In the darkest entrails of the sprawling megacity, a cannibal ethos prevails. You either kill or you get killed. It is as simple as that.  Autochthon savages from outlying primitive enclaves and the last redoubts of Early Man in Africa finally overran the famed metropolis. Despite the bravest efforts of the law enforcement agencies, they held sway in the swampy outreach of the beleaguered city from where they spread their reign of primitive terror via the inner ghettoes to the glittering landmarks of African modernity.

But help is finally on the way from traditional quarters. Where modern policing falters, African magic comes to the rescue. Snooper never gave a chance to General Obasanjo’s famed formula for dislodging apartheid from South Africa until recently. At this rate, it may well be the old magus from ancient Owu who may yet have the last laugh over this matter of pre-colonial hostilities.

As usual with the freeloading contrarian, Baba Lekki had boarded a mass transit “danfo” bus at Oshodi after an all- night carousal with the intention of linking up with Okon at Freedom Park. But the one chance boys had other ideas.

The old savant sensed major trouble once he entered the bus and was immediately hemmed in by two burly ruffians who looked like characters from the outer margins of hell. As soon as the rickety bus flew past the Ikorodu Road loop without making a detour, Baba Lekki knew that he was in for a hard time.

“Awusu billahi!!!” the old codger grunted in a gesture of false religious outrage. A lady who had been monitoring the awful developments with trepidation suddenly screamed.

“Driver, na Ojota I say I dey go!! I no dey go dem Oworo”, she wailed.

“Shut up. Whether na Ojota or na Oguta, you don reach Golgotha”, the driver jeered.

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“Bring out all your phones, money and ATM cards”, one of the thugs shouted. Everybody started complying in fright. When it came to Baba Lekki’s turn, the old rebel brought out an ancient pen and pre-historic reading glasses.

“Wetin be dis yeye nonsense? Stupid old man, if you dey joke, make you stop am”, the mad ruffian screamed as everybody cowered in terror.

“ I no get phone, but I get Kalamu and Molubi”—ancient Yoruba words for pen and glasses— the old contrarian whimpered .

“ Bad Fish, wetin the old Yoruba fool dey say? Giam one dirty slap for me.” The driver ordered. As the impudent fellow made to comply, Baba Lekki sprang with surprising agility and the hand froze in mid-air. “Eeeeewo! Aisiwo lu’mi. Igbe o l’egun sugbon enite gbodo tiro”, the old man burst into torrid incantation.

“Chairman, I no fit bring down dem hand again”, the foolish fellow whimpered. At this point, one of the burly ruffians hemming the old man attempted to twist his right hand from behind, but remembering the tricks he had learnt from  Alimi Yopayopa, the famed Ibadan magician, Baba Lekki puffed like an adder and the hand came off  clean from the shoulder joint.

“Oga, oga him hand dey my hand, him hand dey for my hand!!!”, the poor fellow cried and began pissing in his trousers.

“Idiot, give me back that hand now now”, Baba Lekki thundered, grabbed his hand and put it back without any effort. At this point, the driver who had been monitoring the weird drama through the mirror suddenly brought the bus to a screeching halt.

“Baba, we no dey go again”, the hooligan stammered, shivering with fright and premonition.

“But me I dey go!” Baba Lekki thundered.

“Where you dey go sir make we drop you?” the crook mumbled disjointedly.

“I dey go meet Oduduwa. I get meeting with dem Oranmiyan, dem Agboniregun, dem Ogedengbe, dem Lisabi Agbongbon, dem Basorun Ogunmola and dem Balogun Ogunsigi. This nonsense must stop immediately. Make you come chop no be say make you come chop off our head”, the old man growled. At this point, the driver and his criminal accomplices jumped out of the bus and fled in different directions.

First published in 2016

A few weeks back, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, arguably Nigeria’s most consequential post-independence military leader, turned eighty. Although the applause and celebrations have been muted on a national scale, his remaining core supporters and many of his compatriots who still hold the Minna-born past master of political dribbling in awe and admiration rolled out the drums in his honour.

Snooper wishes the general, an old foe from the battle of wits and will that ensued between the military and the wider society after the annulment of Abiola’s president mandate, very well. Now that another presidential election of consequence is upon the nation, it useful to deploy the occasion of the general’s birthday to reflect on the historical, sociological and political factors which predispose the nation to such self-disabling debacle.

In recent years, General Babangida’s national visibility has shrunken dramatically. Hobbled by domestic misfortunes and natural infirmities, he has been largely confined to his Minna Hill castle from where he continues to make occasional strategic forays and momentous interventions in the political process of his country.

It is a measure of his enduring strength of character and sheer psychological stamina that almost thirty years after leaving office in controversial circumstances, Babangida is still considered by many of his compatriots as a major player and games master in Nigeria’s turbulent and convoluted post-military politics. If anything, Babangida’s political ardour and appetite to dominate, or at least influence, the direction of his society remain unassuaged.

