Opinion

ENDSARS: Buhari mocks dead police victims

Published

5 years ago

October 19, 2020

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Monday, October 19, 2020)

When #ENDSARS protesters upended one of the czars of Nigeria’s 36 states, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, in Lagos and he fled in surrender to Aso Rock last week, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) burst into laughter.

Buhari’s laughter wasn’t hearty. It was dry and mirthless, whizzing like a horsewhip on bare skin in harmattan. The laughter echoes the snapping of the windpipe when the tiger buries its yellow fangs in the back of the antelope’s neck, eyes glazed.

To many, Buhari’s laughter, sardonically, betrays the ultimate insincerity of Aso Rock about solving Nigeria’s problems. To some others, the unsaid words behind the laughter was, “See how dis small boy governor dey shake like leaf because of common protest. Kai, he don see fire!” In truth, I agree that Sanwo-Olu is a small boy in comparison to General Buhari.

Agitated, small boy Sanwo-Olu, who has been sacked since about two weeks ago from the Governor’s Office, Alausa, by youths protesting non-stop police killings, brutality and extortion nationwide, was seen in a viral video eagerly explaining to Buhari what Lagos State has done about the requests of the youth protesters.

Wearing a face mask and clenching a big brown envelope containing the demands of the protesters, Sanwo-Olu gesticulated and physically presented his envelope to Buhari, who has formed a habit of receiving guests without wearing a face mask, unguardedly sending a signal to the citizenry that foolhardy defiance is a protection against the coronavirus.

Talking with the haste of a pilot whose plane is in distress, Sanwo-Olu told Buhari, “They (protesters) said we should release all the protesters, we’ve released them, they said we should set up a trust fund to pay compensation to the families of the ones that have died, I’ve set up my own trust fund. Today, I’ve announced it.”

Then Buhari laughed.

If Sanwo-Olu was shocked about the graceless laughter, he never showed it. He continued, “The third one, they said that we should set up some inquiry for the persons that are bitter…(Buhari interrupts, saying: “Yeah, I said that. I said that in response.”)

Sanwo-Olu continued, “So, tomorrow, the IGP is coming to the Governors Forum, he’s going to ask each of us to set up a four-man or five-man team. And the final one is, they said we should increase the salary of the police. The IGP said he was working on that. And (the) IGP said he’s going to be working to take some of them through some psychosocial treatments. Some, they’re going to go to the Force hospitals, they’re going to clean them up and check them. The ones that can still be absorbed, they will. So, everything is working but I just want to present this formally. (He hands over the envelope to Buhari). Thank you, sir.”

For mocking, instead of mourning those who have died, many Nigerians have called the President uncharitable names. But as annoying as the President’s inappropriate laughter was, I sincerely plead for forgiveness on his behalf. I plead for forgiveness for Buhari because I know that the sweat of the dog is masked by its fur just as our President’s sweat is masked by the splendour of Aso Rock.

As desirable as laughter is, it’s open to ambiguity, I need say. A laughter can be joyous or sorrowful or empty. If I was Buhari, my line of defence against wailers would be that my laughter during Sanwo-Olu’s presentation was sorrowful. I would remind them of the Yoruba proverb, “Oro buruku tohun terin,” which says misfortune walks side by side with laughter.

To those who seek to know whether the President would have laughed if any of his children was killed while protesting for a better Nigeria, I will say: Major General Buhari’s children are obedient, hard working ladies and gentlemen, too busy to lazy about on highways smoking, eating, drinking and singing. And why would Buhari’s children march on the streets to seek a better country when there’s nothing wrong in the Nigeria that fuels the presidential jets that keep them in the air and the limousines that convey them on land?

Buhari’s sweat or laughter, if you like, is seen by many protesting Nigerians as the gerontocratic trait of a leader in need of urgent retirement away from the rigours of critical thinking and the energy-sapping demands of nation-building. A majority of the protesting youths believes that in thought, word and deed, Buhari has no purpose in governance because he’s not in tandem with modern-day democratic realities.

This is why Major General Buhari deserves our collective empathy because he’s at the end of his tether. I’m sure Buhari is shocked and can’t understand why for the first time in the nation’s history, hitherto docile Nigerian youths have suddenly found their voice and massively risen to confront their oppressors. I can hear Buhari asking, who’s funding these protesting youths? I can imagine the loss on his face when a security report shows that the youths’ call for real change is fuelled by the misrule of his government. I can see worry on the President’s face when told that the youth agitation is being powered on the social media. I can hear, ‘social media kwo? Is social media contesting in 2023?’

