During the last days of her husband’s presidency, First Lady, Madam Aisha Buhari, told a gathering of military and police officers wives that her beloved husband, President Muhammadu Buhari, “suffered” much from his checkered career in the military and politics. It all started with his involvement in the Nigerian-Biafra civil war of 1967 – 1970, she said, and the suffering continued with his every stint in public office thereafter. She said that as a 19 year old, she married a mentally and emotionally damaged man who had led his country for 20 months, was in detention for twice as long – “without (the government of the day) disclosing the nature of his offense” Her diagnosis (I don’t know if this was medically obtained) was straightforward: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Listening to Mrs. Buhari, you’d be forgiven to think that a certain Captain M. Buhari single handedly fought and conquered the ‘mighty’ Biafran army, as David did Goliath. And for his rare courage, gallantry and sacrifice, he ended up with PTSD as a badge of honor.
However, this is very far from the truth. In reality, there was no Civil War. There was only a mass slaughter; a genocide; a crime against humanity. In the so-called Nigerian Civil War, a properly trained and equipped Nigerian Army, backed by an endless flow of hardware and logistics from Britain, Russia & USA, was pitched against a rag tag Biafran Army with only a few trained officers and a rank and file made up almost entirely of volunteers.
These drafts were “trained” for just few weeks, and sometimes armed with nothing except machetes. The only weapon they had in surplus was courage to defend their homeland from a Federal side they believed had no need for them except the minerals under their soil. It was 30 months of one-sided carnage, well recorded in history.
In Asaba alone, David Scanlon of Quaker Relief Services reported that 759 men and boys were killed on October 5, 1967, on the orders of Colonel Murtala Mohammed of Nigeria’s 2nd Infantry Division. Yet, he was never tried for war crimes. The Emeritus Anglican Archbishop of Enugu Diocese, Most Rev Dr. Emmanuel Chukwuma, recently told the story of how as a 14 year old boy he was one of those who faced the firing squad at Asaba. He fell in the stampede when the firing began, he said, and was buried under a pile of bodies. He was mistaken for dead and subsequently managed to escape. There were countless other unreported and undocumented massacres by Nigerian troops throughout Biafra.
If Buhari was so traumatized by a skirmish which the federal side he fought for classified as mere “police action”, what could have happened if he fought in a real, evenly-matched war between two armies? He might have died from sheer fright before getting to the fronts. Not from enemy fire.
As a little boy in 1969, this writer vividly recalls surviving a bomb attack by a Nigerian war plane flown by a foreign pilot (later said to be Egyptian). I was with my grandmother in a village market in Orlu, located in present day Imo State. A Nigerian air force plane flew overhead, so low we could see the “White” pilot looking down with a wry smile from the cockpit. A hush fell over the market filled with women and children on that hot harmattan afternoon. Word quickly went round that since we were all civilians the plane would go away, looking for soldiers or military targets to attack. So, the market resumed in full swing.
It turned out to be my first experience with fake news. The plane came back minutes later and dropped a bomb right in the middle of the crowded village market. All hell broke loose. The sky went dark at noon. By the time the dust settled, all that remained were heaps of charred and shredded human flesh and rivulets of blood. The smell of human blood hung in the air for days. That image, that smell, recorded about 54 years ago, is etched in my memory to this day.
So, if M Buhari suffered from PTSD upon return from Biafra, it must have been from the guilt of his involvement in the mass murder of the unarmed men, women and children of Biafra. Or perhaps the blood of the innocent crying out for vengeance. Not from any heroic accomplishments in battle against an army of comparable strength. It is like an Israeli soldier claiming he suffers PTSD from fighting HAMAS in Gaza today. C’mon, that’s not a real war! It’s a walk in the park.
Yet, the real test of M Buhari’s mettle as a soldier and statesman does not lie in the belly of history or in events that occurred in battlefields between 1967 and 1970. It unraveled before our very eyes in his subsequent years in public office. As a two-time Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian armed forces, with all the powers and resources attendant to those positions, Buhari did not aquit himself with distinction. Indeed, he was a General who failed to stop small groups of terrorists and bandits gleefully assailing Nigeria under his watch. This calls to question his true credentials as a soldier.
Even today, over half a century since the “Biafra war” ended, M. Buhari still gets the jitters from the mention of Biafra. That’s why he left all the terrorists, bandits and kidnappers threatening Nigeria to hunt down a benign IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, and hound him into indefinite detention. It remains the only “accomplishment” of the retired Army General in securing Nigeria to date.
How then can Buhari lay claim to some mythical heroics that occurred when he was a junior army officer? It doesn’t add up. Indications are that PMB was a very ordinary (if not below average) soldier. Even whilst taking part in the mass murder of unarmed Biafran civilians and hungry soldiers, there are no records of genuine heroism or humanitarianism ascribed to him by fellow combatants. So the tales of a loving wife desperate to cloak her husband with glory even for a dubious “group accomplishment” may not hold water afterall. As we say in Nigeria, ”Na wash.”
The only good purpose Mrs. Buhari’s attempt at rewriting history serves, I believe, is that it helps confirm that Nigeria was twice led by a man who should have been better off in rehab.
Buhari in State House was a recruitment blunder for which many people should be in jail. It must have been sheer torture for poor PMB to be saddled with duties for which he was technically ill-equipped, professionally unprepared and emotionally unsuited. It’s like asking a ten year old boy to fly an ultramodern jumbo jet! The instruments panel alone is enough to give him a panic attack. That’s probably what led to Buhari’s PTSD symptoms. Certainly not Biafra.
Someday, I believe, Nigerians will thank Madam Buhari for helping to solve the riddle of their national misery in the years between 1983 – 1985 and between 2015 – 2023. Anyone who managed to survive those horrendous years has enough reason to celebrate. The trouble is, Tinubu’s tenure has so far offered no qualitative difference. And so the suffering continues…
Victor Anazonwu, a media and communication expert, is the author of “What Everyone Should Know About Nigerian History, Politics and Government” (2017) and other books.