Although these days General Babangida is viewed with less hostility and his tenure more evenly appraised by his compatriots unlike in the immediate post-annulment period, the deliberate sabotage of the freest and fairest election in the electoral annals of the country is still regarded by historians, sociologists and political scientists alike as the most terrible democratic disaster to have befallen the nation in its postcolonial history.

The annulment led to the termination of a nascent democratic republic, re-militarization of the political process and a descent into untrammelled tyranny and a vicious military dictatorship which ended in a historic comeuppance and humiliation of the Nigerian military. When Nigerians finally emerged from the rubble, it was as if they have been to hell and back.

Given the ease and facility with which Nigeria’s harshly unitarist and congenitally deformed political structure must willy-nilly throw up autocrats in or out of uniform, one can understand why the passage of time has dulled the pains and trauma of the annulment despite its prohibitive human toll. But what must not be condoned is our seeming inability to internalize the lessons of the annulment and learn from its scary and scarifying legacies.

General Babangida left office almost thirty years ago. He might not have succeeded in imposing himself as a civilianized president. But his imprimatur could be found in Nigeria’s post-military imperial presidency in all its Ottoman complexities and contradictions. When in a moment of political epiphany, the general decided to assume the title of military president, he was already offering a template and organogram for Nigeria’s post-military rule, irrespective of whether he was there or not.

We may no longer have a military president. But we have a militarized presidency whose wide untrammelled powers loom so large that it predisposes the holder to despotic whims and caprices which fuel delusions of divine immunity and the impunity that cohabits with it.

One of Babangida’s military predecessors who became his civilian successor also tried his hand at self-succession while another was only recently thwarted by superior forces in his bid to impose his successor on his party. Yet these were the same people who had accused Babangida of playing politics with everything and of deficit of honour and integrity.

One of the lessons to be learnt from this is that annulment and its twin evil of self-succession either directly or by more oblique manipulation of the political process is as much a function of dominant personality and hegemonic politics as it is of extant political structure and environmental culture. Democracy is never given or granted on mere verbal request.

As the political landscape transforms, direct annulment is replaced by the abolition of the electorate, the centrality of the selectorate and the rise of the judiciary as the ultimate vote counter and electoral umpire until the nation is roused from its historic slumber.

Almost three decades after the historic annulment, the sky appears to be darkening once again and the auguries filled with fear and foreboding. Something nasty is hanging in the air. Despite the vast differences in circumstances and actors, there is something about this conjuncture eerily reminiscent of the period leading to democratic meltdown. The unruly political mob has arrived at the table once again.

As it ever so happens in human societies in the grip of a fundamental rupture, the formal outlet of politics can no longer contain its turbulent contents. The annulment was the ultimate outburst of the hegemonic politics of permanent domination which could no longer be bottled within the context of Babangida’s state-party parastatal politics of succession or self-succession.

Dear readers, the piece you are about to read was written about four weeks before the annulment. The stocky general from Minna was still standing and grandstanding. But it was obvious to the discerning that his transition programme had all but unravelled and what remained to be worked out were the terms of his own dismissal and how the nation would pick up the pieces from that point on. It was to lead to another five-year wild goose change which would consume Abacha and the entire military establishment.

When the piece was published, The News magazine was summarily proscribed and its staff hounded on the streets of Lagos. But shortly thereafter, General Babangida himself beat a hasty retreat from what would have been a violent denouement. The parade ground dismissal was a joyless and soulless affair; a state obituary disguised out as a pulling out parade.

It was a mournful anti-climax and Babangida had barely left the stadium for his Minna Hilltop redoubt before the fierce fireworks of real succession commenced. Eight years earlier, this writer had heralded General Babangida’s momentous arrival on the scene with the prologue, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Published in Newswatch, October, 1985). Now, he was being quietly ushered out in the chilly solitude of the marathon runner who had finally outpaced himself.

Plotting, scheming, neutralizing and tirelessly manoeuvring, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, aka Maradona, is Nigeria’s most nimble and politically sophisticated ruler. No one can be said to have ruled the country with a firmer grasp of its confounding intricacies, or a steadier insight into its profound unsettling dynamics.

In a country of reluctant rulers, President Babangida appeared to have prepared himself for office with a calm deliberation and unflinching resolve. He is a man with an astonishing will to power. Yet to many of his countrymen, the general remains a perplexing enigma, an impossible bundle of contradictions. No one can claim that he really knows the Minna-born soldier, that they are privy to what really goes on in the dark recesses of his infinitely resourceful mind.

And here is a man who, by his own admission, has been kingmaker behind the scene and a king on the scene for a whopping twenty-seven years of our chequered history: like the celebrated Janus, the general is all manner of things to all manner of men. To his fawning band of adulators, he is a princely hero. To members of the charmed magical circle that surrounds him, he is the nearest thing to a secular saint.

