“Buhari’s tears are for Nigeria, not for an ambition …” this blog, April 2011; how wrong I was! – Tola Adenle

“…  I am not in presidential race to protect any race or group …”  – Retired General Buhari, April 2011 on the day he wept because it was already apparent the presidential elections would be rigged based on those already held.

“… I do not belong to anyone …” President Buhari, May 2015.

Since his last public statement meant to define who he is, Buhari’s actions as president have nullified both contentions! Read on.

AS FOR APC, the party and the elected reps at both Houses, why and how did you get sucked into THIS? What did you negotiate for the South for this selling of all of us to the interest of the North? – Tola, July 2016.

In this photograph about titled essay used widely by Nigeria’s news outlets, including this blog in 2011, the retired General, and some supporters, are shown crying over his looming loss in the election.

BUHARI’S TEARS ARE FOR NIGERIA, NOT FOR AN AMBITION … emotanafricana.com Tola Adenle, April 14, 2011.

Retired Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s Promise – 2014

1.       I, Muhammadu Buhari, believe that our politics is broken. Our nation urgently needs fundamental political reform and improvement in governance more transparency and accountable. If you nominate me in December, 2014 and elect me in February 2015, my administration will: 1. Initiate action to amend the Nigerian Constitution with a view to devolving powers, duties, and responsibilities to states in order to entrench true Federalism and the Federal spirit …  BuhariTinubuPROMISES

Aṣiwaju Bọla Tinubu’s Contention

2.     “… the unification Decree 34 of 1966, which makes Nigeria a unitary state,  still exists after  47 years, noting that only true federalism will bring about democracy. Represented by former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Dele Alake, [at Professor Sekoni’s 70th birthday], Tinubu stated that the country has only had various shades of unitary forms of  government with different specifications and it is now operating a civilian ‘regime’ instead of  a real democracy …”  

If anyone would dare an opinion about President Buhari ever becoming unpopular, the same journalists who wrote disparagingly about him after the tears of pre-2011 presidential elections campaign would have pilloried such an idea and person. That was just a little over a year ago. Why? They had changed their mindset of seeing the retired General as someone incapable of changing from the old Buhari who was rigid, religiously extreme and incapable of being democratic.

 While Buhari may never become as hated as Babangida the so-called “evil genius”, his popularity is all but gone now except, perhaps, in his native Northwestern Nigeria zone.

 Everything he said he was not:  “… not in presidential race to protect any race or group”; I will-do-this-I-will-do-that-if-nominated-and-win, or I-do-not-belong-to-anyone – are now understood by Southerners to their chagrin, as merely words that should have called for, “sign this document …”

There’s no need rehashing things already said here multiple times except to remind readers of the central issue here, a contention I made in an earlier essay, and used as opening above:

 AS FOR APC, the party and the elected reps at both Houses, why and how did you get sucked into THIS? What did you negotiate for the South for this selling of all of us to the interest of the North? AS FOR APC

The APC and its leadership, led by Asiwaju Tinubu, betrayed and sold Yorubas and the entire South PLUS millions in the central part of Nigeria, a dud check (cheque) by not having something to hold the retired General to, a huge mistake that has enabled him take us all for patsy.

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An essay on the simmering political situation in Nigeria, a direct result of –

•  President Buhari making promises that he is not ready to live up to, and
• Asiwaju Tinubu and APC leadership making pledges they impossible to extract from Buhari because they did not have him get solid promise from their candidate in writing or recordinng before the South was set up to play patsy to the retired General’s long-gestated ambition that did not have the South in his plan IF and WHEN he becomes Nigeria’s president,

is the betrayal referred to above, and is central to an essay through the link below:

“THERE IS FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN” – Remi Oyeyemi, pointblanknews.com

General Akinrinade currently feels betrayed by President Buhari and the Vice President Yemi Osibajo. He also thinks that the party chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun is being perfidious on this issue .. This writer is privy to a meeting at which General Akinrinade was vouching for the then candidate Buhari. General Akinrinade was brutally subjected to tough questioning by all those participating in that meeting on why he was supporting someone like Buhari who could not be trusted. He vowed that Buhari was worthy of trust and he should be given a chance and be supported.

 

Still fresh in one’s memory at that meeting was a question by a young lawyer at the meeting who asked if there was a written agreement between Buhari and all the Yoruba leaders vouching for him. The young lawyer, while insisting that History ought to be a guide, expressed concern that Buhari, because of his trajectory, could flip and disappoint …

 

Akinrinade, Atiku And Restructuring Of Nigeria

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2016. 9:45 p.m. [GMT]