By Dan Amor
To live on this sinful earth for 80 years (whether it is original or official age) is no mean achievement, especially in these terrible times when conditions have sapped real life out of comparative existence leaving the average lifespan of a Nigerian at just 55. But here is General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (retd.) celebrating 80 years with pomp and pageantry in the midst of family members, friends, associates, former colleagues and country men and women. Since Tuesday August 17, his date of birth, Nigerians from all walks of life have paid tributes to this former military President, from varied perspectives.
It is only natural that we greet such a human dynamo with overwhelming gusto. Happy 80th birthday anniversary to General Babangida. I have read big, meaty, skillfully conceived and carefully executed tributes to the gap-toothed former maximum ruler, constantly relating them to the larger story. Some have treated his story with compassion and with a critical probing pen and have achieved brilliantly their aim of following Babangida’s long journey out of the innocence of his turbulent years. Yet, since men must do their work in warmer temperatures, cold light may not be a sufficient condition for the study of men’s lives.
Bookmakers call him the Maradona of Nigerian politics. For he
dribbles with crafty fanaticism and zestful mien like the late legendary
Argentine football star, Diego Armando Maradona. But in an interview with TELL
Magazine, he called himself the “evil genius”, who thinks he is too smart and
too intelligent not to indulge in the starry-eyed notion of self-immolation,
since he is gifted with the machinations of evil. Yet, as a maximum sadist
whose life thrives on the surreal or its fringes, Babangida the erstwhile
dictator who ruled Nigeria for eight years still relishes controversy. In spite
of his eight-year reign adjudged as having ended in a historic fiasco, the
General is said to have rewritten recent Nigerian history even at 80. Read his
elaborate interviews with the media and juxtapose them with what happened between
1985 and 1993, to understand our point of departure.
This saga, verging on the bazaar, and which would have made
Albert Camus, the celebrated modern master of the absurd genre, green with
envy, should not astound Nigerians already shocked to the nerves by the sheer
absurdity of these terrible times of Buhari’s mis-governance. Here is a
gentleman whose eight year reign not only approximates to a plague and a
scourge but is still being perceived as an incubus under which we are smarting.
Indeed, in spite of the miasma he arouses, in spite of his widespread
unpopularity, especially in the South West and in spite of the bitterness
towards what most Nigerians see as his baleful legacy, Babangida who annulled
the most placid election in the country’s annals has granted interviews to the
media on his 80th birthday to rewrite Nigerian history in the evening of his
life. Two factors are said to have spurred and galvanized his life. Astutely
concerned about his place in history, the man who invented Nigeria’s adversity and
barbarism in the face of growing global enlightenment, is ironically crusading
for historical relocation but cannot own up to his immense atrocities. And this
is not new.
His numerous “settlement” schemes and the vending binge of public property at give-away prices to influential Nigerians are thought to be devices to buy over the people’s loyalty, lull and deaden their sense of outrage at his excesses and pave way for his perpetual domination of the political landscape. An index of his desire to govern in perpetuity is said to be the unusual umbrage the former military president took at a report filed to the erstwhile National Defense and Security Council, NDSC, by a former naval bigwig. The officer, along with other compliant generals who were shortly after General Sani Abacha’s demonic seizure of power, asked by the then NDSC members to feel the pulse of military officers in various formations and to find out whether continued military rule was desirable in the aftermath of Chief M.K.O. Abiola’s electoral victory. The conclave of educated military officers in Lagos was not only vehemently opposed to a continued military rule, it spoke in tones that verged on the unusually impudent.
When asked about his assessment of the situation, the naval
chieftain who led the group was said to have told General Babangida: “the boys
are not only asking us to go, they are saying we should run!” A few days after,
to his consternation, his retirement was announced on radio and television.
When he sought to know what informed his precipitate retirement, General
Babangida was reported to have said: “Well, you said the boys want us to run.
Perhaps, it’s time you started.” So anguished at his failures was Babangida
that he was reported to have broken down and wept, wondering ruefully at how
history would view his tenure. This is exactly what has happened since last
week.
Twenty eight years after the annulment of the June 12, 1993
presidential election, Babangida still speaks in tongues and nobody understands
his hyperbole. In fact, the late Prof. Omo Omoruyi, one of the intellectual
jesters who authored the now infamous “stepping aside” speech is said to have
mollified and assuaged the former dictator’s sense of grief almost to no avail.
General Babangida is also concerned about how a successor to the coveted throne
who is not amenable to him would view him. He is said to dread the prospects of
the advent of a successor who would not want to do his bidding. His fear is
that such a ruler would either lacerate his legacy or subject the inequities of
his tenure to close scrutiny.
Even while he feigned to be transiting to “democracy” under one
of the costliest political transitions in the world, Babangida reportedly lured
many a presidential candidate from his cocoon and provided him ready cash. He
succeeded in doing this by giving the impression that a presidential ambition
announced by such gentlemen would invest the transition programme with enough credibility.
No sooner had such personages indicated serious commitment than he erected
obstacles on their path. One of the most painful damages Babangida did to the
corporate existence of Nigeria is taking the nation to the Organization of
Islamic Countries (OIC) thus undermining the secular paradigm that undergird
Nigeria from inception. It is this baleful legacy that General Muhammadu Buhari
is capitalizing on to want to Islamize a country of diverse religions like
Nigeria. Given the odds against him – the bitterness, the hatred and the
disdain he inspires, it would seem that his attempt to rewrite Nigeria’s
history, is akin to swimming against the tide. But Babangida still has
supporters and a sturdy bulwark.
He is said to be counting on his huge resources said to be in
the region of billions in hard currency to draw support from Nigerians to
rewrite our history. With such an outlay and with a generous budget against the
backdrop of massive poverty among Nigerians, the General hopes to distribute
his largesse (a tendency he is adept at) to curry the favour of Nigerians to
agree with him to pave way for his son to join the reactionary faction of the
ruling class and to become president much later. But Nigerians harbour no fear
about Babangida’s enormous questionable wealth. They are no fools. They would
be educated enough to collect back what was taken from their national treasury.
Yet they are generally chattered at the sorry state in which the nation is
today. Although Nigeria has been turned into a pariah state in which subsidized
illiteracy is now part of an elaborate power game, Nigerians will no longer
tolerate barely educated murderers to toy once more with the collective destiny
of the nation.
Babangida’s sundry excesses and the annulment of the June 12
presidential election, will continue to haunt him like ghouls in a nightmare.
So also shall the ghosts of General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua who died like a rat in
Abakaliki prison and Chief Abiola, who had been reduced to dust by the venomous
conspiracy of the Evil Genius and his late Khalifa, General Abacha. But if he
still doesn’t want to repent, as we have seen in his 80th anniversary
interviews, since, as they say, all manner of knives are invited to an
elephant’s funeral, let him continue. Babangida must know that without genuine
expiation of sin, it is impossible to get atonement. Such are the intractable
apologies for a man who had the rare opportunity to right all the wrongs of the
country but failed to do so due largely to ethnic jingoism. There are the
apologies a traumatized nation has to offer a man whose guile and cunning have
triggered her agonizing trip to Golgotha.
*Amor, a public Affairs analyst writes from Abuja (danamor641@gmail.com)
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