BUHARI WON’T GIVE UP — Odumakin
From AIDOGHIE PAULINUS, Abuja
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Buhari
More Stories on This Section

The call for the arrest of former Head of State and presidential candidate of Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), General Muhammadu Buhari, has been described as irresponsible.
According to Buhari’s spokesman, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, rather than arrest Buhari, President Goodluck Jonathan and the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Athahiru Jega, should be held responsible for the mayhem that trailed the outcome of the presidential election.

He said that the ideal Nigeria is not within reach, adding that the battle towards it has just begun and “it is a strong battle for the soul of Nigeria, between those who want progress and those who want us to remain where we are.” He said that Buhari is ready for the battle.
Odumakin further said that Buhari is ready to congratulate President Jonathan if the electoral materials are thoroughly verified and the Supreme Court declares the president winner of the April, 16, 2011 presidential election.

“We have thrown the challenge. If INEC produces all the ballot papers and we check them against the thumb-prints on the ballot papers and if the court establishes, through forensic analysis, that Jonathan won free and square, we will congratulate him. In fact, we will go to the villa to congratulate him, with General Buhari leading us. But we believe seriously that the court will have a great moral burden to carry based on the evidence on ground, to say that Jonathan won that election,” he said.
He spoke on these and other things.

Some Nigerians have continued to blame General Muhammadu Buhari for the crisis that erupted in the North, following the result of the presidential election. Some are even calling for his arrest. Why should Buhari not be arrested?
The question really should be: why should he be arrested? Do you arrest a man who has not committed any offence? He has committed no offence and he has been robbed of his victory. When there were spontaneous reactions to the massive rigging that took place on April, 16, it was on the day of that incident that General Buhari went on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Hausa service, to speak, to appeal for calm. Go to the website and you will notice it. He said that what has taken place was a political thing and that people should not allow themselves to be used for religious, sectional war and the rest. And that was what doused the tension.
In fact, President Goodluck Jonathan, who is now crying more than the bereaved, did not speak on this matter until six days after the incident. This is the president who spoke the day the Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed that they carried out the October 1, 2010, bombing in Abuja. The same day MEND claimed responsibility, he was absolving MEND, that it was not MEND that did it. Lives were lost in that incident. A family lost four children. The first thing in his next thinking was to play politics with it, just as he is trying to do now. Because Dokpesi was working for Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) then, they said it was Dokpesi, but the moment Babangida dropped out of the race, Dokpesi became one of his campaign managers.

So, what has happened in some parts of the North was a spontaneous reaction by people who felt that Jega’s output did not answer their input. And because Nigeria is a country that is founded on the foundation of iniquity, where people don’t believe in justice, where everybody wants peace without justice, where there is so much hypocrisy, where even the highest and the mightiest can be hired for a fee to say all manner of things; they have shifted the blame on the victim rather than looking at the appropriate quarter, because it is those who are responsible for the crisis, who willfully violated the rights of the people, who are still in charge of the treasury, who are in charge of appointments, who are in charge of oil blocks, who are in charge of everything, that is why today, their opinion is to blame the victim. But the truth is unbendable; the truth cannot be changed. No matter how many people refute a lie, it is still a lie.

So, among the trio of President Goodluck Jonathan, General Buhari and the INEC chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, who would you say was responsible for the crisis?
Basically, those who are responsible for the crisis, the bulk of the blame lies between President Jonathan and Attahiru Jega, the INEC chairman, because these are the people who colluded to rob the people of their votes and which was what sparked off the protest. If Jega had conducted a free and fair election and if Jonathan had kept to his promise not to interfere with the electoral process, I don’t think we would have witnessed what happened and this is not the first time this thing is happening in the country. We have had history in this area; five times, of such responses to the violation of the will of the people. It is not the first time and it is just that this time around, it is happening in the North.

Now, they have staged a political protest and there have been extreme reactions and many of them based on sentiments without looking at the facts that in the last 12 years, the northern part of Nigeria has witnessed serious decimation; have been ravaged by poverty that today, the first, the second and the third regions mostly hit by poverty in Nigeria, are the three regions in the North.

When the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) came to power in 1999, as we have always said, the poverty index in Nigeria was 46 per cent. The kind of money this country has made in the last 12 years, we did not make it between 1914 and 1999; yet, poverty has worsened. At a time in this country, the textile industry used to employ about 380, 000 people, but today, it is about 12,000 people. There is extreme poverty in the North and what we saw was a reaction of the poor, who have seen their elite taking advantage of them over the years, who have seen tremendous improvements in the lives of their elites; in their lives of opulence, in their wealth and they have seen the gradual decimation of their own lives.

So, General Buhari just happens to be the symbol of their hope, that oh, this man that has been petroleum minister in this country, that has been chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), that has been head of state, that has been chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), that has done a lot of works in PTF and yet, does not own a filling station, does not have an oil block, they believe that if this kind of person comes to power, their lots will improve. So, when they realised that they were cheated, they went on rampage instantaneously.

