Buhari Set To Solve Problems Of Igbo, Yoruba, Others

A former National Publicity Secretary of the National Democratic Party, Kenny Martins, in an interview reveals how the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and General Buhari resolved their differences arising from the 1985 coup. He also speaks about General Buhari’s leadership abilities which he believes will solve many knotty problems in the country – the Apapa/Oshodi tanker drivers’ menace, for instance.

Kenny Martins as the former chairman of the Police Equipment Foundation (PEF),
for the first time reveals the details of a controversy that brought embarrassment to Nigeria and how it was discovered to be nothing more than scheme in high places to hijack the Foundation.

Speaking about elections in 2011 and 2015, Martins admitted “some of his friends poked fun at him in 2011 when he voted for Buhari, alleging that he were just wasting his vote because they were sure Buhari would not win”. “I voted for him again in this election because he is someone I know personally and I can vouch for his honour and integrity. Everybody around me knew where I stood. I’m saying this now so that Nigerians can appreciate that they have a good leader,” he added.

Excerpts:

We cannot discount the concession made by Jonathan. This is the first time a loser would willingly concede at the presidential level.

Let me salute President Jonathan. I told those closest to President Jonathan and I made it clear to them that whether Jonathan wins or loses, he would still have been a winner – if he had won, he would be ruling Nigeria for 10 years; if he had lost as it has now happened and he concedes as he has done, he would also be making history. This election is significant in many ways that some people are appreciating it.

Two things: How did you meet General Buhari?; then this talk about heroism and democracy.


After he was released from detention, I was involved in instigating a sort of party for him at Obasanjo’s farm. You asked if I’ve seen some people cry yes, I have seen leaders close to tears.

There was this day I woke up and at the four corners of my room I saw four heads. This was after we had bungled June 12 and Abacha had taken over – that too is part of the book I’m writing. I saw Obasanjo with a sword, General Yar’Adua with a sword, General Abacha and General Diya and they were fighting and there was blood everywhere. It was like a vision. The only person I could call was Justice Mamman Nasir, the Galadinma of Malumfaci, a nationalist. He was then the deputy chairman of the National Confab.

Justice Nasir confirmed to me that some Islamic clerics from Mali or somewhere were around some days earlier and they said thesame thing that these men were going to be engaged in a bitter war that could break this country. He suggested we call a meeting of past heads of state and their deputies and work out a transition programme for the Abacha administration and that programme would be worked into the conclusions of the Confab report. He also said Obasanjo would sell the programme internationally and Yar’Adua, as the biggest politician in Nigeria, would sell the idea locally and there would be peace in the country.

When I met Buhari, he refused to be part of the meeting because of the role he alleged Yar’Adua played in the coup that ousted his regime. He took time to explain to me that the boys arranged their coup, decided with Yar’Adua’s knowledge to make him head of state, and when they felt they did not like what he was doing – which by the way he believed he was doing the right thing – they ought to have called him quietly and he would have relinquished power; not to embarrass him the way they did, sent him to detention, messed up his family. So Buhari said with Yar’Adua, he would not be part of any such meeting.

I went back to Yar’Adua and told him what I’d heard. Believe me, General Yar’Adua was almost moved to tears. He admitted that he was wrong and said he would make amends. I reported back to Justice Nasir.


There and then a meeting was scheduled for the palace of the late Emir of Kano, with some first class emirs in attendance and that was where they brokered the peace between Yar’Adua and Buhari. That was when I knew that here was a man of peace. He didn’t want the past to haunt him.

How true is the claim that it was a former First Lady, Mrs. Maryam Abacha, who brought president-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari, into politics?

Incidentally, this again, forms part of the book I am writing, ‘The Nigerian project, My Testimony’. One critical area is the issue of General Buhari’s involvement in politics. It is something that has to be considered from many fronts and diverse angles. I do not believe that Madam Abacha brought General Buhari into politics.

Buhari chaired the first pan-Yoruba, pan-South and pan-Nigerian meeting; the meeting held in Arewa House, traditional residence of the Sardauna of Sokoto. It was a historical meeting which is what has given us the democratic latitude we have today which allowed General Buhari to emerge on the platform of APC. That is why I said he was a beneficiary of something he was involved in at the beginning. Nobody knows how God works. It is beyond man’s understanding. You can start a process, but you may not know how it will end. So, I went to Baba Adesanya, by this time, there were already issues in AD. Bola Ige was already threatening to pull out of AD. Baba Adesanya and Afenifere were almost out in the cold. So, I told him why the party was going to break was because they made it a regional party.


If you had stayed at the national level, you won’t have this problem you are having because it would have become a bigger party by reason of others that would have come in and you would have diffusion of tendencies’. I told him this is what I will do. ‘I am going to meet Chief Awoniyi’. By this time, Chief Awoniyi had been thrown out of the PDP. I went to his residence. I told him Paul Unongo and others will come to meet him. I went with Professor Nwabueze to the leader of Ohanaeze, Dr Joe Irukwu, we all met at different times and they all took a decision that there was a need to widen the political space in the country.

We should not be restricted to PDP which now became what it is now. We should not all be in AD. We all needed a platform where there would be no issues. Senator Dafinone, Albert Horsefall, many leaders from the South- South, we all met at different times at the residence of Chief Abraham Adesanya. Then we all agreed on a date where the Niger-Delta, as represented by Dafinone, the Yoruba, as represented by Adesanya, Dr. Ghali, Opadokun who played a prominent role in this move, would meet at Chief Abraham Adesanya’s residence.

We now fixed a meeting for Arewa House, Kaduna. A night to the meeting, Dr Ghali, on his own initiative, said he was going to call General Buhari to chair the meeting. So, we went to the man and challenged him on the realities on ground, we believed he was the man the country and world could listen to. General Buhari was the chairman of the meeting the following day where leaders of this country met. I don’t want to go into details of what efforts government did to make sure the meeting did not hold including blocking the road from Abuja leading to the venue of the meeting. But the meeting held.

At the end of the day, there was a communiqué demanding more political parties because we have the constitutional right and no restriction should be placed on anybody. This was the beginning of the formation of those parties because after that meeting by the peoples of this country, we then had to come a step lower to the peoples leaders and then go to the politicians. I went to Alhaji Balarabe Musa in Kaduna, Chief Gani Fawehinmi in Lagos.

I met these political leaders to invite them to Abuja. The people had spoken. Let us put substance to the pronouncement and that was how the first meeting was held courtesy of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) and we demanded for more political parties. But, government said no, so, we ended up in court. That was how government allowed us. But we had to start another fight on the need to register more parties. We went to Abuja before the INEC had to now register 13 more parties.

Today, those parties are what you called ACN, DPP, CPC and things like that and General Buhari has become the president on the platform of one of those parties which he chaired where the peoples of Nigeria pronounced the formation of more parties.

That was 2000/2001. So when Mrs. Abacha said she brought General Buhari to politics, maybe she didn’t have the benefit of these developments to know what happened.

That problem you people appear helpless about in Apapa should not be a problem for Buhari.
When he was PTF Chairman, he called me one day and said he was going to do something about the flooding problem on that road.
This was a man in Abuja. Before now, the problem of that road, from the Coconut area towards Mile 2, was flooding. He mentioned the names of the area and I was wondering how he knew the place with such accuracy. He said he would – and he actually did it – do a big drainage that would evacuate the water from that Coconut axis straight down to the canal at Mile 2. It was a PTF project. The drainage was done that time and it solved the flooding problem.