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Everybody except Ibrahim
Babangida and his hangers-on knew that his
foray into the 2011 presidential race was
bound to come to grief. In the history of
Nigeria, few individuals are as passionately
loathed and distrusted as the toothy retired
general. In fact few Nigerians would buy a
used car from the man who misruled Nigeria
for eight years. Babangida in his prime was
bad news; so bad those in decent circles you
might be told to rinse your mouth with
disinfectant for mentioning his name. Now he
wants to be our ‘Northern’ president – what
a sorry climb-down for a man who once
derived his powers from the barrel of the
federal gun!
Admittedly, it would have been odd if the
zoning/consensus hoax orchestrated by Adamu
Ciroma had not featured a Babangida. The
contest was not about integrity; no one, not
even Ciroma, ever said it was. So he
insulted the nation with a list of men with
putrid baggage. Till date, Babangida is yet
to answer questions on the murder of Dele
Giwa; Nigerians have simply refused to
forget the blood curdling dismemberment of
the fiery journalist. That killing signified
the point at which this country turned the
corner and introduced bombing as a means of
‘deleting’ perceived opponents. We have
since witnessed that style of elimination on
the world stage. The suicide bombers of the
Middle East and the latter-day ‘militants’
of our Niger Delta region ought to be sued
for infringing on someone’s patent for
inventing the novel tool for separating the
human body from its spirit.
Before Babangida overthrew his boss,
Mohammadu Buhari and declared himself
military president and commander-in-chief,
looting of public funds used to be in the
thousands with the occasional millions –with
the possible exception of the $2.8 billion
NNPC funds saga which came to light during
the Shagari regime but which the Irikefe
tribunal eventually declared as ‘not
missing’ without telling us from whose
account it had been retrieved. But during
the Babangida years, looting was a
government policy. The regime was noted for
offering its opponents two options: (a)
Accept a fat bribe and toe our line – in the
parlance of the day, let us ‘settle’ you; or
(b) check your dictionary for the meaning of
apocalypse. From that wind of executive
brigandage the twin evils of looting and
killing have grown in leaps and bounds.
In
the 50 years of Nigeria’s existence, the
Babangida regime recorded the highest
peacetime casualty rate of Nigerian military
officers and men, many of them through coup
plots, real or phantom. No one would easily
forget how Babangida authorized the
execution of his cerebral colleague and
friend, Major-General Mamman Vatsa even as
he was assuring a delegation of writers led
by Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe that his
government would temper ‘justice’ with
‘mercy’.
Courtesy of his profligacy and subversive
generosity, Babangida bought a coterie of
praise singers who cheered him as he dealt
the death blow to our economy and devalued
the Naira repeatedly to fund his many phony
schemes. One of those schemes was the
elaborate scam disguised as a democratic
transition programme but which was actually
a grand 419 scam masterminded by the
military president himself and culminating
in his treacherous annulment of the June 12
1993 elections won by MKO Abiola. As can be
confirmed on hundreds of websites on the
subject (including the celebrated site,
againstbabangida.com), Babangida thereafter
crept like the coward that he actually is,
to his lavishly furnished mansion on the
hilltop of Minna from where he looks down on
the squalor and destruction his hand had
wrought below.
The
tragedy of it all was that Babangida was an
immensely gifted man, so gifted that he
would probably have made a success of
starring in Hollywood movies. He charmed you
with smiling dishonesty and was so unctuous
in persuading you to dig your own grave that
you actually look forward to the task. Some
analysts have described Babangida as a bad
leader. I say NO. Babangida was worse than
bad; he was evil. And nothing has happened
since his disgraceful exit from power to
show anyone that he has changed course. If
anything, we can see clearly that on the eve
of his 70th birthday he is a very
bitter man totally demystified, naked and
desperate. The outcome of the 419 consensus
arrangement gored and disemboweled him. He
is prepared to fire on all cylinders to
bring the shop down if he is not allowed to
run the till.
Nigeria has moved beyond Babangida. His
generation thrived on playing brother
against brother, pitching one part of the
country against another. His time is up.
Babangida was military president for eight
years during which he prevented Igbos from
assuming the office of the Chief of Army
Staff. Indeed he disgraced Commodore Ebitu
Ukiwe out of office for that officer’s
principled stance on protocol. To please
Abacha, Babangida sacrificed Ukiwe. Now that
President Jonathan has appointed an Igbo man
as COAS, Babangida
is telling Igbos that if elected
president he will hand over to an Igbo man
in 2015. He must think Igbos are dumb. The
same kind of lies he told as a young man of
forty-something is what he is still
parroting at 69. Since he has chosen to
continue inflicting his malodorous presence
in the public space, it is in order if we
tell him how much he stinks.
Insha Allah, Babangida will never be a
democratically elected president of Nigeria.
We who have survived his first coming owe it
to those who didn’t to hold this man
accountable for his sins for we know that
even if he gets away without sanction in
this world, he would have to answer to the
Unmade Maker who takes no bribes at the end
of the day.
To
show how valueless the Babangida brand has
become, he was defeated in the 419 consensus
race by a political pariah who is yet to
tell us the full story about his involvement
in the PTDF scandal and the Jefferson
bribery scandal in the USA. Atiku’s friend
and alleged comrade in crime, Congressman
Jefferson is serving a jail term in America
while Atiku wants to be our next president!
Both
men are adept at scare mongering and mass
hysteria. They delude themselves, however.
Nigeria will not break up on account of a
thousand
Babantikus. They have divided Nigerians
in the past; never again. Although Nigerians
are unfairly seen as generally corrupt by
outsiders, those of us who toil day and
night know that majority of Nigerians are
good people. And it is precisely because the
good outnumber the bad that we shall soon
see the total eclipse of characters like
Babangida and Atiku.
I do
not believe that Adamu Ciroma meant well for
Nigeria by arranging an ethnic consensus
candidate. The charade was not about the
North. It was about protecting the interests
of a few gluttons. Mrs. Sarah Jibril who
offered herself to be screened was
ignominiously cast aside because in the
definition of the Ciromas of this world,
Sarah Jibril is a woman, a Christian, a
minority – and therefore not qualified to
represent the ‘North’.
In
the same arrogant manner, they say that
President Jonathan is from a minority tribe
and therefore not fit to lead Nigeria.
Apparently, according to Ciroma, it is okay
for the rest of Nigeria to share the oil
money flowing from the Niger Delta but it is
not acceptable for somebody from that region
to rule the country!
Ciroma could not find any Northerner in the
mould of Namadi Sambo, Attahiru Jega, Lamido
Sanusi, or Nuhu Ribadu to sponsor. He had to
invade the cemetery of PDP has-beens and dig
up putrid political cadavers to foul the
political space. The Ciroma generation has
been left stranded by the locomotive of
Time. Their analogue machinations in the
face of digital variables make them a sorry
sight.
Babangida can’t offer anything new except
open tribalism. He has a hefty war chest to
fund his futile propaganda and load the
pockets of guttersnipes like Kassim Afegbua
to foul the air. Now, that is a masterstroke
– a failed general teaming up with a
complete nonentity, name dropper and
ill-bred mendicant. Some slaves will riot if
you try to undo their chains!
Babangida reminds me of the tortoise. When
the tortoise was going to the market, he was
asked by neighbors: “Tortoise, when shall
you return from the market?”
Swinging his ugly head he replied, “Not
until I’ve been disgraced….”
Istifanus H. Yau (istiyau@gmail.com)
writes from Abuja
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