By Akin Osuntokun
“When you were going to become the manager of PTF. We talked about it and when you finished and I took over, we looked into it. “I haven’t said this publicly, I would say it publicly now. When we looked into it, there was really nothing amiss except that that organisation went from road building to mosquito net-buying and all sorts of things. “And what the investigation discovered is a bit of inconsistency in prices and all that. In one area, mosquito net might have been given for N50; in another, N45. And I then remarked that this is fishy. We should look into it”.
“And I called my brother and colleague (Buhari), I said see this and he said ‘look we are managing billions of naira and I tried to make sure I see everything. But I will not say that what they have said about this is correct or not correct. But I can assure you, I tried to see everything.’ I said okay Muhammadu, between me, you and God, was there any personal benefit for you? And you said ‘no.’ I said that is the end of the matter”.
The above excerpts were the remarks former President Olusegun Obasanjo made on the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) controversy when the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, General Mohammadu Buhari, visited him at Abeokuta some days ago. I have recalled them to establish a number of points.
First is factuality – to report exactly what Obasanjo said especially against the background that the header (by the Punch newspaper – where I read the report) ‘I Found Nothing After Probing Buhari’s PTF” is misleading. He indeed found something ‘fishy’.
This is the second significant misleading header I will find in the reportage of the APC presidential candidate within one week. The other was that ‘the Army confirmed the claim that the original copies of Buhari’s certificates were in its custody’.
Contrary to this skew and slant – what the Army said was a mere reiteration and assumption of public service standard rule namely that copies of employees certificates are kept and filed away in the employee’s file.
The Army spokesman never said we checked and found Buhari’s certificates in his file and they couldn’t have found the missing documents otherwise this controversy would have been laid to rest with a simple categorical statement; and Buhari himself or the APC could have sent a clerical staff to retrieve the certified true copy from the Army records’ office.
Now back to Obasanjo and the PTF. The paramount observation that emerges from the former president’s clarification was his extreme indulgence of Buhari, bending overly backwards to express a personal obligation to exonerate a man whose conduct he found ‘fishy’. The suspect even admitted ‘I will not say that what they have said (the PTF report) is correct or not correct’.
How do you establish a suspect’s innocence from “I called my brother and colleague (Buhari), I said see this and he said ‘look we are managing billions of naira and I tried to make sure I see everything. But I will not say that what they have said about this is correct or not correct. But I can assure you, I tried to see everything’. I said okay Muhammadu, between me, you and God, was there any personal benefit for you? And you said no’. I said that is the end of the matter!”
Culpability or lack of it in public service is not established on the basis of whether the president believes you or not and as a matter of fact it is in serious breach of public service standards to establish innocence or culpability on the basis of private exchange of confidences.
And this is precisely the kind of individualised and double standards (where Buhari is concerned) that attracted this observation in this column a week ago “The tragedy here is the seeming predisposition of substantial segment of the Nigerian society to acquiesce and condone (and sometimes celebrate!) this (Buhari) woolly headed and condescending impunity; one law for Buhari and another for the rest of us”.
The affairs of the Nigerian state cannot be reduced to a matter of personal benevolence between a mentor and his protégé. If a president finds something fishy in the conduct of any agency of government what you do is establish a dispassionate (judicial) commission of inquiry to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the alleged questionable conduct.
And to think that the personality who was being so indulged was a leader who never showed an iota of goodwill to people whom his own military tribunals had exonerated of all charges. I refer to the conduct of Buhari as military head of state and crave the indulgence of Professor Wole Soyinka to press him to service once again:
“Recall, if you please, the judicial processes undergone by the septuagenarian Chief Adekunle Ajasin. He was arraigned and tried before Buhari’s punitive tribunal but acquitted. Dissatisfied, Buhari ordered his re-trial. Again, the tribunal could not find this man guilty of a single crime, so once again he was returned for trial, only to be acquitted of all charges of corruption or abuse of office. Was Chief Ajasin thereby released? No! He was ordered detained indefinitely, simply for the crime of winning an election and refusing to knuckle under Shagari’s reign of terror.”
