Burataigate: The Frivolity of Stupidity -By Nwike Ojukwu

Was General Tukur Buratai, our Chief of Army Staff (COAS), being disingenuous, insulting, or outright stupid when he declared that the $1.5 million property in Dubai, UAE, belonged to one of his wives? If you believe his story, you probably believe that the N2.5 billion the EFCC allegedly discovered in a bank account bearing the name of the maid of former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, belonged to her maid. “Believe this – You’ll believe anything” is one of the classics of the thriller maestro, James Hadley Chase, and nowhere does this prevarication and baloney play out than in our dear country.

Our COAS has been in the news lately not because his men eventually routed and crushed the dreaded terrorist organization, Boko Haram (BH), but due to an alleged financial impropriety. One of the allegations against the chief is that he purportedly purchased a piece of real estate in Dubai for $1.5 million. My understanding is that the cost of the property is well beyond the chief’s income. We do not have information about other properties he could be hiding elsewhere in Nigeria. I doubt if he does not own a property in Asokoro, Abuja. As a corollary to the revelation, the press and commentators are having a feast making a caricature of the army chief. We have a saying in my part of the world that whoever harvests ant-infested firewood invites the visitation of lizards.

I will be the first to admit that I lack the expertise at punching numbers. However, I do know that the chief’s earnings from the first day he entered service until the present is easy to figure out. My purpose here, though, is to steer the conversation to a different perspective: how could a serving army officer contemplate, structure, and purchase such an expensive real estate? Now, I am not insinuating that the allegation is true. I am conversant with the general presumption that one is innocent until one’s guilt is proven. That said, I would take a tangent here to explicate how a decorated officer could easily smudge his reputation, and jeopardize his career, in the quest to be one of our country’s millionaires.

General Buratai is a quintessential illustration of how the elites have taken advantage of our lack of accountability to plunder our riches and impoverish us. We live in a country of anything goes: a country that celebrates stealing and decorates a thief.

Perhaps, the general thought if his predecessors in office could steal and get away with it, why not him? He probably figured out we did not have any record where the government ever prosecuted a retired army officer for unjust enrichment. If you are like me, you wonder how Nigerians have managed to remain relatively peaceful in the face of the revealed sustained assault by our dishonest compatriots who are supposed to serve the country “with love and strength and faith,” but have contributed to our present economic crisis. If you are like me, you will expect Nigerians to take to the streets to ventilate their outrage over such financial misconduct by those in the position of authority.

Our “leaders” have acquired notoriety both at home and abroad for stealing and to the former British prime minister we remain “fantastically corrupt.” We helplessly wait for such a time when news from homeland would present encouraging signs of political and economic recovery and improved quality of life for poor folks. On the contrary, we daily are inundated with updates on how our “princes” shamelessly enrich themselves at our expense.

When we think about corrupt institutions in Nigeria, our attention is fixated on the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). Somehow, we make exception to the military because we are afraid to confront an institution that has a license to kill. Besides, the military controlled our government through much of our history and arrogated to itself the moral rights to accuse every other institution of corruption except its own. Our military has overthrown elected civilian governments on the pretext of ridding the country of corrupt politicians while presenting itself as the lone institution incapable of being corrupt. Well, our reality reflects a military that is “prodigiously corrupt,” if not worse.

When Boko Haram sacked our military and successfully unleashed terror on Chibok and abducted defenseless schoolgirls, I warned that we were better off collapsing our military and trust Providence to provide a hedge around our country rather than placing our trust on an ineffectual military that would abdicate its position at the sound of a hunting rifle. The thrust of my argument was that it was shameful that the military of the most populous black nation on earth could not repel a ragtag terrorist organization that was at its formative stage. Some of my readers lampooned my proposition for failing, among other things, to note that our military lacked equipment and funding to prosecute the war on terror. Of course, it lacked equipment and funding because of such brazen human beings like Badeh, Ihejirika, Amosu, Minimah, Buratai who are, to put it mildly, thieves and saboteurs. Our military, sadly, will continue to lack equipment and funding as long as it retains such ambidextrous characters.