Buhari deserves pity because he can’t do more than laugh as the events of the past two weeks are totally beyond him. This is why it took earth-shaking nationwide protests for Buhari to know that Nigerians are being slaughtered by the members of a police force long overdue for reformation.

Or, doesn’t Buhari together with his ministers, legislators in shallow chambers, principalities residing in Government Houses nationwide, the Inspector General of Police, secretaries to federal and state governments etc know that the police are killing, raping, maiming and extorting innocent Nigerians before these protests? They all kept quiet because they don’t represent the people. They only represent their pockets.

While Buhari and Nigeria’s past generation of leaders shout, “Off the mike,” the fresh blood out on the streets of Lagos, Kaduna, Abuja, Kano, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Osogbo, Ibadan, Owerri, shout, “Soro soke!” a synonym for, “Speak louder!” While Buhari, Goodluck Jonathan, Olusegun Obasanjo and their failed political leaderships are enmeshed in innumerable corruption allegations, the young generation of youths protesting on the streets demand openness, probity and equity.

Today, every Nigerian political office holder is afraid. They know the scales are falling off. Nigerian youths have torn the ‘lazy’ tag pinned on them by Buhari. They’ve also defied the notion that only money can mobilise the citizenry. For 60 years, the old order has failed the nation. A new order is rising. May it birth safely.

If the millions of jobs created by Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan, Buhari administrations are true, no youth will be out on the streets today. If the thousands of hectares of farmlands they yearly vote billions of naira to cultivate are real, hungry youths won’t troop out to the streets for food at the protest grounds. If there was electricity in homes, some of the protesters would sit back at home to watch TV. If Buhari gave hope, the youths would cope.

Nigerians have perpetually listened to the broken record titled, “Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable.” Today, I laugh to see these funny leaders running helter-skelter, negotiating the country’s peace. Well, Buhari should know that being out of power for 21 years can’t kill the lust for power in Nigeria’s military. Half a word is enough for the wise.

In captivity, when a tiger or lion tastes human blood, it’s killed instantly because the big cats will kill more people after tasting human blood, for human blood is tastier than other animals’ blood because of its saltiness.

Nigerian youths have tasted the power to change the ills of their society. I pray they never remain the same again.

God bless Nigerian youths.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @tunde odesola

Twitter: @tunde odesola

Opinion

The world dislikes the weak, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

Published

4 days ago

March 3, 2026

Trends Admin

Former Northern Elders Forum spokesperson, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

The world dislikes the weak, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

You just knew they would not turn tail and get back to the US empty-handed. All those ships and planes and everything else that can destroy a country’s critical infrastructure and terminate its leadership massed against a country, Iran. Still, Iran negotiated between being beheaded or being disarmed.

Whether it ‘negotiated’ for a humiliating reprieve out of fear or out of ignorance will be sorted out by historians of chaos. What was beyond doubt was the certainty that Trump and Israel would hit Iran very badly. A virtual and seemingly popular uprising against a regime with its head still bowed from the last foray by the US/ Israel had been active against leaders and agents of a brutal state.

Iran’s leadership had been swamped by encircling hostility and crippled by poverty of ideas on getting out of tight corners. Still, it went through the motions of discussing with the US/Israel over demands that it dismantle its strategic assets and plans and submit to a regime of intense scrutiny reserved only for the conquered. Even as it was being surrounded by an assemblage of weaponry rarely seen in history, the Iranian leadership was negotiating through third parties, apparently hoping for a miracle.

US/Israel struck at a time and place of their choice. Iran may have misread Trump. Perhaps it thought it could buy time while he involved the US Congress before embarking on an adventure that would make the entire region immensely more unstable. Not Trump. He does not go by the book. Especially not after the last humiliating pummelling Iran received at the hands of Trump/Israel and its thunderous applause from his base.

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Perhaps Iran thought it had friends in influential places, enough of them to rein in a US/Israel virtually on the loose. If it did, it was a poor reader of the international context: the world has little sympathy for the weak, and has even less leverage over Trump/Israel. It may even have exaggerated its circles of friends and allies. Modern warfare makes it difficult to reach friends when the threat is overhead and can cause more damage than a year of ground fights. Actually, Iran should have known a long while back that it lacks friends and allies, the type that will make Trump/Israel think twice. Surrogates and proxies, yes, but friends with muscle and enough interests to scare away threats or stand with you in battle? No.

