Nigeria: Apologies For Gen. Sani Abacha

By Dan Amor

​Friday this week indubitably marks the twentieth 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 most notorious dictators, not only of the age of antiquity but of all times. He died in Abuja on June 8, 1998 as a sitting military dictator. It is true that the degree of cruelty and loathsome human vulgarity that the Abacha era epitomized is already fading into the background due largely to 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 mankind from such epoch of human misery.

*Gen Abacha 

Abacha emerged as head of state from the ashes of the June 12 crisis. The General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida military administration had annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election with a clear winner. It was the most placid election ever conducted in the annals of our country. The contest was between Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the billionaire business mogul, Chief MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Abiola was coasting to victory when the Babangida military regime halted the announcement of the election result superintended by the Professor Humfrey Nwosu-led National Electoral Commission. The Federal Government eventually announced the annulment of the result on June 23, 1993. This action triggered a violent protest especially in the South West which led to Babangida stepping aside.

Before he departed Aso Villa in a hurry, Babangida appointed Chief Ernest Shonekan who was then Chairman of United African Company (UAC) of Nigeria as head of the contraption called the Interim National Government. Shonekan was toppled in a palace coup on November 17, 1993 by Gen. Abacha. But Chief Abiola insisted on reclaiming his mandate which was freely given to him by the Nigerian people. The event led to the arrest and detention of Abiola by Abacha, the assassination of Kudirat Olayinka, his irrepressible wife and the crippling of his business empire including his Concord Group of Newspapers. Under Abacha's draconian rule, several independent-minded Nigerians were either killed, detained or driven into self exile in foreign lands. The press was gagged as several media houses were proscribed. It was suffocating living in Nigeria then as it was even declared a pariah state by the international community. Abacha was indeed a demented iron-fisted despot.

​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 killer gang 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 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.

​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 elan yet with a ruthless streak which lay deep beneath the toothily 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 shut 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 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 mess. How can we avoid another Abacha or IBB coming on stage in this soulless nation? It is a daunting task. Indeed, the study of the Abacha tragedy and the current murderous fantasy the country is writhing in under the Buhari presidency reveals a compelling and traumatic hangover of the far North's pursuit of total domination of Nigeria and the catastrophic consequences of its continuity. We all have now seen the real motives for the far North's unrelenting quest for power and political control even when it brings nothing to the table. Yet, how do we come out of this terrible mess? How do we extricate the country from the jaws of pro-establishment Sharks intent on annihilating the unity and peace that cost us a 30 month devastating civil war in which more than two million people were killed?

​Nigeria must be restructured, and its institutions too. A system that recognizes one simply because one comes from a particular section of the country even though one's 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 mass killings, 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. We may have to ponder on the postulation of Ernst Mayr, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, that the human form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be smart than to be stupid." Never again must Nigeria be allowed to be overturned by such a senseless butcher who looted over $7billion from Nigeria to foreign banks yet eulogized at home by Buhari, our sitting president. Never! Never!! Never!!!

*Amor, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja