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& #39;s "tolerance" was a matter of being practical, not niceness.

The attempts to keep whitewashing GEJ especially considering his successor are appalling. GEJ wasn& #39;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& #39;s mistakes.

There was nothing Ironsi did that his successors didn& #39;t do worse. The difference was that Ironsi wasn& #39;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& #39;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.