Actually, if Iran had read the world well, it would have known that only the strong make real friends and allies. The weak has no friends. If you are Israel and you exist to keep an entire part of the world in line so that you and your allies can establish their hegemony over it, you can get away with hundreds of thousands of murders. Iran forgot Gaza. Iran missed the key lesson in US positions over Ukraine, an abdication of historic magnitude. Europe is coming to terms with the futility of getting Trump to stand up to Russia over Ukraine.

Europe could have taught Iran a lesson or two on the fallacy of collective regional security and destiny, if Iran had been disposed towards building alliances. For a country that had acquired a place of note in the manner it related with the world with an identity that stepped on toes, Iran should know the global community has no power over strong nations like US/Israel. It had built a formidable military, developed advanced technology and exported its interests at great cost to itself and other countries, but it is a poor judge of reading the deeply unimpeachable relationship between the US and Israel. It thought it could exist in a neighbourhood where it is one of two sworn enemies. It saw Israel and failed to read US.

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Well, the world will now count another casualty of power. Iran will expend a few more missiles before it submits to the power of US/Israel. This will not necessarily be a victory for US/Israel. Iran will go through the torture represented, on one hand, by attempts at preserving remnants of the leadership of a regime severely damaged by its stubborn failures to accept some changes in its basic character and disposition to the world around it. On the other hand, it will battle resistance to forces that will seek wholesale capitulation and radical change that will please US/Israel.

This tussle will involve a lot of sweat and blood, such is the depth and spread of the regime in the Middle East and parts of the world. Either way, Iran will not easily settle what it represents without a fight. Iranians who want radical change will not find a world waiting for them with open arms. US/Israel are not seeking regime change for the liberal Iranian, for the oppressed, the frustrated and poor Iranian. These have to fight their battles, and they will have to take on other Iranians who will fight to recapture the basic character of the regime US/Israel think they have dislodged.

Iran’s neighbours will pay a steep price for the activities of US/Israel. The entire question of Palestinian rights will now become more complicated as proxies and surrogates chart their own courses with greater autonomy. Arab surrogates of the US who tip-toe around Israel will submit even deeper to the protection and dictates of US/Israel. The entire region will go through massive turbulence as forces fight to preserve what is left of the defiance against US/Israel, or decide over the cost of capitulation. Israel will keep at least one eye open for old, wounded or new enemies.

The world dislikes the weak, by Hakeem Baba-Ahmed

Opinion

Our children must be kept away from Obi’s mob

Published

7 days ago

February 28, 2026

Trends Admin

Vincent Akanmode

Our children must be kept away from Obi’s mob

Any Nigerian with an iota of conscience would be miffed at the content of a video that trended on the social media during the week. It was the motion picture of three children whose age ranged between 10 and 12 professing to be supporters of former Anambra State governor and presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 presidential election, Mr. Peter Obi. Oblivious in their pristine innocence that they were being initiated into the triple crimes of lying, cheating and forgery by those who contrived the issuance of voter cards to them, they heartily flaunted the cards meant only for adults above 18 years, threatening to vote Obi in the 2027 elections like they did three years ago.

Instructively, it was Obi’s supporters, led by the then Chief Spokesperson for the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Dr. Yunusa Tanko, who embarked on a peaceful protest in Abuja against alleged registration of underage voters in the build-up to the 2023 elections.

During the campaign rallies that preceded the 2023 elections, the world had watched with bated breath as a 15-year-old boy identified as Alabi Quadri jumped into the road arms outstretched as Obi’s convoy approached during a campaign rally in Lagos. I was personally alarmed at the stupidity of young man’s action, seeing the possibility of him being hit by the advancing convoy of vehicles. But while I thought it was the dumbest act anyone could muster, Obi, rather than rebuke Quadri’s foolery, alighted from his vehicle, walked towards the scallywag and embraced him in the full glare of cameras. Obviously, the Labour Party presidential candidate was in full agreement that the rascal did very well staking his life for his (Obi’s) presidential ambition.

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Obi, who had earlier prided himself with not giving shishi (a dime), reportedly rewarded Quadri’s foolhardiness with an unspecified sum of money, which later put him into trouble with his colleagues and earned him a stay in Kirikiri prison for about three months after an alleged frame-up for armed robbery by some thugs in his Amukoko (Lagos) neighbourhood, who were said to be angry that Quadri did not deem them fit for a slice of Obi’s cake. They handed him over to the police, who kept him in custody until some human rights activists intervened and secured his release.

