President Muhammadu Buhari’s best kept secrets have been revealed by his former Aide de Camp, Major Mustapha Jokolo (retd.)…
“You see this is Buhari’s nature and if you read previous books about him, even in secondary school he was not very much the social type, unlike his other colleagues, people like Yar’Adua and co. He was always to himself and even when we were in State House he had routine that we religiously adhered to, that was from 8 O’clock breakfast and what have you and appointments, only two and on Sundays no appointments. It is for him to be with his family.”
“But if you went to Babangida’s house you found it like a market place. For Buhari, one thing he was busy doing was military duties. He was not much into this military politics in the Army. He didn’t get involved. Even at that time you had two camps, Jallo group and the Wushishi group. Jallo, all the people who operated in 2 Division like Jega, Lekwot, Rimawa they were all in Jallo’s camp but Wushishi had his own group with officers like Babangida, Aliyu Gusau and Vatsa. They were in the same camp.”
“Buhari was not in any of the camps. He was a pure military officer. He was respected for that because he didn’t dabble into politics at all. There was politics in the military at that time, but he never got involved. For instance, I was his ADC; I never had any vote. I took about 70 soldiers to Abuja, first time we went to Abuja. I didn’t have money to feed them. I ran out of money and I had to borrow N3,120 to feed them for four days. They were being fed on N2 per day, even officers, everybody was paid N2 per day.”
“Even the Head of State, his feeding as a General was N2 per day. So when we were there something interesting happened, the IG, one Calabar man, Etim Inyang wrote to Buhari that policemen were being paid N10 per day and that the amount was not enough. So I called his attention and told him that if I pass this memo you will be in trouble because they will take you to N2 per day. So you better keep quiet and take your memo back.”
– Culled from The Sun