I write to warn the international community of a clear and present danger to democracy in Nigeria in the person of President Muhammadu Buhari, a pseudo fascist leader who is taking Nigeria the way of Venezuela.
As Nigeria prepares for another round of Presidential elections, President Buhari has unleashed the fascist in him by taking steps to undermine democracy.
Two prominent opponents of the President have indicated interest in contesting the Presidential elections of 2019.
The first is the incumbent Governor of Ekiti state, Ayo Fayose. Exactly one hour after Governor Fayose declared, his Commissioner for Finance and the state Accountant General were arrested on trumped up charges to cripple the Fayose campaign.
Also, when former Vice President Atiku Abubakar looked like he might be interested in the 2019 race, the government of President Buhari on October 11, 2011, curiously accused his firm, INTELS of not adhering to a policy that runs contrary to a legally binding agreement between the government and INTELS and on the basis of that unilaterally revoked a contract that was still in force.
Obviously, this was done to neutralize him ahead of the 2019 Presidential election.
Curiously though, an international fugitive who is on INTERPOL's wanted list, Abdulrasheed Maina, was invited back to the country by the Buhari administration (according to a press conference by his family). He was reinstated to the civil service from which he had been dismissed after he stole millions of dollars from the pension fund, and given a double promotion by the Buhari government.
Being that Maina's gubernatorial campaign posters suddenly sprung up all over Northern Nigeria, it is generally suspected that he was brought in by the President to fund his reelection campaign with his loot especially as the President has fallen out with people like Atiku Abubakar and Bola Tinubu, who funded his 2015 election.
This is all the more so given the fact that the head of the civil service revealed in a leaked memo that she warned the President against the act of reinstating a known criminal into the civil service, even though the President had lied to the Nigerian public that he was unaware that Mr. Maina had been recalled and reinstated.
The head of the civil service, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, is now being persecuted by the Buhari administration and the President's chief of Staff was caught on video trying to intimidate her for exposing the President as a liar.
There is now a palpable fear in Nigeria about the fate of the 2011 election. Some people fear that the unprecedented militarization and intimidation in Nigeria under Buhari would render any credible election impossible.
When he was an opposition leader, he contested the Presidential elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011.
At each of those elections he was rejected by the Nigerian people, yet he refused to accept the results and encouraged his followers to take to violence through combustible rhetoric including threatening that 'the dog and the baboon will both be soaked in blood' if he should suffer the same fate.
If President Buhari was unable to accept defeat as an opposition candidate and even threatened bloodshed and non recognition of the government in power, how reasonable is it to expect that he would be able to conduct a credible election and accept defeat as an incumbent president?
The international community should note that in preparation for his reelection in 2019, President Buhari had nominated a woman, Amina Zakari, who was revealed by Junaid Mohammed, a former Buhari supporter and prominent northerner, to be his niece!
Public outcry made the President drawback from that decision and in her place he appointed the current chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu.
The International Community should note that in the 16 years that the Peoples Democratic Party Governed Nigeria, there were never any 'inconclusive elections'. However, in the two years that the Buhari administration has been in power, inconclusive elections have become the trend in various states including Kogi, Bayelsa, Osun FCT, Imo and Nasarawa.
I therefore call on the international community to urgently intervene in Nigeria to prevent what may become a Venezuela style descent into dictatorship and economic turmoil in Nigeria at the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari.
A man whose army killed 347 unarmed Shiite men, women, children and infants because they allegedly interrupted the road trip of his army chief during their religious procession is a man capable of anything.
If democracy is allowed to fail in Nigeria, it will lead to a domino effect in West Africa and perhaps Africa. Is the world ready for that?
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