Sometime in 2000 or 2001 in Jos, Plateau State, where I was the Financial Standard Correspondent, I covered a three day adoration and adulation conference put together by General Ibrahim Babangida’ lieutenants, former lieutenants, protégés, friends, lovers, believers, disciples, advocates, apostles, beneficiaries, hangers on and wannabes.
Sometime in 2000 or 2001 in Jos, Plateau State, where I was the Financial Standard Correspondent, I covered a three day adoration and adulation conference put together by General Ibrahim Babangida’ lieutenants, former lieutenants, protégés, friends, lovers, believers, disciples, advocates, apostles, beneficiaries, hangers on and wannabes.
They claimed it was an intellectual enterprise aimed at putting the facts across and hence ascertaining the “truth” about Babangida’s eight-year rule of Nigeria. It however turned out, not so surprisingly after all, to be a most nauseating gathering where IBB was praised and worshiped to the high heavens as the Baal that did no wrong and the Ashteroth without whom Nigeria would probably have been Somalianised. Babangida, his carefully selected resource persons including Comfort Obi of the Source Magazine swore was the best man that ever lived, the most generous man that God ever created and the most misunderstood person that ever gazed at the face of the earth. At that gathering, serious attempt was made to rewrite history in the most hilarious of manners, and truth was turned upside down in the most barefaced manner. When Babangida finally sauntered in at the end of the second day of the “academic and intellectual” fete, his apostles went into a duplicitous whirl that brought out a very satisfying smile from the object of their passion. At the end of the sad wingding, a communiqué was issued vowing total support for the former dictator’s future aspirations and swearing oaths to defend his legacy- whatever that meant.
A decade later, as I critically analysed the supporters’ attendance sheet and the few loud persons and groups that profess undying love for Babangida and unending support for his ambition to return back to office, I am amazed at the novelty of the names I see and the sparseness of the names I saw then. Where is Bolaji Akinyemi, where is Comfort Obi, where is Dogonyaro, Shagaya, Asaph Zadok- whom I personally spoke with and a man I have the highest regards for, where are the many important and influential persons I interviewed and had heated yet genial discussions with? I see most of them today; they are not with IBB but openly canvassing for Goodluck Jonathan. I am forced to wonder if Babangida really thinks that all of us, 150 million Nigerians, are so dim-witted, dreamy and forgetful of history for him to win the PDP primaries not to talk of getting our highly cherished votes to become president.
I have always credited Babangida with some modicum of intellect and guile if not reasonability. That is ability to reason his way through what is possible and what is not practicable. So what is wrong? What does Babangida want so much that minute reasoning has left him? Perhaps nearly a septuagenarian, he has become easily amenable to ego massaging, and a whispering campaign of sweet nothings by the Kassim Afegbuas, Raymond Dokpesis and Peter Odilis of this world. I can only with retrospect and a keen sense of history counsel Babangida of what awaits him in January 2011; the demystification of a well designed and well engineered masquerade of potency and invincibility that would consequently end in disgrace, contempt and dismissal. From thence the question would always be asked BABANGIDA? WHAT IS THAT?
A couple of days ago, Babangida’ Goebel, Kassim Afegbua in a reaction to the endorsement of Goodluck Jonathan by the Southwest PDP asserted in a manner reminiscent of Mohammed Saheed Al-Sahaf, (Comical Ali) Saddam Hussein’ Information Minister who while Iraq was being bombed to rubble swore and churned out releases about how the glorious Iraqi forces were slaughtering American and British forces that the South-West people are a very sophiscated people and hence would certainly reject Jonathan and vote his Principal, Babangida as President in 2011. I often assert that where reason takes leave, delusion and deceit takes over. No doubt delusion reigns within Camp IBB and deceit is the throttle that accelerates it.
I am amenable to educating Babangida, Odili, Dokpesi and Kassim Afegbua why they will certainly lose and lose well come 2011. Nigerians know deceit when they see one. They lived through it between August 17 1985 and August 17 1993, they suffered through it when they saw billionaires been made out of Babangida and his cronies while the rest of us got pauperised daily as the economy shrunk and purchasing power declined to a non-existential level. While Babangida was “donated” a Jet by his in-law, Chief Sunny Okogwu, the rest of us Nigerians watched while Nigeria Airways disappeared from our skies. The Nigerian Air Force and its personnel watched while over fifty of their aircrafts including Jaguars, Alpha-Jets, MiG 21 and C-130 Hercules medium-lift transport carriers were deliberately grounded and left to rot by Babangida in order to prevent a Jerry Rawlings style coup against him. For Babangida to survive in power, other institutions had to die. How can we forget so easily?
