A Lagos-based lawyer, who
was jailed by Gen Muhammadu Buhari during his regime 30 years ago, says the
former head of state remains the country’s hope for change. Adeyemi Adefulu is
a Member of the Federal Republic (MFR), believes Gen Buhari is on a rescue
mission.
Story highlights:
Story highlights:
–I was in the gulag for 18
months, 16 of which I spent in the Abeokuta prison
– The open and vocal
agitation of many well-meaning citizens, including Prof Wole Soyinka, for my
release was an act of grace for which I will forever be grateful.
President Jonathan has been
such a disappointment in many critical areas of our national life.
I found Lola Shoneyin’s
piece on Buhari titled: “How My Father’s Jailer Can Offer Nigeria A Fresh
Start” very engaging, although it dredged up some very painful memories. It
took me down the memory lane; indeed, it was a vivid reminder of an awful road
on which l, and others like Audu Ogbeh, now an ardent Buhari backer, travelled.
It was my painful duty as the “Captain” of the detainees, to receive Lola’s father,
Tinuoye Shoneyin, an engineer, into the Abeokuta prison and to make him as
comfortable as possible in the extremely difficult prison environment,
providing him with clothes, a towel and toiletries. Shoneyin had, as a matter
of courtesy, responded to the invitation of the government of Ogun State, then
led by Col Oladipo Diya, who later became the deputy to Gen. Sani Abacha(the
late Head of State), to answer some questions and had expected to be back home
that evening. He was not to return home for six months!
Lola’s account dwelt on the
torture that she (at such a young age) and her family had to endure and the
telling effect of such an experience on the family. Many detainees never
recovered from the torture and the injustice that this experience represented. In
many cases, mine included, there was no accusation, much less a charge. One
slight misstatement in Lola’s account was that the detention was at the behest
of Col. Tunde Idiagbon, the erstwhile deputy to Gen Buhari. I doubt if that is
quite true. The problem with autocracy is that once the atmosphere has been
established, or allowed by the leader, many tin gods at the various levels of
the strata will for any number of reasons, exploit the situation for the
purpose of settling personal and petty scores, including disputations over
girlfriends! So, in the case of Lola’s father, the local despot at the time was
Col Oladipo
Diya, who was mean, brutal and sadistic and locked up as many
people as he wanted, for good, bad or sometimes no reason at all. He flogged
civil servants for lateness, taxed the people on every imaginable score, and
signed for nearly 20 people who had been sentenced to death (none of whom his
predecessor permitted to be killed), to be executed by hanging in one day. He
revelled in making people suffer wherewith he was promptly given the name of
“Kunya” (meaning tormentor which was the direct opposite of what his name
“Diya” means in Yoruba language. He was, indeed, the harbinger of torment and
suffering. He, it was who saw a ghost in every situation. If the sun was too
bright, he blamed it on the dethroned politicians. He was a cruel task-master,
who tried irrationally to get water out of stone. At a stage he rounded up
contractors who had done various jobs for the state government and dictated
that they should either pay certain arbitrary fines or be locked up in prison.
In jail for 18 months
I was in the gulag for 18
months, 16 of which I spent in the Abeokuta prison. Prior to this time, I had
presided over three ministries in four years and three months. There was never
an accusation or a charge of any sort against me. His investigators were
surprised at how clean my affairs were and how I could succinctly explain every
transaction I was involved in, including providing photocopies of cheques that
even pre-dated my appointment. “Were you expecting that this type of thing
would happen? Why did you leave a thriving law practice for a job like this?”
they asked me repeatedly. Therein lies the dilemma of our country that needs
good people to preside over its affairs, yet castigates the few who dare to get
in the fray. “The punishment for the wise, who refuse to take part in the
government of their people,” said a Greek philosopher, “is to be ruled by
fools.”
I came to understand that
Diya’s grouse with me was that I was so close to the late Chief Olabisi
Onabanjo, my governor, and that there was no way of getting Onabanjo without
getting Adefulu, his political son and confidant! “Onabanjo did nothing Adefulu
did not know of,” Diya was reported to have said repeatedly. So l had to be
purged! Oluokun, the head of state security, himself a dastardly character, was
Diya’s hatchet man. When all efforts at intimidation and harassment failed,
they changed tactics and tried to recruit me as an informant against the late
Onabanjo. It soon became clear to them however, that I was not going to be
party to their pursuit of crass injustice and motive hunting. I asked Oluokun
pointedly to cock his gun and shoot and kill me because under no circumstances
would I be part of such villainy. In any case, unless I wanted to become a
liar, such incriminating evidence did not exist except in the figment of Diya’s
convoluted imagination. The late Onabanjo was the quintessential leader – open,
fair-minded, as straight as a spoke and a great lover of the people; a man who,
to this day, several years after his demise, I still hold in the highest
regard.
