_By Omo Odemwingie, April 2023._
Nigerians voted for Muhammadu Buhari because of what they thought were his previous credentials of integrity and zero tolerance for corruption in public governance. These were gleaned from such policies of his era as War Against Indiscipline (WAI), which he vigorously pursued as military head of state and his post-military legacies as chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF).
In the two legacy arenas cited above, Buhari's reputation in Africa's anti-corruption annals towered gloriously from policies which altruistically pursued an anti-corruption ideology against all public office holders irrespective of their tribe, religion & region of origin. It was an unforgettable era in history during which governors and ministers of the second republic were individually sentenced to hundreds of years in prison per convict. Umaru Dikko, the all-powerful Minister of Transport of the Second Republic, a larger than life political giant of that epoch who was of the same Muslim faith and Hausa-Fulani tribe as Buhari, was crated in London by Israeli espionage operatives hired by the Buhari junta for repatriation to Nigeria to face harsh corruption charges. At least one jailed governor of that Republic which was headed by President Shehu Shagari, also a Muslim of the same Fulani tribe as Buhari, actually died in jail while serving sentence before the overthrowing Babangida regime, pursuing an utterly deceitful populist agenda, set free all convicts of the Buhari junta in a blanket amnesty.
In sharp contrast to this glowing anti-corruption reputation of his military days, in the February 25 presidential and March 18, 2023 governorship elections, President Buhari put his name in Nigeria's books as having orchestrated the most disastrously, traumatically corrupt, mind-bending and dismaying election rigging experience known to Nigeria's history.
Buhari displayed his ballot paper to cameras shortly after voting, which is against Nigeria's electoral laws. What the law interprets of that contravention is that Buhari campaigned on election day for his APC members and his Muslim fanatics to follow his example on who to vote for.
By actions of omission and commission, Buhari created an atmosphere of free reign of terror for APC political thugs to maim, murder, cordon off and prevent massive turnout of Labour Party voters from voting on election day, at the end of which the APC sardonically taunting the oppositions to go to court.
By guile and stealth, President Buhari also established fertile room nationwide for use of threats of treason by APC elite thugs such as Fani-Kayode, Bayo Onanuga, Festus Keyamo and the Adamus of his infernal party who stridently laid allegations of phantom coup plots against the Labour Party's leaders. Buhari created an architecture of incumbency shenanigans which provided impetus for Festus Keyamo to petition the now politically privatized DSS and its Director-General, Mr. Yusuf Bichi, who is also undeniably linked to Tinubu's APC political camp, urging the nation's arch secret police agency with ludicrous allegations to arrest and jail Labour Party's presidential candidate, Peter Obi and VP Datti.
The Buhari administration, while pretending to be upright through the new currency change and exchange period preceding the elections, however slyly threw open otherworldly channels for Tinubu's APC to induce and conduce INEC chairman Mamhoud Yakubu to spearhead Nigeria's most epic election fraud to date for the benefit of the Tinubu-Shettima Muslim-Muslim ticket of Buhari's APC. The same was true for the Police which merely stood by while mayhem and murder was committed against Labour Party's voting masses in different parts of the country, and in some places even directly participated and aided the most heinous and barefaced election violence and bloodshed, sometimes shamelessly in front of foreign election observers.
Under the Buhari-APC election subterfuge, the majority of Professors on election duty as returning officers had a field day falsifying ballot results for Tinubu and APC candidates across the country.
Furthermore, one has to ask: while DSS is presently working assiduously on Festus Keyamo's hallucinatory petition to arrest and jail Peter Obi and Sen. Datti Baba-Ahmed, why is grass growing under the DSS's feet by delaying to arrest Fani-Kayode, Bayo Onanuga, MC Oluomo and other notorious felons of the APC political camp for inflammatory and treasonable ethnic cleansing threats, including their incendiary diktat that Igbos should leave Yorubaland starting with Lagos?
March 18 Governorship Election in Lagos was sheer anarchy of bloodletting mayhem, murder and sundry felonies. Why has DSS not declared the many identified thugs and their paymasters wanted for prosecution yet have the banana republic temerity and appetite to seek arrest and remand of the Labour Party's presidential and vice presidential candidates?
In all these treasonable threats by APC, can any objective person fault Datti Baba-Ahmed's comments that swearing in Tinubu as President on May 31st without meeting constitutional requirements will mean "the end to democracy" in Nigeria?
It is now also glaring to every discerning Nigerian and the onlooking world that a new, unconstitutional role has been fabricated by Tinubu and the APC for DSS to execute as an army of privatized hunt dogs. The new job description of the Nigerian secret police service now seems to entail:
1. Make DSS a Nazi organization equipped to brutally suppress freedom of speech.
2) Make DSS a Nazi syndicate equipped to brutally repress freedom of protest.
3) Make DSS a Nazi underground repression cult to collaborate with the army in reportedly planned rolling out of armoured tanks to massacre protesters shortly before, during and after proposed unlawful swearing-in of Tinubu as President in order to bury, cover up and cement permanently from Nigerians' view APC's eight years of scandalous corruption horror and bloodshed.
6) Make DSS an undercover blackmail agency of APC to persuade or arm-twist Supreme Court justices to wrongfully deliver a final presidential judgement in favour of Tinubu.
*Conclusion*
Swearing in Tinubu in the prevailing plethora of brazen electoral contraventions, constitutional subversions, injustices and anarchy shall amount to monumental treason and truly next to the end of democracy in Nigeria. Sen. Datti Baba-Ahmed couldn't have said it better.
Buhari, Tinubu, the APC and their cross-border cohorts like Nyesom Wike, Arthur Okowa and Godwin Obaseki should not underestimate the intensely seething and pent-up anger of the ObiDients and Nigerians in general. I have no hesitation in foretelling that sheer anarchy will be the name of the day if on May 29, 2023 Nigerians do not have the actual winner and President they voted for. It will spell doom and very potentially bring to a screeching halt the present democracy in Nigeria if Nigerians pour out into the streets in protests only to be butchered by a Tinubu-Shettima led tyranny of army tanks, government hoodlums and killers. A Tinubu APC government would quickly turn into a blood-soaked military dictatorship and people resistance theatre of genocide. A scenario which should compel President Buhari to ask himself what kind of legacy he was leaving behind.
It would certainly not be a legacy of peace and progress but a country in a blaze of crises, ruin, debris and possible disintegration, as former President Olusegun Obasanjo has predicted.
When INEC evidently deliberately refused to transmit the presidential results as seen and testified to in many videos of INEC polling unit officers which publicly proclaimed that the commission itself had instructed them not to upload results on the BVAS, that was itself an indirect coup d'etat against the citizens of Nigeria.
Outgoing President Buhari must wake up from the misleading delusion of APC's fabricated presidential victory to realize that is the bounden duty of good leaders, whether incumbent or outgoing, to engage and mobilize power to protect citizens the same way they protect their families. They should not abuse power and multiply cause for their citizens to flee their country in search of better life outside their shores, with their hearts bitterly sworn against leaders at home.
God bless Nigeria.
_Omo Odemwingie writes from Abuja._