A Civilian Despot and a Nation in ruins – #EndSARS Movement in Autocratic Democracy – Ken Eneduwa

20th October, 2020 was a day of horror in Nigeria. Well-meaning, harmless protesting Nigerians were reported to have been injured and killed by the Nigerian Government in the most reckless and senseless manner at the Lekki Toll Gate. This is happening in a nation that claimed to practice democracy. This is genocide against the Nigerian people and President Buhari must be held accountable. We should be calling for General Muhammad Buhari’s head on a platter for the extra-judicial killings of innocent, peaceful protesters.

There is no other justification to establish that returning Muhammadu Buhari, a bloodsucking demon as Nigerian President in 2019 was a huge mistake. This is a man who in his first tenure showed clear disdain for the nation’s constitution, an Islamic fundamentalist, tribal bigot and wicked soul who do not care about the people.

In the prelude to the 2015 presidential election, General Muhammadu Buhari issued an ominous threat that “the blood of dogs and baboons” would be shed if he lost at the poll again, having previously tried unsuccessfully three times to become the civilian president of a democratic Nigeria he had spent his military career thwarting.

There were already portends in the atmosphere that another loss by Nigeria’s former military head of state would usher in a nationwide spate of violence emanating prominently from the core north where he held and enjoyed a cult follower-ship, especially amongst violence-prone extremist groups such as Boko Haram who once picked him as their spokesman to President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, and who he, Buhari, severally described as “our aggrieved brothers”. Sadly, majority of us allowed such a candidate with an unrepentant loathing for democracy and a support base drawn from extremist groups find his way to the ballot and eventually win same in 2015 is evidence of how desperate politics is the bane of true democracy in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole.

General Buhari’s victory at the polls in 2015, and again in 2019 refereed by a highly compromised electoral body, would go on to usher the country into one of its most divisive eras, rising bad debts, state-sponsored terrorism through extra-judicial killings and the entrenchment of bigotry and nepotism in the country’s national life. As difficult as it is to believe that a civilian president could out-perform former military heads of states, including himself, in corruption, political assassinations, terrorism and, government-led pilfering of the national treasury, General Buhari truly has ripped Nigeria and Nigerians of what little gains have been made in its democratic experiment.

In the north, lives have become mere statistics. Daily reports keep overwhelming media coverage as bandits, extremist groups and Fulani herdsmen carry out ethno-religious cleansing without restrain or caution from their kin, Muhammadu Buhari- Nigeria’s Commander-in-Chief of all security apparatus of state. While the maurading Fulani herdsmen have gained international notoriety and have been ranked on Terrorism Index as the fourth most dangerous terrorist group in the world, they’ve continued to be feted by General Muhammadu Buhari who attempted through an Executive Bill to snatch people’s farms and lands to give to his kinsmen under the guise of a scheme called “Cattle Colony”, later modified to RUGA – Rural Grazing Area. However, note that “RUGA” is in fact a Fulani word that means “human settlement”. General Muhammadu Buhari’s scheme was therefore to use legislative espionage to claim people’s ancestral lands and homes to satisfy the expansionist desires of his nomadic kith.

The north-east especially continues to be ravaged by the criminal activities of Boko Haram, an insurgent group General Buhari has severally defended, and as President, has offered so much money in the form of unjustifiable ransoms. Nigerian soldiers have mutinied several times alleging internal sabotage within the military. Some of those bold enough to confront this reality, mostly of southern extraction, are either court-martialled or are curiously lost in battle from ‘friendly fire’. General Muhammadu Buhari’s military twice bombed IDP camps, later claiming both instances to be errors yet failing to prosecute those who’s alleged error caused the lives of several refugee children, men and women. In fact, General Buhari’s failure to relieve his underperforming Service Chiefs has led to the conclusion that he is more concerned with regime protection than he is with successfully prosecuting the war against insurgency in Nigeria. This notion was again tested and found true in the wake of unravelling police brutality in Nigeria enabled by the tacit support of the agency’s hierarchy at the behest of General Muhammadu Buhari and his oligarch cronies.

The #ENDSARS momentum presented a rare opportunity for General Buhari to acquit himself of public suspicions as a blood-thirsty ruler but was squandered away as those who came out to protest against police brutality have equally been brutalized and some, fatally so. At the time of writing this, at least twenty persons have lost their lives and over one-hundred cars burnt completely as rogue police officers and thugs sympathetic to General Muhammadu Buhari have been on a killing and maiming rampage all over the country. There are several videos on various platforms on social media showing men, allegedly from the Department of State Service, as well as those of the Nigerian Police Force directly coordinating the attacks on peaceful protesters in the Federal Capital Territory. Buhari’s Hausa/Hausa miscreants left to roam about the city baying for blood. There is no doubt that the peaceful protests all over were sabotaged by rage state security with approval from the presidency.

While the nation is scorched by the cruelty of its police officers and state-sponsored thugs, General Buhari has remained aloof, refraining from taking charge to restore peace and order. He only deigned to address Nigerians through a pre-recorded speech where he rambled incoherently through a litany of false promises intended to temporarily assuage public concerns while failing to address the root causes for the peaceful protests and demonstrations nationwide. Offering the voice of Jacob but dealing the hands of Esau, General Muhammadu Buhari, during the #ENDSARS protests, have only further cemented his reputation as an autocratic brute with an aversion to truth, peace and order. In his supposedly live broadcast to the nation, no regards or mention of the fallen heroa of this currently struggle.

General Buhari’s divisive politics and general incompetence, in the following years, may be the last straw to break the back of Nigeria’s thread-hanging Republic, sending down the path of a bloodier Civil War or outright fragmentation of its parts along ethno-religious lines.

The man who once threatened that “the blood of dogs and baboons” would be shed is living up to his words by letting the nation burn while he sits in opulence and safety in unminding of his sworn oath to protect the lives of the citizens of Nigeria. The man who once cried on national television begging to be voted in before resorting to open threats of violence is today basking in fateful victory while un-looking as the seams of a fragile democracy are unbundling under his heavy handedness. The same man who became the only military Head of State to subvert a civilian government when he overthrew President Shehu Shagari through a military coup in 1983, is today disrupting the democratic gains of the world’s most populous black nation through brute force and an affront on the nation’s rule of law. Nigerians must put aside their differences and arise to the challenge of protecting Nigeria from Buhari’s violent incompetence. The man is in 2020 as he was in 1983, an albatross of evil and destruction, lacking of integrity and wilfully petulant to lawful processes.

Buhari must be prevented from frittering away the remnants of the soul of Nigeria. There is a clarion call today to #ENDBADLEADERSHIP carried along in the spirit of the #ENDSARS protest.

My heart bleeds, the bloodshed is enough. Ask yourself, what would Buhari be rememebred for apart from HARDSHIP, SORROW, TEARS and BLOOD?

It is time for the bloodsucking demon called Buhari to go. I would have suggested he does the honourable thing by throwing in the towel in order to save what is left of his person for his retirement, but then I realized the vampire of a man has no honour in him.

Buhari MUST go, NOW!

We must join hands to make this demand of the young generation a success to signal a new era in Nigeria.