Babangida and Afegbua verbalizes loudly that amongst their “achievements” was the creation of MAMSER, DFRRI, FRSC and sundry other governmental institutions. The probable answer any 6 year old kid would give to Babangida and his cohorts is “durrrrr” Yes how DULL as if institutions on their own turn the lives of people around. The retort is what impact did these institutions make? Apart from the success of FRSC, how many rural roads, rural health centres and rural schools did DFRRI create and sustain? Had DFRRI been so successful perhaps Abacha would not have needed to set up PTF nor Obasanjo NDDC. It is not the hood that makes the monk, neither do politically inspired and politically run institutions on their own achieve anything. Babangida should probably call for lessons in institutional workability and success from Nasir El-Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. That would do for starters
It was Babangida in one of his many platitudinal announcements that opined that “the work of Nigeria is not complete as long as there is any one Nigerian who goes to bed hungry” WHAT HYPOCRISY! CRASS HYPOCRISY! In his eight years in power, many more Nigerians went to bed hungry than they ever did before, a new class of ill-fed, ill-clothed Nigerians was created, and the middle class disappeared and only re-appeared during the Obasanjo administration.
According to Online Nigeria, Under Babangida, the state of heightened political uncertainty occasioned by a deceitful political programme and process went side by side with severe economic retardation. The basis of economic policy was the Fifth National Development Plan (1986 - 1990), and the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) offered as an alternative to IMF Loan. These efforts were overwhelmed by the general air of political instability and uncertainty, corruption, a backward agricultural sector, a high inflation rate reckoned at eighty per cent in July 1993, and unbearable external debt estimated at $27 billion by October 1993.
Apart from some commencement of primary production and exports, especially of cocoa, the consequences of the nation's economic course and, by implication, of SAP, were dire and debilitating. Among them were mass poverty, misery and general social malaise partly epitomised by anti-poverty protests, riots and strikes across the country; acute food shortages; collapse of infrastructure and of businesses, including banks; abandoned capital projects; inability of government to pay workers’ salaries for months on end; and rising crime rate particularly of drug trafficking, armed robbery, and "419" for which Nigeria and Nigerians became notorious internationally and were shunned by many foreign investors and businesses high risks as high-risk. According to a prevailing parlance and terminology of the time, SAP had sapped life out of Nigeria and ordinary Nigerians. And, rather than alleviate these conditions, other aspects of Babangida’s economic policies exacerbated them. Tens of billions of naira realized during the boom occasioned by the 1990 Gulf crises and war cannot be accounted for.
Even General Sani Abacha was so disturbed about the missing billions that he had to institute a panel headed by the late notable economist, Professor Pius Okigbo to ascertain the ways and means these monies were expended. The conclusion of the panel was that Babangida and the government he ran for eight years should be held accountable for the corrupt and fraudulent ways the monies were spent. Indeed the panel held that twelve and half billion dollars of oil receipts were improperly and fraudulently dispensed.
The relevant question then is what did Babangida do that is worth $12.5 billion? He claims the third mainland bridge was constructed with receipts from the Gulf windfall. Really? How much was used to construct the bridge? $12.5 billion? Babangida’ stupendous wealth assaults our eyes and senses every day yet a very simple question like how did you come across such wealth is dismissed as the trivial objection of an opponent. Babangida has every right to contest for the Presidency of this country but like every other contender, he must be subjected to critical inquest about his past whether sordid or graceful, present and future. If the media executives he summoned over to his Villa last month to intimate them of his ambition to rule over us acquiesced to sweet lucre as widely speculated and refused to subject him to decisive yet vital examination, it beholds us ordinary folks he aspires to lord over to ask him such simple yet relevant questions.
History is there so that we can always look back, assess, analyse and reach rational judgments that enables us negate new mistakes. It is written, “by their fruits you shall know them.” We know the fruit IBB produces, we have tasted it and it is sour in mouths. We certainly will not eat of it again
Nosa James-Igbinadolor wrote in from Abuja. He can be reached on [email protected]
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