BEFORE YOUR VOTE EQUALS SUCCESSFUL SUICIDE ... A CAPTION CUT OUT OF AN ARTICLE .......... QUOTE: But the public pressure for the government to release the report of the probe never ceased during the Second Republic. Indeed, the Shagari government had made all arrangements to release the probe report (which reportedly indicted Buhari over the missing money) after the Christmas and New Year holiday of December 1983 and January 1984, but on December 31st 1983, Buhari conveniently struck in a coup that ousted the civilian government. I know that it’s common to hear Buhari supporters claim he was never part of the coup that brought him to power, but they can tell that to the marines. No one risks their lives planning a coup only to hand over to others who are not part of it. No, the coup planners always have it worked out before execution those going to occupy what position, not least the position of head of state. Anyone who chooses to believe anything otherwise is free to continue to believe whatever it is they want to believe. Predictably, the first act of Buhari and his cohorts upon seizing power was to ransack the Senate and destroy all the papers relating to the N2.8 billion probe and then they followed that up with indiscriminate arrest of politicians on the ostensible excuse of corruption, considering there was indeed serious corruption at the time and the national mood was against the excesses of the politicians. The Buhari government jailed the politicians and persons they consider threats to their government without due process. It was precisely because there was no due process that the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) of the time boycotted the Buhari military tribunals meant to try the politicians. It was a sad period in our national history as many innocent people were simply put in the gulag and wasted. People like Professor Ambrose Alli and Bisi Onabanjo, the former governors of the old Bendel State and Ogun State respectively didn’t last long after they were released before they died. People like Adekunle Ajasin, the former governor of Ondo State, Sam Mbakwe, former governor of Imo State and Olu Awotesu who was the Minister of State for Agriculture lived with life-long health effects from their incarceration until they passed on. People have written plenty on the unfairness of the treatment of the time in terms of how politicians from the North and South were treated by Buhari, something that was exemplified with Shagari being under house arrest and the squeaky clean Alex Ekwueme banged up in Kirikiri Maximum Prison. UNQUOTE. BY: saharareporters/2014/11/02/buharists-and-their-stockholm-syndrome
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 19:14:30 +0000