Buhari is perpetually unelectable says el-Rufai

The attention of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has been drawn to statements from Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida purporting to be responses to the advice he gave both men to retire.

Since Babangida libelled whole generations of Nigerian youth as being unfit for leadership, age has become an issue in the coming elections. While it is true that neither youth nor age supplies wisdom on their own, it makes sense to ask those who have been recurring decimals in our country’s sorry history to leave the stage. That is all El-Rufai asked of these men who seem to think that their failure to do their best for Nigeria when they had the chance qualifies them for a return to office. Our people surely deserve better.

El-Rufai is amazed that General Buhari cannot debate this matter without scurrying to the gutter, making claims that are baseless and unsupported by any facts. Mallam El-Rufai’s tenure as FCT minister was a period of stellar performance in remaking our federal capital. Despite the difficult decisions that had to be taken to restore Abuja, Mallam El-Rufai continues to receive deserved praise and recognition for his achievements in restoring the Abuja master plan, introducing Nigeria’s first computerised land registry and helping thousands of Nigerians achieve their dreams of home ownership in the federal capital. Buhari is perhaps one of a tiny few blinded by their prejudice from recognising the quality of El Rufai’s service.

That same prejudice accounts for the baseless claims of corruption Buhari levels against El Rufai. The fact is that Mallam El-Rufai served Nigeria with integrity and has never been convicted of any corrupt act. He is boldly contesting the false charges which the Yar’Adua government filed against him in court. It is strange that a Buhari who protests when unproven claims of N2.5 billion (about US $3billion in those days!) missing oil funds are levelled against him can gleefully elevate similar claims into facts when it concerns another. How would Buhari feel if the corruption allegations made against him by Group Captain Usman Jibrin, then a board member of PTF, are today reported as if they were proven facts? So much for “corrupt background” and “shoddy performance”.

Mallam El-Rufai wishes to remind General Buhari that he has remained perpetually unelectable because his record as military head of state, and afterwards, is a warning that many Nigerians have wisely heeded. His insensitivity to Nigeria’s diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known. In 1984, Buhari allowed 53 suitcases belonging to his ADC’s father to enter Nigeria unchecked at a time the country was exchanging old currency for new. Against all canons of legal decency, he used retroactive laws to execute three young men for drug-peddling after they were convicted by a military tribunal and not regular courts of law. Buhari was so high handed that he gave himself and his officials immunity even from truthful reporting. That obnoxious Decree 4, against which truth was no defence, was used to jail journalists and attempt to cow the media as a whole. That tyrannical legislation shows the essence of his intolerance. These are facts of recent history.

The story of counter-trade and import licensing, the cornerstone of Buhari’s stone-age economic strategy and those whose interests it served, is a tale for another day.

Mallam El-Rufai respects both Generals Buhari and Babangida as elder statesmen. He believes their age, experience and guidance may contribute to the success of any future government. El-Rufai however believes that it is time for a new generation of leaders with new thinking and wholesome democratic attitude to move our nation forward. The vicious response by the Buhari camp to a simple statement that their almost-70 principal should retire is proof enough that a Buhari, the new Democrat, tolerant of views different from his own, is yet to evolve. And that is sad, for his fledgling party and its leadership. Buhari and his cohorts may wish to reflect that it will take more than attacks on personalities to become electable. Having seen his version of discipline, Nigerians are not likely to cherish an encore. But they will welcome an engagement with the issues and problems of everyday life that have hobbled the peoples of this land.

So? Buhari Could Not Account For $2.8 billion As A 

Minister Of Petroleum?

" Since his exit from government, Buhari has been trying to project an image of himself as an honest, detribalised and incorruptible political leader deeply concerned about the deteriorating condition of life in the country. Unfortunately, over the years Buhari’s reputation has been sullied by inconsistencies and serious errors of judgment.

To begin with, Buhari was minister of petroleum in the military regime of Olusegun Obasanjo. While he was still serving, it was reported that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could not account for $2.8 billion that accrued to the federal government from crude oil sales. Since then, Buhari had been trying to explain away the scandal." explained, Mr. Douglas Anele.

" One would have expected Buhari, given his much talked about anti-corruption stance, to avail himself of the opportunity to state all he knew (and did not know) about the missing money, not the least because $2.8 billion is a gigantic sum that can make a positive difference in Nigeria’s economy."

