Since he became the Chief of Army Staff, a pattern of narcissism has followed the pronouncements and actions of Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai. Even the military under him comes up with funny ideas such as setting up zoos and parks in barracks, establishing cattle ranches, and producing military vehicles.
Buratai’s latest offering is the book, “The Legend of Buratai,” a project of self-admiration billed for a public presentation on May 17. Written by one Dr. Abubakar Mohammed Sani who claims that his agenda was to transform “the Buratai narrative” into a legend, the book will be publicly presented before the children and young adults they will shepherd out of their schools to be a witness to what is essentially a moral travesty. The design of the book itself, a pencil sketch of Buratai against a background of army green colour patterns, screams propaganda. They are going to push it to schools to start the brainwashing of hapless kids early enough. The remarkable gist about the book is that it is packaged as a work of fiction. This barefaced subterfuge, this monstrous lie would, ordinarily, have fetched a laugh or two if it were not an unfolding tragedy.
This is not the first book about Buratai that is out there. Recently, the University of Lagos Press published a book titled, “Terrorism and Counter Terrorism War in Nigeria: Essays in Honour of Lt. Gen. T.Y. Buratai.” The book is edited by two professors of sociology in UNILAG, and it is on the reading list at the National Defence College in Abuja. A couple of weeks ago too, Ebonyi State University named its newly established Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies after Buratai. The university leaders, led by the Vice Chancellor, Professor Chigozie Ogbu, even carried their legs to Abuja to pay Buratai a courtesy visit at the Army Headquarters. Just a few days before that, Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State too named its Centre for Contemporary Security Affair after Buratai. Add all of that to the growing list of “Buratai is the best” articles by faceless beings that are being currently published in the media and you can tell that someone somewhere is helping this man curate his legacy.
We should be curious about why Buratai, self-absorbed, is invading educational institutions and planting seeds of his ersatz legacies? Why is he using professors to put his name on either buildings or books? One answer could be because the academia is one place where enduring archives that will outlast him can be guaranteed. There is a lesser probability that a vengeful successor can upturn the things named in his honour. The fact that academic institutions are active participants in this project of vanity is a sad irony. Ideally, the university is where the antics of a politician desperate to write himself into history as a legend should have met the stiffest resistance. Instead, the intelligentsia is a collaborator, its firewall having long been breached by rampaging politicians desperate to inscribe themselves within the academic culture.
Buratai’s gentrification of educational institutions is straight from the playbook of Nigerian politicians and their obsessive relationship with the world of the academia and all that it symbolises. One of the many paradoxes of our political class is while they have sat back and watched our educational institutions implode, they also love the trappings of the university culture. They are forever organising colloquiums, symposia, and workshops where they get to deliver fancy speeches that have been inelegantly scribbled by those possessing PhDs on their payroll. They validate their emptiness with multiple honorary degrees. More than any other project, they love setting up universities even when such projects are more likely to starve to death from lack of funding. Even Mrs. Aisha Buhari has hinted us about the possibility of a university being set up in her husband’s name. Nigerian politicians do not boast of reading books, but they write a lot of them especially when they leave office! Those books typically contain details that degenerate into controversies and fierce media exchanges. Any outsider witnessing them bark at each other would be forgiven for assuming that our leaders read or take an intellectual exchange seriously, but nothing else about them suggests they do. You cannot trace policy or the projects they carry out to their pretend-intellectual activities.
Buratai has taken his fascination with intellectualism up a notch. Now you can expect that stories that valourise all kinds of mediocre politicians will now be the next level of the Nigerian madness. They will build false narratives that cut from the fabric of reality and fantasy to sow fictitious accounts that legendises them, and then tries to pass off the hagiographic creation as just “fiction.”
Precisely, what is this Buratai narrative that makes him a legend? Yes, indeed, the man has been at the helm of affairs in the fight against Boko Haram. While there has been some victory against Boko Haram (and part of it preceded Buratai in office anyway), the battle is far from over.
The security situation in Nigeria is at an alarming level with the cases of mass killings by bandits and herdsmen in places like Zamfara, Kaduna, and Benue states. Then, the sporadic rate at which kidnappings have risen in states like Katsina, Zamfara, Kaduna, and Abuja, should be sobering. We are not yet at the point where those tasked with the responsibility to guarantee collective security should be engaging in a self-glorifying enterprise to raise themselves to an undeserved level of apotheosisation. No serious-minded general pauses in the middle of a war to award himself a medal, or even accepts a meaningless celebration that confers a dubious honour such as “legend” on him.
In another world where human lives are taken seriously, Buratai will be answering hard questions on the fate that befell the Shiites when they stood on his way and ended up being massacred. We know from official accounts that 350 of them were mass-buried, but up till this moment, the soldiers have not been made to account for that cruelty. Then, there are the pro-Biafran protesters who were killed by soldiers but whose murderers have not been called to judgment. In January, soldiers raided media houses in a manner reminiscent of how they did under the military.
The army under Buratai has been operating under an illusory high of power, and that is why their activities have been more about brawn than brain. In November, when the army was taken up on their decision to fire live ammunition at the Shiite protesters in Abuja, they had no moral compass with which to think through their actions. The only defence they could plea was to latch on to the rambles of Donald Trump whose lack of knowledge on anything is itself another stuff for legends. Yes, the Nigerian Army officially justified its acts of inordinate brutality and it has zero remorse for it. In which universe is the kind of cowardice that makes soldiers turn deadly weapons on unarmed folk legendary?
The soldiers that Buratai leads have been so brutalised and dehumanised they have no empathy left to stick to the rules of engagement. These soldiers have dispensed with courtesies to narrate how much they suffer at the warfront where they perish due to lack of provision of amenities for basic sustenance. Yet, the top brass grows fat.. The Boko Haram maniacs have killed hundreds of these soldiers, but the army will not even permit a decent burial for them. They do not want to puncture their official narratives of victory that have been padded with lies. To make the ultimate sacrifice for your country should be a thing of honour but under Buratai, those soldiers are secretly buried as if it is a shame to give your life for your country. He is no legend, just a lie-gend.
If Buratai is confused about his true legacy, here is a list: violence, brutality, and brigandage. He will not rewrite this history.
Credit: Abimbola Adelakun, Punch