SATIRE: Buhari’s urgent dispatch from the great beyond

Fellow Compatriots,

I would like to drop this message while my name is still fresh on your lips. Before you lay my body to rest and move on with your lives, allow me to share some reflections—my first thoughts on life and death. I know that in a few days, as the tears of those who loved me dry up and the furies of those who loathed me fade, nothing I say will matter anymore.

Let me begin by sharing the most profound truth I ever heard in life—one I stubbornly ignored:

Only the dead are truly educated.

Believe me, if you’re still alive, congratulations on being utterly clueless. You know nothing. Not a thing. You’re as oblivious as a rock. I discovered this sooner than I expected. It began before I crossed over, or as some of you say with great relish, before I kicked the bucket.

Lying on a hospital bed in London, waiting to die, I had time—perhaps too much time—to reflect. On my dying bed, they reduced me, General Muhammadu Buhari, once the most powerful man in Nigeria and all of West Africa, to a limp lab specimen. My body became a mere object in the hands of foreign medical personnel. They came and went, pricking me with needles, probing with scopes, drawing samples, scanning my brain and bones, injecting me with whatever they deemed fit. I lay like a frog surrounded by high school kids performing their first dissection experiment in biology class. I never felt a greater humiliation. At those moments, I felt like a dot in a circle. I could only pray to Allah that they meant well, hoping their efforts might buy me more time to see my grandchildren one last time. But I was utterly powerless.

Despite the hospital’s global reputation, a part of me remained wary. I was paranoid. What if a rogue staff member took my DNA, sequenced it, and cloned me in a lab off the coast of Barbados? As a former military officer and president, I knew the dark arts of global intelligence agencies. I knew some of those attending to me were CIA, KGB, M16, MSS, SVR, and GRU operatives in disguise. It haunted me. I often wondered if what they had in the syringes was unapproved medicine in the arsenal of Western mischief. But again, I was helpless. Right there, I belonged to everybody and to nobody.

You might ask, why would anyone want to clone an aged primitive African man—or, as some of you have said, “an African tyrant who admired the trappings of Western civilization but was ignorant of its tenets?” Don’t think I’m unaware of what’s been said about me. But understand this: these white people don’t think like us. They are building a future we can’t even begin to imagine. While we cling to the belief that our wives and concubines belonging to us, to the kitchen and to the other room; and look forward to our dream of paradise full of more pleasure in the afterlife, those white people are constructing their next world—brick by brick, gig by gig, one block chain by one block chain.

While I lay there, my family came to visit. I saw the fear in their eyes—not fear of where my soul might end up, but of what would happen to them after I was gone. They feared losing the privileges that came with being related to me. My presence protected them. My influence secured them. I was their ATM card, Credit Card, and Platinum Card. As long as I lived, their cards would never be declined anywhere in the world. They knew the erosion of those privileges would begin immediately after my burial. That is when the cards will expire, and they must learn to stand on their CVs. As my blood clotted, lungs collapsed, their privileges crumbled. That realization saddened me, because it meant we had failed to build a fair, just system where every citizen mattered, regardless of status or surname.

As I said, these are just preliminary observations. I assure you that occasionally, I’ll share more from this side of eternity. I assure you of that. I never wrote a memoir. I told you I wouldn’t. I chose not because I wanted to spare the children of some of the wicked men and women I encountered from the shame of their fathers’ deeds. Now I understand something more profound.

I now see that I, too, was one of those men who harmed Nigeria. I now understand. My sanctimonious pride has been stripped away—because here, in this place, everything is laid bare. No one tells you your grade—you see it for yourself. It is on a constant loop on the big screen where everyone’s good and bad deeds are on display, including those done in secret. Even our innermost thoughts are highlighted over whatever rat infestation lies we used to cover them up. And in that mirror, all your self-righteous justifications dissolve. You feel the weight of your actions as excuses are turned into dust. That’s why I’m repeating it: only the dead are educated.

Please, spare me your tears or your prayers. They won’t do a thing to change where I am and the consequences I face here. Trust me, I have asked. I don’t need your kind words, either. They are pointless. My heart has seen clearly, and the judgment has been passed, and nothing you write in your newspapers op-ed will change a thing. If you find an honor greater than GCFR and give it to me posthumously, it won’t change the dial of how hot my place is here. I don’t need streets, airports, or universities named after me. Instead of helping my situation here, such honors may infuriate these people in charge even more. Whether you place my body in a gold casket or a raffia basket, it makes no difference. Irrespective of the music the military plays at my funeral, 21-gun salute or not, it won’t change the music I face here. Whether you curse me or canonize me, I am where I am – my fate is sealed as tight as a Nigerian politician’s offshore safe-haven account in the Cayman Islands.

Since my arrival, I’ve met many of our people — the usual gang, Sardauna, Ojukwu, Abiola, Zik, Shagari, Tunde Idiagbon, Sani Abacha, Murtala Muhammed, and others. We have been trading regrets like soldiers swapping war stories. We all have no illusions about how abominably we were in the discharge of our duties. In the coming weeks, I’ll send more messages. I’ll tell you just how foolish we all were in our shallow understanding of life and leadership. As someone said on 90MinutesAfrica the other day, “we were clueless shepherds leading a flock into an abyss, armed only with ego and empty slogans.” He was so right. Like the slogan that said, “We have no other country but Nigeria. We must stay here and salvage it together.” It is a mere empty slogan from a man who ended up dying in a London hospital.

Like those before me, I didn’t know better. I chased shadows. I revered false gods. I admired mountains that were mere anthills – sometimes, just mirages. My understanding of life’s essence was a mere fragment—a hallucination. We leaders were too lazy to develop new ideas suitable for our societies, or even to use ideas that had already worked elsewhere properly.

For now, I leave you with a deep sense of regret for everyone I hurt, knowingly or unknowingly. Please accept my apology. I did not realize how little I knew, or how much I needed to know before I knew how little I know. I was the embodiment of arrogance. And I wasn’t alone—many of us were, just like many of you are over there.

We fell victim to deception. We chased frivolities and ignored our actual responsibilities. Not only did we read the wrong books—they taught us the wrong subjects. Is it any wonder we failed the exam?

The only amends I can offer now are these dispatches—occasional messages from the great beyond—tiny sparks of awareness. I assure you of that as a token of my sincere apologies.

Until next time,

I remain your humbled former president,

Muhammadu Buhari

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Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History, Afrodiasporic Literature, and African Folktales at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef” and “Children of a Retired God.” among others. His upcoming book is called “Why I’m Disappointed in Jesus.”