I had thought it was a dirty dubious grave humour when I heard that some mischievous people had manufactured stories that our own Muhammadu Aleko [Taiwo] Buhari was dead and about to be ferried back home in the luggage cabin until I read a rebuttal from the Presidency. So there was indeed such a rumour, that some people actually wished Buhari dead!

What offence had Buhari committed? What on earth could have produced a death wish on Buhari? Was it as a result of his person? Was it because he had coined the phrase of the ‘other room’? Could it have been the perceived performance or non-performance of the government he leads? Are people so angered by his heavy Fulani accent that they thought he was rather dead than have him into their ears? Or is it because the man is very tall and charming and those who would have loved him to be their husband but rejected by his “I belong to nobody” declaration? So many thoughts, but none was weighty enough to necessitate the call or wish for his demise.

It is true that millions of Nigerians are angry at Buhari’s primitive parochialism and unprecedented narcissistic nepotism, that unspeakable flaw alone should not warrant a call for his head. It should also be emphasised that Buhari did not create the mess that Nigeria has found itself in, even though some argued that nearly two years was more than enough to get the economy right and stop the Naira becoming a toilet paper!

However I wish Muhammadu Buhari many, many years on the surface of the earth. We never hear the news of the death of earth; we never hear the news of the death of anvil; and vultures never die until they reach over-ripe age. And like the legendary tortoise at the Ogbomoso palace, Buhari will live out his years as ordained by Olodumare. Amin.

Security and Intelligence Agencies must fish out whoever started this rumour and must subject him or them to the full rigours of the law. To wish a person dead is not a small offence. Long before machine and materialism consumed the world, mankind lived in the world of Spirituality when the most potent power on earth was the Word! In those pre-historic days man could command the Spirit to do his bidding. A person could be killed with mere words either as a curse or through incantation, or a spell. There has always been what is called spiritual war! In the days of yore people also traversed long distances by commanding the road to shorten itself! And heavy loads were lifted with the Word!

As Christians would say “No weapon fashioned against Buhari shall prosper”.

If indeed some Nigerians wished death for anybody or anything, there is a long list of issues plaguing Nigeria that should be pronounced death upon. Killing a Nigerian leader either physically or through death wish or through the Word has never changed anything and never achieved any positive results to better the lives of the Nigerian suffering masses.

Those who killed Gentleman, the-best-of-them-all, Mr Golden Voice Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, because of the alleged ‘10 per-centers’ in his government left Nigeria worse than they met it. People who thought the death of Abacha would bring an Eldorado to Nigeria are now witnesses to a much worse Nigeria than in the Abacha era!

What Nigerians needed to kill are a legion of leprosies that are eating the bones and flesh of Nigeria. Timidity and criminal silence by Nigerians in the face of oppression and deprivation should be the first to be wished dead.

The internal colonialism that has enslaved the entire country should be another leprosy to be wished dead. The internal colonialism that began with the conquest of the Hausas in 1804 or thereabout and had continued unabated even though temporarily defeated by the Yoruba forces at Osogbo should be pronounced dead and dead forever so that a new country could emerge from the ashes of menacingly colonised and corrupted Nigeria.

This satanic colonialism that has consumed the Plateau state, consumed the Agatus in Benue, threatened the peace in Nassarawa, parts of Borno and Yobe, and now raging like wild fire in Southern Zaria should die. Nigeria can no longer survive with the yoke and burden of internal colonialism.

The idea of Nigerian governors running to Abuja every month to collect doles with beggars bowl should perish. In a true federalism, the government at the Centre should never be a Master. Federating units agree to come together and live together as equal partners. That is what obtains in Canada and the US. Unitarism that has ruined our politics, ruined our education, ruined our agriculture, ruined our competitive spirit must die. If anybody wants to roll out a death wish, it is the death of unitary system of government which is totalitarian, dictatorial and tyrannical that should die.

A system of centralised Police force which has virtually paralysed our internal security should die. It does not deserve to breathe for another day. Community policing is the order of the day all over the world. The current overburdened Central Police must die.

Whoever has Death in his pouch, I mean an Anikulapo, should release his venom on the head of corruption which is the bye-product of all that is ugly in the present neo-colonialism. As long as the government at the Centre does not belong to anybody every operator who has access to Abuja would continue to plunder the unfortunate seat of the Unitary Government. There is too much money in Abuja. The Unitary government robs the rest of the country silly and gets overblown with too much money such that it does not know what to do with the largesse.

All terrorist organisations plaguing the country including those that allegedly have the blessing of the state should die. Nigerians know these terror cells and they have an idea who their backers are but are too timid or too frightened or too disorganised to confront them or confront the sponsors and backers.

Those who should die are the sadists that are taking other people’s lives with dark relish. Those who are hell bent on frightening the whole country into submission in the pursuit of naked power.

Those therefore who are wishing Buhari dead are directing their wicked wish at the wrong quarters, Buhari will shame all of them. Buhari will outlive them. Buhari will do his 8 years as President and go back to his cows in Daura.

And if I were Buhari, I would invoke the great spirit of the great Zik of Africa who was wished dead early in the 1990s. Zik responded with a curse and decreed that all those who engineered his untimely Obituary should die immediately. Pronto, all of them, the death wishers died one by one. And Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe lived for many years thereafter!

•Chief Tola Adeniyi (shown in photo), a former Managing Director of Daily Times of Nigeria, is Executive Chairman, The Knowledge Plaza and Founder Global Intelligentsia for Buhari. He can be reached via can be reached via adetolaadeniyi@hotmail.com

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