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I think we need to be realistic that our climate will not allow a president from a minority ethnicity to be a successful dictator, especially if they would have had to jail people from the majority ethnicities.
GEJ's "tolerance" was a matter of being practical, not niceness.
GEJ's "tolerance" was a matter of being practical, not niceness.
The attempts to keep whitewashing GEJ especially considering his successor are appalling. GEJ wasn't nice, his govt rolled out the army, closed media houses, and locked up ordinary Nigerians. But he stayed within a kind of boundary and avoided Ironsi's mistakes.
There was nothing Ironsi did that his successors didn't do worse. The difference was that Ironsi wasn't either Northern or South Western - and so his stronf arm unitary rule was regarded as an ethnocentric affront to the North. GEJ was wise to avoid that route.
GEJ could have (validly under Nigeria's bad laws) had people like El Rufai, Lai Mohammed or even Tinubu arrested and detained for years. But guess what would have happened if he did that? I leave it to your imaginations.
