Twice on Wednesday,
President Muhammadu Buhari displayed an uncommon generosity of spirit.
We had set forth at dawn,
shortly before 5 a.m, to visit the presidential campaign office in Central Area
of Abuja.
The purpose was for the
President to read his victory speech, having been pronounced winner of the
February 23 election by Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC).
This portion resonated loudly
in the speech, and was widely applauded by the All Progressives Congress (APC)
stalwarts in attendance:
I will like to make a
special appeal to my supporters not to gloat or humiliate the opposition.
Victory is enough reward for your efforts.
Holy Moses!
Was the President telling
his supporters not to stick out their tongues in derision, to mock those who
had fought a bitter, if not acrimonious electoral war?
Is all not fair in love and
war again? Surely, the millions of Buhari supporters were raring to do the Dino
Melaye stuff, open their eyes to the widest, and say ntorrrrr, or oooobiiii, to
those who just lost the election. But the President said; no, please dont do
it. They are your brothers and sisters.
So dissatisfied with the
instruction was one of the Presidents greatest online supporters, that she was
ready to start a rebellion on Facebook.
Jewel Ifunnaya is a
dyed-in-the-wool Buharist. She loves the President to the marrows, and proclaims
it from the rooftops anytime.
But on Wednesday morning,
she was almost embarking on civil disobedience.
She kicked like a wild
horse, querying why the President must tell her not to gloat, when she was
ready to embark on a gloating party against the Atikulators (as the online
supporters of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the greatest challenger in the
presidential election, are called).
I read the protest by
Jewel, and appealed to her to respect the wishes of our principal. She then
agreed.
Again on Wednesday,
President Buhari showed that he meant what he said. By 2 p.m, he was at the
International Conference Centre, in Abuja, to receive his Certificate of
Return, from INEC.
Hear the President in his
speech again: Now that the elections are over, and a winner declared, we must
all see it as a victory for Nigeria, our dear country.
That was why I encouraged
my teeming supporters, in a speech I read earlier today, not to gloat.
Our God-given victory is
enough cause for joy, without deriding those who were in the opposition.
All Nigerians, going
forward, must stand in brotherhood, for a bright and fulfilling future.
Jumping Jehoshaphat! What
generosity of spirit from the President. This was time to preen like the
peacock, swagger like a man of war just returning from battle, hunch up your
shoulders in pride, and tell the members of opposition to hug the nearest
electricity transformer, if they were not happy.
But President Buhari chose
to play the true father. What an enduring lesson. I know one of his
predecessors in office, who would never have done that.
When that man was
president, and he won re-election despite the fact that university lecturers
had been on strike for many months, he came out after the polls to say he had
broken the back of ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) irredeemably.
That same predecessor was
publicly opposed to President Buhari running for a second term in office, and
had engaged in a campaign of calumny both locally and internationally for more
than a year, and if he had been the one who won at the polls, gloating would
have been endless. But our political hero said: dont gloat.
This reminds me of a story
Id told in a piece I did in 2017, when President Buhari just came from medical
vacation. Permit me to repeat the story, as it is quite germane.
In 1998, when the country
was groaning under the jackboot of Gen. Sani Abacha, I was deputy editor of
National Concord, a newspaper owned by Bashorun Moshood Abiola, who Abacha held
in military gulag for five years.
Abiolas offence was that he
sought the actualization of a mandate freely given to him by 14 million
Nigerians to be president in an election held on June 12, 1993. Gen Ibrahim
Babangida, then military dictator, had annulled the result without explanation.
One bright June afternoon,
news wafted out that Abacha was dead. It turned out to be true. Every newspaper
house was buzzing with activities, seeking to be the one to report the news
with best perspectives the following day.
My editor, Dele Alake
(later, Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos for eight years) was
away, and the lot fell on me to edit the newspaper.
I relocated from my office
upstairs, to the compugraphy room on the ground floor, where I could treat the
stories faster. It was not yet the era of computer then.
Dr Doyin Abiola was
Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of Concord Press. She was wife to the
detained president-elect.
On her way home about 7 pm,
she stopped over in the compugraphy room to see me. And what did she say?
Editor, please in your treatment of the story, dont gloat!
If anyone would gloat that
Gen Abacha was dead, should it not be an Abiola? But my boss said: Dont gloat!.
And I learnt an eternal
lesson about generosity of spirit towards even those who have treated you
spitefully and disdainfully. Never gloat if anything untoward happens to them,
or you come into a better station in life than them.
See how the principalities
and powers of Nigeria had arrayed themselves against President Buhari. Some
former military rulers and leaders turned themselves into an evil confederacy,
acting as if they owned Nigeria.
They had always determined
who aspired to certain offices in the country, and who should not.
They had held the country
by the jugular for ages, almost asphyxiating her. But this time, they met their
match.
The President looked at
them straight in the face when they told him not to seek a second term, and
told them to pick one: get lost, or go to hell. They chose not to pick any, but
rather turned themselves into an opposition force.
Formidable they were, but
not with a man that had the true army behind him. The ordinary people. So, last
Saturday, President Buhari and his peculiar army gave the opposition a bloody
nose.
The retired generals were
not alone. They recruited pliant members of the international community, who
had their eyes on a slice of the Nigerian economy, which Atiku had vowed to run
along Western principles.
Thank God for China, which
charted a separate course, saying Nigeria should be left alone to resolve her
internal matters without interference.
Also with Atiku were many
questionable characters, who had questions to answer on what they did to the
public treasury, when they had access to it.
Nigeria would simply have
been done for, if they had regained the levers of power again.
The ordinary people fought
valiantly behind Buhari. And the impending army of occupation was worsted.
Given a drubbing. Yet, no gloating? Very noble.
On Wednesday last week,
during the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, the President had told
members about millions of dollars seized by security agencies at the various
entry points into the country: air, land, sea, all towards compromising and
manipulating the election.
They wanted to buy each and
every electorate, and possibly the electoral officers. But the plans were
thwarted.
The President also told of
a more sinister stratagem they had, which Ill rather keep close to my chest for
now.
Desperate people. All due
to lust for power. Bashorun Abiola used to say you dont urinate inside a well
you would later fetch drinking water from.
These ones not only
urinated, they also did the big job inside the well. But God proved greater.
Yet, dont gloat? Strange
and curious. Human dictum is an eye for an eye. You dont brook principalities
and powers. Rather, you take the battle to them, and cast them out into the dry
desert places.
But President Buhari now
says an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind. They dont seem to make
them like this older and less ruthless Buhari anymore. We continue to learn.
Sai Baba!
Adesina is Special Adviser
to President Buhari on Media and Publicity.
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