But as an unrepentant dictator he is, Buhari refused to appear before the famous Oputa Panel to address the matter conclusively.

Buhari refused to appear before the panel simply because he has hidden a whopping $2.8 billion-sized skeleton in his cupboard.

It is pertinent to note that up till now, Buhari is yet to give any satisfactory explanation of what transpired with the mouth watering $2.8 billion.

It is therefore morally repulsive for any one to expect a stinking corrupt Buhari to be anything different. A grand-pa Buhari who has defended one of the world most corrupt leaders- Abacha, of not being corrupt. "Buhari seems not to realise that, by associating closely with prominent people of questionable character, he is invariably telling Nigerians that, in terms of character, he is not so different from them. "

More so, Buhari has always basked in the unfortunate euphoria of 'detriblised' leader, but, recall, "When Buhari was chairman of PTF, more PTF projects were executed in the north than in the south; moreover, of the six geopolitical zones in the country, the south east geopolitical zone got the least number of projects."

"A detribalised Nigerian would not be so biased in distributing federal projects to favour his own region." also, A probe of the activities and accounts of the trust fund in 2000 revealed that billions of naira were stolen under Buhari’s watch."

Grandpa General Muhammadu Buhari is everything Nigerians do no want in a national leader as he is not only massively corrupt, he is also a tribalist, a religious fanatic, a sectional leader and an ethnic Champion.

Vote Against Buhari!!!

How Buhari Managed Ptf by karlma

WHEN, in 1994, the late General Sani Abacha, invited former Head of State, Major Gen. Muhammadu Buhari to serve as head of the newly created Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF), the latter gave one condition for this acceptance: He must be given the title of Executive Chairman, and he must have a free hand to run the Fund as he saw fit, without any interference from anyone.

The PTF was itself a child of controversy. Abacha had, in 1994, increased the price which Nigerians had to pay for petrol, diesel and kerosene. The Nigerian populace vehemently opposed the hike, both because the increase was exorbitant, and because most Nigerians were certain that the windfall from the price hike would find its way into the hands of a few highly placed Nigerians.

To assuage this fear, Abacha summoned Gen. Buhari from retirement, to administer a new Trust Fund into which all excess income from the price increase would be paid, and from which the Fund would intervene in critical areas of the economy in such a manner as to directly benefit ordinary Nigerians. Buhari's main qualification was that he was considered to be both a strict disciplinarian and an incorruptible man. And he was for this reason expected to ensure that the fund was properly used, and that it would not become another avenue from which public funds were simply carted away by a handful of well-placed Nigerians. That was the expectation. But the reality, in the end, was a story of massive and cynical looting of the public treasury.

How the Fund became a funnel

Gen. Buhari was Executive Chairman of the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund from its inception in 1994, to its disbandment by the Obasanjo administration in 1999. According to the report of the Interim Management Committee, which was set up in that year to investigate the affairs of the Fund, the total income accruing to the Fund from mid-1994 to July 1999 was in excess of N181 billion. There were six major areas in which the PTF intervened directly during the period. They were: roads and waterways; supply of educational materials and rehabilitation of educational infrastructure; food supply; health; water supply; and what was curiously termed other projects.

The management structure of the Fund was so capricious, from start, as in retrospect to suggest that the executive chairman was far more impressed by his position as an alternate Head of State, an Interventionist Czar who was answerable to no one, not even the Head of State himself, than anything else. First, he unilaterally appointed a single consultant, Afri-Projects Consortium, as the sole adviser to the Fund. Then he delegated virtually all his powers to this agency. Afri-Projects Consortium was given the exclusive power to initiate projects, assess their probable cost, approve the costs, execute the projects, and assess the quality of execution, all alone. The Consortium's decisions could not be questioned by anyone outside the Fund. Even the statutory members of the Fund's Board of Trustees found themselves helplessly watching as huge sums of money were paid out for questionable projects. And not surprisingly, the three professional management firms recruited by the Interim Management Committee to audit the performance of Afri-Projects Consortium came up with the unanimous conclusion that APC had over-charged the Fund for its services to the tune of over N2 billion.

