The notion that Buhari was not corrupt Is a cruel myth. Buhari was just as corrupt and brutal as Obasanjo and the others before him. Hear Wole Soyinka on his good friend Buhari:

“[Babangida] rode to public favor on the brutal and hypocritical record of his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, one devil for whom, in my calculation, no spoon existed that was long enough to justify the risk even of an impromptu snack.




WITH HIS PARTNER, Tunde Idiagbon, General Buhari blew onto the Nigerian stage, raising a whirlwind of corrective energy. His first port of call was the Ministry of Petroleum, which, during the Obasanjo regime, he had headed as minister. During the succeeding rule, that of Shehu Shagari, a hue and cry had begun about a missing $ 3.4 billion of the nation’s petroleum funds, a sum that was later upgraded to $ 4.1 billion. The scandal was not new.




The accusations were public, pursued with vigor by the social critic and schoolmaster Tai Solarin and by an activist with an even more volatile temperament, Dr. Ayodele Awojobi, a professor of engineering at the University of Lagos. Lithe and intense in every inch of his six-foot-four frame, Awojobi was, however, more fastidious and persuasive than Tai in his acquisition and presentation of facts. The Shagari government was compelled to set up a commission of inquiry. Its findings were negative: Tai Solarin, it decided, was merely whistling in the wind, and no such funds were missing.




Nevertheless, it raised not a few eyebrows that General Buhari, who was at the center of this scandal, should stage a coup d’état against the civilian regime that had inquired into the affair.




The eyebrows were raised even higher when, having seized control of the nation, he made a beeline for the Petroleum Commission, raided its offices, and carted away its files, swearing publicly that he would get to the bottom of the missing funds and announce his findings in a matter of months. This was the last that the nation heard of those files or the missing billions.




Buhari sacked the incumbent head of the Petroleum Commission, reinstated his right-hand man from his previous ministerial stint in that department, and, at the first opportunity, locked up Tai Solarin on an unrelated pretext—for distributing leaflets calling for a return to democracy.





It was a harsh confinement. Tai Solarin was subjected to a life-threatening regimen in an inclement far-north prison. He was refused access to his accustomed medication for asthma, one that had been prepared for him for years by a traditional herbalist and had proved a hundred percent effective,whereas Western medicine had failed. As for Professor Awojobi, he died soon after Buhari took over. A vigorous personality and brilliant engineer, Awojobi simply passed away conveniently, ostensibly of hypertension.






That beginning established the pattern. The Buhari regime redefined all concepts of moral scourge, incorruptibility, transparency, and even-handedness in the execution of its own codes of justice. It was this regime that presided over the saga of some fifty-three suitcases that passed through Customs at the international airport of Kano. As a measure to stabilize the Nigerian currency and terminate the business of illegal speculation, currency trafficking, and other dodgy financial dealings, the Buhari regime ordered the production of a new national currency.





So comprehensive were the measures undertaken to ensure that not a single forged or obsolete currency note was blown across the borders, either entering or exiting, that all land, air, and sea borders were sealed tight without notice. If migrating birds were not exactly ordered to be shot on sight, it was only because the Nigerian Air Force was too busy ferrying in the new notes.





International transactions were suspended. Too bad for those who were trapped outside or inside until the fiscal exercise of several days was over!




Nonetheless, a Northern emir arrived at Kano airport with fifty-three bulging suitcases and—who would be waiting to clear him through Customs? Buhari’s own aide-de-camp, Major Mustapha Jokolo! He encountered and tried to brush aside the stolid opposition of the Customs officer in charge of the airport—an unknown civil servant by the name of Alhaji Abubakar Atiku who would later become the vice president of the nation after the return of democracy.




The Customs officer held his ground as long as he could but was no match for the aide-de-camp, who had flown to Kano from his duty post in Lagos solely to facilitate the passage of the emir’s camels through the needle’s eye of Customs. Entry was eventually effected with only one casualty: not long after, the stubborn Customs officer was unceremoniously bundled out of Kano and redeployed to Lagos.





Based on the provisions of an allied regulation, however, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Afro-beat musician, would be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for failing to declare some foreign currency that he had legitimately brought into the country. Fela had kept the funds as immediate living expenses for his band, due to begin an overseas tour shortly after.




After Babangida came to power, the trial judge visited Fela in prison, apologized to him for his role in his conviction, and admitted that he had only acted on orders. The poor judge! Did he really think that my uninhibited cousin would keep quiet after such a confession? “The judge done come beg me o!” screamed Fela to the media, leaving Babangida no choice but to set free the victim of Buhari’s reformist zeal and dismiss the judge.”

– Wole Soyinka, You Must Set Forth at Dawn (pp 220-223)