|
Babangida, the man who re-engineered
Nigeria-
By
Mohammed Haruna Wed Aug17,2011
General
Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (GCFR), aka IBB, aka Maradona (of
Nigeria’s politics), former army chief and former self-styled
military president of Nigeria (August 27, 1985 to August 27
1993) is 70 today.
When, as army
chief, the man ousted his boss, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari,
in a palace coup 26 years ago, he promised in one of his early
broadcasts that he was going to be a bold leader, bolder than
any we have seen before. He would, he said, rather go down in
History as a leader who took the wrong decision than one who
procrastinated.
Twenty six
years on few Nigerians, I am sure, would dispute the fact that
the man kept his word on both the domestic and external fronts.
As I argued nearly twelve years ago on these pages, no Nigerian
leader has sought to change the face of the country’s politics
and socio-economy in as thoroughgoing way as Babangida. Whether
he succeeded or failed in his attempt was, as I said, a matter
for debate. Few, however, could dispute the fact that his
eight-year rule had become a defining period of Nigeria’s
history.
Here I’ll
like to reproduce much of what I said about the man in the
article in question published in
Daily Trust of
November 1, 2000 and The
Comet (The Nation’s
precursor) of the same date, because what I said at the time is
as valid today as it was then. The article was a review of a
well attended and well publicized symposium by The Open Press
Limited in Jos in mid October 2000 which was in assessment of
the man’s regime.
The most
definitive proof of Babangida’s unsurpassed boldness, I said in
the piece, was President Olusegun Obasanjo himself who, before
his second coming as Nigeria’s leader, was the severest critic
of Babangida, bar possibly the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi.
“Many years
after condemning Babangida’s
economic policies of privation and deregulation as
lacking a human face,” I said, “he adopted them lock stock and
barrel, the major difference being that he seems to be doing
worse than Babangida in implementing them.
“As for
politics, not only has Obasanjo been a willing beneficiary of
Babangida’s creed of the two party tendency, ha has hardly
indicated any desire to deregulate party formation so that we
can become a multi-party system, even if only in principle –
something which he could do by initiating a bill that would
remove INEC’s power to register political parties using stiff,
if not impossible, guidelines.
“The
fact that seven years after Babangida ‘stepped aside’
we still conduct our politics and socio-economics in the
mould he had set, makes it justified for him to claim at the end
of the Jos symposium that he had indeed ‘re-engineered Nigeria’.
“This claim
has, predictably become a matter for scorn among many analysts
and much of the press for whom Babangida has become a, if not
the, favourite whipping boy...Those who pour scorn on
Babangida’s claim to have re-engineered Nigeria fall into at
least two categories. First, there are those who concede that
Babangida did indeed re-engineer Nigeria but they insist that in
doing so he left Nigeria worse off and therefore he has no moral
right to boast about his re-engineering feat. Second, there are
those who argue that Babangida did re-engineer Nigeria for good
and things would have remained so but for his seemingly
unpardonable crime of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections
which his friend Chief M.K.O. Abiola looked set to win.
“Analysts can
debate the merits of these two schools of thought till Thy
Kingdom Come. For me, however, whereas the first has some
justification, the second is merely based on sentiment and
little or no logic at all. No one, not even Babangida, can
dispute the fact that SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme, the
centre-piece of his economic policy) was bound to inflict, and
did indeed inflict, pain on Nigerians. That was why programmes
like the National Directorate of Employment, NERFUND, Peoples
Bank, DIFFRI, etc were created to lessen the pains. Even then
those programmes hardly achieved their objectives.
“However, to
dwell on the pains alone and ignore the potential of Babangida’s
economic policies to turn things around is not only
short-sighted, it completely misses the point that his
Structural Adjustment Policy was merely a necessary but not
sufficient condition for things to actually turn around. I am a
critic of the IMF-type SAP which seeks to impose completely
unregulated market forces on Third World countries when
elementary economics suggests quite clearly that no economy, not
even United States’, the mother of capitalism, is completely
unregulated and without a huge public sector.
