Special adviser,media and publicity, Femi Adesina writes an interesting article on President Buhari’s victory

See the full piece below…

Twice on Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari displayed an uncommon
generosity of spirit. We had set forth at dawn, shortly before 5 a.m, to
visit the presidential campaign office in Central Area of Abuja. The
purpose was for the President to read his victory speech, having been
pronounced winner of the February 23 election by Professor Mahmood
Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC).

This portion resonated loudly in the speech, and was widely applauded
by the All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwarts in attendance: “I will
like to make a special appeal to my supporters not to gloat or
humiliate the opposition. Victory is enough reward for your efforts.”

Holy Moses!

Was the President telling his supporters not to stick out their
tongues in derision, to mock those who had fought a bitter, if not
acrimonious electoral war? Is all not fair in love and war again?
Surely, the millions of Buhari supporters were raring to do the Dino
Melaye stuff, open their eyes to the widest, and say ntorrrrr, or
oooobiiii, to those who just lost the election. But the President said;
no, please don’t do it. They are your brothers and sisters.

So dissatisfied with the instruction was one of the President’s
greatest online supporters, that she was ready to start a rebellion on
Facebook. Jewel Ifunnaya is a dyed-in-the-wool Buharist. She loves the
President to the marrows, and proclaims it from the rooftops anytime.
But on Wednesday morning, she was almost embarking on civil
disobedience. She kicked like a wild horse, querying why the President
must tell her not to gloat, when she was ready to embark on a gloating
party against the Atikulators (as the online supporters of Alhaji Atiku
Abubakar, the greatest challenger in the presidential election, are
called). I read the protest by Jewel, and appealed to her to respect the
wishes of our principal. She then agreed.

Again on Wednesday, President Buhari showed that he meant what he
said. By 2 p.m, he was at the International Conference Centre, in Abuja,
to receive his Certificate of Return, from INEC. Hear the President in
his speech again: “Now that the elections are over, and a winner
declared, we must all see it as a victory for Nigeria, our dear country.
That was why I encouraged my teeming supporters, in a speech I read
earlier today, not to gloat. Our God-given victory is enough cause for
joy, without deriding those who were in the opposition. All Nigerians,
going forward, must stand in brotherhood, for a bright and fulfilling
future.”

Jumping Jehoshaphat! What generosity of spirit from the President.
This was time to preen like the peacock, swagger like a man of war just
returning from battle, hunch up your shoulders in pride, and tell the
members of opposition to hug the nearest electricity transformer, if
they were not happy. But President Buhari chose to play the true father.
What an enduring lesson. I know one of his predecessors in office, who
would never have done that. When that man was president, and he won
re-election despite the fact that university lecturers had been on
strike for many months, he came out after the polls to say he had broken
the back of ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) irredeemably.
That same predecessor was publicly opposed to President Buhari running
for a second term in office, and had engaged in a campaign of calumny
both locally and internationally for more than a year, and if he had
been the one who won at the polls, gloating would have been endless. But
our political hero said: don’t gloat.

This reminds me of a story I’d told in a piece I did in 2017, when
President Buhari just came from medical vacation. Permit me to repeat
the story, as it is quite germane.

In 1998, when the country was groaning under the jackboot of Gen.
Sani Abacha, I was deputy editor of National Concord, a newspaper owned
by Bashorun Moshood Abiola, who Abacha held in military gulag for five
years. Abiola’s offence was that he sought the actualization of a
mandate freely given to him by 14 million Nigerians to be president in
an election held on June 12, 1993. Gen Ibrahim Babangida, then military
dictator, had annulled the result without explanation.

One bright June afternoon, news wafted out that Abacha was dead. It
turned out to be true. Every newspaper house was buzzing with
activities, seeking to be the one to report the news with best
perspectives the following day. My editor, Dele Alake (later,
Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos for eight years) was
away, and the lot fell on me to edit the newspaper. I relocated from my
office upstairs, to the compugraphy room on the ground floor, where I
could treat the stories faster. It was not yet the era of computer then.

Dr Doyin Abiola was Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of Concord
Press. She was wife to the detained president-elect. On her way home
about 7 p.m, she stopped over in the compugraphy room to see me. And
what did she say? “Editor, please in your treatment of the story, don’t
gloat!”

If anyone would gloat that Gen Abacha was dead, should it not be an
Abiola? But my boss said: “Don’t gloat!. And I learnt an eternal lesson
about generosity of spirit towards even those who have treated you
spitefully and disdainfully. Never gloat if anything untoward happens to
them, or you come into a better station in life than them.

See how the principalities and powers of Nigeria had arrayed
themselves against President Buhari. Some former military rulers and
leaders turned themselves into an evil confederacy, acting as if they
owned Nigeria. They had always determined who aspired to certain offices
in the country, and who should not. They had held the country by the
jugular for ages, almost asphyxiating her. But this time, they met their
match. The President looked at them straight in the face when they told
him not to seek a second term, and told them to pick one: get lost, or
go to hell. They chose not to pick any, but rather turned themselves
into an opposition force. Formidable they were, but not with a man that
had the true army behind him. The ordinary people. So, last Saturday,
President Buhari and his peculiar army gave the opposition a bloody
nose.

The retired generals were not alone. They recruited pliant members of
the international community, who had their eyes on a slice of the
Nigerian economy, which Atiku had vowed to run along Western principles.
Thank God for China, which charted a separate course, saying Nigeria
should be left alone to resolve her internal matters without
interference.

Also with Atiku were many questionable characters, who had questions
to answer on what they did to the public treasury, when they had access
to it. Nigeria would simply have been done for, if they had regained the
levers of power again.

The ordinary people fought valiantly behind Buhari. And the impending
army of occupation was worsted. Given a drubbing. Yet, no gloating?
Very noble.

On Wednesday last week, during the Federal Executive Council (FEC)
meeting, the President had told members about millions of dollars seized
by security agencies at the various entry points into the country: air,
land, sea, all towards compromising and manipulating the election. They
wanted to buy each and every electorate, and possibly the electoral
officers. But the plans were thwarted. The President also told of a more
sinister stratagem they had, which I’ll rather keep close to my chest
for now. Desperate people. All due to lust for power. Bashorun Abiola
used to say you don’t urinate inside a well you would later fetch
drinking water from. These ones not only urinated, they also did the
‘big job’ inside the well. But God proved greater.

Yet, don’t gloat? Strange and curious. Human dictum is ‘an eye for an
eye.’ You don’t brook principalities and powers. Rather, you take the
battle to them, and cast them out into the dry desert places. But
President Buhari now says an eye for an eye makes the whole world go
blind. They don’t seem to make them like this older and less ruthless
Buhari anymore. We continue to learn. Sai Baba!