join irresponsible hate mongers in bearing false witness against an innocent man. General Buhari did not just start serving his father land in 1977, he began it in 1962 when he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Nigerian army. Through the years, he discharged every of his assignments with distinction and blamelessness.
But because most Nigerians are criminals, some of you find it difficult to believe that a man like Buhari, who has held the most lucrative positions (to Nigerians thieves) in his career, could not have stolen from Nigeria. The conclusion, by you, that every Nigerian is a thief (that is what you imply when you assert that Buhari could have stolen while in office) was what fueled all the rumors around him. In every instance where the rumors were investigated, Buhari came out shinning like a virgin star.
By now, you must have accepted that the Irieke Tribunal gave a complete and irrefutable exoneration of Buhari on the stupid allegation of $2.8 billion missing oil money — no money missed or could have even missed. You are an intelligent man and a successful accountant but I was appalled at you for not once deploying your expertise at fiscal matters to dissuade the idiots who believed that it was possible to siphon out of Nigeria $2.8 billion and deposit it in one bank. I could not believe that educated Nigerians could be so dumb over monetary policies that they believed that such a concoction was possible.
By not dismissing the $2.8 billion fairy tale from a professional point of view, and now tarring that excuse by indirectly fueling a ridiculous lie that Buhari lives above his means — he does not live above his means; his most virulent critics who know him personally can tell you so while swearing with Amadioha.
The next rumor about Buhari that was investigated was the accusation that he and Idiangbo were enriching themselves through the counter trade embarked upon by his administration. In fact, this CIA instigated rumor was so ripe that Babangida used it to convince some soldiers who were unwilling to join his coup into joining it. He said something like this to them, ‘how could they (Buhari and Idiagbon) stop us from stealing but are making themselves millionaires through counter trade?’ The idea that Buhari was making money through counter trade so enviously disturbed Babangida that he announced the cancellation and probing of the counter trade scheme on his maiden address to the nation — just imagine that. Well, the tribunal he set up to investigate the counter trade came back and told him that they had been sold a dummy — the counter trade was an economic bonanza to Nigeria, with no one having personally benefited from it fraudulently.
Babangida tried to revive the counter trade but the CIA, at the behest of Big Oil, told him, “no way Jose”, and he balked (they had told Buhari similarly but he defied them). How did we get to the counter trade?
Well, the Buhari adminsitration had made oil bunkering punishable by firing squad and overnight, oil thieves exited Nigerian territories (they came back right after he left office and are today siphoning more oil out of Nigeria than Nigeria sells, with no Nigerian leader doing anything about it). With that, Nigeria became awash in excess crude oil, which we could not sell due to our OPEC assigned quotas. Ingeniously, Buhari and Tam David West decided to barter our oil for the manufacturing, industrial, educational, and hospital equipment that we lacked but needed badly — bear in mind that our earnings had reduced by about 60% as at 1983 and a reasonable portion of what we earned went back into servicing debts incurred by the politicians.
By bartering the oil that we could not sell, we were solving a major part of our economic decline — the barter was keeping industries afloat, hospitals viable, science and education up to standard, etc. But American and British Big Oil did not like this, for it cut off their exploitative profiteering in the countries with whom we bartered oil. In addition, the UK manufacturers association (or whatever it was called) raised a serious alarm, to the effect that Nigeria’s bartering for oil had made it possible for Nigeria to reduce its projected imports from the UK by over 50%, a situation that could lead to unemployment and economic crises in the UK. It was at this juncture that the CIA and its British counterpart went to work, tarnishing Nigeria and Buhari.
First, they spread a propaganda within OPEC that Nigeria was quitting and destabilizing the organization — they presented oil bartering as their evidence. OPEC summoned Nigeria and Tam David West denied that Nigeria was quitting or destabilizing OPEC. He cited Saudi Arabia as an OPEC member that once used barter to solve its pressing economic needs when it could not export more oil than the quota allowed it to export. With that, OPEC told the CIA to mind its business and leave the organization alone. But knowing Nigerians to be inexplicably gullible over rumors, the CIA planted the rumor, which was believed then by most Nigerians, until Babangida’s tribunal uncovered its source and its mendacity.
I must add that the citizens who allow themselves to be deluded by unintelligent lies of this sort deserve whatever befalls them and or whatever befalls their nation. In other words, the gullibility of Nigerians, with respect to admiring or accepting gossips and character assassinations, is one of the reasons that Nigeria is today a big for nothing country. But for Nigerians’ gullibility in accepting the distorted versions of the events of January 15, 1966, there would have been no civil war or the atrocities that preceded and succeeded it.
It troubles me that most of these lies against Buhari were begun by the then notoriously partisan Yoruba press and later championed by our ordinary Yoroba compatriots whose gripe was the alleged disrespecting of Pa Awo and the retrial of some acquitted beloved Yoroba UPN ex-governors by the Buhari regime. While our Yoroba folks have mostly learnt the truth and backed away from this degree of incessant hate-filed falsehood peddling against Buhari, my Igbo, as did some in 1966, have taken over the fatuous falsehood ferrying.
In 1966, Igbo took over Yoroba’s wahala that began in 1964 and brought a hundredth fold that wahala to Igbo folks, with its residuals still felt today. Fifty years later, Igbo are once again grabbing Yoroba-abandoned falsehood peddling against Buhari and are running wild and deliriously with it. All this for Jonathan Goodluck who has 419ned us consistently.
Today, we have a seaport at Enugwu where he claimed to have built an airport for us. He is building a second Niger Bridge but Igbo is paying for most of it through tollgate — something that had never been done anywhere else in Nigeria. The federal government even constructed the new River Kaduna Bridge — a local problem for that matter– but Ebele finds it difficult to construct an essential inter state linkage like the second Niger Bridge without charging Ndi Igbo for it, yet most of us don’t see the injustice there? Igbo entrepreneurs must import their goods from Lagos and wait months and months to clear the goods at high costs. But this can easily be ameliorated by putting the ports in the East and Midwest into use.
It is stupid and vintage visionless leadership that a country of over a 100 million people operates only one seaport. A couple of weeks ago, the catastrophe that is that seaport — delays in clearing goods, traffic congestion within the port, corruption of all sorts in open view, the high penalties paid by the government for ships that berth because of congestion, etc — were cataloged in a news report. All these inefficiencies translate to hardships to the average citizen and high cost of doing business by the business community. Were Ebele a visionary leader, all the seaports outside Lagos would be in operation now, they would have created hundreds of jobs in their areas of location, and also made entrepreneurship attractive once again. It will cost the government the same amount it pays in penalties to delayed berthing ships to make these other ports operational. The returns will be so huge and easily felt by the people that Ebele will overnight become the most accomplished president in Nigeria. Instead of some of you to channeling him into these areas, you only resort to applauding his incompetence, his brutish deploying of the instrument of the federal government to crush anyone opposed to his reelection, and your irrational fixation on Muhammadu Buhari. What most of you do not know is that Ebele holds Buhari in the most utmost respect because of Buhari’s incorruptibility.
There is nothing wrong in not supporting Buhari based on ideology but there is everything wrong in making up lies just to tar him. What you are doing with this falsehood peddling is not funny and it will backfire on Igbo in the same way that Ifeajuna’s irrational coup backfired on us. Please folks, play politics of intelligence, not politics of loud mouth and character assassinations.
I am sorry for the lengthiness of this piece. I am not even half way done but I had to stop myself against the dictates of my mind.
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