IKENNA EMEWU
We have set up a podium to canonize Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the self-styled military president of Nigeria between 1985 and 1993.
His were the inglorious years and dark side of Nigeria’s political history that we have decided to celebrate 32 years after, instead of crying over them.
The show of impunity by IBB in Abuja at the launch of his book was the height of Nigeria’s systemic sadomasochism. No people who wish their country well will roll out the drums and eulogise a man who ruined their fate and the future.
Since his days, which were preceded by another two years of the locust, Nigeria has stayed on the lane of progressive retrogression. The success of the ruin IBB planned, executed, and handed the baton is what informed the celebration. You don’t look further to know that those who actually benefit from the Nigerian project never wish Nigeria well. Otherwise, why celebrate a man who plunged the country in the cesspit of ruin and doom?
In the 32 years he has been out of office, but very much in power, but failed to return as planned because he actually stepped aside, in his own language, this general has harvested bounties from his deliberate wrong.
Every year, from the government coffers, he is paid retirement benefits that verge into cash, cars, health allowance, travel allowance, earning for his aides, etc. IBB must have earned in billions these past years from this field he plundered.
Last week, Nigerians enriched him further by donating billions into his library project, with further donations coming to him as you buy a copy of his book, a deodorized inglorious documentation. Nigeria is a sad situation, and that theatre of last week gave it a seal and stamp of affirmation.
You may do yourself a favour by not listening to anybody that tells you that Nigeria is a normal place or that those called leaders mean well.
IBB, the architect of Nigeria’s malady today confessing in writing that he deliberately killed the project of moving Nigeria to democracy for which he wasted hundreds of billions of naira of public resources, and ended it the way he did by denying MKO Abiola his victory to become a president of Nigeria is pleading guilty to a crime.
After that act, Abiola, his wife, Kudirat, his family, his business empire became victims.
Hundreds of Nigerians who died in the bedlam that ensued in what the Igbo called oso Abiola (Abiola forced migration or exodus) and ultimately Nigeria itself are the victims.
The man behind this absurdity is himself the beneficiary in so many ways, culminating in last week’s gold-digging.
From the reverberations of his act, NADECO was formed to agitate for a reversal which led to the killing of Kudirat, shooting of Abraham Adesanya, death of Alfred Rewane, shooting of Alex Ibru and many more.
For five unbroken years, I and some others in our field daily listened to the endless tales of state-sponsored violence against citizens at the Lagos courtrooms in Ikeja and Igbosere. The circus rolled from Chief Magistrate Oke Lawal to Justice Christopher Segun, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, now Chief Justice of the Nigeria, who granted Mohammed Abacha bail in Ikeja to Igbosere before Justice Augustine Ade-Alabi. The entire scenario got animation from the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Abiola, but was robbed. Everybody knew that he won because the extent of results already announced by Humphrey Nwosu, the NEC chairman, and collations by returning officers awaiting to be made public were intact. Nwosu almost paid with his life. But now IBB is admitting to the truncation, a crime against the state, Nwosu got no mention or credit for conducting the freest presidential election in Nigeria’s political history.
If any citizen of Nigeria uses whatever means to truncate and subvert the democratic mandate the citizens gave a particular candidate, made nonsense of the huge budget and human efforts put into that, such is liable for the offence of treason because such act has the high tendency of leading to a war, death of citizens and the end of the state of Nigeria. That is treasonable.
So, why did IBB document that he committed such a felony and gave excuses that some forces from northern Nigeria coerced him to do, and the audience and entire country roared in admiration?
If some other citizens owned up to that, would the Department of State Security (DSS) and the Police allow such a step out of that event hall without being arrested? If it is a crime, and treasonable felony is, do we imply that time has overtaken questioning IBB for putting Nigeria through those crises?
He said he feared for his life and destroyed Nigeria. We keep quiet because his personal life was more important than those of Abiola and hundreds of others that died because of his indiscretion. His life was also more important than Nigeria. Why is Sani (Abacha) IBB’s fall guy in the confession? It’s because the dead stay dumb. If he were alive, the destroyer dare not indict him. Poor Abacha. He takes all the blame because death silenced him when it spared his compatriots in the Nigerian doom cycle. If Abacha were alive, he would have been in the audience of that book presentation also laughing and clapping, drenching in praises as a champion like Osinbajo decorated the rest there with.
The return to democracy in 1999 was burdened by those reckless years between 1993 and 1998, a dead weight the government planned to address through reconciliation.
President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission (Oputa Panel), a session I reported live. It was an odd show, its findings and revelations were utterly shocking.
Again, IBB returned and frustrated the panel that was already on its way to healing wounds. To evade the summons to testify in the petition of Gani Fawehinmi over the murder of Dele Giwa, he applied to the Federal High Court and got an order stopping the panel from compelling him to appear before it. The Court of Appeal presided over by Justice George Oguntade agreed with his lawyer, FRA Williams, that the Oputa Panel was an administrative panel of inquiry and not a judicial panel, therefore lacked the power to compel an individual to appear before it. By the time he was done at the Supreme Court, he succeeded in frustrating the publication of a White Paper of the Commission. That is how an effort at mending what was destroyed through the 1993 election annulment was washed down the drain.
At a point, I asked if Obasanjo didn’t deliberately create that lapse to ensure some people in his military clan who facilitated his return to power escaped punishment. Or just made the Oputa Panel another useful distraction. Otherwise, why didn’t the entire justice ministry know such a vital point of law when the panel was created?
At Oputa Panel, we heard to our ear fill and today, we are clapping for a ruinous ride IBB took us through for eight years. Yes, they were ruinous in every definition of it. What else was it when he took our economy that had 12% of the GDP in manufacturing when he came to power down to 4%, an equivalent of 1% chipped away every year? He crashed the value of naira by 500%, encumbered us with unpayable loans, the flak still haunts Nigeria, and wasted billions of naira on a rigmarole and circuitous migration to democracy which he knew he was never sincere about.
Two major victims got atrophied and never recovered from the pains. They are – Nigeria and those that died. The rest moved on in the normal trajectory of growth. Today, IBB is the latest circus champion on the podium kissing his medal for destroying the future of a country he hijacked. Talk about a dog that devoured the bone hung on its neck for safe keeping. To canonize his victory and conquest of the system, he came with his book to celebrate his chivalry over his personal estate, Nigeria.
Twenty-six years later, former VP Yemi Osinbajo who was the prosecutor of those who were used to mire Nigeria in the mess, returned as the mouthpiece at the theatre IBB summoned to own up to the damage and deep cut he inflicted on Nigeria.
The former Attorney General of Lagos State, chief prosecutor of the Abacha collaborators, an offshoot of the June 1993 mess entertained us with how actors in Nigeria’s plunder industry seamlessly regroup, re-strategize and drop their differences. But do they regroup to better Nigeria? Never! Even though he was silent on that, but we know they only re-aggregate to plan further plunder of their field of sorrows and pains. Nigeria steadily dwindles while the plunderers flourish and make more billions from their acts.
We have collectively endorsed that IBB, against the rule of natural justice, reaps from his deliberate wrong. He already hit billions in income and more on the way as we rush to buy the book at between N40,000 and N60,000 per copy. Every copy bought further enriches Emperor IBB, the Napoleon that does no wrong.
Listening to that jesters’ theatre mounted on the podium of impunity, you would agree that in IBB’s mind, no Nigerians alive are older than 32. They never witnessed the damage fabricated in his mills. So, he reserves the right to twist it into any shape he chooses and force us to believe him, the way he forced us to believe he did no wrong in annulling the June 1993 election.