Time heals
Genevieve Magazine At the
time of my incarceration, my family was at a more delicate stage than the Shoneyins,
because it was younger and less endowed. My first son Adeoye, was just under 10
years and our last daughter, Dayo was three months old. I was 37 years old at
the time of the coup. My family was subjected to a long and extremely
humiliating deprivation. It was the unjust compensation I received for a job to
which I gave the very best of my life at a very young age (try as you may, such
injustice never leaves you. The wound may heal but the scar is there and
sometimes stares you in the face). I tried hard to be strong and for the most
part, I was.
The knowledge that I had served with the very best of my ability
in a job I truly enjoyed, gave me peace of mind and assurance. The open and
vocal agitation of many well-meaning citizens, including Prof Wole Soyinka, for
my release was an act of grace for which I will forever be grateful. The only
time I broke down was the day my son, Adeoye, turned 10. With a smuggled
recorder, I had recorded a birthday message for him and his young siblings
admonishing them to be strong in the knowledge that God was on our side. After
recording the message, I wept profusely. It was terrible! My co-prisoners,
including my Deputy Governor, the late Chief Sesan Soluade, and the present
Emir of Suleija, Alhaji Anwal Ibrahim, the erstwhile Governor of Niger State,
and the others, tried hard to console me. I had been the strong one, the
encourager of the brethren, but I guess the cup had become too full and it ran
over.
While time heals, the
impact of such injustice endures. It leaves a telling effect which you carry
for the rest of your life. Ironically, when I was finally released, I was in
hospital where I had just undergone an emergency operation. Liberty had come at
last but it met me totally broken and incapacitated. At my release and after,
no one offered any apology for this gruesome and very unjust recompense.
Nobody, without due process, should ever have the power to visit such
humiliation and injustice on any human being. The irony of dictatorship is that
a leader can be so conscientiously wrong in his crusading mission. The Buhari
regime was very wrong in my case as in the case of several others. I, along
with many others, had come into office with the purest motive of service. It
was what I had always wanted to do. I thought it was my life’s mission and when
the opportunity came I did the work as if my life depended on it. I left a
lucrative practice to serve my people. I was totally accountable, yet I was
unfairly thrown into jail for no just cause for 18 months!
Our nation’s survival first
That was many years ago and
since I have focused on re-building my life and raising my family. I have
prayed and tried hard to forgive my unjust tormentors but I know that the scar
is there and people like Lola Shoneyin stroke that weak point now and again,
albeit unwittingly. Obviously this is not an experience that can be wished away
because it evidently affected my being and changed my life fundamentally. It
makes me appreciate people like Mandela so much – 26 years on Robben Island
(have you been there?) and he came out with no bitterness and no guile! Such
men are rare!
Understandably then, it has
taken some effort for me to embrace Buhari’s candidacy. I have never voted for
him. I did not even like him. But as my friend, Audu Ogbeh said to me once, “so
much has gone wrong with our polity that our emphasis now must not be on
ourselves but on the survival of the nation.” I have no doubt he is right. This
is a time when the overriding interest must be that of the country. As a student
of history, I know that while constitutions can be copied and adopted, in the
end every nation will only learn by its national experience. The history of
many of the democracies we admire today is replete with unimaginable and odious
occurrences that characterised their development. It is obvious to me that the
trust we reposed in President Jonathan in 2011 has been wantonly squandered.
The sobering state of our
nation and real politic has made me take another look at Gen Buhari. How viable
is he for our polity given the available options? Is the General the devil he
is portrayed to be, or a victim of circumstances or a misunderstood individual?
Jonathan, a disappointment
To me, President Jonathan
has been such a disappointment in many critical areas of our national life.
There has been unprecedented violence and blood-letting under this
administration, which, naively in my view, treated the Boko Haram insurgency
with kid gloves and a total lack of resolve. Today, Boko Haram has established
a formidable force and has succeeded, before our very eyes, in changing the map
of Nigeria. The President appears to have turned deaf ears to the voices of
wisdom and surrounded himself with cronies, whose main pre-occupation is to
exploit him. Some of his spokesmen have made a virtue of rascality and turned
public relations upside down. Miscreants, who should be in jail for their past
deeds, are the ones now threatening that our collective vote must go a
particular way or there will be insurrection. We never heard of “democracy” at
gunpoint till now.