I give you some instances to show the kind of hope that a lot of people have in the candidacy of General Buhari. There was an incident of a woman in Kaduna who queued to vote, who went into labour, gave birth to her child and came back to vote and name that child Buhari. In Daura, after Jega announced his result, a woman just came out of her house and just shouted, ‘Buhari has lost, Buhari has lost, Buhari has lost?’ She fainted and died.

Died?
Yes, in Daura. She died. So, that tells you the kind of passion that the candidacy of General Buhari generated among these forsaken, abandon, neglected, poor people who felt that well, one man who identify with them, one man they can trust is about to come to power and right the wrongs in Nigeria. That is it. Those who believe that President Jonathan won the election premised their facts on the reality that the PDP has larger spread and that most Nigerians believe in the personality of the man, Goodluck Jonathan. In your heart of heart, between General Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan, who do you believe won that election? Based on genuine and lawful votes cast, General Buhari won that election but based on doctored results and what Professor Itse Sagey called electoral barbarism, compunction of figures was what gave Jonathan undeserved victory. Come to think of it! How on earth will the people vote massively for a party which has been in power for 12 years, that spent 16 billion dollars under Obasanjo alone without generating a megawatt?

In Obasanjo’s first four years, the PDP spent 800 million dollars on the turn-around, maintenance of refineries, but till date, no refinery is working. They are importing fuel. A litre of diesel now sells for N170. Joblessness everywhere; crimes all over the place; violence everywhere and you think people voted in favour of that? You see, what the PDP and INEC have done is that they are telling Nigerians that elections don’t prove anything and once we get to that point, where elections don’t matter, where election doesn’t prove anything, it is a step to underdevelopment.

The question of Jonathan’s popularity. What do you mean by being popular? What has he done to be popular among Nigerians? The idea has been a kind of media scheme of standing logic on its head, deodorizing and odorous substance by packaging these lies and this has spread across the Nigerian society, which shows how far-collapsed our moral words are, that even religious leaders, academics and even our renowned, people that we look up to, now begin to talk from different points of their mouths.

I have heard a man I respect so much, saying that he does not care how much Jonathan spent to become president. I have heard a man of God who was praying a particular prayer before the elections, saying Nigerians, evil men will not rule you again and when evil triumphed on April, 16, he said he saw the hand of God in it. And the question I have been asking is; now that we have seen massive evidence of multiple thumb-printing, so if they do biometric test today, you will see the finger of God in those multiple thumb-printing? Is God now a rigger?
So, there is a conspiracy of the elite in Nigeria: the political class, the business class and the religious leaders and this brings about John Campbell’s book: ‘Nigeria Dancing on the Brink,’ and in the book, he said that the highly incorruptible General Buhari is about the most popular politician in Nigeria today but for those who are benefiting from the rot in Nigeria, he is a high risk. And that is why they are all uniting against him, to spin all these lies, to begin to congratulate Jonathan, to begin to say all kinds of things; I mean, everybody is now a judge in Nigeria. If you listened to Professor Itse Sagey, he said recently that there were no elections in the South-South and in the South-East. That we were misled by the international community, the media and opinion leaders who were hailing electoral fraud as free and fair elections. Now, our party has gone to the tribunal to say well, we believe that there were no elections in the South-South and in the South-East. And the PDP that said that the election was free and fair, are now saying that well, there were six million under-age voters who voted for CPC. They just want to challenge that. So, if they said the elections were credible, it only shows that the elections were not credible and that Jega has a lot of statistics to make. If indeed, under-aged voters voted, then what did Jega do with our N87 billion? What did he spend the money on? That means Jega should face trial. He should be tried for sabotage after collecting N87 billion. Was it the CPC that registered the under-aged voters?

When he finished the presentations, he said he was going to clean-up the register. He came back with bloated figures, 11 million extra voters. So, for us to get it right, we have to start afresh with voters’ registration and conduct fresh election.

General Buhari earlier said he was not going to court. Now that the CPC is in court, are you hopeful of victory?
We have thrown the challenge. If INEC produces all the ballot papers and we check them against the thumb-prints on the ballot papers and if the court establishes, through forensic analysis, that Jonathan won free and square, we will congratulate him. In fact, we will go to the Villa to congratulate him, with General Buhari leading us, but we believe seriously that the court will have a great moral burden to carry based on the evidence on ground, to say that Jonathan won that election.

