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The β€˜Buhari Reporter’ Note.

My very first major news break after the New Nigerian hired me in Aug. 1982 was to report Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Jos

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My very first major news break after the New Nigerian hired me in Aug. 1982 was to report Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Jos. He was visiting his old base after he had been made Head of State after the December 31 coup d’etat that overthrew President Shehu Shagari’s government.
Before then, Buhari was the General Officer Commanding [GOC], 3 Armoured Division, Nigerian Army. It was headquartered at Rukuba, few kilometers outside Jos. He was returning to officially take leave of the officers and men of the division.

Malam Mohammed, my news editor then, called me to his desk one evening. He took some time before saying what it was that made him send for me. At first, he didn’t look me in the face, which was something unusual.

He was pulling out one drawer after another as though looking for a misplaced story. But what would a big story be doing in a drawer, I wondered. It should be right there on his editing board in front of him! β€œTawey,” he called finally. β€œI’m sending you to Jos to report the Head of State’s visit. You will leave this evening. Get baba Abass, the driver and start off right away.” β€œBut there is a reporter in” Jos …,” I stammered in weak protest.

Bomoi, the index finger raised to his mouth, and making the shhhhhh keep-quiet sound, said matter-of-factly, β€œYes, that I know but I’m sending you anyway. Go to Accounts and get some money for your trip.” That said, his eyes dropped down to his table, meaning I was dismissed.

I headed out of the building to the spot where I knew Abass would be and told him about the journey to Jos. Then I proceeded to Accounts where I got money for fuel for the Editorial Dept car and hotel lodging for myself. Abass would not leave his car for anything.

The trip to Jos took two hours. Abass was a slow driver, deliberately slow to prevent an accident, he told me. While at the steering, he kept up a steady conversation in Hausa. He was a receptacle of humour and he kept me amused all the way, so much so that the journey seemed quicker than I had imagined.

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In Jos we asked for direction to Rukuba Barracks. We arrived in time for the reception ceremony. When it was over, we headed back into the city and there began a search for the New Nigerian office.

We met a young photo journalist Andrew Orolua, who offered me his writing table. I did my story and handed it over to him to send by radio to Kaduna head office while Abass and I rolled back on the road to base. Buhari and his entourage returned to Lagos in the plane that brought them.

Few months later, around March 1984, Buhari flew into Kaduna on a working visit. Again, my news editor pointed to Tawey. β€œYou’re aware the head of state will be arriving tomorrow on a state visit.

You’ll cover his engagements. Make the usual arrangement.” Buhari arrived Kaduna the next day. I trailed his convoy to Zonkwa, south of Kaduna, where a special farm produce fair had been set up in his honour.

The fair ground was crowded and Buhari was installed on a high wooden platform. From there he descended to inspect the food stalls. He entered one after the other, examining the different categories of produce. Done, he headed for Kwoi, the town from where Mr.

Tanko Kokwain hailed. He was one of the senior aides Buhari had appointed as the managing director of New Nigerian Newspapers Limited. We all crammed into the grounds of the sprawling compound. Buhari made a brief speech and barely touched the buffet prepared for him before taking off.

In another one month or two, Buhari would be back in Kaduna State, but this time in his hometown Daura. He would be relaunching Nigeria’s anti-desertification and re-afforestation campaign, a so called green belt to stop the southward advance of the Sahara desert. Again, Buhari was going to fly in from Lagos and return in late evening of the same day.

Again, it was Tawey and Abass the news editor turned to. We drove from Kaduna to Katsina all evening, arriving few minutes after 10 pm. In Katsina, we found no hotel accommodation. We drove to Katsina Motel, also fully booked. Abass found a parking space for the car. That was where we passed the night – in the car with singing mosquitoes for company. The following morning, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, we washed our faces and took the road to Daura an hour ahead of the head of state’s convoy of cars.

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Thirty minutes later, we were in the town, already brimming with visitors. Shortly, Buhari arrived, heading straight for tree planting on the outskirts of the town. There was a barbecue prepared for the visitor who seemed in a hurry to return to Dodan Barracks, Lagos.

I told Abass and the photographer Luka Nayan who had accompanied us, we needn’t be in a haste to leave town. We drove back to Katsina and took a hotel room just outside the city wall. It was a Friday and Saturday was my rest day. We returned to Kaduna Sunday afternoon, my story ready.

My last coverage of Buhari before his overthrow by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida in August 1985, was again in Kaduna, where he was billed to oversee an army drill codenamed β€œOperation Ruwan Zafi [Operation Hot Water]. Held in a valley outside Kachia, where the Army’s armoury was located, it was a battle field simulation.

Troops massed around in formation, tanks rolled on, emitting fire and combat jets took over the skies. It was a spectacle to behold. Nobody who watched the nation’s show of power would fail to be impressed. At the end of it, everyone left, confident that they had a country well capable of fending off enemy attacks. Regrettably, that was to be the last of it.

I wasn’t to report on Buhari again, until almost a decade later. When Gen. Sani Abacha became head of state in Aug. 1993, he set up a Petroleum Trust Fund [PTF] in 1995 and named Buhari as the head. It was given a hefty portion of oil money [N65 billion, I heard] to rebuild the nation’s crumbling social infrastructure. PTF, in short, was Abacha’s idea of β€˜peoplizing’ governance.

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PTF built roads in urban centres and distributed PTF stamped textbooks to schools and drugs to hospitals across the country. Buhari was the chairman and a certain reverend gentleman from Edo state vice chairman. The Fund did some pretty good work, still many criticized it as doing too much for the North and too little for South. Just about the same time that Buhari became the PTF head, I was moved from Lagos to head New Nigerian’s Abuja office.

I decided to take PTF as my beat, not least because Buhari was there. I covered it until 2000 when newly elected President Olusegun Obasanjo disbanded it. Again, Buhari and I went our separate ways, our paths not to cross again until 2008. Then I had left New Nigerian to edit a private newspaper, Peoples Daily, in Abuja. One day, I received an invitation from Arewa Media Forum to join a team that was to interview Buhari.

A rare opportunity offered by a man who detested press interviews as if they were a plague. It was facilitated by his personal assistant of many years, Mal. Ya’u. It took place at a house somewhere in Kaduna’s GRA. The interview lasted close to two hours and as it wore on, it emerged that this was a β€œman more sinned against than sinning.”

He was bitter that he had not received a Kobo of his military pension since his overthrow and vehicles he was promised were never delivered. But typically, he never complained.

The interview came a year after his second failed attempt at the presidency but he would go on to be elected president in his 4th attempt in 2015 and was reelected in 2019. That interview turned out to be my last reporting on Buhari. Whatever has a beginning has an end, they say. True, but not for me this time.

I couldn’t bring my reporting of Buhari to an end. My one regret. Anyway, my last line: Immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, who last Sunday died in London, was buried Tuesday in his birthplace Daura.

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