The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Ibrahim Babangida

  • What IBB did right

    What IBB did right

    Since the launch of his autobiography a few weeks ago, Ibrahim Babangida’s book has been subjected to critical analysis by the public. The analysts have x-rayed his achievements and failures. Today, I want to pay attention only to his achievements while I hope to focus attention on his failures in the weeks to come.

    Let it be known that no leader is 100% perfect or 100% imperfect. This is because no human being is perfect. Also, every leader makes mistakes because governance involves lots of people with particular interests and people seek to push their own interests into the decision-making process.

    In the midst of these interests which may sometimes be conflicting, a leader may make mistakes.

    President Babangida who overthrew General Muhammadu Buhari in August 1985 was a Ssldier with the organisational genius of a field marshal. He is not a tall man, but he was the linchpin in the military system with a monumental self-confidence. This presence brought for him enormous respect within and outside the armed forces. His smile with his tooth-gap was disarmingly generous. He used this smile and an accompanying charm to good effect, hoodwinking those who came his way.

    In the art of governance, he went for some of the best and brightest from our universities as ministers and special advisers. These eggheads contributed considerably to the intellectual impact that his policies enjoyed. Some of them also helped in crafting the excellent speeches that Babangida gave on even controversial subjects.

    When he was about to deliver a major speech at the United Nations in 1992, he went out of his way to invite into his speech drafting team, public intellectuals who were not in his government. Such persons included Dr. Stanley Macebuh, Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi and a few others whose names I do not remember now; I was also there. Even though the diplomats had done an excellent job by detailing in the draft speech issues that were important to the global south, we also had to work on the fluency and lyricalness of the narration in a way that matched Babangida’s manner of speaking. It was an excellent rendition that brought honour to Nigeria as a country of significance. That was one example of Babangida’s quest for excellence.

    One of the brilliant ideas that Babangida and his team borrowed from South East Asia was the People/s Bank and Microfinance banks which dotted and still dot the landscape of Nigeria today. Even though the People’s Bank did not survive the politics of the time, the microfinance banks have been a major addition to the banking paraphernalia, especially in the rural areas.

    Even though the big banks still dominate the banking scene today, the microfinance banks have filled admirably the void that had existed for years in the banking sector. The fact that they have survived up till today is a credit to the creativity of the thinkers in the Babangida government.

    Most democratic countries in the world today are a two-party system, even if they have some fringe parties struggling to survive. In Britain, there are the Labour and Conservative parties. In the United States, there are the Republican and Democratic parties. There are also minor parties either struggling to survive or seeking to have some kind of partnership with either the ruling parties or the opposition parties.

    The reason many of these countries have two parties is because in ideological terms, you only have leftist and rightist parties. Parties at the centre are ideologically barren.

    Read Also: Wike revokes 4,794 land titles over non-payment of ground rent in FCT

    In Nigeria, Babangida created two parties; the NRC and the SDP. The slogan at the time was “a little to the right and a little to the left”. When you look at the global scenario today, it can be said that Babangida was thinking ahead of his time. Since 1999 when we welcomed the fourth Republic, Nigeria has had several parties, each struggling to be the dominant party in governance or the leading opposition party. Today, the APC is the ruling party, while the PDP is the main opposition party. There are two fringe parties, the Labour party and the NNPP. Other small parties are struggling to be big players.

    But the truth is that today, it is the APC and the PDP that can be regarded as the leading parties even though they both have problems. The SDP which was the party on which Chief MKO Abiola contested the presidential election in 1993 and won is trying to have a rebirth, pushing to get rebels from the existing parties.

    The attempt to have two major parties in Nigeria has not yet succeeded. The problem really is that there is hardly any significant difference between the parties. That is why politicians just stroll from one party to another at every election cycle. If at any time in the near or far future, Nigeria becomes a truly two-party democracy, a lot of the credit will go to Babangida for pressing for it in his days as a military president.

    One of the most significant achievements of the Babangida era is the opening up of the ownership of radio and television to the private sector in, I think, 1991. Before this time, the electronic media in Nigeria were owned only and solely by the federal and state governments. The fear had been that the electronic media are too powerful to be left in the hands of the private sector. It was said at the time that with the advent of the transistor radio, you could reach anyone anywhere, electricity or on electricity. That was seen as danger waiting to happen.

