The Man of the Moment: Muhammadu Buhari
A New Book about the ANPP Presidential Candidate – Buhari by Peter Opara
Review by
Edu Nnodim, PhD
Posterity Books
P.O.Box449
Canton, Ma 02021
USA
70 Pages
Price: $12.00
ISBN - 978-0-9653465-3-5
Peter Opara, a prolific writer, erudite scholar and one of Nigeria’s leading, contemporary political commentators, has just added another feather to his list of books with the release of The Man of the Moment: Muhammadu Buhari. This book in seventy pages conveys the magnitude of Buhari’s political achievements, while offering a wonderfully rounded portrait of the ever-surprising Buhari personality. The book is highly readable and informative.
Unlike most books written about prominent characters, The Man of the moment does not begin with an outright, empty eulogy of Buhari, but rather with a somewhat scholastic disputation, providing persuasive and logically convincing answers to hypothetical Buhari skeptics. This immediately knocks Buhari’s real and imaginary enemies into shaky defenses.
One such objection to Buhari’s presidential ambition would be that Buhari was a military leader. The author uncovers the historical dialectics leading to the coup d’etat, which brought Buhari to power in 1984. The result of this historical fact-finding makes it clear that Buhari did not participate in that coup; rather the Nigerian military coup plotters needed a man of integrity, a disciplined and no nonsense soldier to redeem their unexpected state of self-doubt and group-doubt. Hence, the emergence of the then Brig. General Buhari as commander-in-chief. As most Nigerians would attest, Buhari-Idiagbon’s war against indiscipline and corruption in high and low places, unsettled the moral disequilibrium associated with military rule.
The discipline, sanity and progress Nigerians experienced during the Buhari-Idiagbon regime, cast despair among the ranks and files of the coup plotters, who feared Buhari would descend upon them flinging his moral hammer. Terrified like the legendary Frankenstein, the coup plotters, once again, set out to unsaddle the moral giant. Since the end of the Buhari-Idiagbon regime, Nigeria has become a den of thieves, 419ners, murderers, political blockheads, dumb-bells, twerps, etc. with despicable, deplorable and unconscionable moral free space unprecedented in the history of any African nation.
The current debasement of the Nigerian basic social, economic and moral structure resonates beyond the borders of Nigeria. It is ugly and stinky. Every Nigerian, without exception, is tagged a criminal or at least dubious in international circles. This situation has left Nigerians dreaming and gasping for the return of Buhari in government:
“Buhari has remedy of presence. Peoples of Nigerian nations, who are desirous of a decent polity in which to do business, politics or economics, must experiment on remedy of presence”.
As the book reiterates, Buhari today is an outstanding democrat, upon whom the light of history beams with pride. It is time once again, to give this man the opportunity to sanitize and clear the garbage in our polity.
The Man of the Moment, though as polemical as Nigerian politics itself, does not find it necessary to vilify Obasanjo. Nevertheless, it throws open the qualities of Buhari, a man whose name is synonymous with discipline and order, while decrying the Babangida-Obasanjo power continuum. The IBB-OBJ power continuum has left Nigeria sick and stinky, and plagued with a litany of misdeeds, misfortune, mishap, embezzlement, underperformance, etc. :
“For eight long years – 1999-2007, peoples of Nigerian nations have experienced Lootocracy in the name of Democracy. Lootocracy – government of looters, by looters, for looters. Nowhere in the world, since the Greeks invented the practice of ‘government of the people by the people, for the people’ – Democracy – has there been such brazen and fragrant robbery of people’s economic and political franchise, as today’s Obasanjo/PDP Nigeria”
Like Friedrich Nietzsche’s superman, the book portrays Buhari as the man of the moment, whose fusion of Apollonian and Dionysian elements will rescue Nigeria from the abyss of moral decadence and annihilation.
Even in the face of the present economic despondency, the author urges Nigerians to change the course of their fate, from evil to good, by working alongside the gadfly, and walking in the gallant strides of Muhammadu Buhari:
“Peoples of Nigerian nations have reason to be hopeful. After nine years (April 1999- April 2007) of steadfast abuse, terror and neglect by Olusegun Obasanjo regime, they have the opportunity to put at the helm, through their franchise, a leader that cares, a leader that will exist to work for their wellbeing and welfare. Buhari for Nigeria.
As the author puts it, the forthcoming election is a choice between good and evil. Buhari represents the good.
The Man of the Moment is a portable, non-bulky book, which will serve as a pocket dictionary of Nigerian politics, and above all, as another cogent reason to choose Buhari as the next Nigerian president. The book is an illuminating delight in the study of turbulent Nigerian politics.