In mourning the Second Republic President of Nigeria, Shehu Aliyu Shagari, who died on Friday at the age of 93, President Muhammadu Buhari described the late former president in very glowing terms.
Buhari, in a statement issued by Femi Adesina, his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, described Shagari as a patriot whose life of service and humility was widely acknowledged. He said Shagari lived an exemplary life and urged Nigerians of all walks of life to emulate the departed former president.
Buhari recalled part of the birthday message he had sent to Shagari last February, saying, “We are enthralled and regaled with the many years of unequalled patriotism, sacrifices and contributions to national development. More specifically, we celebrate the role-modelling qualities of integrity, diligence and humility that have been the hallmark of your visionary leadership.”
But Buhari’s description of Shagari in death contradicts his description of the same man in life. On December 24, 2015, Buhari was a guest on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’. Seun Okinbaloye, the programme anchor, asked Buhari if he was sorry for bringing to an end the Shagari government.
“No, I am not sorry because I mentioned why we did it and we proved our case,” Buhari said.
“But that was a democratic process that would have extended,” Okinbaloye probed further.
Buhari said, “So when you are in a democracy so you are entitled to steal the treasury dry and put your people into popular positions and destroy institutions and destroy infrastructure?” Even though Buhari laboured not to put the blame on Shagari but on the Second Republic, it was a futile effort since Shagari was the arrowhead of the Second Republic on whose table the buck stopped. (Watch recorded video of the programme on https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Shagari was Nigeria’s president from 1979 to 1983. He was re-elected for a second term of four years in 1983 but his second term rule was cut short by Buhari through a military coup barely three months on. It took Nigeria another 15 years to find its way back to civil rule, of which Buhari is now a beneficiary.
It will be recalled that when Buhari wrested power from Shagari through a military coup on December 31, 1983, he said in his broadcast on January 1, 1984 that “corruption has become so pervasive and intractable that a whole ministry has been created to stem it”.
“While corruption and indiscipline have been associated with our state of under-development, these two evils in our body-politic have attained unprecedented height in the past few years. The corrupt, inept and insensitive leadership in the last four years has been the source of immorality and impropriety in our society,” Buhari had said.
The Shehu Shagari administration, no doubt, reeked of pervasive corruption. It was during this period that some federal buildings went into flames following investigations into the finances of the officials working in the buildings. The notorious rice import licence scandal also happened during this era.
Indeed, it was during this time that Chinua Achebe wrote ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’ (1983), in which he stated that “corruption in Nigeria has passed the alarming and entered the fatal stage; and Nigeria will die if we keep pretending that she is only slightly indisposed”.
Referring to a story in the National Concord of May 16, 1983 with the headline “Fraud at P&T”, Achebe quoted the then Federal Minister of Communication, Audu Ogbe, as revealing that the Federal Government was losing N50 million every month as salaries to non-existent workers.
“In the course of one year then Nigeria loses N600 million in this particular racket…With N600 million Nigeria could build two more international airports like Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos; or if r are not keen on more airports the money could buy us three refineries; or build us a dual express motorway from Lagos to Kaduna; or pay the salary of 10,000 workers on grade level 01 for forty years,” Achebe wrote.
Achebe also drew attention to an editorial in The Daily Times of the same day, titled “The Fake Importers”, which highlighted “a story of Nigerian importers who having applied for and obtained scarce foreign exchange from the Central bank ostensibly to pay for raw materials overseas, leave the money in their banks abroad and ship to Lagos containers of mud and sand”.
He, therefore, admonished Shagari thus, “But to initiate change the President of this country must take, and be seen to take, a decisive first step of ridding his administration of all persons on whom the slightest wind of corruption and scandal has blown. When he can summon up the courage to do that, he will find himself grown overnight to such stature and authority that he will become Nigeria’s leader, not just its president. Only then can he take on and conquer corruption in the nation.”
In an 2015 article during Shagari’s 90th birthday celebration, Kayode Soremekun, professor and current vice chancellor of Federal University Oye-Ekiti, described the various shades of encomiums on the now departed former president as “grand, if fictitious, terms”, arguing that “a lot of what has been said about Shagari on his birthday does violence to truth and reality”.
“The Second Republic kicked off on an optimistic note in late 1979. Despite the pillage of yester-years, Shagari inherited an external reserve of N2.3 billion. In the next four years of his rule, Nigeria would earn a total of N40.5 billion in foreign exchange. One major style of his government was the weekly meeting of the party caucus at the State House on Ribadu Road. These meetings were attended by the president and other fat-cats of the then ruling (ruining) party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
“As revealed separately by Nwankwo and Omotoso in their respective books, this assemblage of powerful men of the Second Republic administration met every week, ostensibly to critically analyze the state of the nation. In reality, however, the meetings were more concerned with the issues of illegal oil deals and kickbacks from capital projects. These men of power effectively plotted what turned out to be the systematic looting of Nigeria. According to records, they had a willing institutional ally in the defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). By the 1990s, when BBCI was in its death throes, it became synonymous with the looting of Nigeria in the period under Shagari’s presidency,” Soremekun wrote in the article ‘Shagari and the counter-narratives’ published in BusinessDay.
For Buhari to turn around then to describe the same Shagari, in death, as a role model of “integrity” and an exemplary Nigerian smacks of double-speak and questions Buhari’s own claim to integrity – which, of course, is constantly being put to question these days. If it was so, why then did Buhari and his co-travellers boot out the democratically-elected Shagari administration?
Even Junaid Mohammed, a Second Republic lawmaker, agrees that Buhari’s tribute to Shagari was insincere, although for other reasons.
He told PUNCH, “It’s not sincere. If you’ve contributed so much in bringing down a government and bringing down a man who had nothing to gain, even though he had poor eyesight and was in poor health – he was in his late 60s then – you cannot say, from 1984 till now, you got along well. How did you get along well? No matter what you say about the Shagari administration, he knew how to retire from public service quietly, with a tremendous amount of nobility and self-respect. You have to give him that. In terms of retirement and living a quiet life and garnering more respect, Shagari is certainly one of Nigeria’s most outstanding leaders and I certainly believe the nation will continue to mourn him appropriately.”
That – the fact that after he was sacked from office Shagari retired to a quiet life, thus gaining the respect of many – is perhaps the only consolation for many Nigerians.
CHUKS OLUIGBO
