April 15, 2010
I cannot remember what time of the year it was, but the year was probably 1990 or thereabout and I was a pupil of Holy Child Primary School, Ofodua, Obubra LGA in Cross River State. It wasn’t everyday a Head of State visited your primary school in a helicopter—no, several helicopters actually. General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) was in my Local Government Area (LGA) to officially open the College of Agriculture which bore his name until recently when it was elevated to a university.
I cannot remember what time of the year it was, but the year was probably 1990 or thereabout and I was a pupil of Holy Child Primary School, Ofodua, Obubra LGA in Cross River State. It wasn’t everyday a Head of State visited your primary school in a helicopter—no, several helicopters actually. General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) was in my Local Government Area (LGA) to officially open the College of Agriculture which bore his name until recently when it was elevated to a university.
My headmaster at the time was a wiry middle aged man whose disciplinary ethos drove plenty of fear and trepidation down our spines. The whip was his companion and his mode of communication. IBB wasn’t coming to visit my school officially, but our football pitch provided the perfect hangar for his Choppers and we were located at a walking distance from the college. I remember how our headmaster almost tore us to shreds as we were put through the paces of learning how to perform the perfect “March Past” for our ‘August visitor’.
We were a poor public school in a village with no electricity at the time and blessed with a building or two. Most pupils provided own desks and many more sat on floors to receive lessons or perched on window sills. Hello, this was not 1884 I am writing about, but the early ‘90s or late ‘80s! Poor folks that we were, we had to look good for our ‘President’. So, the Headmaster went to the village secondary school to borrow desks—as though IBB was going to visit every classroom! But we had to be and look our best—no dirty uniforms, no undone hair, no bathroom slippers. The headmaster would have skinned you alive if you as much as dared to appear near the school gate looking a tad scruffy!
The day before IBB’s arrival, I sat at the tailor’s shop, harassing him all the way, to get my new uniform ready before D-Day. The village tailors must have smiled all the way to the bank that week as all pupils of Holy Child kept vigil over new uniforms. IBB was coming to town! With machetes too big for our ages, we brought down all overgrown blades of grasses around the school compound. We got boulders and stones from the bushes and painted them all white to decorate the sidewalks, all for IBB.
He arrived four hours behind schedule the next day in his helicopter looking every bit like the pictures I had seen of him on the back of my ‘Current Affairs’ textbook. Some of us ‘lucky’ pupils had been chosen to line the main walk to the school in the scorching sun. So, there we stood as statues, the tropical sunshine blazing through our craniums, a forced smile for the Military leader decorating our faces. But he didn’t look our way, nor the headmaster’s. Ours was just a parking lot for his helicopters, he must have thought. As the Choppers touched down, IBB got into one of the tinted cars on the convoy in the company of his military aides and was driven away. That was my first impression of IBB. I noted the cold blooded General in his Khaki Uniform and the gap tooth. He almost limped as he walked and wasn’t too tall either.
I also noticed that he didn’t give a hoot about our dilapidated school buildings and said nothing to the teachers whose over used shoes and worn out attires were enough to tell how little they earned. Two days after his departure, a few soldiers made sure the villagers had enough Kerosene from the tanks to power their lamps and cook their meals. Life was back to normal after that and I never saw IBB again. But I followed his career path and listened to each and every one of his numerous ‘fellow Nigerians’ speeches thanks to my mum’s transistor radio.
I remember writing a few essays about his regime in an exercise book I kept under my pillow. I disliked how he continually postponed the transition calendar. I wasn’t a fan of his then and I am not a fan now. The day a parcel bomb decimated Dele Giwa’s life, I went on a hunger strike—for Giwa was my Idol. I had always wanted to write like him. I read and re-read his timely pieces in The ‘NewsWatch’ magazine. If I was ever going to forgive IBB, it would be difficult to forgive him for all the cover-ups he supervised into unravelling Giwa’s killers.
As he announced his dream of becoming Nigeria’s president next year, IBB was driving more nails into our wounds—wounds he inflicted on us for eight gruelling years and wounds that haven’t healed yet. He raped the economy, balkanised the nation and institutionalised what we now know as ‘corruption’ in these parts. He liked to call himself ‘Maradona’ and ‘Evil Genius’—monikers that riled us even more because the man who bore them made sure he lived them; rubbing them in so viciously with one harsh policy after another.
No, IBB won’t return as President because it is a no-brainer and Nigeria and Nigerians do not need his ilk no more. He is now part of our past; he is history—a history we are still finding hard to swallow and one which he played a most sinister role in. IBB won’t return as President because my headmaster won’t like it—not least because he kept him waiting in the scorching sun and couldn’t even acknowledge the fact that he was standing there. Need I add that my headmaster retired a pauper? IBB won’t make it back because he left the school without a care as to whether we were properly educated or had a good learning environment. No, he won’t return because Nigeria has moved on since he ‘stepped aside’ and he may now need to ‘step out’ of our consciousness. No, IBB won’t return because he is simply IBB—the ‘Evil Genius’ we don’t want in a country that could do without some evil at the moment.
