Is Buratai Above The Law?

Since the story linking the Chief of Army Staff Lt. General Tukur Buratai and family to a Dubai property worth 4.2 billion naira was broken by citizen journalist Sahara reporters, the tempo with which the anti-graft war is being pursued has suddenly vanished. At a time the government of President Muhammadu Buhari is ferociously waging wars in all fronts against those it felt dipped their hands into our common till, it is extremely disturbing that a military chief has so much to acquire a property in a foreign land at such a whooping sum. With this disclosure in a damning petition against the army chief by the “Concerned Officers And Soldiers From the North East”, the entire military was rattled afterwards. The army particularly is bitter and has not recovered from this deadly upset. The salary of the military has now become a subject of debate within every strata of the society. Those who are in the know and also good in arithmetic have put two and two together and ruled out the possibility of the military chief buying that property with mere personal savings.
The military hierarchy has done everything at its disposal to approbate and reprobate in a matter concerning one of its bosses. The source of the critical information, the reason and those behind it has been a source of concern and worry to the army. Little or no energy, intelligence was seen to have been deployed to ascertaining the truism of the petition. Lt. General Tukur Buratai has put up a defence where he attempted to convince the naïve that the property was bought with his hard earned salaries and personal savings. The acting Director Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Kukasheka has taken the defence further by stoutly standing behind his boss. He has consistently dished out statements, press releases in his favour and has lined up friendly media outfits to do the job of image laundry for “Oga.” In a statement he issued on the matter, Col Sani Kukasheka said, “the allegations in the Sahara Reporters are baseless and not correct. It is a fact that the Buratai family has two properties in Dubai that were paid for instalmentally through personal savings three years ago… Consequently, the public and indeed all well-meaning persons should disregard this round of campaign of calumny against the Chief of Army Staff and similar ones because they are baseless and unfounded.”
Public Relations is the art of shaping and maintaining the good image of a company, organisations or individuals in the eyes of various publics. The army PR is doing good one may say. A good number of Nigerians who waited anxiously for the reaction of the presidency were disappointed at the lull. Surprisingly, in bid to giving General Buratai a clean bill of health, it was all over the media that the presidency has through its “internal purging mechanism” cleared the general of wrong doings without involving the law enforcement agencies saddled with the responsibility of handling issues of this magnitude. According to the statement, “Government, after investigating a recent media report over the acquisition of property in Dubai by General Buratai discovered that he and his wives invested as “shareholders” like many other persons in the property mentioned in the publications and were not sole owners. If you know the property being referred to, you would know that they are like quoted companies. You buy into them and get dividends as profit from your investments. You can also do your own private findings on this fact.”

All in all, Buratai was washed as white as snow, duly discharged and acquitted by those who have no business in the adjudication of cases of this nature. One wonders when in our statutory books the presidency has assumed the responsibilities of the police trained for investigation of weighty matters like this one. Well, Nigerians are not fools.  They have refused to buy into the federal government’s intervention on the issue. There is no doubt that with this ugly development, the measure of successes recorded and goodwill the anti-corruption drive of this government is enjoying has been adversely affected. In fact, the ant-corruption campaign of President Muhammadu Buhari is on a big-time trial at the moment. 

Lt. General Tukur Buratai has proved to be untouchable and can easily walk away with any wrongdoing. On December 15, 2015 in Zaria just for a simple reason of right of way, his personal military entourage brutally murdered more than 300 Shiite Muslims in a cold blood. The inability of or rather refusal of the authorities concerned to properly handle that case which led to the dehumanisation, humiliation, incarceration of the leader of Shiite group El-Zakzaky and the death of his followers in a democracy was befuddling. The law of our land should not be a respecter of persons. Therefore, is Buratai above the law? One is at loss why the full weight of the law has not been visited upon him like anyone who contravenes it. The machineries of government and the laws deployed to investigate others including serving and retired military officers should be visited upon any one found culpable. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other security apparatus of government should beam their investigative light on Buratai to unravel the truth behind the source of this stupendous wealth of his.