I Will Tell General Sani Abacha

By Dan Amor

Sunday June 8, 2014 indubitably marked the sixteenth anniversary of the death of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most treacherous tyrant and who ranked with Agathocles and Dionysus I of Sicily, as the greatest dictators, not only of antiquity but of all time. 

*Abacha

It is true that the degree of cruelty and loathsome human vulgarity that the Abacha era epitomized is already fading into the background because of the mundane and short character of the human memory. But his timely exit ought to have been marked by Nigerians just as the United Nations marks the end of the Second World War not only for posterity but also as a thanksgiving to God for extricating us from such epoch of human misery.

Son of a Kanuri peasant farmer who rose through the rank and file to the position of an infantry General, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces through intrigues, subterfuge and power play, Abacha was something like a medieval feudal lord in grand style.  He expected loyalty from all Nigerians just as a medieval king expected it from his vassals. Rebellion against him or even criticism of his policies was considered breaking this bond of trust and was therefore punished by him in person. Having become supreme master of his monster nation and all its resources, Abacha despised all foreign nations in order to foreclose any “interference in the internal affairs” of his country. Like all true dictators, Abacha was as much a danger to his friends as to his foes.

The assassinations and outrages committed by the Abacha and gangs perfected with brutal efficiency, terrified many members of the upper class and even affected most of his followers. The unusual pathological traits so typical of most dictators emerged with special vigour in Abacha, but in accordance with his own queer personality. Unlike most other impoverished noblemen who became tyrants, Abacha, being a professional army officer, was not able to achieve his goal early enough nor did he achieve it as a revolutionary demagogue. His success was made possible by his immediate past predecessor and friend, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who once openly called him Khalifa (meaning ‘my successor’). A commentator once wryly described the difference between Babangida and Abacha as one between December 25 and Christmas Day.

*Abacha greeting his troops

Whatever that means, both demonstrated the capacity to diddle and to beguile as virtuosos of the Nigerian power game. But, while Babangida was colourful with a little dose of élan yet with a ruthless streak which lay deep beneath the toothy smile and generosity, Abacha was dour and taciturn yet summarily brutal and passionately sadistic. He presided over the most barbaric military regime in Nigeria’s chequered history. In the days of the departed evil dictator, a thick satanic cloud shot our land from the sight of the civilized world. And the voice of the hungry and powerless masses was overpowered by the intimidating din of the forces of tyranny and the echo of machine guns and bombs. We may well find a philosophical explanation as to why Nigeria came to such a sorry pass. The task of holding back, by force if necessary, the worst manifestations and most dangerous consequences of passion is entrusted to the state. This was the thought of St. Augustine, which was to be closely echoed in the sixteenth century by Calvin. Any established social and political order is justified by its very existence. Its possible injustices are just retributions for the sins of Fallen Man.

In fact, while IBB allegedly confessed being the evil genius of the Nigerian tragedy, Abacha was the tragic villain of military banditry in Nigeria. His story is that of a haunted man with his mind in the frontier of two worlds, unable either quite to reject or quite to admit the supernatural; struggling to walk on top of water without sinking, yet incapable of achievement because of his inability to understand either himself or his fellows or the real quality of the universe which had produced him. To be sure, some hints of more particular motives for Abacha’s actions are every now and then fagged up to why our society created such a monster in the first place. It could be beneficial for literary scholars to embark on a psychoanalytic study of the Abacha phenomenon, to try to trace the complex connections between the traumatic memories of his reign and certain recurring patterns of the Nigerian national question. But the nation is still detained in primitive accommodation.

Even as the feudal and religious forces which enjoy playing dice with the collective destiny of the nation are still plotting, our politicians have learned nothing and forgotten all. Winners are yet to manage their victory with magnanimity and losers their defeat with equanimity. Our politics is still that of the winner-takes-all and the loser fighting to the last drop of his blood mentality. Nigeria, I believe, is still neck – deep in the crisis. How can we avoid another Abacha or IBB or Obasanjo coming on stage in this soulless nation? It is a daunting task.

Nigeria must be restructured, and its institutions too. A system that recognizes one simply because he comes from a particular section of the country even though his intelligence quotient is far below that of a goat must be abolished in its entirety. Having done that, we must define the limit of our responsibility to the nation: who must hold power, and for how long? Nigerians need to know why their country’s history has always been that of usurpation, graft and squandermania leaving the people as the ultimate victim. Abacha’s death had brought a flood of relief that our awful blunder had played out itself. Never again must Nigeria be allowed to be overturned by such a senseless butcher.

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*Dan Amor is an Abuja-based journalist and columnist; he also contributes to   SCRUPLES. He could be reached with danamor98@gmail.com

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