    As for television, the fear was that it has the powerful combination of sight and sound. That, they said, was danger personified. These fears were grossly exaggerated. The electronic media have not proved to be more dangerous to the survival of the nation than the print media. The print media with their power of permanence are quite a force to reckon with. That is why several print media houses were shut down by the Babangida administration.

    By opening up the electronic media to private investors, Babangida expanded the range of media output available to the public. The action has also increased the level of competition among the media, thus leading to improved coverage of events and an enhanced opportunity for the public’s right to know. It is a major irony that it was a military government that did not seem to be in a hurry to handover the government to elected civilians that decided to enhance the availability of democracy’s major tool. Today, all Nigerians easily tune to any station of their choice, thanks to Babangida.

    There is Miller’s law that states that, “you can’t tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it”. I wonder whether Babangida, all things considered, feels that he took the right decision to open up the electronic media to the private sector.

    There are two things on which Babangida deserves to be commended today;

    (a) His autobiography, and,

    (b) His Presidential library.

    For many Nigerians, it is a matter of great pleasure that he allowed his mind to run backwards, flipping his memory file and producing a book that is eagerly read by many Nigerians. Whatever anyone thinks of the book, it is a document of history. It gives other thinkers the opportunity to react to what he has said. The total exertions by a number of people on the book will sum up to the complete history of Nigeria in those subject areas. Nigeria will benefit more if many more of our leaders decide, to write as Olusegun Obasanjo had done before now, when he gave us My Watch, a three-book documentation of his governance journey.

    Again, Obasanjo took the lead in building a Presidential Library, a tradition established by American presidents. Now with Babangida’s proposed presidential library, we are likely to have, in one place, appropriate documents of his presidency. That too, like the book, will be history in one place.

  • Babangida and the restless ghosts of his friends

    Babangida and the restless ghosts of his friends

    By Dare Babarinsa

    Despite his long absence from the epicentre of power, General Ibrahim Babangida remains a subject of constant fascinations. The attention commanded by his recently published autobiography, My Journey in Service, attests to his hold on the public imagination for good or evil. Love him or hate him, you dare not ignore him. Younger Nigerians may not understand the full import of Babangida’s allure, yet his career has so much to do with what we are today. This is the man offered a place in history by Destiny but who through his reckless idiosyncratic preoccupations, destroyed the house he had built with so much meticulous husbandry. He tried to ramble about the June 12 debacle by speaking through both ends of his mouth. Now his story, whatever else he may be struggling with in his winter years, would be reduced to the tragedy of the man who annulled the freest election in Nigerian history.

    It is a fact that Abiola did not have the opportunity to tell his own side of the story. Abiola was eager to display his love affairs with Babangida. In those days, as you climb the flight of stairs leading to the first floor of Abiola’s palatial mansion in Ikeja, you will see the giant picture of Babangida on the wall. Abiola wanted it be known that Babangida was his friend. He was very successful in his primary assignment of making money. He had almost everything. He kept acquiring more. He acquired good friends. He acquired a multitude of dangerous and envious enemies whom he thought were his friends.

    During the Second Republic, Abiola made a spectacular foray into politics, colliding with the immovable obelisk of Yoruba politics, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, first premier of the defunct Western Region. His ambition was high and he thought he had arrived. He had money and relied on the dangerous friends he had acquired in the military. One of them was Babangida.

    It was believed that Abiola was recruited into millionairedom through his friendship with General Murtala Muhammed, General Yakubu Gowon’s Minister of Communications. It was a turbulent and profitable friendship and when Gowon was toppled in 1975, Abiola’s friend became the new Head of State. Six months later, Muhammed was assassinated during the botched coup of February 13, 1976 and Abiola’s kinsman, General Olusegun Obasanjo, became the new Head of State. It was an endless summer time for Abiola and the harvest was big. He found his way into the Constituent Assembly and made more friends.

    Read Also: Bamidele: N’Assembly positioning Nigeria for $1trn economy by 2030

    One of his new friends was Shehu Shagari, a suave subaltern of the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello. Shagari was Abiola’s colleague at the Constituent Assembly. He was elected the first president of Nigeria under the new American style constitution. Despite his money, Abiola’s National Party of Nigeria, NPN, did not make much inroads into Yorubaland. Despite the passage of years, the Yoruba people have not forgotten the Fulani, who dominated the NPN, as the traditional enemy.

    For almost 50 years in the 19th Century, the Fulani, after seizing Ilorin, an Oyo provincial town, by subterfuge, embarked on a ceaseless campaign to impose Fulani rule over the rest of Yorubaland on the pretence that they were spreading Islam. They have succeeded in doing the same in Hausaland, where they killed all Hausa kings and replaced them with Fulani rulers. Their unforgiving and unrelenting quest for total power also manifested during the First Republic when they hounded Obafemi Awolowo into prison. By the time of Abiola’s bumptious challenge, Awolowo had joined the pantheon. To the Yoruba people, he was now an irunmole; one of those ageless deities inhabiting Oke Itase in the sacred land of Ile-Ife.

    By 1982, Abiola was having a rethink. He left the NPN and claimed that he was no longer interested in partisan politics. However, when the military struck on December 31, 1983, sacking the regime of President Shagari, Abiola’s friends were back in power. Some people were even ready to speculate that Abiola was one of the sponsors of the coup that toppled the Shagari regime. He was flamboyant and large and through him, possibilities were many. He was very successful; too successful. That was the problem.

    Among the stories of Orunmila, there was a man who was too well fed that he started looking for medicine that could burst his protruding belly. So, Abiola started looking for battles to fight. He sought and was given honours from different corners of the world. He was the Pillar of Sports in Africa. He was the Bashorun of Ibadan, a title once held by Oluyole, the Oyo prince who became the second ruler of Ibadan after the legendary Ife general, Lagelu. He wanted visibility. He wanted power! He had the unquenchable desire to change the world.

    He soon started having trouble with his old friends. In 1991, the African Concord, one of the publications of the Concord Group of Newspapers owned by Abiola, wrote a story that annoyed the Babangida regime. The regime simply passed a decree banning all newspapers in the Concord stable including the National Concord, Sunday Concord, Weekend Concord, Isokan and Amana. When Abiola humiliatingly arranged a truce, asking his editor, Bayo Onanuga, to apologise, Onanuga refused flatly, declaring in a letter to Abiola: “I am not going to write any apology to anyone!” Instead, he resigned, along with his colleagues; Kunle Ajibade, Femi Ojudu, Dapo Olorunyomi and Seye Kehinde, to start TheNews magazine.

    Despite his travails, Abiola still believed so much in Babangida. In 1992, I was among a group of journalists that travelled with him to Goree Island in Senegal, as part of his global campaign for reparation from the West for their two centuries of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. On our return journey, I sat beside him on the plane to conduct an interview for TELL magazine. He said he would not join politics again. “What else do I want in my life,” he said. I believed him.

    Then he visited his friend in the newly built Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja. Babangida took him on a tour of the palace, culminating in a pleasurable moment at the presidential office. “This would be your office,” Babangida told him. Abiola believed him and he plunged into the presidential race, culminating in the June 12 debacle.

    My late boss, Dele Giwa, the first editor-in-chief of Newswatch also believed that Babangida was his friend. Then one day early 1986, my colleague, Chuks Iluegbunam, was assigned to cover the opening day of the trial of Major-General Maman Vatsa and 15 others accused of plotting to topple the new military regime of Babangida. I told the Editorial Board of Newswatch that I believe Vatsa will be killed because he was put in handcuff and leg chains. You cannot do that to a general unless you are prepared to finish him.

    “He is Babangida’s childhood friend,” Giwa said. “Babangida was his best man at his wedding.” Giwa believed Babangida would spare Vatsa.

    Giwa was very sober when the news came via an announcement by General Domkat Bali that Vatsa and the others “have been executed about an hour ago!” Bali added with blatant irony: “In the military, the price of treason is death!”

    After that death came for Giwa on October 19, 1986 wearing the innocent mask of a parcel.