Not surprisingly, many other admirers of Obi celebrated Quadri’s display of obtuseness as a heroic act worthy of emulation by anyone worth the helm of the presidential aspirant’s black gown. Little wonder the teenager’s example has since caught on among his followers with other dumb actions and utterances. Last week, another youthful follower of the mob took the malady to the precincts of blasphemy, saying that Jesus Christ would lose if he contests an election with Obi in Nigeria. And rather than condemnation, this reckless delivery has enjoyed the approval of many Obidient members in a country where religion is as sensitive as the mimosa plant.

And before the dust generated by the sacrilegious utterance could settle, another teenager identified as Mc Aha from Imo State said he would gladly sacrifice his father and mother if that was all Obi needed to become the President of Nigeria. Commendably, the teenager’s obviously embarrassed father did not allow his son’s misguided utterance to go without a consequence. Convinced that the teenager’s outburst bordered more on crime than insanity, he ignored psychiatrists and psychologists and promptly handed his errant son over to the police.

Our children must be kept away from Obi’s mob

Opinion

History and psychoanalysis of El-Rufai’s troubles with Ribadu – Farooq Kperogi

Published

1 week ago

February 28, 2026

Trends Admin

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism

Farooq Kperogi

History and psychoanalysis of El-Rufai’s troubles with Ribadu – Farooq Kperogi

Given the depth and intensity of the friendship they cultivated over decades, many people are befuddled by why the personal conflict between former Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai and National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu has burst into the open with such virulence. As I’ll show, it’s inspired by deep-seated envy, ego trip and bruised self-construal.

Both were born in 1960 (with El-Rufai being about nine months older), graduated from ABU in the 1980s (with El-Rufai graduating three years earlier), have a reputation for boldness and outspokenness, and were stars of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

From the outside looking in, it appears to me that although both men had mutual admiration for each other, the scale tilted a little in favor of El-Rufai. I say this for at least two reasons.

One, according to a recent social media post by presidential aide Gimba Kakanda, who appears to be close to both men, Ribadu named his son in honor of El-Rufai. I am not aware that El-Rufai requited Ribadu’s gesture even though he has had boys. If my assumption is wrong, I apologize. If it’s right, that bespeaks a deep, unspoken, but nonetheless significant inequality in admiration.

Second, on page 358 of El-Rufai’s 2013 autobiography titled The Accidental Public Servant, which has made the social media rounds, El-Rufai revealed that when the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua sought Ribadu’s support to be president and said Obasanjo had already endorsed him, Ribadu rebuffed Yar’Adua, saying, “Well, Obasanjo has not told me, and as far as the presidency is concerned, I have my candidate for president, and that is Nasir El-Rufai. I am going to have to speak to Obasanjo about this.”

So, El-Rufai internalized the asymmetry in their admiration for each other. He took for granted that Ribadu thought higher of him than he did of Ribadu. There can be no greater endorsement of this fact than Ribadu’s perception that El-Rufai was the best Nigerian qualified to succeed Obasanjo.

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However, in 2011, when Bola Ahmed Tinubu was shopping for a young northern candidate to fly the flag of the ACN, he commissioned a public opinion poll to determine which northern candidate enjoyed the most national acceptance, according to Akin Osuntokun’s February 20, 2026, Arise News interview.

Osuntokun not only worked with both men during the Obasanjo presidency, he is also friends with them. Plus, I’ve heard this story from several people close to El-Rufai and Ribadu, but this is the first time it’s out in the open.

Osuntokun’s revelation that the national poll showed Nuhu Ribadu with a significantly higher rating (about 45 percent) compared to Nasir El-Rufai (around seven percent) is consistent with what I’ve heard.

Based on that result, Tinubu backed Ribadu’s candidacy within the ACN. It also marked the beginning of Ribadu’s relationship with Tinubu.

El-Rufai’s exaggerated self-construal of his superiority over Ribadu was badly shattered, and he couldn’t take it. But I am not surprised by the outcome of the poll. It occurred at the height of Ribadu’s popularity in the country.

As I pointed out in a past column, my own paternal uncle, a UK-educated health professional, named his son Ribadu, not Nuhu, in honor of Nuhu Ribadu’s exploits at the EFCC. When I told him Ribadu is the name of a town in Adamawa State where Nuhu hails from, he was surprised. We still laugh over it.

