What The Papers Say
Sunday Concord, Nigeria, September 8
An appeal to ex-detainees
It is a credit to all Nigerians that even while the Buhari regime lasted, many had the guts to oppose through diverse ways, the injustice that detention without trial for upwards of days, weeks and months represented. The press in its own modest way, and under the pressure of the now repealed Decree No. 4, did the best she could to highlight these anomalies for correction.However, it is a major credit to the Babangida administration that it did not only sweep General Buhari and Idiagbon out of office, but has started to create a climate of free expression, free association and general recourse to public discourse on major issues concerning everyone. Freedom is of course never to be treated like a privilege by any society or ruling government. But it behoves all true lovers of freedom to help foster it.
It is for the above reasons, and many more that we appeal to the ex-detainees (including those who might have missed genuine convictions only through the incompetence of the fact-finders of General Buhari's team) to desist from making unbecoming public or private utterances. We are making this timely appeal, because, some have, perhaps out of the immediate euphoria of their release, started acting not only as instant heroes, but talking as if they had no hand in the collective mess of the Second Republican experiment.
The truth still remains that the Second Republican experi- ment failed, not as a result of the failures in any one man or group of political actors, but as a result of the collective folly displayed by all of the political actors as at December 31, 1983. The 1983 election fiasco, the mismanagement of the nation's economy, and the corruption of the political system, could not have boomeranged so much as it did with the December 31, 1983 coup if any significant segment of the political ruling class of the time held on steadfastly to a high level of probity.
It would therefore, be dishonest for any ex-detainee or public office holder of the pre-Buhari era to use the mis- fortune of the Buhari insensitivity to the demands of power, to embark on another career of self-extolment or the defence of measures that were only geared to catch votes. Indeed, they need to show more appreciation to the Nigerian public who despite the calamities which their 1979-1983 reign plunged them into, still retained enough humaneness to tolerate them in society.
The debt burden, for which Nigerians are now suffering untold hardships, began after all in that period. What Nigeria needs today is for everyone to join hands with the new government in the task of building a society which will not only be free of the Buhari/Idiagbon tyrannies but will also be free of the political excesses and degenera- tion which the 1979-1983 period witnessed. Nigeria needs progress, meaningful but peaceful development, and not heroes for their own sake.