We have succeeded in raising a military that flouts the laws of the land and cannot protect her landscape; a bunch of shenanigans, psychopaths, thieves, rapscallions, and fools who would stop at nothing to liquidate our commonwealth in order to line their pockets. The mistakes of the past when we celebrated the military overthrow of civilian administrations have come full circle to haunt us. Our officers have tasted power and fame, and acquired expertise at cutting corners and hardly understand the difference between personal and public funds. I dare anyone to challenge my position that we will ever restore professionalism in our military with the crop of officers we have currently. Put differently, those who hope a day will come when military professionalism will come into being in our country may wait a very long time.

In any event, the relevant inquiry, in my view, is how a serving officer could have the audacity to convert funds meant to service our army to personal use. The answer is not difficult to determine. General Buratai is a product of the entitlement proclivity, which the Babangida administration introduced in the military. To IBB, any general who has “distinguished” himself or herself in the service of the country should be able live in a “hill top mansion,” own oil well, and own properties in various parts of the world. Buratai’s conduct is not different from that of the officers before him: Obasanjo, Babangida, Abacha, Danjuma, Useni, Abdulsalami, Mark, Marwa, etc. The authorities are yet to invite any of these retired officers to account for his service to the country. They continue to enjoy their loot, except for Sani Abacha, who we revile because he is dead. If he were alive, he probably would be one of our power brokers and no one would dare question his source of wealth.

Our hyperventilation over the financial impropriety of General Buratai without more will amount to nothing unless it will pressure the government to hold him as well as the previous occupiers of the office accountable and perhaps open up an investigation into the activities of our military going back decades. I argue that the perpetrators of crimes against our collective interest belong in jail, and they should forfeit that wealth and their fruits. Until we demonstrate our outrage by sending a strong message to our leaders that we can no longer tolerate anyone treating our interest with levity, we will continue to watch an endless stealing movie. My insistence that General Buratai must go is due to my penchant for fairness and moral disapprobation of anyone who converts public asset to personal property.

Our social structure is rigged in favor of a certain demographic group, especially the military and this is common knowledge. In other climes, once someone alleges that you compromised your professional responsibilities, you stepped aside to allow access to the records to determine the veracity or otherwise of the allegation. In our situation, you retain your position to cover your tracks, and if you are well connected, the matter dies a natural death, and we are back to business as usual. And if for some reason, the matter goes to court, you hire some dubious Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who has access to the presiding judge, and for sure, the “honorable judge” will grant you permanent injunction and you walk the streets of Nigeria with your shoulders high.

President Buhari (PMB) has tried to convince us that he is devoted to fighting corruption and recovering our stolen wealth. My take is PMB is not fighting corruption; rather he is trying to recover our stolen wealth. You do not fight corruption without reconfiguring the structures that encourage corruption because corruption is symptomatic of a structural failure. In any event, if PMB is genuine about recovering our stolen wealth, he must take the only sensible, prompt, and decisive course; fire General Buratai, and go after Babangida and his cronies and subject them to the ventilation of our criminal justice system before they pass away and their stolen wealth transfer to their children. In my view, the retention of General Buratai after what we know about him is a stain on PMB’s rhetoric and an insult to honest citizens who struggle daily to provide for their families. I am opposed to selective justice. I have argued variously that people similarly situated deserve similar treatment. If PMB fails to seize this opportunity, General Buratai will leave office and hide in the governor’s mansion and enjoy immunity from prosecution or proceed to the National Assembly to enjoy his loot.

We cannot build a sustainable nation on the shoulders of kleptomaniacs and liars. A nation is built by the sweat and blood of selfless men and woman who are motivated by their love for country to serve. General Buratai remains the wrong person to head our army at this time. His killing antecedents from Zaria through the South East are enough to press charges against him for crimes against humanity. I urge PMB to do everything within his powers to break the cycle of stealing pervading our military. What is at stake is greater than any person or group’s ambition; it is the future of our children and children’s children. We have a responsibility to leave behind a nation where justice flows like a river and thieves are held accountable and serve their terms in jail.

-Dr. Nwike Ojukwu