BY EFEROVO IGHO

TUNDE Idiagbon was not around to see it. And if he were to still be here but didn’t see it he would have doubted the news about it. But it happened. Muhammadu Buhari (who with Tunde Idiagbon once overthrew democracy and held Nigeria with iron-stiff hands) ‘bathed’ us with tears recently.

I tell you, Tunde Bakare would have had an uphill task convincing Tunde Idiagbon, his namesake and ‘predecessor’, that Buhari first sailed away in thought while addressing the world, then the whole head plummeted, and before he was done with giving vent to the trouble inside, his papers and viewers were already wet with his tears, and could only moan thereafter!

But very seriously: Why did Buhari sob before 150 million Nigerians and the entire world? What altered and changed the solid frame of this Idiagbon’s principal? What made the military strongman not to dey kempe like OBJ, his former boss but rather was anything except to be able to say: I dey laugh. It is the phenomenon called Jonathan; the political hurricane that changed all political calculations on the board!

Or, what do you think happened to Buhari that he welled up? Was it not because he has seen – given this overwhelming political hurricane – failure stamped and sealed far ahead? That was why he wept. And if this is so, why should it turn to blood-letting of innocent citizens in the North, destruction of properties and another attempt to overthrow democracy?

Buhari wept because he reasoned that after failing many attempts at making it to Aso Rock, he is again face-to-face with another – in a contest actually presenting itself as his worst outing with a sweeping Jonathan as co-contestant– and the tears streamed out uncontrollably.

As if that was not enough he saw the only strategy that can marginally up his dream and give some faint hope – i.e. the talk with ACN – irredeemably crashing down, and the inner pain enlarged the passage for those tears. And as if that was not still enough, he heard that the national borders would be closed. ‘Oh! Which kine thin bi dis?’ he seems to ruminate and cogitate and the vents went more ‘elastic and supple’!

And even while he was already being additionally battered that APGA and Labor Party are going with Jonathan, he got a whisper that an already soaring Jonathan just had the endorsement of 46 parties.  Buhari thought of his age, and knew this can only be his last attempt at the presidency. And yet here he was glued to failure with all its beckoning signs on every side, and the emotions completely went out of control.

Buhari wept because the handwriting was clear. He wept because he saw himself in a political cul-de-sac without comparison, without solution and yet do not allow for retreat at this point! That is why it baffles one that after a wholesome and wholesale defeat by Jonathan, Buhari could resort to mischievous allegation of election rigging, incitement, not of his children and other members of the leadership of the CPC in the North but, of some to-be-pitied and not-well-brought-up children who could both afford to heed the dangerous invitation to empty self of reason and humanity and to actually go playing Mephistophelian duties!

Or could it really be that there was another reason why we saw those tears that day. If they were not tears that anticipated failure at the polls could they be tears to prepare in advance the emotions of youths other than the children and grandchildren of the elite class in the North loyal to him (Buhari)? Were they tears meant to prepare these and to take them to the streets in the event of his defeat; his own present way of overthrowing democracy? Remember that he was even to go a step further later when he reportedly said that if the votes did not translate to his winning the election (this being the actual import of his very careless statement) that all that is happening in North Africa put together will be a child’s play in comparison with what will happen in Nigeria.

Having set the stage for the demonized outing of those youths, Buhari has since said that he considers their acts dastardly. Really! Of course, Atiku Abubakar who started this clarion call of making the country ungovernable if Jonathan runs the presidential race has, even before Buhari did, condemned the killings and the destructions. Uhn! Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) that created the coast for all this has also condemned the carnage.

Mr. Igho, a commentator on national  issues, wrote from Warri, Delta State.