IBB again? no way! why not?

In the last twenty-five years, I do not think anybody has dominated his environment more than Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida aka IBB, Maradonna, Evil Genius and so many other unprintable aliases.
I had the privilege to be a guest in one of the Nigeria’s elite social clubs a few days after the now [in] famous IBB’s Abeakuta declaration and the above question was hot on the table with equally hot pepper soup and the accompanying booze. As it is usual in such gatherings, every body had something to say about IBB at the same time. Quite a number of the most vociferous contributors talked in a way that suggested they have known him all their lives. Most rambled-on about what a wide dream IBB’s ambition was. I listened with keen interest not because the topic on ground and the discussants are about to reveal something new about IBB or that whatever verdict the mini parliament arrives at will be binding, far from it.

I listened because I felt that this elite and privileged class would volunteer new strategies to scuttle IBB’s nightmarish vaulting ambition. I wanted to know from them how they intend to stop IBB’s ambition by simply wishing it, shouting it and listing multitude of excellent reasons why IBB should bury his dream. What I kept hearing was a cacophony of discordant voices more interested in the business of chicken pepper soup at hand and the next round of drink to wash it down than an articulate strategy to stop IBB. I was somewhat irritated by their apparent lack of foreboding that I decided to play the devils advocate. I felt that if I succeed in making the very tasteful pepper soup tasteless in their mouth by taking a position different from theirs; that IBB is a waiting President in the next dispensation, I would have achieved equal revenge at least by my estimation.  I felt they didn’t have the right to spoil my evening. I had come to the gathering with high expectations of a focused and clear-headed group that will marshal out informed strategies to put IBB in his place but all I heard them dish out are the same unhelpful June 12 election annulment, the murder of Dele Giwa and institutionalizing corruption in the country. I believe a two year old can recite all that plus more.

Let us assume IBB committed all these crimes plus many others. How does that stop him from resuming back in Aso-Rock he claimed to have stepped-aside from over sixteen years ago? My son delivered during this period is now getting ready to enter the University. At the time of his birth in 1993, universities were closed. Now he is getting ready to access those same universities, nothing seems to have changed. The only change we have noticed is that the students have turned those citadel of learning into grounds for training and churning out first-class graduates of cultism, armed robbers, yahoo-yahoo {419}  and lately faculty of kidnapping has been added.  My teenage son was born hearing about Babangida and his many exploits against his mother and I. He is sadly going into adulthood still hearing about the same man who if he succeeds in wrestling power next year may equally exploit the poor innocent lad whose only sin is to have been born in Nigeria during the reign of the self confessed evil genius and his intervening interlopers. {Shonekan, Abacha, Abdulsalami and Obasanjo in that order}. My challenge as a father is to seek ways to protect my son and his siblings from further exploitation. I know that dreaming like these my august host will not cut it. The quality of discussion on the menu is not quite different from those I have heard in Oshodi bus stop and down town joints in Agege. The diction and quality of presentation may differ but the substance remained painfully the same. My argument that if opinion leaders and molders’ are all fixated about the sins of IBB yesterday and forget to articulate pragmatic ways to stop him today from mounting the saddle again from where he could commit even greater sins simply means an inevitable IBB presidency was condemned by my distinguished hosts  with a chorus of “God forbid’. It was at this stage that my apprehension degenerated to trepidation.  Not because I do not believe that God forbids bad things but because we have not demonstrated enough will to forbid it ourselves before God’s intervention.

It will be interesting to interrogate briefly and constructively the IBB years as a military dictator in an attempt to evaluate the merit or lack of it for his come back project. In a country where issues are hardly a campaign requirement, I doubt strongly if this will not be an exercise in self-entertainment. However, I am an unrepentant believer that things are the way they are in the country because we have not collectively done enough to challenge and tell truth to power. I cannot claim to know IBB even remotely other than the fact that I was already a full-grown adult when in 1985; he came smiling generously at us. The press quickly nicknamed him the gap tooth smiling General. This was when they did one of those their thing {coup} that brought him to power.

To be fair, the duo of Buhari/Idiagbon whose government he toppled in a palace-coup in 1985 was brutal, rudderless and primitive. Their only solution and approach to governance was a military styled discipline where one is forced to obey all rules and order the way it is done in the barracks. Not a few will argue and swear today that if we had continued with that draconian initiative, that most of the problems that later came to exacerbate the existing ones could have been arrested. This is subject to serious debate and all I can say is that those who did not elect to join the military should never be subjected to its rules even when the government enforcing it was aptly referred to as Military Government. As long as they were not elected by popular votes, they remain an illegitimate government no matter the grandness of their motive. They fact that they are not facing trial for disrupting the constitution even after leaving power shows the generous spirit of the Nigerian populace.