Buhari said he will not challenge the outcome of the election. Why won’t he stick to that?
Well, those who are saying that he is putting the nation into further chaos are the agents of chaos. They are people who want to sustain iniquity. They have always said that let’s move on, let’s move on. We have always been moving backward. Was he the one that drafted the Electoral Act that says that if a party feels aggrieved, it can go to court? Why have these people not been insisting that we must do it right? There is no growing nation that stands on the foundation of fraud. It is unfortunate and it is because of their selfish agenda. Most of the people who are making these calls, if you trace them, it is because of their selfish agenda. It is because they are benefiting from these rots. It is because those who are in charge of the Villa now have opened the treasury and they are doing the kind of thing they like with it. That is why people are no longer speaking the truth, speaking from all the four points of their mouths. Why must CPC accepts fraud? They should wait for the case we presented to the court and allow the court to say that there is no case. Why should they say we must not go to the court? What is the court there for?

Is the ideal Nigeria we have all be longing and praying for within reach at all?
With all these happenings, it is very far, far, far. The journey to nationhood has not started. Righteousness exalts a nation. A nation that cannot stands for righteousness, cannot make progress. And there is no amount of oil that can make us progress for as long as we cannot embrace what is right, for as long as we don’t have a critical mass of people that can stand for righteousness, that can speak the truth; that can speak truth to power, that can rise above sentiments.

And how can we arrive there?
Oh yes, it is for those who stand for righteousness, who stand for the goodness of the society not to be discouraged by the attitude and the conspiracy of the elites who will not stand for what is right, to push and not relent or allow blackmail. And that is the position of General Buhari. General Buhari has contested. This is the third time he is contesting and this is the third time they are robbing him. He has pushed on and he is not allowing himself to be defeated. We need that kind of spirit of not giving up. But it is a strong battle for the soul of Nigeria, between those who want progress and those who want us to remain where we are.

A lot of people in Nigeria today can make all sorts of flowing speeches but cannot walk the talk because deep down within them, they would rather benefit, satisfy their personal greed from the rot status quo than seeking for change that will benefit the larger society. So, it is the selfishness of the elite that is preventing us in Nigeria today from getting to the promise land and we must continue to fight that, to push that. Those of us who believe in that must not give up, must not surrender, must not acquiesce or compromise with evil. Compromise is a deadly disease that is killing Nigeria.

How prepared is General Buhari for battle?
General Buhari, if you know him very well, has never given up on any battle. In the last two elections before now, 2003 and 2007, he was in court for several months. This time round, he has said that personally, he is not going to court but that the party can go to court and he is standing by the decision of his party. He is one man that history will write in golden ink for extending the frontiers of uncompromising fight for justice, equity, truth, principles and for values in Nigeria. That even when the so-called progressives, for shorter gains, for personal greed, for what they are going to get from these rots by making all kinds of deals, he stands for what is just. He did make a statement during the campaigns that it is his love for Nigeria and her people, that he is engaged in what he is doing. Otherwise, he too, could have chosen the life of a retired General that sits on his farm, say nice words to those in power, getting oil blocks, getting contracts, being chairman of companies, but he cannot withstand the agony, the pains, the suffering of our people in the midst of plenty and that was why he wept days before the elections.

He said one thing: that he has decided to dedicate the rest of his life to fight for the good of the Nigerian people and I think that is the driving force and when you have that inner conviction, nothing can defeat you.

Link:
http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/june/04/national-04-06-2011-010.html

WHEN UNA FINISH, UNA REST. FOOLISH PEOPLE.

ALUTA CONTINUA!
VICTORIA ACERTA!

Continue General!
We are still behind you and posterity will vindicate you.

^^^ you can say that again.Let the truth be told!!!!Let the victims be compensated and let the culprits be punished! Not just attacking the Person of Buhari.If the FG under GEj believes its CPC members,catch them and if its a grand plan by the Northern elite,arrest them!That is why GEJ has the suffix C-of-C.If only he knew the meaning he wouldn't want to make such comments to stoop so low!

gen. buhari will be president of the federal republic of nigeria.

Arrest who why put him in the spotlight??let him keep wallowing in oblivion abeg

Obviously that's the only way he'll be back in the news seeing how irrelevant,useless and neglected he has become in such a short while

kcng:

gen. buhari will be president of the federal republic of nigeria.

Ey yahhhhh
If wishes were horses

,,,or is ur federal republic of nigeria another name for boko haram?

"I voted for Goodluck, not PDP"

How is that palling out guys - The largest scam in Nigeria's history!

GEJ: 2011 -2015
www.nairaland.com/attachments/429070_continuity_gif9a707f56000ec259b18a6e5b45cfa2f7

What to have expected in Buhari's first one year as president:
- All the top Nigeria's corrupt politicians abroad in self exiles
- Repair of all Nigeria's existing refineries
- Introduction of six regional institutions with 300Bn each for developmental projects
- A unified law for the armed forces
- Federal, regional, state and community police backed by law.
- Crush all terrorist activities if it disturbs the peace of this nation (be it Boko, Mend, Opc, Massop all join)

And more in the first year. Nigerians will surely miss BUHARI.