This is the concluding part of a three series on Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s President-elect.
53 suitcases saga
Buhari’s administration was embroiled in a scandal concerning the fate of 53 suitcases, allegedly containing $700 million in Nigerian naira (which, at the time, was not allowed to leave the country due to inflation control efforts).
The suitcases were being transported by the Emir of Gwandu, whose son was Buhari’s aide-de-camp, and were cleared through customs on June 10, 1984 without inspection during his return flight from Saudi Arabia.
Buhari claims this was carried out without his knowledge by Atiku Abubakar.
Human rights
According to Decree Number 2 of 1984, the state security and the chief of staff were given the power to detain, without charges, individuals deemed to be a security risk to the state for up to three months.
Strikes and popular demonstrations were banned and Nigeria’s secret police service, the National Security Organization (NSO) was entrusted with unprecedented powers.
The NSO played a wide role in the cracking down of public dissent by intimidating, harassing and jailing individuals who broke the interdiction on strikes.
By October 1984, about 200,000 civil servants were retrenched.
Critics of the regime were also thrown in jail, as was the case of Nigeria’s most popular artist and one time presidential contender, afro-beat singer Kuti.
He was arrested on September 4, 1984 at the airport as he was about to embark on an American tour.
Amnesty International described the charges brought against him for illegally exporting foreign currency as “spurious.”
Using the wide powers bestowed upon it by Decree Number 2, the government sentenced Fela to 10 years in prison. He was released after 18 months, when the Buhari government was toppled in a coup d’etat.
In 1984, Buhari passed Decree Number 4, the Protection Against False Accusations Decree, considered by scholars as the most repressive press law ever enacted in Nigeria.
Section 1 of the law provided that “Any person who publishes in any form, whether written or otherwise, any message, rumour, report or statement […] which is false in any material particular or which brings or is calculated to bring the Federal Military Government or the Government of a state or public officer to ridicule or disrepute, shall be guilty of an offense under this Decree.”
The law further stated that offending journalists and publishers will be tried by an open military tribunal, whose ruling would be final and unappealable in any court and those found guilty would be eligible for a fine not less than 10,000 naira and a jail sentence of up to two years.
Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor of The Guardian were among the journalists who were tried under the decree.
Decree 20 on illegal ship bunkering and drug trafficking was another example of Buhari’s tough approach to crime.[35] Section 3 (2) (K) provided that “any person who, without lawful authority deals in, sells, smokes or inhales the drug known as cocaine or other similar drugs, shall be guilty under section 6 (3) (K) of an offence and liable on conviction to suffer death sentence by firing squad.”
In the case of Bernard Ogedengebe, the Decree was applied retroactively.[36] He was executed even if at the time of his arrest the crime did not mandate the capital punishment, but had carried a sentence of six months imprisonment.
In another prominent case of April 1985, six Nigerians were condemned to death under the same decree: Sidikatu Tairi, Sola Oguntayo, Oladele Omosebi, Lasunkanmi Awolola, Jimi Adebayo and Gladys Iyamah.
In 1985, prompted by economic uncertainties and a rising crime rate, the government of Buhari opened the borders (closed since April 1984) with Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon to speed up the expulsion of 700,000 illegal foreigners and illegal migrant workers.[38] Buhari is today known for this crises; there even is a famine in the east of Niger that have been named “El Buhari”.
One of the most enduring legacies of the Buhari government has been the War Against Indiscipline (WAI).
Launched on March 20, 1984, the policy tried to address the perceived lack of public morality and civic responsibility of Nigerian society.
Unruly Nigerians were ordered to form neat queues at bus stops, under the eyes of whip-wielding soldiers.
Civil servants[ who failed to show up on time at work were humiliated and forced to do “frog jumps”.
Minor offences carried long sentences. Any student over the age of 17 caught cheating on an exam would get 21 years in prison. Counterfeiting and arson could lead to the death penalty.
His regime drew the critics of many, including Nigeria’s first Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, who, in 2007, wrote a piece called “The Crimes of Buhari” which outlined many of the abuses conducted under his military rule.
The Umaru Dikko Affair was another defining moment in Buhari’s military government.
Umaru Dikko, a former Minister of Transportation under the previous civilian administration of President Shagari who fled the country shortly after the coup, was accused of embezzling $1 billion in oil profits.
With the help of the Mossad, the NSO traced him to London where operatives from Nigeria and Israel drugged and kidnapped him.
They placed him in a plastic bag, which was subsequently hidden inside a crate labelled as “Diplomatic Baggage”.
The purpose of this secret operation was to ship Dikko off to Nigeria on an empty Nigerian Airways Boeing 707, to stand trial for embezzlement. The plot was foiled by British airport officers.
Buhari mounted an offensive against entrenched interests. In 20 months as Head of State, about 500 politicians, officials and businessmen were jailed for corruption during his stewardship.
In February 2015, Buhari stated that he took responsibility for whatever happened under his watch during military rule; saying that he could not change the past. He also described himself as a “converted democrat”.
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