I was about to write yesterday asking anyone who knows and can tell me the issues of this coming election. What are the issues? Everywhere it is not the issues that are being addressed but personalities and insults being thrown here and there. How will this help us to avoid falling into another "one chance" after this election?
This then brings me to a recent matter along this line. While speaking yesterday the leader of APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu touched on an important issue of this campaign: integrity of the candidates. In his averment he said that Nigerians should vote Buhari because he is the more honest among the two top contenders. That if you put one naira in a room and you return with Buhari in the room, you will find your money.
Hear him:
" President Buhari is a straight and honest man. Leave a naira on the table with Buhari in the room. You will find the naira on the table when you return. When Buhari says yes ' yes' or 'no' you know where he stands. He means what he says, no more, no less".
[Source](Vanguard online 9/1/2019)
This is what constitutes honesty in the understanding of a front line politician in this dispensation.
In the same newspaper the Vice President, Pastor Professor Osinbajo also harps on the honesty of Buhari and that even the "opposition PDP and Atiku know that President Buhari is a honest man".
Really? There must be something dynamic and deeply affective, if not outrightly contagious, about the honesty of this man that both politician and pastor - turned - politician will attest it.
In the same rally where Osinbajo said this, Yahaya Bello, the enfant terrible of Kogi politics carried the Buhari - is - honest sing - song to another pedestrian, if not totally banal, level and condescension. Hear him:
"There are two banks, one is Buhari bank, another one is Atiku bank where will you deposit your money?", he asked his impoverished, largely illiterate audience and citizens, most of who have not been paid for several months.
The beauty of democracy is the freedom to canvass ideas, even stupid ideas and the freedom to challenge the price idea and deconstruct them. Once you put an idea in the public space then that idea can be challenged, interrogated and impugned or impeached; and you must accept it. There is nothing you can do about it. It is part of the price if democracy.
The idea that "Buhari is honest" has stayed so long and dominated the narrative of this dispensation, especially the Fourth Republic that it is now a bounden duty, if not an spiritual call, to interrogate it, examine it and even challenge it. Politicians say many things that are not true, even ignorant and illiterate. And Nigerian politicians are among the most ignorant of all. Thus once in a while it is the duty of the rest, the "We the people" to take them up on some of the things they say. This is the role of scholars, universities, writers, knowledge class and public intellectuals.
Failing to do this tantamounts to intellectual surrender and abdication of responsibility.
I want to address this question under three areas viz: what honesty is, the honesty of Buhari under examination, the claim considered based on the facts available to us.
It is a reality of our religiously plural society that different forms of morality and honesty exist. But there must still be certain baseline, datum of acceptable standard. For instance what a Muslim calls honesty may not pass the test of Christian standard of honesty. What a politician calls honest may be different from what a soldier calls honest or what an academic calls honest. A serving senator was caught on video sleeping with two prostitutes and he did not deny it. He is still serving as senator still. No qualms. Another professor is accused of harassing a lady sexually, even when he has done nothing and when the evidence could have gone either way, he is still in jail as we speak.
This brings me to an important point: what constitute honesty for a leader of a nation and even a public officer may not be the same as a private citizen. This is where our politicians are missing it and confusing issues. Leaving one naira in a room and finding it when you return is honest of a citizen but for a leader of a nation, honesty is more than that.
Honesty for a private citizen may stop at keeping the naira from being stolen but a nation is more than one naira or be billion or trillion naira. This is why the scale of honesty is higher for a leader of a nation. Financial integrity is just one, but it is not all.
Honesty, then, is more than keeping the "one naira" from being stolen it also means keeping the house where the naira is kept. Of what use s keeping the naira from being stolen when the room where it is kept is on fire and when the owner of the naira is not even secure to return to claim his naira?
Honesty also means faithful abidance to rules, status, Constitution and oaths. When Buhari took the oaths to serve this nation on May 29, 2015, he swore to an oath to defend the Constitution of Nigeria, to keep the Laws of Nigeria and all other issues arising from it. Part of the claims of that Constitution is to obey the law and the judgment given by the Courts who are the Constitutionally - approved channel to interpret the law of the land.
