Photo credit: People’s Gazette
I am asking a question whether Nigerians do use their brains to think at all. I can not be accused of being stand offish because the question includes me too.
No matter how we look at the self styled Maradona, Ibrahim Babangida, who himself did not prove better, the greatest favour he did us was overthrowing Mr Mohammed Buhari on August 27, 1985.
The land itself breathed peace!
I’m sure Alhaji Shehu Shagari would be laughing now. He would be laughing down on this yeye government.
And of course, at Nigerians!
Really, the Shagari government was no good. But it successfully proved that the worst civilian government is better than the best military government.
When Buhari overthrew Shagari on December 31, 1983, he was visibly annoyed with all Nigerians. Ok, except his fellow coupists.
He committed an act of murder. Three so called drug peddlers were executed. But then, the offence as at the time it was committed could only earn the offenders six months each in jail.
What did the evil government of Buhari do? It made a decree which it promptly backdated so that it could cover the dates the offences were committed.
And we all went to watch as innocent men were being executed.
What about Fela?
The icon came in with some foreign currency. He was to go on a trip almost immediately. Since he was the leader of the band, he kept the foreign currency which he promptly declared at the airport. If divided amongst the band members, I don’t think each of them would have gotten up to one American dollar.
But Fela was a marked man!
He was therefore arrested for going against a phoney foreign exchange law and was subsequently imprisoned. He served time at the hot Maiduguri prisons before he was released by IBB!
The trial judge was to beg the musician later.
When the government organised a currency change, all borders were closed. However, Major Jokolo, the then ADC to Buhari caused to be brought in thirty five suit cases of suspected cash.
Who go question am?
The government èven tried to smuggle Umaru Dikko into Nigeria from the U.K. That caused an international row between Nigeria and the British government. That’s why Nigerians now need visa to enter the U.K.
The government made a law that people who were not up to eighteen should not be allowed to go on pilgrimage. As fate would have it, Adekunle Idiagbon, son of Buhari’s number two accompanied his father to Mecca.
And so on and so forth!
The way he was going, he would have been worse than Abacha. Yet we allowed some political jobbers to hoodwink us into voting him into power.
Maybe that’s why that sculptor did not put head on the Fela statue in Lagos. Until we start to think, our problems will continue!
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