When the dead can’t rest in peace

A  dying old man was asked why he was pensive on his sick bed. He responded that he was not worried about where he was going. Then what was his worry, his relations asked him. The old man responded that he was worried because he knew he rode the horse of life roughly.

The old man had every reason to be worried. Nobody tethers a badly ridden horse for the rider after his departure. This is why our elders admonish that he who must live, must live very well, very godly and very admirably. The Yoruba concept of igbehin aye (hereafter) speaks to living well. The concept places importance on what history tells after one has departed this planet.

When a good man dies, my people say o se gudugudu meje ati yaya mefa. This simply means the departed soul’s good deeds will not be forgotten easily.  When a bad person also dies, the people of my place have a way of remembering him. When you hear: aku itunku e lona ogun, aku itunku e lona ogbon (may he die twenty times over, may he die thirty times over), nobody needs any further explanation to know the one referred to did not live well.

When General Muhammadu Buhari died on July 13, 2025, and was buried, I had a feeling that Nigerians would not allow him to rest peacefully in the bosom of his maker. At least, not immediately. This has nothing to do with the scriptural injunction of “there is no peace,” says God, “for the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22). There is no way Buhari would have led Nigeria the way he did and rest peacefully thereafter. That would have been a double tragedy for Nigeria and Nigerians.

The theory of not speaking ill of the dead became the refrain shortly after the Daura-born General passed on. It became a blackmail, in some quarters. But why should we not talk ill about the dead? Why should we refrain from recalling their deeds-good or evil? We learn from the dead and the living. A lot of people did justice to the monumental failure Buhari was as a leader. One cannot but appreciate those profound thoughts on the life and times of the late President.

Even when the present set of locusts appear to be worse, Nigerians should be grateful to those who took time to remind the vampire in power today, that a day would come when people would gather to assess him and his rudderless leadership. It does not matter if he is deaf and inorganic; the day of reckoning shall come. And not just for the veiled maximum ruler; but for everyone, including yours sincerely.

We have remained silent on Buhari not because of the blackmail of those who would not want anyone to situate the soldier man to the corner of history he deserves. History is a beast on its own. Today, members of Buhari’s households are on the rooftops telling us the evil the late President represented. The chicken has come home to roost now. Less than two months after Buhari was interred, his kinsmen are out there telling us the atrocities the retired General perpetrated in his ambition to rule Nigeria.

Datti Baba-Ahmed was on Channels Television a week ago. The man shipped himself to the television house because his half-brother, Nasir El-Rufai, had earlier appeared on the same platform to talk about how they (the political class) made life unbearable for the poor people.

Listening to Datti Baba-Ahmed’s open ‘confession’ about Buhari last week, the first person that came to my mind is former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ). I don’t know how close the former President is to nature; i don’t know how much he understands about our traditional hermeneutics. But his disposition while in power, especially during the heat of the 2015 presidential election, shows that the man must be deeply rooted in the wisdom of our ages.

The elders of my place caution that when a man threatens to drag you through the bush, the one so threatened should relax; he should not argue or resist. We ask them why. They respond thus: he who says he will drag you through the bush will first use his own back to create the path. How wise they are, the elders of our land!

Was that why GEJ packed his bags and slippers and left Aso Rock Villa for Buhari to occupy? Did the Otuoke man see something that we did not see, such that even before the final whistle was blown on the presidential race, he picked up the telephone, called Buhari and congratulated him? Datti Baba-Ahmed, in his outing on Channels Television has cleared every doubt we might have had in confirming that majority of our leaders, past and present and likely too, the aspiring ones, are devil incarnates! In most cases, our leaders make the devil green with envy as they struggle to outdo one another in the perpetration of evil.

Datti Baba-Ahmed, in that interview, stated that the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) then, was desperate to send GEJ packing at all costs, such that “…they, brought people from neighbouring countries in readiness, to remove Jonathan by all means. The desperation to get Jonathan out of power built up and added to what we call insecurity in Nigeria today.”

GEJ is out of power today. But who is bearing the brunt of the insecurity the desperate gang brought upon the nation? Those who vowed then that they must drag Jonathan through the bush; have they not used their own backs to create the paths? Can we all recall the number of innocent souls that have been killed in the North-West and the North-East geo-political zones by the same bandits and terrorists that Buhari and his gang, according to Datti Baba-Ahmed, imported from Libya?

Which part of Buhari’s North is safe today? How many members of that gang can go to their hometowns freely? How many of them can sleep with their two eyes closed? Who is the ultimate loser; GEJ or those who did all they could to get him out of the way?

I have read comments by people asking why Datti waited for Buhari to die before ‘revealing’ Buhari’s atrocities against the nation, Nigeria and its people. Many commenters said that Datti is simply a coward. But is he?

If, for the purpose of this argument, we admit that Datti Baba-Ahmed is a coward, is it not equally true that it is before the carcass of the elephant that we un-sheath the sword; nobody dares bring the scimitar before a calf (èyìn òkú àjànàkú làá yo idà, taní jé yo agada l’ójú omo erin?). Could this axiom not be true of the Datti Baba-Ahmed’s outing on Buhari?  

