Borderless

BUT shouldn’t Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) have known that his words carry a lot of power and influence many people? Could he have forgotten so soon that his charge to Northern youths last year to attack presumed election riggers triggered the post-presidential election violence which resulted in the loss of many lives and properties, a problem the country has yet to recover from? Doesn’t the General realise that with the followership he controls in the North, a suggestion or even an allusion by him is taken as a command by many? Could Buhari, a trained soldier, have overlooked the fact that the security situation of the nation at the moment is so delicate that any further stretch could lead to a snap?

While the pains of the General over his loss and his disappointment over the state of the nation are shared by many Nigerians, is his calling for blood-letting the remedy to these challenges, especially given that the victims of the bloody revolt he is advocating will not be members of the political class but ordinary Nigerians who merely manage to make a sense out of our national nonsense? Would the General be content to see Nigeria thrown into war a second time knowing that no country survives two civil wars?

How does Buhari want to be remembered by Nigerians? Is it as a leader who spurs his followers into greatness by charging them to embrace love or one who encourages people to regress into bestiality by asking them to take up arms at the slightest of provocations? Does he want history to remember him as an altruistic leader who will not stop at anything to ensure the continued oneness of the country or a selfish one who would want the country shattered into smithereens just so he can have his way?

What manner of leader will threaten to bring down hell on the people he wants to lead if he does not get what he wants? What manner of leader will be so determined to have his way that he will not care a hoot whether the people he wants to lead are destroyed in the process or not? What manner of leader will stop at nothing, including blood-letting, to get his aspiration fulfilled?

The utterances of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) are a demonstration of his uncommon desperation; and with a desperate man, no one is safe.

Former Vice-President Al Gore of the United States of America had every reason to call down fire and brimstone in 2000 when his request for the recount of 70,000 ballots of the presidential election previously rejected by machine counters was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Many people in the USA and across the world were of the view that had the recount been allowed, Gore would have won because even without the recount, he narrowly lost to George W. Bush and even beat him in popular votes. This belief was accentuated by the fact that the Supreme Court’s decision was an unsigned or a “Per Curiam” ruling, meaning the ruling was “limited to the present circumstances” and could not be cited as precedent. Despite this, Gore never demurred; he conceded defeat to George Bush and congratulated him. To Gore, personal aspiration had to be subsumed by national interest.
Gore went back to his preoccupation with environmental issues and produced documentaries as well as books which won him a Nobel Prize. Today, he is not just a national figure, he is global leader. That is the stuff great leaders are made of. Expression of concern for human welfare is not restricted to holding a public office. Nigerians need leaders who will be willing to be wronged for the general good of the people, not those who will turn the country to another Sudan just to have their interest satisfied.

Buhari will do well to pick some lessons from Gore.