IBB on the other hand, had a professorial approach to the myriad of challenges plaguing the nation. He cut the picture of a man that was well prepared for the assignment at hand. He appeared to understand what the problems were and the urgency needed to address them. A willing nation responded with love and co-operation. After all, where Buhari/Idiagbon negotiated with only koboko and jack-booths, IBB was ready to engage us in a robust debate. He seemed to care about public opinion and so allowed the public to have their say while he had his way in all matters. He was arguably the first Nigerian leader to employ top rate technocrats in management of governmental affairs. He set out early in his regime to establish democratic and other institutions that ought to have ushered in an egalitarian society. He recognized the need to expand the economic frontiers of the country and was bold enough to challenge Nigerians to embrace same as antidote of an equally ballooning population that was growing by geometric progression. It is safe to say that within the first four years of the IBB regime, he analyzed thoroughly all aspects of national life and put them in perspective. Oil, the life-wire of our economy was selling at beggarly prices at that time compared to now.
Needless to state that perhaps because of the superlative quality of human capital he engaged to supervise the various national institutions he inherited and established, the structural adjustment program he set up as an economic policy thrust became a reference point to other third world countries passing through our peculiar experiences. For once, the country appeared ready to confront frontally the ills of its problems no matter how painful. IBB called for sacrifices and we obliged.  All he needed do to keep the ship of state afloat was the political will, transparency, sustained re-invigoration of all departments and institutions and their managers and honesty of purpose.

And what did he do?  IBB got high on his own supplies. He became his own enemy by willingly embracing the contagious black leaders’ disease called self-perpetuation in power. Nothing in history has rubbished leaders more than a feeling of invisibility and indispensability. The moment professional praise singers noticed the affliction; they moved in immediately and became his spin-doctors. Arthur Nzeribe, a self-confessed political felon became his henchman. He started firing and hiring more and more professionals and social critics some of whom he hired cynically and mischievously just to remind them that everyone has a prize and he {IBB} is not against paying. From this point, policy clashes and summersaults became the order of the day. I guess that is what people mean when they say he institutionalized corruption.

He started manipulating the political class and introduced so many shifts in political time lines and timetables all in a bid to confuse and confound the people he once called a compliant public. In order to maintain the power matrix, he compromised the system he helped create and took the first political chieftaincy title of Maradona. Maradona being the Argentine soccer legend that also got high on his own supplies. While he destroyed himself and career with drugs, IBB destroyed his own works by dribbling himself out of the political pitch, when he realized nobody was ready to engage him there, he came back into the field of play and scored a disingenuous own-goal {June 12, annulled election} that earned him a permanent red card. It was that red card he now wants to convert to a national call up once more while many would rather have him as either a mere defeated veteran or at best a national political coach having since passed his playing age. But IBB must be reminded that he is about to burn the only remaining political souvenir left in his closet. He indeed has carried himself admirably well in all these years of retirement. He never joined issues with many of his critics that included Obasanjo and some of his junior officers. {For instance the deposed Emir of Gwandu major Jokolo, who is apparently still unhappy about IBB’s treachery for toppling the government of his boss Buhari}.

He has made so many friends around the country and I believe he confuses that for popularity. Some of these friends see him more as a meal ticket than a friend. The almost cult following he appears to enjoy now is more because the political class believe and see him as a major pillar of Nigeria’s political triangle whose friendship must be courted at all cost if they must realize their own ambitions. However, when the political godfather throws his hat in the ring to challenge his godsons, whatever invisibility he must have enjoyed must give way first for a proper contest to take place. Those who claim to be his friend and know him well say IBB grows inside you like a virus. He must realize however, that viruses also die with their host carriers the moment it gets to saturation point.

I see Babaginda as a man who constantly gets in touch with history and cherishes a revered place in it. If this gamble works for him, he will go down in history as a man who fought a battle, lost, stepped aside and promised to come back and eventually came back and won the battle in a more difficult front. However, if this adventure fails like the 2007 razzmatazz, that failure which he fears most as a serial power contender will become his fort. Whether he will fight all the way this time will be determined by a combination of outcomes of the so-called consultation he claimed to be doing which incidentally does not include us the masses and the unforeseen forces of nature that is always superior to the best-laid plans. One thing is obvious though, if IBB succeeds, it will not be because of his dexterity in political engineering but because we want him to by chasing rats while our houses burn. The prospect of an IBB Presidency again is even more frightening because his corridor of power will be littered with too many hangers-on who see him as a good guy who does not bat an eye lid about corruption and will ultimately return them to winning ways once more. Even though he didn’t start corruption in Nigeria, but he doesn’t quite seem to see it as a problem of monumental importance.

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