“However, the
inefficiency of and the corruption in most Third World public
sectors, including Nigeria’s, is such that no development can
possibly take place without deregulating it to a great extent
and making the private sector to take over its role of being the
engine of development.
“Babangida
was, of course, not the first to see this point. He was,
however, the first Nigerian leader to have had the courage to do
something about it. If, in showing this courage, Babangida had
succeeded in spreading the burdens of SAP among the rich, the
middle class and the poor rather than restrict the sacrifice
largely to the middle class and the poor, he probably would have
been able to secure the long term support his policies needed to
succeed. Thus he probably would have been saved the SAP riots of
1989 which provided an excuse for the bloody coup attempt of
1990, which in turn made him too paranoid to give matters of
state, as opposed to his self-preservation, the priority he had
accorded it up till then.
“Yes,
Babangida’s SAP, like IMF’s SAP that it resembled somewhat, may
have left Nigerians worse off than they were, but the same SAP
given a human face was a necessary condition for turning things
around. Surely Babangida deserved credit and not vilification
for having the courage to embark on it. Chances are, if he had
not embarked on it 14 years ago, bad as things are today, they
would have been a hell lot worse.
“Now, whereas
the argument that Babangida should not boast about
re-engineering Nigeria because it inflicted a lot of pain on
Nigerians has some justification, the argument that whatever
good resulted from his re-engineering feat was annulled by his
annulment of June 12, 1993 election has little or no merit. The
reverse of this argument is that if Babangida had allowed the
election to stand all his other perceived sins would have been
forgiven if not forgotten. How the irrationality of this
argument would escape the many otherwise intelligent people who
make it, never ceases to amaze me.”
Next to his
annulment of “June 12” probably his worst crime in the eyes of
his many critics was his alleged complicity, at the least, in
the murder via a parcel bomb of the celebrated columnist and
editor, Dele Giwa, on October 19, 1986. But in this, even more
so than in that of “June 12”, the critics’ views had been driven
more by emotions than by the facts of the case. And these
include the fact that Giwa’s personal lawyer, the indefatigable
Chief Gani Fawehinmi, could not successfully pursue his private
prosecution of the two Babangida intelligence chiefs, Colonels
Halliru Akilu and A. K. Togun, that Fawehinmi has accused of the
murder. On the contrary, he had in the end lost a libel case
which the two has instituted against him.
Then again
other than the possibility of Giwa being a victim of
extra-judicial murder, there were two other possibilities,
namely, (1) marital grouse on the part of his then estranged
wife, Florence Ita-Giwa, whose driver, Olufemi Oyeleke, was
identified by Giwa’s guard, Musa Zibo, as the person who
delivered the parcel bomb, and (2) business grouse on the part
of Mr. G. Coumantarous, the global flour mill magnate and
Chairman of the huge Nigerian Flour Mill, Apapa.
Both Ita-Giwa
and Coumantarous were interrogated by the police but Babangida’s
critics were never interested in any consideration of these
possibilities, having clearly made up their minds that Giwa had
to be the victim of extra-judicial murder.
Much water,
as they say, has passed under the bridge since Babangida
“stepped aside” as military president 18 years ago. The man has
tried to step back into power as a civilian twice since then,
first in 2007 and then this year. On both occasions I had argued
on these pages that it was unwise of him to have tried. I had
argued that it was best that he played the role of a statesman
and kingmaker after eight years in power and over 17 years in
its corridors following the brave role he played in aborting the
1976 Dimka coup attempt in which the Head of State, General
Murtala Mohammed, was gunned down in broad daylight in a Lagos
traffic.
In any case
his attempts, as we all know, have been unsuccessful. Those
failures may have now diminished his reputation as the
invincible grand master of Nigerian politics - from whence he
got his sobriquet, Maradona – but it will be difficult to deny
him the fact for good or for ill he has, more than any leader of
this country to date, been responsible for re-casting the mould
in which the politics and socio-economics of this country had
been conducted since the First Republic.
Here’s Happy
Birthday to the man who re-engineered Nigeria. And many more
years of service to your country outside partisan politics.
The President’s single-term bill -By Mohammed Haruna
|
