Man who predicted Buhari’s return to power 30 yrs ago says he has been vindicated

In the year 2005 when the book, Nigeria: Buhari’s Boots, Babangida’s Boots , a 145-paged jeremiad of a book was published by PANZA Publishers in Owerri, not many Nigerians believed that the predictions made in the book would come to pass. Nobody took it seriously during its public presentation by Chief Jerry Alagboso in 2009 at Imo State University Auditorium.

The author, Dr Sam Iheanacho Madugba had predicted on 24th February, 1986 in his 86-line poem titled ‘Truth pooh-poohed’, that Muhammadu Buhari would come back to become the President of Nigeria and salvage the country from the forces of darkness and falsehood, economic mismanagement and misrule, represented by those who overthrew him on 27th August, 1985. This poem which appears on pages 26 – 28 says thus: This country ours/nothing good lasts/reality-facing leaders/committed to the cause of revitalization/of falsehood-infested secretariats/and economic-moribund state/bulldozed with ignominy/by agents of felony/but in utter negation/sycophantic press exults…But the incarcerated veracity/must, I trust, one day resurrect… like the First Fruit Himself.

In another 54-line poem titled, ‘I Reminisce The Ten and Eight-Moons’ which appears on page 41 and written on 2nd July,1986, and dedicated to Buhari and Idiagbon in detention together with ‘ Rebellious Patriot’ so equally dedicated, Madugba asked that he be taken back there/with the ones incarcerated on top/for the pampered ship(Nigeria)/ now wrecked/with hands of inexperience. Lines 25 -34 of the latter reads: I pledge to Nigeria/I pledge not to mischief/beclouding the faces of her chiefs/for they all liars are/wanting honey mixed with sugar/But I with those two-some lot/ behind closed door today/love a Nigeria of bitterness today/preparing to pave for posterity/a sanguine tomorrow.

The book which was copiously rejected at the 2009 launch just for the mentioning of the name, Buhari, and the fact that Dr Madugba, then serving his 5^th year of forced retirement by the Achike Udenwa Administration in Imo State, ‘’chronicled Nigeria’s march in decadence for two decades, 1979 to 2003 and compares Nigeria in the two military dictatorships of Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida and gives a pass mark to the short-lived Buhari regime and wishes that the lanky soldier-statesman-disciplinarian returns to right Nigeria destroyed by the ugly seeds sown by Babangida over eight years, the fruits of which Nigerians are harvesting in tears today’’. Still on P.104 of this unbelievably prophetic book, Madugba predicted Babangida’s ‘’ignominious exit from power’’ in a 15-line poem titled ‘Bitter Laughter’.

Madugba, a 2005 winner of the Association of Nigerian Authors’ award in poetry with his book,Nigeria: Buhari’s Boots, Babangida’s Boots, had earlier in a medical fiction( novel)  he wrote in 1985 soon after the fall of Buhari titled, The Quick Intervention, published by Pacific Publishers, Obosi in 1999, described Major-General Muhammadu Buhari in the dedication page as ‘’ the first Nigerian leader who understood the country’s problems and went about tackling them before the kite struck …’’

Dr Sam Madugba

Speaking during an interview with the Mr Ebere Inyama recently, the Imo-State-born medical doctor and human rights activist said that besides Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and Buhari, no other Nigerian leader has had the ideological philosophy for the survival and growth of Nigeria. He said he counted ‘’18 fundamental ideological philosophies in Buhari’s 18 months in power, all aimed at making Nigeria great’’

Said he, “I was 21 years old when Buhari struck. I followed his first pronouncement till he was overthrown. Then I realized that he is a messiah. The day he was overthrown, I wrote two poems, Ambition and 27th August ”. Both poems, written in his book, Apartheid: Chants of Liberation, published by Totan Press, Owerri when the author was a House Officer at the Owerri General Hospital in 1993, which equally appeared in the controversial Nigeria: Buhari’s Boots, Babangida’s Boots, openly condemned the inordinate ambition of those that overthrew his government when most Nigerians were celebrating them.

Dr Madugba, a Public Health physician, who is, at present, a Director in the Imo State Ministry of Health/Co-ordinator, School Health Services Programme, said Nigeria was not an impossible task. All that President Buhari needed to do was to carefully choose courageous, educated, disciplined and patriotic Nigerians, irrespective of their political party affiliations, religion and tribe ‘’ to help him recover the Nigeria of our dream from the dust’’.