    Babangida said in his book that he did know anything about the death of Dele Giwa. I believe him. He would have a lot of explanations to make when he finally makes the inevitable journey to God’s headquarters. He may have to contend with many restless ghosts before he finally keeps that appointment before the Judgement Throne. Then his comprehensive mendacity may not be of any use.

    Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, his nom de plume, the French philosopher of the 18th Century said: “Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies!”

    •Babarinsa is chairman, Gaskia Media Ltd.

  • IBB: Revision for contrition?

    IBB: Revision for contrition?

    It is just as well that Nigerians have been speaking on Ibrahim Babangida’s long awaited book – “A Journey of Service” since its public presentation Thursday last week. Surely, if a week after its release, most Nigerians appear less convinced about the aptness of the subject’s so-called journey of service which the title desperately sought to project, what the snippets out there suggest goes beyond a less-than-credible account of the eight-year trauma unleashed on a long-suffering people by the individual now famously described as Maradona. It is, to put things mildly, a nauseating patchwork of astounding self-justification, and a most egregious assault on the psyche of an injured people.

    Let me start with a confession at this stage: I have not read the book. I will hopefully do as soon as I am able to grab a copy. But like every concerned Nigerian, I have followed, closely, the events from the presentation to the subsequent naira rain in the service of the vainglorious monument of a so-called presidential library project – a scandal, an obscenity, if you ask me. That is a different matter by the way.

    Just as theirs belong the prerogative of what to make of his account as laid out in the book, Nigerians ought to join me in commending the number one artful dodger for finally coming out with his story – never mind that this is coming after 32 years since the annulment of an election that the world has come to accept as the freest and fairest in the nation’s electoral history.

    To say that the man they call IBB is no ordinary leader is no overstatement. For good or bad, the point really is not to deny him his place in history. Next to Yakubu Gowon under whose leadership the nation fought a bloody civil war, he is arguably Nigeria’s most consequential leader till date. Howbeit, if a minority few detected his pretensions to high-mindedness particularly in the early days of his administration, one must give it to his uncommon ability to deploy a certain charm offensive, added to his trademark toothy smile, to get majority to accept that he meant no harm.

    With all manners of palace intellectuals in his beck and call, the administration, which he was the supremo, was apparently well prepared, to answer to any and every quest, right up to playing god! In those giddy moments of intoxicating power, some even dared to call him the Prince of the Niger!

    To be sure, he was not all image and no substance. He was a doer of sorts. For roads and food security, his administration had the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI); there was the Mass Mobilization for Self-Reliance, Social Justice, and Economic Recovery (MAMSER) to educate the citizens about the political process, their civic duties and to inculcate in them a dependence on locally made goods and Nigerian products. They, the administration that is, even had the National Agricultural Land Development Agency (NALDA) to assist willing farmers to prepare the land for cultivation! Nigerians will recall the much reviled Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), the policy anchor to address the then looming economic catastrophe. 

    And then the spectacular bid to nurture a so-called new breed of politicians and with it, the laboratory of costly political experimentations; an era when politicians were banned, unbanned and re-banned by his administration– politicians thought to have crossed the lines of the administration’s political orthodoxy.

    If Nigerians were exasperated by the chaos falsely presented as a transition programme, the artful manoeuvres which berthed few hours into the elections and the subsequent annulment of same on June 12, 1993 certainly went beyond a mere turning point, it has since defined everything that the administration represents to Nigerians if not the global humanity.

    It is precisely why Nigerians chose to see the book – A Journey of Service – as an essential June 12 story – as against the autobiography that it is. As far as most are concerned – everything of meaning starts and ends with the story of MKO Abiola, a man who won an election fair and square but was denied the fruit of his victory for reasons that are as inexplicable as they are illogical. (Like most adults at the time, I could still play back in my mind those testy moments when a rambling Babangida, as if under the influence of substance, decreed the election annulled)!

    Now that the Supremo testament is out in the bookstands, many are actually wondering whether the so-called memoir should not have been more appropriately titled The Return of the Maradona. Yes, an exposition on the same old indulgences in semantic inexactitudes that is vintage IBB!

