Still on memoirs

Anyone who believes you can’t change history has never tried to write his memoirs – David Ben-Gurion

I did not plan to write on memoirs again this week. I thought I’d concluded on it last week in the two-part series. However, the fact that last week was June 12, a date that means more than just another to many in the country. I came across a lot of postings that prodded my memory and made me to think I can’t just conclude that session without talking about our recent history.

A few of the participants in that dramatic parcel of our life have written their own stories to state where they stood and perhaps explain why they did what they did. The one that prompted me to write this today was an excerpt from the memoir of Chief Anthony Anenih. It was posted on a group I belonged to. It was a portion about his role and that of the man that was at the centre of the June 12 debacle, the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.

The two dramatis personae – Anenih and Abiola – are late so it is not possible for any of them to defend his stance or rebut what the former ‘Mr Fix It’, as Anenih was popularly called, wrote.  The title of the book is My Life And Nigerian Politics. I must say that because I have not read the entire book it would be unfair and unscholarly for me to judge it, because you don’t judge a book by its cover.

In the book which was published three years ago, Anenih tried to justify all his decisions and moves as the Chairman of the Social Democratic party (SDP), the party on which platform Abiola won his mandate. The winner of the mandate was painted as someone who was not open enough to the party members, especially the leadership of the party in all his actions. According to Anenih, even Abiola’s decision to travel out of the country, endorse and urge the late Gen Sani Abacha to topple the Interim National Government (ING) headed by his kinsman and corporate world czar, Chief Ernest Shonekan, and others were taken without taking the leadership into confidence.

According to Anenih, “I was returning from one of such trips to a prominent Emir one afternoon when I heard from my car radio Chief Abiola calling on General Abacha to come and ease Chief Shonekan as he eased out Babangida, I was shocked.

“I called Chief Abiola and asked for an explanation of what I had just heard. His reply was, “Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to have worked for you. You are a strong-willed man, but you see, if you want to go to Kano by road and you later decide to go to Kano by air, as long as you get to Kano, there is nothing wrong with that.”

He added that most of the key decisions taken by Abiola were taken without the party’s consultations. Many of the things he wrote about in the excerpt I read were all done to justify his own position and to correct the impressions most Nigerians have about him and the party leadership over the way they ‘betrayed’ June 12 and left the winner of the party’s mandate to ride the crest as a lone ranger.

Unfortunately, Abiola is no more and the truth of all what transpired may not be unveiled for a long time to come. But as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has always emphasised, there is danger in a single story line. The June 12 story is not a single story, it is multi-faceted and one can only judge from one’s angle or where one stood. As Achebe would say, you cannot see a masquerade dance by standing on one spot!

The story has not ended and cannot even end just like that. There are many others whose stories would make interesting reading and throw more light into this dark arena of our national life. All those who have been strutting around as heroes of the struggle should endeavour to write their own versions and let readers judge. They want to change history? Then, with the Ben-Gurion quote above they should try and change history by writing their own stories.