APC directly managed the HIV/AIDS Intervention Programme of the Fund. Its managerial incompetence was found to be staggering. It knowingly imported sub-standard, poorly packaged, poorly stored, expired, or soon to expire treatment kits and drugs. And in the end, the auditing firms that investigated APC's performance concluded that it had cost the government N579 million by stocking huge silos of useless drugs and kits, purchased at inflated prices.

PTF's intervention in other areas of the health sector was equally atrocious. For instance, under the supervision of the omnipotent APC, PTF purchased large quantities of spectacle frames which were at the time costing only N800 a piece locally, for N1,900 a piece. This cost the public treasury over N45 million in inflated charges.

Ambulances whose going price at the time was N3 million each were found to have been purchased for N13 million each, leading to a loss to the treasury of N900 million.

PTF, through APC, purchased general drugs at the cost of N3 billion. The Interim Management Committee's consultants concluded that the Fund had been cheated by as much as N1.5 billion through inflated charges, and because most of the drugs had already expired before they could be safely used.

The Interim Committee's consultants also discovered that PTF had decided, without approval from the government, to build a residential estate in Wuse, Abuja, a project which was clearly outside the scope of its intervention mandate. The project purportedly cost PTF N703 million. But the consultants concluded that a realistic valuation of the project could not exceed N328 million. The project cost was inflated by more than 100 per cent, at N375 million.

In virtually every other area of PTF activity, three separate consultants engaged by the Interim Committee, and working independently, concluded that there had been massive fraud or criminal mismanagement of funds belonging to Buhari's empire. The Headquarters Extension and Renovation Project of the PTF cost the Fund N461 million. The consultants determined that it should not have cost more than N326 million. The Fund had been defrauded by N135 million.

The PTF had three main bank accounts. The independent consultants concluded that the Fund had been short-changed by as much as N3.6 billion by way of short payment of interest accruals from deposits, or excessive charges on Cost of Turnover by preferred banks.

The Rural Water Supply Scheme was another funnel from which huge sums of money were siphoned away. The independent consultants determined that as much as N1 billion was recoverable from inflated costs and mobilisations for work that was never done. They discovered, also, that the Fund had lost as much as N900 million in the Educational Materials Supply Scheme, through inflated charges and non-performance of contracts duly paid for.

The Rural Telecommunications Development Scheme was another such scheme from which money was cynically carted away by favoured clients. The scheme was designed in two parts: a Pilot Phase, and the Main Phase. The Pilot programme was intended to determine the viability of the project. But this did not deter PFF, under Gen. Buhari, to award contracts for the main programme to the tune of N1.6 billion, without any contracts signed, and before any conclusions could be drawn from the Pilot project.

It is a horrendous story of criminal negligence, cynical fraud, and unprecedented disregard for all civilised standards of prudence and transparency in the disbursement of public funds. In the end, the independent consultants concluded that of the N181 billion that accrued to PTF in the four and a half years of its existence between July 1994 and July 1999, as much as N25 billion was either stolen or improperly expended.

The great man's defence

Sources from within the PTF Interim Management Committee assert that when Gen. Buhari was invited to comment on the findings of the committee's consultants regarding the conduct of the empire over which he presided, he coyly retorted that he was not aware that such massive fraud went on his watch, but that in any event, he could not have benefited personally from the hideous purloining of the treasury. .

That may be true, but it does not detract from the fact that he delegated to this outfit the sole and exclusive power to initiate projects, assess those submitted by other companies, approve variations on contract sums, and determine the quality of work done. He also, by his own admission, according to our sources, approved in writing all recommended payments from the Fund. But he did not know, he claimed, that those to whom he had delegated virtually all his powers were stealing the country blind. And no one has a right to call him to account, since to do so would be to question his famous reputation.

Former president Shehu Shagari was kept in jail for nearly one and a half years by Buhari, and almost lost his sight, when Buhari seized power on December 31, 1983, not because he was found guilty of any criminal offence, certainly not for abuse of his office. Shagari's only crime, it appeared, was that Buhari was convinced that the buck stopped at his desk, for as President, he had to pay vicariously for the purported crimes of his lieutenants. Umaru Dikko, Shagari's ubiquitous Minister of Transport, almost died in a crate, contrived by Buhari, that was en route from London to Nigeria, where he no doubt would have suffered worse than Shagari's fate. Some state governors were jailed for 200 years and more, because they could not account for how they spent their security votes (which were often no more than N20 million).