    Still, there is lot that Nigerians ought to be thankful for. First the dubious, but utterly self-serving attempt to conflate ‘acceptance of responsibility’ with ‘expression of remorse’ has been finally exposed for what it is – an exercise in chicanery at best. The man is apparently far too gone to understand the difference and their import. He apparently thinks that he has done the country no wrong to call for an apology to be offered. Or better still, he thinks that would detract from his macho image of the soldier’s soldier!

    Read Also: Tax Reform Bills: Less than 30% of Nigerians pay tax, says Akpabio

    That thousands died didn’t appear to matter; nothing about the grave socio-economic dislocation spawned by the crisis seems to matter; these were mere collateral damages and should be accepted as such! That, for yours truly, is a revelation, a sure profile in leadership.

    Second, the confession that he, IBB was never truly in charge of anything! Again, I am relying on newspaper reports!

    Yes, he was supposed to be the commander-in-chief, but Sani Abacha, his army chief, was actually the one running the show! Interestingly that all of the other brass-hats which he gleefully named as his nemesis, and all of whom he claimed were sworn to ensure that the transition did not run its full course, are now dead! While that remains his words against theirs, the only thing that he did not add is that the perceptibly rattled, rambling and incoherent general that appeared on TV to announce the annulment was actually a Babangida clone!

    How about that shameful admission, coming from our beloved military president, a four-star general?

    Now that the man has pretty little to offer the nation or anyone for that matter, it’s probably time Nigerians left him alone as he continues to enjoy the peace of his rarefied hill-top mansion in Minna!

  • No regrets

    No regrets

    The terrible thing about IBB last week was that we allowed him to be Maradona again. The headlines last week said it all. They said the former military president regretted his actions in annulling the June 12 poll.

    If you read the book, A Journey In Service, An Autobiography, and if you heard his short speech at the book presentation, Ibrahim Babangida never once said or even suggested that he regretted it. He described it as regrettable, which means we ought to lament his shameless action. That does not amount to a personal regret.

    He also said: “The nation is entitled to expect my impression of regret.” A tongue-twister. That does not mean he regretted it. The expression was a trap, and editors, reporters, commentators and even the political class fell into it. He indeed conned journalism.

    For you to regret, we expect remorse. There was no remorse in the diction and tone of his delivery. It was a cold-blooded offering. You need remorse to apologise. To regret is to be unhappy about what one has done to oneself. Remorse means you are pained for hurting others. He did nothing of that. We climbed a high moral pedestal believing he asked for mercy. He asked for no such thing.

    IBB was Maradona again, and he conned many with his rhetorical rigmarole. I don’t like him but I admire the man. He came to laugh at the nation, and at the end of that dark cackle, he carted home a profit. If he said, we are “entitled to expect my impression of regret,” he merely said it is your right to ask me to say I am sorry, but it is my choice not to say it. I cannot give you the throat to gloat, to wrest judgment, to humiliate me as a groveling sinner. I will never flatter your moral superiority.

    He boasted that he conducted the best election. That was his point. He knew Abiola won. His opinion was worthless. Buhari has declared it, and M.K.O. Abiola has earned GCFR. IBB gave us a meal, a poisonous meal, but no mea culpa. His confession adds nothing to the June 12 value. It was just a saga of a man – IBB – trying to be heard, when all ears were deaf.

    Ten he said he took full responsibility. He said, he would do it differently, if he had the chance again. How differently? Many, including the reviewer Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, implied he would have allowed Abiola be president. The same Abiola he said in the book would not be a good president? The same Abiola he paraded Yoruba topmen, including the Ooni of ife, to see his contracts with government, his government? The Ooni yelled, “Ohun nikan la s’aiye fun ni?” Was the world made for him alone?

    Doing things differently surely did not include Abiola restoration. After that assertion, he said he did it in the best interest of the country. It means annulling June 12 was in the best interest of the country. Restoring it was not. It was a binary choice? He chose the path of perdition. He just told us that, in June 1993, the best action was to annul. He even gloats that his action was right because democracy has prevailed over disintegration.