To the discerning, it is
clear that the Boko Haram insurgency has been employed as a source of
inscrutable abuse, or how else do we explain a Nigerian private plane filled
with raw US dollars being impounded abroad? How many such plane-loads escaped
without being caught is anybody’s guess, yet our troops are said to be so
ill-equipped that the insurgents have better arms. All this, despite the huge
sums that have been voted for defence under this administration; one wonders
where all that money went. Then the massive corruption in every sphere of
public office – pension funds stuffed into pillows and mattresses among others.
The disgusting state pardon for a man, who, before an incredulous world, broke
the terms to a court order and left Britain dressed as a woman! This is not how
a leader should exercise such hallowed prerogative power. The President’s
conduct sent a chilling message down the spine of the polity that corruption
and stealing are the way to go. You can add to that the company of shady men
wanted abroad for all manner of crimes, including drug offences, who have been
installed in positions of leadership in the PDP or have been fielded as
senatorial candidates.
The management or lack of it of our foreign reserves
(which have become totally depleted) and reports of billions of missing dollars
dominate the air. Everybody who is working hard is in trouble. Joblessness has
risen to record levels. The youths are, justifiably restless because they have
no future in the present dispensation. The tales of woe are just endless.
Billions of dollars have disappeared into petroleum subsidy, yet, even the cost
of kerosene, the poor man’s fuel, is at an all-time high. It is the oil sheiks
that are being subsidised not the ordinary people. To say the ship of state is
clearly adrift in Nigeria is an understatement. A land that should be flowing
with milk and honey has become the laughing stock of the international
community. We simply can no longer tolerate this grotesque level of gluttony
and of corruption. There is an urgent need for a change. Otherwise, we face a
huge problem and social dislocation ahead, beyond what we already have.
Buhari means well
These are the reasons why I
have embraced Buhari. If you look at his past, and some of the statements
credited to him, he is not an easy man for a person like me to embrace. But 30
years is a long time and I honestly believe he has had enough time to reflect
and to change. He is no more a military officer. He has retained a sharp,
social conscience for the people. I am impressed with the hunger with which he
has fought for elections. I want to believe that it is out of an earnest desire
to work for the people and to do some things right that Gen Buhari has
struggled so hard to win the nation’s leadership through the electoral process.
While he may not be a saint, he is certainly not a villain. His choice of a
very good man in Prof Yemi Osinbajo, for a Vice President gave me the assurance
that Gen Buhari was listening to the comments on his areas of weakness. There
are enough checks and balances in a democratic set up to make fears of a return
to dictatorship a joke. I am also impressed by his modest lifestyle, unlike
many of his ilk who live in opulence and indulgence.This says something about
the man.
I can trust this man with my wallet in a way i cannot do with
Jonathan, who appears to have forgotten where he came from. Jonathan has lost
the golden opportunity to fundamentally affect the lives of the ordinary folks.
I am persuaded that it will be a tragedy for us to continue in this drift for
another four years. While Buhari is far from being my ideal candidate and I
worry about some of his deficiencies, my perception is that although he may be
short on the skills required for the modern management of a state – technology,
economic management among others – his record shows that he has the ability to
enlist support. I hope this time; he will choose the right people and avoid
those who will use his name to do iniquity. While Buhari may not be the ideal
candidate we need, he is, certainly the best we have. There is a time in the
history of a nation when an individual is needed to rescue it or perform a
historic role. As it was with Winston Churchill who provided Britain with the
much needed war-time leadership, Gen Charles de Gaulle who restored the
confidence of France, Madiba Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who championed the
cause of majority rule and showed the way to national reconciliation and our
own Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who provided leadership to a country on the brink
after the Abacha years, my belief is that this is the hour for Muhammadu Buhari
to stop the torment of a hemorrhaging nation and restore its confidence.
Lastly, the General owes me
one. I will still like Buhari to vocalise an apology and offer some succour to
people like me whom his government brutalised in the past. It is the least he
can do. To do so is not weakness. Indeed, it is strength to admit the mistakes
of the past and to promote national reconciliation. For now, even ahead of the
apology, and in the national interest, i have thrown in my hat with Gen.
Buhari. So has Lola Shoneyin’s father. Now 87, but still spritely and alert, my
big brother and comrade, Tinuoye Shoneyin, always a big heart, is
enthusiastically by my side at political rallies and party support meetings.
Our jailer has become our hope. Life is indeed nothing if not an agglomeration
of ironies.
Buhari might win the election the problem is corrupt INEC
ReplyDeleteBuhari stil d best candidate u like it or not
ReplyDeleteWell said the trust we reposed in Jonathan has been squandered that man is ignorant has no clue.
ReplyDeleteDiya is known to be ruthless, he was a sellout within the yoruba community, he did all the oppressor's dirty work.
ReplyDelete