Anyone out there still deluded that IBB will make it even beyond the party primaries? Not a chance! Not with one of my Primary School Teachers at the time reportedly committing suicide in his one room apartment after attempting to ‘Adjust his life Structurally’ (pun intended). IBB is such a sad reminder I would stop writing right now for want of space!
My headmaster at the time was a wiry middle aged man whose disciplinary ethos drove plenty of fear and trepidation down our spines. The whip was his companion and his mode of communication. IBB wasn’t coming to visit my school officially, but our football pitch provided the perfect hangar for his Choppers and we were located at a walking distance from the college. I remember how our headmaster almost tore us to shreds as we were put through the paces of learning how to perform the perfect “March Past” for our ‘August visitor’.
We were a poor public school in a village with no electricity at the time and blessed with a building or two. Most pupils provided own desks and many more sat on floors to receive lessons or perched on window sills. Hello, this was not 1884 I am writing about, but the early ‘90s or late ‘80s! Poor folks that we were, we had to look good for our ‘President’. So, the Headmaster went to the village secondary school to borrow desks—as though IBB was going to visit every classroom! But we had to be and look our best—no dirty uniforms, no undone hair, no bathroom slippers. The headmaster would have skinned you alive if you as much as dared to appear near the school gate looking a tad scruffy!
The day before IBB’s arrival, I sat at the tailor’s shop, harassing him all the way, to get my new uniform ready before D-Day. The village tailors must have smiled all the way to the bank that week as all pupils of Holy Child kept vigil over new uniforms. IBB was coming to town! With machetes too big for our ages, we brought down all overgrown blades of grasses around the school compound. We got boulders and stones from the bushes and painted them all white to decorate the sidewalks, all for IBB.
He arrived four hours behind schedule the next day in his helicopter looking every bit like the pictures I had seen of him on the back of my ‘Current Affairs’ textbook. Some of us ‘lucky’ pupils had been chosen to line the main walk to the school in the scorching sun. So, there we stood as statues, the tropical sunshine blazing through our craniums, a forced smile for the Military leader decorating our faces. But he didn’t look our way, nor the headmaster’s. Ours was just a parking lot for his helicopters, he must have thought. As the Choppers touched down, IBB got into one of the tinted cars on the convoy in the company of his military aides and was driven away. That was my first impression of IBB. I noted the cold blooded General in his Khaki Uniform and the gap tooth. He almost limped as he walked and wasn’t too tall either.
I also noticed that he didn’t give a hoot about our dilapidated school buildings and said nothing to the teachers whose over used shoes and worn out attires were enough to tell how little they earned. Two days after his departure, a few soldiers made sure the villagers had enough Kerosene from the tanks to power their lamps and cook their meals. Life was back to normal after that and I never saw IBB again. But I followed his career path and listened to each and every one of his numerous ‘fellow Nigerians’ speeches thanks to my mum’s transistor radio.
I remember writing a few essays about his regime in an exercise book I kept under my pillow. I disliked how he continually postponed the transition calendar. I wasn’t a fan of his then and I am not a fan now. The day a parcel bomb decimated Dele Giwa’s life, I went on a hunger strike—for Giwa was my Idol. I had always wanted to write like him. I read and re-read his timely pieces in The ‘NewsWatch’ magazine. If I was ever going to forgive IBB, it would be difficult to forgive him for all the cover-ups he supervised into unravelling Giwa’s killers.
As he announced his dream of becoming Nigeria’s president next year, IBB was driving more nails into our wounds—wounds he inflicted on us for eight gruelling years and wounds that haven’t healed yet. He raped the economy, balkanised the nation and institutionalised what we now know as ‘corruption’ in these parts. He liked to call himself ‘Maradona’ and ‘Evil Genius’—monikers that riled us even more because the man who bore them made sure he lived them; rubbing them in so viciously with one harsh policy after another.
No, IBB won’t return as President because it is a no-brainer and Nigeria and Nigerians do not need his ilk no more. He is now part of our past; he is history—a history we are still finding hard to swallow and one which he played a most sinister role in. IBB won’t return as President because my headmaster won’t like it—not least because he kept him waiting in the scorching sun and couldn’t even acknowledge the fact that he was standing there. Need I add that my headmaster retired a pauper? IBB won’t make it back because he left the school without a care as to whether we were properly educated or had a good learning environment. No, he won’t return because Nigeria has moved on since he ‘stepped aside’ and he may now need to ‘step out’ of our consciousness. No, IBB won’t return because he is simply IBB—the ‘Evil Genius’ we don’t want in a country that could do without some evil at the moment.
Anyone out there still deluded that IBB will make it even beyond the party primaries? Not a chance! Not with one of my Primary School Teachers at the time reportedly committing suicide in his one room apartment after attempting to ‘Adjust his life Structurally’ (pun intended). IBB is such a sad reminder I would stop writing right now for want of space!
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });