Recently, Nigeria’s former military dictator Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida publicly presented his autobiography in Abuja. Unfortunately, what should have passed as a day of mourning, a requiem for the desecration of Nigeria’s human landscape ended up becoming a confluence of eulogies from a few badged members of the country’s hall of infamy. One after another, the guests praised IBB, chronicling his outstanding, ingenious identity as a statesman, astute administrator, distinguished political hero, and exceptional character with all the messianic attribution. The virulent intensity of the encomiums shot straight at the heart of the Nigerian existence, making a caricature of all our claims to nationhood. No, that gathering should not have taken place but sadly, it took place and MKO Abiola was openly murdered the second time. I do not quarrel with those who have identified IBB’s misleading and malicious account of cancelling the June 12 elections. I also do not query those who are aghast by his spurious account of the death of Dele Giwa. These are all important issues, but I am more concerned about immediate fundamentals, including the larger implications of Nigeria’s proclivities to celebrating deviant characters for pulverising our collective existence through overt and covert treachery.
Ordinarily, I should join the bandwagon and say great things about IBB because he was nice to me when I travelled to his Minna home with Professor Hope Eghagha in 2016 for a detailed interview towards a research project. However, praising him would defile my moral canvas and further heap insults on beleaguered Nigerians, victims of his unparalleled political violation. I am not so much interested in the contents of his book or the barefaced manipulation of details. I am more interested in the height of congregational adultery and the open display of perfidy by those who have benefitted from the sorrow, tears, and blood of Nigerians. They were all present at the book launch. The gathering testifies to the abundance of insincere opportunists who rode on the penurious provenance of the masses to sweltering lucre and fame. It was an accurate definition of everything wrong with Nigeria. One day, we will officially erect the devil’s statute in Abuja and compel Nigerians to worship it every day as part of our national day celebration protocol. Then, the whole world will applaud us as a country where the devil is worshipped.
How do people easily defy, repudiate honour, and dance naked at the market square? My heart bled for MKO Abiola and his wife as they rolled in the grave, watching those who capitalized on their emergence through pretentious, veiled activism. I wept for democracy and all the fallen patriots consigned to the great beyond through IBB’s primitive embrace of raw power. As the guests openly praised IBB one after another, I wept for Nigeria, reconciling myself to the reality that this country would slumber along the dusty road of political and economic indeterminacy for a long time. Never did I imagine that one day, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida would become a hero in Nigeria. This is a man who mindlessly aborted the greatness of a nation and on whose shoulders rest the blood of millions of Nigerians who died through political violence and all forms of social dislocation as a consequence of the June 12 election cancellation. It is the irony of the Nigerian narrative, an illustration of celebration in parody – those who should face trial, tied to the stake, and shot or be cooling off in the grave for crime against humanity are feted as heroes while the real heroes are infinitely maligned for their reactionary posturing. Perhaps, karma is a scam, it does not exist. Perhaps, ‘the end justifies the means’ as a regular mantra deserves a more distinguished spot in our ideological repertoire. But IBB’s physical condition also vindicates karma to some extent.
Some people are celebrating IBB’s confirmation that the coup of 1966 was not an Igbo coup. By that declaration, IBB did not say anything new. The informed mind knows the coup was definitely not an Igbo coup. But because peddling half-truths, outright falsehood, and various degrees of fabrication satisfy an insecure, yawning, chasm in the rancid emotions of many people, they are happy to spread hate for inscrutable objectives. Regrettably, falsehood easily attracts like-minded monsters in its journey to guaranteed perdition and people easily cling to it to satisfy their base emotions. Of course, mortar, pestle, and the ground upon which we all stand know it was not an Igbo coup. Maybe, IBB’s confirmation has put a gloss on it. The informed mind knows that the coup was the response of some young Nigerian army officials drawn from different parts of the country who were disenchanted by the overbearing, profligate, corrupt–ridden First Republic politicians and wanted to redeem their country from drifting into the valleys of Golgotha. But narrow, brutish-minded Nigerians have feasted on the coup narrative to advance hate of unimaginable proportions against the Igbo to score cheap, adulterated political points. Anyway, the coup narrative is not my intention in this essay.
The losers of the gathering at IBB’s book launch are Nigerians, the poor and the rich but especially the intelligentsia who always vehemently support greedy politicians in their pursuit of personal glory. In 1993, Nigeria was on the cusp of becoming one of the greatest countries in the world and a concise advertisement for democracy. The world stood for Nigeria and applauded our resolve to establish a democratic culture through a free and fair election. We achieved that feat by conducting one of the best elections in global history. But one man thought otherwise. He cancelled the election. I remember clearly when I sat close to IBB inside his living room in Minna with Professor Hope Eghagha. I asked him pointedly why he cancelled the June 12 elections. He smiled, looked around as if searching for something and asked us to switch off our recording devices. We did. He gave a detailed account of why he cancelled the election which is completely unconnected and unrelated to the fiction in his book. I will not recount it here. Thus, IBB has dribbled Nigerians and fooled everybody on the way to his contrived, dubious sense of immortality.
By cancelling the June 12 election, IBB partially destroyed Nigeria. He took away an essential ingredient that would have garnished the Nigerian menu in the twenty-first century. The cancellation of the collective will and determination of Nigerians on June 12 1993 opened the floodgate of disastrous consequences, enthroning misfits to the echelon of political glory. First was the dictator Sanni Abacha who made no pretences about his undemocratic, sadistic inclinations. I am not sure Nigeria has recovered from Abacha’s five-year crucible. Second was the emergence of self-seeking, inordinate opportunists who pretended to be fighting military rule and defending democracy but were in real terms bulldozing their way to the apex of the country’s economic fountain and political splendour. Surely, few activists in those days were sincere. But the gathering at the IBB’s book launch demonstrates the disingenuous, hypocritical temperament of some people who pretended to defend democracy or committed to protecting MKO Abiola’s mandate.
Few people have argued that Nigeria must move forward from the MKO Abiola’s experience. Such people lamely grip the stale, self-defeating refrain ‘let bygones be bygones’. It is easy to ‘let bygones be bygones’ but ‘bygones’ most times have disastrous implications for the future when beneficiaries of the ‘bygones’ continue to excavate their depressing sensations as Nigeria’s political class did in Abuja last week. How would ‘bygones’ be ‘bygones’ when unconscionable demagogues exhume and splash them on our faces at will? Nigeria has not recovered from the June 12 election debacle and whether the country will recover from it is a matter of infinite conjecture. Nigeria’s political class last week, by celebrating IBB opened healed wounds, making them fresh and painful.
The gathering of who is who in Nigeria to celebrate IBB subliminally confers a certain level of negativity on the byways of the mind towards conviction to upholding upright behaviour. One’s mental process is challenged to continue to do good in a country where duplicity is openly rewarded. For destroying Nigeria’s democratic culture, for aborting the future of millions of Nigerians, for handing Nigeria over to demons from the netherworld, and for plunging the country into the abyss of economic turmoil, IBB was rewarded with over seventeen billion naira, a state status event, and accolades from the heights of our bourgeois commune. As far as I am concerned, our misnamed heroes of democracy following MKO Abiola’s death are today villains of democracy. The gathering in Abuja was a celebration of villainy. It was a mockery of the endeavour by Nigerians to achieve a country of equitable distribution, fair play, and socio-political justice. For cancelling the June 12 elections and launching a book to celebrate the affront, IBB and his co-celebrators have renewed their gold membership in Nigeria’s hall of infamy. Posterity will always remember. Adieu MKO Abiola.
