Bola Tinubu And Sani Abacha’s Ghost

 By Ugoji Egbujo

Recently, many have seen the ghost of Sani Abacha. And they have cried aloud.

After the annulment of the June 12 elections, chaos ensued. Gen Babangida stepped aside. As Shonekan’s Interim Government (ING) wobbled under the June 12 pressure, Abacha dispatched emissaries to Abiola who had dashed into exile.  Abacha promised to restore hope. Nobody should have believed him, but being credulous from hopelessness, they said he was a man of his word. They hoped Abacha would renew Hope.  Hope 93 was Abiola’s slogan.

Once Abiola’s men secured a court declaration to damage the Interim Government, Abacha pounced. He swept aside the wounded regime, dismantled lingering political structures and installed himself. Abiola’s camp was stupefied.  That wasn’t the plan. Betrayed and disconsolate, Abiola’s men fitted and the masses bristled.  Abacha’s men told them to be patient. They said Abacha would need six months to stabilize the country to restore Hope. Abiola returned from exile, wary, but hopeful. Patience yielded nothing. Abacha consolidated and grew new fangs.

Senator Tinubu was one of Abiola’s men. He was privy to the compromise.  He couldn’t stand the perfidy. The futility of hope had become certain.  Abiola and his people decided to rev up the struggle to restore democracy and freedom. On that path, a head-on collision with Abacha was unavoidable. Once deemed a coward while he lingered in exile , then a turncoat while he tried the promiscuous compromise, now he went headlong and declared himself president at Epetedo. 

Enough was enough. In his words, he had climbed the highest mountains and passed through the deepest seas to find peace, but the ‘politicians in military uniform’ were stones, deaf to reason and bereft of conscience. Abacha said enough was enough. Abiola was arrested. Tinubu, hunted,  went underground and was declared wanted. Ostensibly for treason , terrorism and terror financing. Abacha said Tinubu planned to blow up Ejigbo fuel depot.  Many other activists fled the country. Abacha  had tried to charm the Abiola brigade and civil society, he was out to crush them. 

 All through Abacha’s reign, treason was bandied,  hawked and foisted on political opponents and rights activists. It was unprecedented. Under Abacha, once a citizen was identified as a critic or political opponent of influence  and refused to yield the regime’s intimidation, he was framed with treason, and his fate became death, exile or incarceration. 

The country was littered with extra judicial murders and human rights atrocities. The police learnt crudity. Abacha’s military protectors were actively involved. They controlled the strike squad which dispensed death,  disappearances and torture. The military intelligence and the SSS, as the DSS was then known, both tormented and maimed citizens  for the regime.

Everyone, it seemed, tried to outdo the others in savagery to prove their professionalism and loyalty to the country which increasingly became synonymous with Abacha.  All the security agencies freely plumbed the depth of depravity. And with the  feral arbitrariness with which they operated, everyone was vulnerable. 

Without much fuss,  Abacha became the giver of life and death. Soon, big men, including military Generals, started to win Abacha’s lapel on their uniforms. That was how people stood on General’s  mandate. Phantom coups were fabricated. Obasanjo, Yaradua and even Diya were all later imprisoned. 

Abacha’s ghost is a scary ghost. Tinubu ought to be the perfect contrast to Abacha. The free wheeling and dealing grassroots politician who trained in Chicago and worked at Deloitte and Mobil. He is as ‘bloody’ as any civilian can be. A political associate of Sarumi and Yaradua with a ring of Adedibu’s political mentality.  The man who loves rice and ewedu, and DJ duties for fun. 

A man who  spent a good portion of his life and early fortune fighting for democracy by trying to uninstall a rugged dictatorship. Tinubu, the Muslim who married a Christian and allowed her to become a pentecostal pastor. Tinubu, the streetwise technocrat who brags about his great intellect and political savviness but finds joy in the company of the lowest. The man who loves to be called the father of modern Lagos. He should be the antithesis of Abacha.  

Abacha the taciturn man of modest intellect, who became an infantry General. Some say he never passed his promotion exams. Abacha was the no-nonsense head of state who executed Saro Wiwa while the world begged for clemency. He was not as dumb as his opponents thought. 

Under his watch, Ibru was shot, Rewane was murdered, Onagoruwa’s son was eliminated.  The killing of Kudirat Abiola was beyond demonic. When he decided to transfigure into a life president, he formed five parties and arranged thousands of youths to come to Abuja to plead with him to run for election.

Enigmatic Abacha, who looted the central bank while chasing around failed bank owners and managers. His friends still insist he was saving the siphoned monies for the country in his private accounts in Europe and America. Documents showed that he used his National Security Advisers to siphon million of dollars from the central bank almost every fortnight. His desire was to be crowned the consensus political presidential candidate by all the parties. Once Abacha’s ambitions were aborted by sudden death, Tinubu returned to cash in on his pro-democracy credentials. 

Now, Tinubu is president. Had Abacha lived, he would have become an Eyadema or Museveni or Paul Biya. Perhaps Nigerians would have been longing for a Tinubu. Because Abacha would have, while paying lip service to democracy and human rights to please the international community,  liquidated political opposition and dissent at home. Abacha would have been expected to plant one of his most servile and loquacious lackeys as the president of the Senate.  The courts would have been moulded into pliable instruments of coercion and regime preservation. 

Abacha would have entrusted the police to one of his longstanding servants. The DSS would have been spooky, distinguishing itself in the disobedience of court orders and arbitrary detentions of big and small persons to teach the nation true patriotism. Abacha would have preached  the rule of law, but the police would have had a field day combing the social media and arresting his critics and teaching them cybercrime  lessons with indefinite incarcerations as terrorism suspects. 

Perhaps Abacha would have contained the bandits and insurgents that have mushroomed across the country. Definitely, he would have used  the INEC , Police , DSS,  and thugs to score landslide victories in re-elections. Abacha would have allowed his family , friends and helped themselves with juicy coastal road contracts. Because conflicts of interest in government business wouldn’t bother him that much.  

Interestingly,  Abacha allowed student protests those days. So he might have allowed protests against bad governance, so that the international community would give him a break. But if he decided enough was enough, then he would arrest protesters and have them charged as coup plotters or terrorists. Arbitrariness was part of Abacha. 

Abacha didn’t rope in or harm the NLC. But if he felt they were becoming a nuisance, he might have planted something on them as one of his boys he did with the Alafin. He wouldn’t use one Wynne and one local Ehis. Perhaps it takes a while for the agents of the oppressors to hone their wiles and grow their claws.  Abacha had Mustapha, Omenka and many experienced others. Some of them trained in North Korea and Libya, in places where brutality and torture were studied.

Some say Abacha would have changed the anthem at some point. Perhaps, he might have reverted to the old one to feed him with nostalgia of the days when he was a boy in the military school. That’s the lifestyle of emperors. They give their fantasies life. He would have bought for himself a beautiful jet and a fabulous yacht. These are the paraphernalia of the office of a Conqueror. Generally they live large while prescribing austerity. 

Some observers say recent happenings have reminded them of Abacha. That’s scary.

*Egbujo is a commentator on public issues