El-Rufai’s ego was badly bruised because he had a hard time accepting that Ribadu, who didn’t think of himself as presidential material in 2007 and who instead thought El-Rufai should succeed Obasanjo, should be considered worthier of being president in 2011 by more Nigerians. As a result, the previously impregnable walls of friendship between them began to collapse irretrievably.

By 2015, El-Rufai rode on the coattails of Muhammadu Buhari to become governor of Kaduna State. According to people familiar with the dynamics of their relationship, El-Rufai studiously used his influence in the Buhari government to exclude Ribadu.

But by 2023, when Tinubu became president, Ribadu got his groove back. El-Rufai believes that the rejection of his ministerial nomination by the Senate on “security” grounds was inspired by Ribadu, who was retaliating for El-Rufai’s own underhanded exclusion of Ribadu during the Buhari presidency.

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Most regular people with no hangups would take it in their stride and wait for their “time.” But El-Rufai isn’t a “regular” person. He must be in on the action or everything must be scattered. So, he set out to do at least three things to get at Ribadu: 1. Show that Ribadu is dangerous and vindictive. 2. Show that he is incompetent. 3. Show that he is a craven fellow who can’t return, much less match, El-Rufai’s lethal rhetorical salvos.

These points overlap. If you are vindictive but are afraid of being seen as such, then you’re a coward. If you’re a coward and you control the security of the country, then you’re also incompetent. If you don’t respond to my personal attacks, it’s because you fear that I’ll reveal more damaging information and also lack the rhetorical and intellectual firepower to fight back, which harkens back to your fitness for the job of protecting the country.

Of course, El-Rufai knows that Ribadu is anything but a coward. In The Accidental Public Servant, El-Rufai recounts an incident from their undergraduate days at Ahmadu Bello University to illustrate what he presents as Ribadu’s boldness.

According to El-Rufai, Ribadu was confronted by an armed robber who pointed a gun at him. Instead of complying or retreating, Ribadu slapped the robber and challenged him.

El-Rufai told the anecdote as an example of Ribadu’s fearlessness and impulsive self-confidence during their student years and to sketch Ribadu’s temperament early on, suggesting that Ribadu’s later public persona as an anti-corruption crusader was consistent with traits visible even as an undergraduate.

In his only public reaction to El-Rufai’s constant personal attacks, Ribadu was conciliatory and even-tempered. “Despite the incessant baiting and attacks, I have never spoken ill of Nasir on record anywhere,” he wrote on February 24, 2025. “This is out of respect for our past association and our respective families. I will not start today.”

El-Rufai’s supporters read the statement, whose grace should have disarmed anyone, as evidence of cowardice. But had he attacked El-Rufai back in the fashion that El-Rufai savaged him, the public, which tends to side with the underdog (in this case anyone outside the orbit of the reigning government), would see El-Rufai as the victim and Ribadu as the villain.

This gave El-Rufai the illusion that he was winning the war and led him to dig in even deeper with that self-sabotaging Arise News interview, which overstepped the bounds of reasonableness and landed him in the hot water he is in now.

In spite of people’s natural predilection to sympathize with the underdog, outside of partisan political circles, El-Rufai’s troubles aren’t eliciting the profusion of support, outrage and empathy anyone else would have received. And it’s because he is being given a taste of his own medicine.

For those who want to sympathize with him, which is perfectly legitimate, I leave you with these words he uttered on January 22, 2012, at the Yar’Adua Center, Abuja, at a presentation at the T2T (Transformed To Transform) Nigeria Conference for Youth Corps Members:

“We have no politics of public interest or public good. And you know the politicians proudly tell you that politics is about interest. If they don’t get what they want, they’re ready to collapse the system.

“Every military coup in Nigeria’s history was engineered by civilians. They have lost elections, right or wrongly. If a politician contests for a position and he doesn’t get it, he’ll not support a party member that got the nomination.

“He would rather move to the opposition and ensure that the person that defeated him fair and square loses the election. So, we have a political culture where the primacy of personal interest trumps everything else.

“Now, what is the difference between human beings and animals? So it is with most Nigerian politicians: everyone for himself, no one for the country, no one even for the party. It’s an interesting political culture. And it’s ingrained. Politicians believe that is the way, that is politics, and to change it will take quite an effort. This is a problem.”