Obasanjo’s technical cover up re-echoes a similar predisposition by Buhari’s successor who interdicted and censured the investigative report into the countertrade policy because it indicted his immediate predecessor in office. Is this what the fabled espirit de corp is all about?
All this, of course, now pales into insignificance relative to the personal integrity scandal over the shady and catch me if you can stonewall of the APC presidential candidate in regard of his inability to produce his credentials or its authentication.
Here, Nigeria, especially the younger generation who do not have a personal adult recollection of Buhari’s erstwhile stint in office, is lucky that they now have an evidence – not blinkered by the passage of time, the sympathetic mediation of institutional colleagues and friends and the filter of the colluding propaganda of media savvy party platforms and associates. They are being conspicuously presented an opportunity to have a rounded real life education on the kind of personality the APC presidential candidate truly is; and how his hypocrisy dovetails into that of his political party.
Following the evasive tactic of his party’s presidential candidate, this was the response of the party’s publicity secretary, Lai Mohammed, to the scandal: “What is more and frankly speaking it does not appear the PDP is getting the best of advice from its members. They ought to realise that challenging Buhari’s education is a self-indictment on the party itself. The man contested election in 2003, 2007 and 2011 and under the same PDP-controlled INEC and he has repeatedly told them the same thing – go to the Army.”
Is this the best response option (for any honest Nigerian) when your integrity is called to question? In my evaluation, Buhari has not responded the way a man of integrity should respond when his integrity is called to question. A man of integrity should not seek shield and protection in dubious legalism in preference to the observance of full disclosure.
This is certainly a most bizarre manner of responding to the resolution of an issue that requires of Buhari and his party nothing more demanding than a simple request to the Army for the (speculation ending) release of the mysterious credentials. The only logical deduction from this stonewalling is that the certificates, especially the secondary school leaving certificate, do not exist.
How do we reconcile this moral regression with the image of the purported puritanical crusader who had people shot for drug peddling under a retroactive decree? Who harassed, detained and humiliated moral icons like the late Dr. Tai Solarin, an asthmatic, whom he denied access to his medications; who ransacked and surrounded Awolowo’s residence with Army troops for the duration of his incumbency as military head of state; from whose gulags notable politicians like Ambrose Alli and Bisi Onabanjo emerged to die a premature death; where Ayo Ojewumi went blind and followed suit.
The truth is that anyone who bothers to critically study the Buhari personae would always found his trumpet integrity suspect and the current certificate saga is only the latest in the long list of internal contradictions that demystifies him of any shred of lingering integrity myth.
Aribisala wrote of him in his vanguard newspaper column “A man should know at what age he went to school, but Buhari does not seem to know. If Buhari started school at 11 and he joined the army at the age of 19 in January 1962; that means it took him only eight years to finish primary and secondary school. That is not feasible. It would appear that, instead of completing school, Buhari opted to join the army.”
President Barack Obama entered all the requisite information on his eligibility to contest for the office of the American president including the fact that he was born in America. At no time did he swear to an affidavit that the original copy of his birth certificate was in the custody of any America public institution as a cover up excuse – yet he responded to the (far right) orchestrated scepticism on the true identity of his birthplace by publicly displaying the long form original copy of his birth record.
The APC candidate has been contesting for a similar office since 2003 yet all he could provide is a sworn affidavit that his certificates are in the custody of his former employers – whose retrieval has become a task beyond him and his political party.
And just like the eminent Obasanjo was worried years ago over the conduct of Buhari at the PTF, there is equally something ‘fishy’ about the self-willed inability of his ‘brother and colleague’ to come clean on the missing credentials.
The present excuse makes no sense, absolutely no sense. Can anyone think of any earthly reason why the Army, if truly the certificates
Sayelba Times 