Today this government headed by Buhari has fragrantly disobeyed court orders and we all know this except you are blind. Dasuki is still in detention after the court has admitted him to bail. Even an ECOWAS court gave judgment in his favour on the issue of bail but he is still being kept purportedly for "national interest", the usual alibi of dictators, tyrants and brutes by a supposedly " honest" government. What of El- Zakkyzaky the Shiites leader? This government defied the court to grant him bail and his wife and to pay him for wrongful detention. He has s still in detention and many of his followers have been killed whose only crime is protesting the continued detention of their leader against the judgment of the court. And a government headed by a "honest" man does not see this to be amiss.
It is part of being honest and a higher form of integrity to obey law and keep the oaths you swore than keeping naira. If a man does not keep the law as enshrined in the Constitution is it safe to believe that he will keep money or is keeping money?
A significant element of personal honesty is also keeping the terms and letter of the Constitution and being fair to others. Our Constitution requires that appointments and public offices should be spread to reflect Nigeria's ethnic and religious diversity and must not be concentrated in a particular tribe or religion. Even an illiterate reading the Constitution can deduce that this is what the spirit and letter of the law is saying which Buhari swore to defend when he took the oath on May 29,2015. I ask everyone to review the appointments and offices made by this administration and honestly answer whether that provision has been followed. Is that honest?
It is true that that Ibos did not vote this government but the Constitution is clear on this things. Can we say this government has been fair to the southeast in its appointments vis-a-vis the Constitutional provisions cited above? Can a man be deemed truly honest who is not fair?
Let us take another issue about the "honesty" of Buhari. Nepotism and double standard.
I will just cite few examples and allow the readers to find the rest.
- Police is presently prosecuting Adeleke, the PDP candidate in the last election in Osun State for examination malpractices or what have you. This is okay.
However, see the contradiction: the special assistant to Buhari, one Obla has been accused by lawmakers that he his using a forged certificate based on proper investigation. Buhari has neither removed him for trial nor relieve him of his position. - Lawal his former Secretary to Government was incriminated in award of contract, it took a longtime before he removed him. He has not being brought to trial.
- We now know that Buhari was aware that Maina, the indicted pension thief, was being brought back to Nigeria and would have been reinstated by Buhari and even promoted but for the outcries. So much for "honesty " of Buhari.
If a person doesn't steal money but he surrounds himself with those who steal and he is comfortable working with them, is that a honest man?
" Show me your friend and I will show you who you are", is a popular saying of elders.
We have a right to question the honesty of a man who is comfortable in the midst of dishonest people. This Buhari- is - honest hoopla, this swan song by an undiscerning crowd of yes men, Hallelujah chorus of this government has dwelt too long and must now be challenged.
Honesty is more than keeping money for others, it must also include keeping their estate. It also means being honest in dealing with issues and avoiding partiality and double standard. Some 8 Fulani's were killed in Gboko by gunmen suspected to be Tiv militia. By the next day the whole town has been surrounded by soldiers and placed under a curfew. The promptness and efficiency was alarming in a nation where bureaucracy and red tape vitiate official directives. But when it was Zamfara, Benue, Taraba, Plateau etc; it is a different story.
Many IPOB members have been arrested for protesting not for carrying guns. Today Myetti Allah Association has threatened state government with terror and not a single one of their leaders has been even interrogated. Not a single herdsman for all the terror, kidnapping and destruction is on trial, as we speak. That is double standard. Can a man be said to be honest who is partial in his dealings?
Finally I come to Tinubu's last statement. He said Atiku is a thief and has no integrity. It is not my business to answer for any politician but I must raise the deeper issues here.
Two things here. If Atiku is a thief then the APC government is incompetent and wayward. The same Atiku contested your primary election in 2014 and he was fit to contest. Then APC must be wayward.
Two, if you know he is a thief you control the EFCC, police, DSS, NIA and you failed for 3 years to bring a thief to trial when it is in the power of your hands to do so, then you are a government of thieves too and incompetent. You have only confessed your own incompetence through the mouth of your own leader. Why, then, should Nigeria give you another 4 years to perpetuate incompetence?
Finally on a lighter mood a question for the husband of Remi. Yoruba's say that it is a thief who knows how to trace the footprints of another thief on a rock. ( Ole lo mo ESE ole nto Lori apata.)
Since the courts have not pronounced Atiku a thief and Efcc has not done so then we must ask Tinubu, from where did you get the information from? Or are you a THIEF yourself?