By Abdullahi Haruspice
In 2009 on his way from kano, around the Jaji military cantonment, soldiers were having a ceremony and as usual, they barricaded one of the highways causing long stretch of traffic gridlock. For hours people waited in depressive resignations as they bemoaned the impunity of our security forces.
The man after waiting for 30 minutes on the immobile gridlock alighted and began the trek of life.
He came to the point of the blockade and discovered to his chagrin that there was indeed no need for the barricade by the soldiers. Pronto he ordered, although politely that the two soldiers mounting the barricade dismantle their rods of torture. One of them refused and threatened to shoot the man.
Typical of a fearless man, he dared the soldier to shoot him. In the midst of the daring duel, the other soldier recognized the daring man as a retired senior officer and the belligerent soldier who threatened to shoot rose up in full salute succumbing to the audacity of courage.
The fearless man waited until every held-up motorist had passed the military barricade before he entered his car and drove off. That was General Muhammadu Buhari for you!
It was in 2003, immediately after the Geregu Power plant, Ajaokuta in Kogi state few meters to Itobe Bridge. The General, in the midst of about 20 cars stopped at the Tollgate, counted the number of cars in his convoy and paid their toll fare! I was shocked to my marrow…ladies and gentleman, that was the beginning of my immeasurable love for General Muhammadu Buhari!!!
Just recently, he married out his daughter without the usual fanfare, he held one of the modest weddings in our clime. To keen watchers, this is unheard of. How can a country’s president marry out his daughter without the paraphernalia of power brought to his heels?
That is Buhari, the man who has defied every tempting of mundane taste to remain intimate with modesty.
While many frown at this ‘stingy’ lifestyle of the president, others believed this is the body language needed to revive a national ethos of discipline and civility.
There is something about this man that is unprecedentedly- fascinating, he does things with certain convictions. Buhari again dazed the world at the beginning of his government when he was sighted on 10 Downing Street London with no air around him. It was even reported that he turned down a Royce made car offered by Nigeria’s High Commission in the UK and instead opted to ride while the world was still in fascinating admiration of this rare gem, he stunned us again when he decided to fly back on the economy compartment of the British Airways!
Different people have described General Muhammadu Buhari in many ways. Time and circumstances have placed this man on a scale of continuum to be birthed in different forest of descriptions. While some see him as a beacon of hope, some despised him even more than they do to the devil!
From the sojourn of this man, I have come to learn that the worst calamity that can ever befall a man is to portray honesty and impeccability in a land infested by usurpers. Like an assemblage of vampires, the usurpers gathered to carve a stinking toga that hung permanently on the shoulder of this man but that has permanently changed for good.
From the conscience of my mind, I strived albeit in vein to explain the existence of this phenomenal. How can I explain the organized mutilation of his character? How do I explain that a man is scarred only because his mind is pure, that he is called names only because he chooses to be different? `How can I explain that he dumped his elitist constituency for the colonies of the masses?
This is my confusion and excitement as I write this poser for a man I have grown to live in his image, to cultivate his tidings of selflessness, to reflect his philosophy. Even though I have never met him, I get fulfillment from the traces of his existence.
His voice like the murmur of the sea soothes me to no end, his laughter, like the cackle of the wind leaves me in momentary fantasy…oh and his genuine tears like the ones he poured on the eve of the 2011 presidential elections burns me like a bake of coal.
For every statement he makes, they concocted and distorted it meaning, for every intervention he made they drew their interpretations. When he decided to remain silence they shouted to heavens of his insensitivity. Some say he is a religious bigot yet men of other faith surround him. He refused to own mansions; they scorned him that he wasn’t a good investor.
He brought great human face to the government of late Sani Abacha through his PTF yet they accused him of siting all the projects in the North. Perhaps history has vindicated this man that there are more PTF projects in Niger Delta than you have NNDC projects in the same region even with the avalanche of funds pumped into that region.
Indeed with the life of this man, we can develop new ethos of national consciousness. Leadership becomes interesting when the man at the cockpit is not motivated by the benefits of office. Show me a modest leader and I will follow him blindly and unashamedly.
Happy 75th birthday the people’s president, Baban Yusuf mijin Aisha.
Happily musing!
