Just came across this piece that was put together by Tunde Fagbenle back in 2007. It was for sure an interesting read. You can go through it and share your opinion. Is the curse of Bernard Ogedengbe truly haunting Gen. Buhari?
Is Gen. Buhari a changed man or are we going to get more of this from him if he becomes President again?


Buhari: The curse of Ogedengbe
By Tunde Fagbenle


Major-General Muhammadu
Buhari (rtd)Something tells me that General Buhari’s bid to rule Nigeria one more time, this time through the ballot box, would come to naught, just like it did the other time in 2003.


There’s a curse on that lean-framed general, you can quote me. And it is the curse of Ogedengbe. No, not Ogedengbe the famed Ijesha warrior of old, I talk of Ogedengbe, a 29-year old Nigerian youth who was sent to an early grave by General Muhammadu Buhari when he was military head of state.


Reminds me of what’s generally regarded as the “curse of Tutankhamen”, the young Egyptian king, Tutankhamen (Tut, for short) who was believed to have been murdered by his enemies at only 19 years of age. Little is known about Tut’s vengeance, from his grave, on his enemies in their lifetime but archaeologists who disturbed his tomb centuries after his death were presumed to have been afflicted by Tut’s curse such that all manners of evil befell them one after another.


Bernard Ogedengbe was one of three young men – the others were Lawal Ojuolape (30) and Bartholomew Owoh (26) – executed by firing squad under the orders of General Buhari, not for armed robbery or murder, but for being couriers of some illicit drug (cocaine or so).


True, General Buhari had promulgated a decree prescribing death penalty for anyone caught drug trafficking. But that was after Bernard had committed the offence and was caught. It was bad enough that Buhari, a religious bigot if ever there was one, wanted to Sharialise the entire country, but to kill a young man for a crime that did not carry a death penalty at the time of its commission was pure murder. Everyone, every institution, religious and otherwise, in Nigeria and internationally, pleaded for the life of at least innocent (of the penalty) Bernard. Yet no plea on earth softened the heart of Buhari, or of his equally heartless deputy, Brigadier-general Idiagbon. Bernard Ogedengbe was tied to the stake and executed. And as he breathed his last, so I’m told, he cursed his murderers.


I’m not one for believing in fables, curses and stuff, after all, though Idiagbon be dead, Buhari is still alive and hale, even if not too hearty. But he is hale enough to insult our senses and sensibilities by wanting to become our president, by our own vote. Truth be told, if I were a close blood relation of Bernard, I would by now have headed for the International Court of Justice to seek redress against Buhari for the murder of Bernard, if I couldn’t find justice in Nigerian courts, and I would be urging the courts to give him a dose of his own medicine, a la Sadam.


The curse of Ogedengbe aside, I do not know upon what criterion or qualification Buhari wants to govern us again. What are his special skills other than the capability of immeasurable inhumanity? Other than ruling the country by force of arms, other than being in the military, what exactly has been the range and breadth of his knowledge, his exposure and his experience – be it in business, in management, in industry, in international affairs, etc. – to enable us entrust our affairs into his hands in the 21st century! In this age of the computer, the Internet, and space exploration!! Haba.


Well, I guess we should tick his once being a Commissioner (Minister) of Petroleum and at another time the chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF). But need we remind ourselves what he made of both instances? The messy scandals of lousy accounting if not outright poor and lopsided management? Buhari’s hands may be clean, and everything points to that, but that’s only by Nigerian standard, after all what does a man need beyond his needs being met either by his own means or by means of others who have been favoured? Buhari is running for president a second time, no, he has no money of his, but it takes real money, hundreds of millions of it, to contemplate running for president and there are those willing to cough it out for him as often as he needs it. They believe in his uprightness, yeah? Righhhht!!


I would not put all of the atrocities that were committed by Buhari’s regime at his feet. Many he knew nothing about, and some allegations were probably untrue, like the one that would not go away of the 35 (or is it 53?) suitcases. Jokolo (Buhari’s then military aide) has sworn, asking Allah to deny him his wishes if he lied, that there was no truth to it, it had nothing to do with his father, the Emir, who Jokolo had been sent by Buhari to meet at the airport. I believe Jokolo. But still why would the stone-hearted Buhari who treated leaders of other ethnic groups (Awolowo, Ekwueme, Ajasin, etc.) with disdain bend over backwards to give an arriving Emir a red-carpet treatment and airport clearance (even of one suitcase) at a time he was killing innocent Bernard and jailing innocent Fela Anikulapo-Kuti?


Things were committed in Buhari’s name, and I live to bear witness. One afternoon, his goons (can’t remember what they were called), the equivalent of Obasanjo’s EFCC, came for me at my brother-in-law’s office in Yaba where a just-back-from-UK me was using as my office; 2 truckloads of them, dressed in military camouflage and armed to the teeth. You would think they were out to capture a detachment of terrorists or arrest some murderers. My offence? I was running a “Save-Haroun” media campaign, challenging the continued incarceration of my friend, Haroun Adamu, by the Buhari regime without charge. Straight from there, I was whisked to their office on Ribadu Road, Ikoyi where I was offered as repast for the cockroach-sized mosquitoes till morning before being flown to Kano ostensibly to meet the military governor who I had been “calling names in the paper”! That was the end of my freedom or human-rights for some time, and my seized international passport I never recovered!!


Buhari would know nothing of me, I bet, but he would of Haroun. And he would of Ebenezer Babatope. And he would of Tai Solarin. And he would of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, not to mention the scores of other personalities he unfairly, unjustly, and not impartially sent to gaol or to untimely death.


There is a Latin saying: ab actu ad posse valet illation, meaning, “from the past one can infer the future”. Buhari has nothing but disdain for the press, he has contempt for democracy and democratic values. And if the curse of Ogedengbe would not stop him, then our votes should.

http://nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/tunde-fagbenle/buhari-the-curse-of-ogedengbe-4.html