Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK) is not a new name in political and
social criticism.
As a former Minister of Aviation, FFK has questioned APC
flagbearer Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s credibility going into the
2015 General elections.
Fani-Kayode extensively looked through the actions of
the former head of state and decided to shin some light to the former army
man’s actions.
Excerpts:
Yet whilst doing so we ought to consider the words of Miss
Dora Ade Bentley. On December 11 on her Facebook wall, she wrote the following:
‘’Jihadi
groups killed more than 5,000 people last month, with Iraq topping the league
table of deaths, followed by Nigeria, Afghanistan and Syria. In 664
incidents recorded in November by the BBC World Service and researched jointly
with King’s College London, the overall death toll was 5,042, or an average of
168 deaths per day and nearly twice the number of people who were killed in the
11 September 2001 attacks on America. After Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan and
Syria, Yemen was fifth in the deadly league table, tying with Somalia, with 37
incidents each’’.
All these and some people still say they don’t know who they
want as President? An individual once said, only last year, that ‘’an attack on
Boko Haram is an attack on the North’’; in 2001, that he wanted to ‘’spread
Sharia throughout the federation’’; that “Muslims should only vote for
Muslims’’; that ‘’why should Christians be concerned when Muslims cut off their
limbs under Sharia”; and that ‘’after all the limbs that are being cut off are
Muslim ones and not Christians; so why should the Christians other about it?’’
Since some are partial to Buhari, let us subject him to a
little scrutiny right here and now. Let us put a few questions to him.
Let us judge him by what he says and does.
On July 22, 2014, he told The Nation Newspaper:
“Our country has gone through several rough patches, but
never before have I seen a Nigerian President declare war on his own country as
we are seeing now. Never before have I seen a Nigerian President deploy federal
institutions in the service of partisanship as we are witnessing now. Never
before have I seen a Nigerian President utilize the common wealth to subvert
the system and punish the opposition, all in the name of politics. Our nation
has suffered serious consequences in the past for egregious acts that are not
even close to what we are seeing now. It is time to pull the brakes’’.
One may have been prepared to accept the general’s words as
being those of a genuinely concerned and committed patriot who simply wanted
our President and his government to do a better job and who was worried about
the unfolding situation in our country if he had not consistently exposed his
true colors and his obvious soft spot for Boko Haram.
Permit me to share just one example of the expression of that
soft spot in this contribution. On June 3, 2013, Thisday Newspaper’s lead story
carried the following headline: ‘’The military offensive against Boko Haram is
anti-North – General Muhammadu Buhari’.
The story ran as follows:
‘’Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari has criticised the declaration
of state of emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States and the subsequent
military offensive against the Boko Haram Islamic sect. Buhari, who featured on
the “Guest of the Week,” a Hausa programme of the Kaduna-based Liberty Radio,
yesterday, said the Federal Government’s action was a gross injustice against
the North. According to him, unlike the special treatment the Federal
Government gave to the Niger Delta militants, the Boko Haram members were being
killed and their houses demolished. He said he was not in support of the
declaration of state of emergency in the three north-eastern states because
President Goodluck Jonathan had failed from the outset in addressing the
security situation in the country’’.
The implications of these comments, coming from a former Head
of State, are obvious and self-evident.
Yet that same General Buhari who said these unacceptable
things one year ago is now busy pontificating about his concerns for our
nation. Many would argue that, that is pretty rich coming from him given his
past comments about a ruthless group of terrorists who, more than any other,
merit the award for the greatest ‘’troublers of our nation’’. Given this, I
regard Buhari’s comments to The Nation Newspaper on July 22, 2014 as nothing
but self-serving.
Of particular interest to me were the following words:
‘’Never before have I seen a Nigerian President declare war on his own country
as we are seeing now’’. Really? Correct me if I am wrong but I thought that the
war that President Goodluck Jonathan has declared was against terrorism and
Boko Haram and not against the Nigerian people.
Questions begging for answers
Does General Buhari find it difficult to make a distinction
between the jihadists and the Nigerian people?
Does he see them as being one and the same?
Does he actually equate members of Jama’at ahl as-sunnah
li-d-da’wa wa-l-jihad with the Nigerian people?
Does he regard the military offensive against Boko Haram as
being an offensive against OUR people?
Does he honestly believe that anytime that a Boko Haram
terrorist is killed by our armed forces and security agencies or that his house
is blown up, it is an attack on the Nigerian people or an assault on the North?
Are those people that Boko Haram slaughtering, terrorising,
abducting, pillaging, robbing and raping on a daily basis all over our country
not the real Nigerians?
Does he honestly believe that Boko Haram is representative of
the thinking of our people or even the majority of the people in the Muslim
North?
Is he still insisting on having another Muslim as his running
mate in order to establish his strange dream of a Muslim/Muslim President and
Vice President for our country or has he shelved that idea due to public
resentment and outrage?
Does he have any empathy with the Christian community in
northern Nigeria for the immense suffering, degradation, humiliation, contempt,
shame, indignity, persecution and mass murder that they have been subjected to
in the North for the last 53 years and particularly in the last few years?
Does he still believe that ‘’Christians should not worry when Muslims chop off
their own arms and hands in the name of Sharia because it is none of their
business’’ as he said in 2001?
Does he still believe that Boko Haram members should be
forgiven, granted amnesty, pampered, sent abroad to learn and given monthly
allowances like the Niger Delta militants like he suggested in 2013?
If the truth must be told, the only thing that is worse than Boko Haram are
those in the Nigerian political class that secretly support and covertly assist
them.
I believe these questions deserves answers ooo... Either directly or by proxy!
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