To many of his military colleagues, he is the embodiment of patience and understanding. But to others not so well disposed, Babangida is a ruthless and vindictive schemer, a megalomaniac on an epic ego trip and the worst political pestilence to have been inflicted on the country. And yet there are others who see him as a misunderstood reformer, a much maligned patriot. One thing stands out in all these assessments, Babangida is a strong character that cannot be easily shoved aside.

Perhaps, then, the key to unlocking the Babangida mystery lies in the greater Nigerian mystery. If Babangida is a confounding paradox, Nigeria itself, as several commentators have noticed, is the ultimate paradox. Like Nigeria, Babangida is a combination of astonishing strengths as well as astonishing weaknesses. Nigeria is a richly talented country which perpetually runs in the opposite direction to greatness.

Like oil, a natural blessing that has turned out a source of profound embarrassment for the country, General Babangida’s own considerable natural endowments, his guile, his cunning, his breathtaking daring, his will to dominate, his penetrating insight into the seemingly defective constitution of his fellow countrymen may ultimately have proved an embarrassment of riches.

As a ruler, General Babangida is the most compelling embodiment of the Nigerian mystique. This perhaps is the key that unravels the riddle of the original romance. After an initial coolness, Nigeria suddenly warmed up to its new ruler in an unprecedented upsurge of affection and admiration. It was as if the country had suddenly discovered the hero it had been searching for.

The summer of 1985 was as unforgettable as it was memorable. Die-hard critics, age-long malcontents and the professional opposition began falling over each other to pay homage and pilgrimage to the new king. For those interested in the semiotic of official patriotism and of power with responsibility, the image of a rain-soaked Major General Babangida taking the national salute at that year’s independence celebrations remains a fetching symbol of national rejuvenation.

But if that was a dream honeymoon, the marriage itself cannot be said to have lasted much longer. The cosy association appeared to have disintegrated in a nightmare of recrimination and mutual disenchantment. As it happened in Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s celebrated classic, hero and society seemed to have parted ways, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer, anarchy looms.

Perhaps what is unfolding before our very eyes is one of those epic historical tragedies. And it is not an occasion for caustic virulence but an opportunity for sober reflection and a reassessment of what Aeschylus, in a moment of supreme insight, has called the fundamental unhappiness of the society in search of heroes. Not even his worst detractors could deny the fact that there was a time when Babangida had virtually the whole of Nigeria eating from his palms.

It is the task of sober historians of the future to determine what went wrong. All we can do is to hazard a few guesses. Perhaps there was really no foundation for the optimism, a case of a tired, despoiled nation ready to clutch at any straw. Or it may be that in the long run, the general might have been manipulated by his own manipulations. How else does one explain the elementary mistakes, the bizarre miscalculations and the penchant to self-destruct even when supreme glory seemed in sight?

The overarching vision was wrecked in a jungle of primitive struggle and murderous power play. After all, you can only execute your grand vision if you stay afloat—and alive in the shark-infested and turbulent ocean of the Nigerian polity. And as the pidgin wisdom has it, there is no paddy for jungle. In that case, history may return a verdict of brilliant tactician and poor strategist on the esteemed general.

For an orphan from a lonely outpost of the country who has lifted himself to the very pinnacle of power by the bootstrap, this may not be a damning verdict after all. Babangida’s career is a classic study in survivalist instincts honed to precision and a phenomenal will to dominate. Perhaps in more stable societies, he would have made a distinguished and world famous tank general. But even here, the analysis shipwrecks.

The greatest tank generals the world has known, from the illustrious George Patton through Lord Bernard Montgomery, Field Marshal Rommel and Marshal Zhukov were crusty, caustic eccentrics and apolitical rebels. The urbane and supremely political general from Minna does not quite fit the classic billing. In temperament and outlook, he is miles apart from these distinguished warriors. Where then do we place our man?

There are many Nigerians, in no mood for charity, who will argue that there has been no fundamental vision or strategy to the game all along. The whole thing had been one grand trick whose sole aim is to remain in power for a long time and at all cost.

If you point at such fundamental programmes as DFRRI, MAMSER, PEOPLE’S BANK, BETTER LIFE and even the uniquely baleful SAP, they are wont to retort that all these are ad hoc schemes hastily and clumsily grafted on as the occasion and opportunity demand.  In other words, rather than being well thought out initiatives, Babangida’s reforms are nothing but desperate responses to desperate political pressures.

A harsh verdict, no doubt and one that may yet be tempered by the passage of time. But in what looks definitely like the autumn of power, the grandmaster of power play must have come to realize the utter loneliness of the long distance runner.

As General Babangida, in the stupendous solitude of Aso Rock, calmly contemplates a grand architecture in virtual ruins, he might be inclined to conclude that there is after all some architecture in the ruins, as he himself said of the efforts of his predecessors.  But what many others see beyond the great chess board is a huge mausoleum of discarded pawns and sacrificed knights.

• First published on May 24th, 1993.