Of all the responses former military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida gave in the interview he granted the media to mark his 74 birthday, the most striking must be his answer to the question on the 1990 Gideon Orkar coup. He had been asked how he escaped being killed. He attributed his salvation to the courage of loyal officers, chief among whom was the late Sani Abacha, then a general and Chief of Army Staff, who would later become head of state. Granting interviews is apparently not Gen Babangida’s forte, and his answers have often exposed his general inability to ruminate expertly on complex, nuanced issues before venturing responses. In past interviews, he had guilelessly likened himself to the Argentine football icon, (Diego) Maradona, espoused his admiration for Machiavellian realpolitik, and with a hint of sarcasm, described himself as an evil genius. The Maradona and evil genius labels have stuck in the public mind like adhesive.
On the Major Orkar coup question, Gen Babangida spoke of how he and Gen Abacha rallied loyal troops to quell the revolt. “May God bless Sani Abacha,” he added emotively, unbeknownst to him the dire import of that unreflective prayer. Obviously, in his estimation, he owed his survival to Gen Abacha, to whom he went on to dedicate even the country when the complex politics of the 1993 presidential poll annulment forced him to step aside. If 25 years after the fateful coup Gen Babangida could still speak so emotionally and so laudably about Gen Abacha, it perhaps reflects very badly on his spiritual philosophy, which age should have helped him to deepen and fine-tune, and on his leadership qualities, which hindsight should have impelled him to recognise fell far short of the standard he seems to approximate for himself.
There is little he has said since he stepped aside in August 1993 to inspire anyone, or give indication of his depth of understanding of great issues, or lead him inexorably to the remorse leaders show over glaring policy weaknesses and failures. Till today, though most of his policies miscarried very badly during his eight-year rule, and he had needed to reverse many of them, he still proudly claims them as bold, courageous and innovative policies that changed Nigeria for the better. His government was rife with corruption, but his defence consistently is that succeeding regimes were even more corrupt, a fact that is regrettably true. His policies impoverished a vast number of people and virtually wiped out the middle class, but having raised a new generation of unprincipled and dilatory political class, he rejects the accusation of destroying the middle class, but raises his so-called new political generation as a totem of his daring and immutable achievements.
Nigerians await his memoirs, on soldiering and leadership. There is no guarantee they will ever come, or that he will have the courage to publish them in his lifetime. If they come, however, there is nothing to suggest they will contain bold assessments of his war years or his time in office, for he is not gifted with the same plucky bravado that has bewitched former president Olusegun Obasanjo into the worst display of narcissism and self-glorification ever known in these parts. When Gen Babangida is not afflicted by variableness, he is paralysed by excessive caution. If his memoirs are ever published, they will invariably contain facts and materials riddled with hesitations and caution. At least his interviews over the years indicate nothing revolutionary will ever issue from him.
It is, therefore, in the context of his complex persona and cautious worldview that his prayer for Gen Abacha must be interpreted. Had he been capable of the ennobling reflection great leaders are familiar with and frequently subscribe to, Gen Babangida would have been chary of asking God to bless Gen Abacha, even if he could prove he owed his life to the late head of state’s intervention in the 1990 coup. Gen Abacha surprisingly ran a more disciplined economy than any of his successors, including the notoriously self-satisfied Chief Obasanjo. But the scale of thievery he enacted is unequalled by any other Nigerian head of state. Worse, though Gen Babangida himself dealt atrociously with human rights, and appears naturally equanimous in the face of widespread human rights violations, he should have sensibly refrained from appearing (in his press interview) to be indifferent to Gen Abacha’s horrifying abuses.
Many years after the Major Orkar coup, Gen Babangida has still been unable to refine his understanding of spiritual matters, let alone deepen it. Was it really Gen Abacha’s intervention that saved him, or was it God? Gen Abacha, as events would later show, was himself a very ambitious general who was obsessed with ruling Nigeria. If he was so minded on that crazy coup day in 1990, he would have seized the opportunity during the ensuing confusion to take power. In addition, even before Gen Babangida could rally either loyalist troops or Gen Abacha, the coup plotters could have got to him, had heaven given them the leeway. A leader with acute spiritual insight, as world history has shown repeatedly, would recognise the role destiny plays in the survival and longevity of a ruler. In his birthday interview, Gen Babangida exaggerates the role played by Gen Abacha and gives the impression he sees his survival, if not his longevity, as a futile veneer of his existence.
Gen Babangida has granted many interviews, some of which provided great sound bites, even if they were exasperatingly cautious and nugatory. At 70 years and above, his interviews have not only become jaded and remorseless, given the weighty matters inviting his comments and the misdeeds waiting for public and unreserved atonement, they have in fact become much tamer and rambling. He ruled for eight years, and managed the poetic grace of exiting power on the same day he took it, on August 27. It is hoped that in one final and soaring deed of penance and noblesse oblige, Gen Babangida would demonstrate, in logic and arguments at least, the leadership skills and capacity the world always thought he possessed. Given his now increasingly lethargic age, it will be unfortunate indeed should he depart this world without coming to terms with the many lives he had ruined, the policies he had grossly miscarried, the country he has blighted by his lack of discipline and human rights violations, and the final parting shot of bequeathing to the country the ineffectual interim government of Ernest Shonekan in August 1993 and the hedonistic and putrid leadership of Gen Abacha a few months later.
It is also bewildering that the birthday man did not shrink at the unflattering import of celebrating the longevity of the seven living Nigerian leaders, to wit, Yakubu Gowon, Shehu Shagari, Obasanjo, Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Shonekan, and Muhammadu Buhari. A few weeks ago, this columnist bemoaned the fact that contrary to the average life expectancy of the Nigerian, the seven living Nigerian rulers had all surpassed the 70 years mark, and seemed poised to go on interminably. The columnist did not wish them dead; but he wondered whether it was fitting to celebrate the seven when the people they ruled over live short, miserable and cursed lives. The rulers, the columnist concluded, had all lived in easy circumstances on the bread and honey of the republic nearly to the complete detriment of the people they governed. Gen Babangida should have been philosophical about the seven living Nigerian rulers, and drawn the right lessons.
Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar has appeared to find a role as a peacemaker to live out the rest of his days; Chief Shonekan is gradually mummifying in a political and business vacuum; Alhaji Shagari waits perhaps regretfully and phlegmatically for a coup de theatre to close his uneventful era; Chief Obasanjo sets himself up sanctimoniously as a sort of national umpire, truculent, virulent and unsparing; and Gen Gowon has found for himself the intercessory role of a prayer warrior and ecclesiastical peregrine. Gen Babangida burnt himself out too early, his controversial skills and accomplishments totally unsuited to anything the country might need. Had all these leaders done right by country, both they and their grateful countrymen would today be living in symbiotic joy, proud of the past, satisfied with the present, and looking forward to a great future. At 74, let Gen Babangida ruminate on these lost chances, if he can, if the number of his years is not just statistics.