But in the real sense of it, is there anything Datti Baba-Ahmed said about Buhari that we all did not know when the old man was on this side of the divide? Did we not all know that Buhari was named as the patron of the bandits before we handed over the nation to him to ruin?

Yes, it would have been better if Datti had spoken when Buhari was alive. Nigerians would have had the opportunity to hear the ‘other side’. But what difference would that have made? Who in Nigeria today is not aware that Kaduna is the laboratory where the tactics of insurgency that happened between 2011 and 2015 were brewed? Who is not in the know of the fact that the eggs of the decision to take out GEJ were laid and hatched in Kaduna before the day-old chicks were sold in other cities and towns of Nigeria?

Who among us is ignorant of the fact that today’s ‘Saint’ El-Rufai, as a two-term governor of Kaduna State, presided over a state where insecurity almost became the order of the day?

Who would forget that when the repression of the Southern Kaduna people was a State act and art in the Kaduna of El-Rufai, the voice of Datti Baba-Ahmed was loudly silent? So, if today, Datti has elected to say the ‘truth’ we all knew long ago, why should we worry if Buhari is dead or alive to counter him? Is there anytime ‘truth’ cannot be spoken; does it really matter when it is spoken?

The only worrisome aspect of Datti’s outing on Channels Television is why after all those ‘revelations’, the man is still walking our streets free! Datti, I dare say, was unequivocal when he spoke. His attempt to veil the character involved failed woefully! The reference to “a former Nigerian president” that “was attacked by terrorists”, is a failed attempt to be diplomatic. We all know that Buhari was the former President who was attacked by bandits on the streets of Kaduna.

When that ugly incident happened on Wednesday, July 23, 2014, at Kawo Market area of Kaduna, Buhari’s APC attributed it to the General’s criticism of the Jonathan administration. Many of us also believed that the attack was stage-managed by the APC to shore up Buhari’s popularity. But today, we have Datti to thank for telling us exactly what happened.

But for Datti Baba-Ahmed, we would not have known that what happened was because the late Mai Gaskiya, Buhari, “…had stopped sending the recurrent expenses of those people (bandits) who used to come to Kaduna, collect (money) and go back.” Every bad child has his own glorious day. Last Tuesday was Datti Baba-Ahmed’s day!

What Datti Baba-Ahmed ‘revealed’ on Channels Television are not just bad, they are egregiously implicating. If ours were not to be an anomic State, the Kaduna politician would by now be helping security agencies to unravel those behind the evil of insurgency and banditry in the nation. He knows too much about how we got to this level of insecurity in the nation. With what he said on Channels Television, Datti does not have the prerogative to keep other information to himself. No! If he is not willing to volunteer them, the State should get him to do so by all means.

Also, with the little he has revealed, if Nigeria were to be a decent nation, in his grave too, Buhari would be stripped of all national honour and human respect he dubiously acquired while veiling his devilish postures with the cloak of a saint!

Nigerians must love Datti Baba-Ahmed for his opening remarks about the APC. We should be thankful to him for re-echoing our suspicions “…that insecurity is part of APC; insecurity has been APC’s way of getting power. Insecurity has been APC’s way of staying in power.” We should hail him for telling us that bandits did not just surface on our streets but the late Mai Gaskiya, Buhari, travelled as far as Libya to import the felons to our country.

Today makes it exactly a week that Datti spoke. It is alarming that there is no news out there that he has been invited by the security agencies to shed more light. If in 2014 and 2015, the opposition could initiate insecurity to get rid of President Jonathan, why are we blind to the similarity of the events playing out now? Where are the more than half of those who devised the 2015 evil plans today? In the ruling APC or in the various opposition camps?

If Buhari could travel as far as Libya to get money to unseat the ruling party then, where can’t today’s opposition travel to? Fortunately, the man at the centre of it all, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is a shareholder in the 2015 schemes. We have been told that Tinubu is not Jonathan. We don’t dispute that because the two don’t share anything in common. If Jonathan were to be like Tinubu, Nigeria would either have broken up or a figure like Tinubu would only enter Aso Rock Villa on courtesy visit! Today, Tinubu rules Nigeria from any part of the world because a GEJ placed the nation above self! History is there to talk about the Otuoke-born ex-president the same way history is talking about Buhari and his sanguinary inclination!

This is why I feel that today, if anybody should roll out the drums in celebration, it should be President Jonathan. There is nothing more worthy for a man to live to see his enemies fight dirty on the streets. I wonder how the former President reacts to these ‘revelations’ that, in their desperate bid to get to power, the APC incubated insecurity and brought terrorists to Nigeria! How does the Otuoke man feel whenever he remembers his posture that his presidential ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian? Those who called GEJ “clueless” then, what do they have to say to Datti’s claim that the APC gang “wanted Nigeria to burn if Buhari did not become the president in 2015?”

And with all these revelations and the sordid state of our security in Nigeria, how would Buhari’s soul rest in peace? How do we reconcile the fact that they asked us to canonise Buhari, who was the greatest importer of terrorists to Nigeria? If we had had any doubt as to why Buhari lifted no finger to fight terrorism when he was president, is the doubt not clear now?

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