    Read Also: Beta Nigeria trains journalists, influencers to advocate for education reform in Kaduna

    If you read the book, you could hear IBB’s voice. For those who were alive when he was president, and listened and studied his speeches, there is nothing different now. The writers then may be different from the editors like Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi and Dr. Chidi Amuta, yet the voice is inescapably IBB’s. In his style, he projects the air of the learned, but that is because he knows how to pick brilliant men. Who would go wrong with Amuta, Ogunbiyi, et al? But he has a native cunning, an earthy brilliance, a street wisdom, and an ability to appear to grasp concepts like a sponge. We saw it when he was military president. We see it now. He was a dangerous man and he exploited the air of macabre augury around him.

    Some have called him a coward when he blamed Abacha.  He cannot defend himself. Maybe his people can. Even if they do, it will all be speculative. Sophocles wrote. “The dead will never testify against a burial.” Cowardice is an elementary, if naïve, charge. A dictator is, by definition, a coward. Such a claim says nothing new. History has a list of such despots. Pol Pot, Mussolini, Kurunmi, Caligula, Nero. They are impotent without arms and state power. But Babangida is a special kind of coward. It is a special kind of coward who stakes his life in coup after coup. It is a coward who was shot at during the civil war, flown to Lagos, rejected a surgery, recovered and was not afraid to return to battle. It takes a special kind of coward to go upstairs in a radio station in Lagos to meet with coup leader Buka Dimka without any arms. His boss T.Y. Danjuma ordered him to return and flush him out.

    He did not fear court martial as implied in Alabi Isama’s book, The Tragedy of Victory. Isama wrote that IBB asked Dimka to drop his weapons and run. IBB writes that he “inescapably” escaped. It takes more than a coward to dare Idiagbon with a coup attempt. It took more than a coward to sit at his office on the top floor of the  Defence Headquarters in Lagos when virtually every soldier was running for their life out of the building over a bomb scare but IBB remained ensconced and unfazed in his office. This is not his story, but Debo Bashorun’s account in his anti-IBB book, Honour for Sale.

    One thing I wanted to read was his use of decree two. He gave himself plaudits for abrogating Decree 4 but says nothing of Decree 2. Four was a subset of two. Rather he undertakes a phony intellectual rollercoaster trying to frame a human and democratic system. He says nothing about the deaths he piled up during the June 12 turmoil, the hounding of radicals, the many dead on street protests, the long disruptions of life, the destruction of the economy, the high-profile deaths like Kudirat Abiola, Bagauda Kaltho, etc.  There was no mention, not to say regrets or even a funereal tone on the deaths he unleashed.

    The health challenges that ultimately took the lives of Gani Fawehinmi and Beko Ransome-Kuti derived from jail times under his gulag. I remember as the managing editor of the Concord Newspapers’ Abuja bureau, I was sitting on my desk when our Villa correspondent Mohammed Adamu walked in with what looked like a scrap of a paper. It had no letter head, no signature, no government insignia. He told me Chief Press Secretary Nduka Irabor gave it to him and other correspondents. I read it, and its writing bore IBB’s serpentine style. It did not say directly that the election was annulled, but it implied it. I called the editor of National Concord, Nsikak Essien. He asked me to call the editor-in-chief, Dr. Doyin Abiola. She asked what it all meant, as though she did not understand it. I explained that the election had been annulled. As the wife of the winner, the hope of a life in the villa held the prospect of a fantasy. She became angry with the messenger, and said I should have scooped this earlier.

    I was in the joyous halo of my birthday, but history decided to mock. IBB says, it was Abacha’s men who did it. We need Nduka Irabor to let us know if his boss Admiral Aikhomu did not know about it. IBB said Aikhomu was taken aback by the letter.

    IBB said he knew nothing about Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) that mobilized a circus for annulment. He did not know about Justice Ikpeme’s decision about the June 12 poll. He felt helpless about stopping the group, yet he banned newspapers, hounded human rights group like CDHR and CLO, and the Campaign for Democracy and NUPENG’s Frank Kokori. He locked up Beko and Falana, and I remember seeing them in court and even following them to know where they were kept until a soldier pointed a gun and asked me to go back. IBB and his men did not even stop his SSS men from following me around Abuja, I did not know until Abiola’s  first aide Olu Akerele hinted me that two cars, a Jetta and 505, took turns following me about town. The same IBB who boasted as though inebriated that “we are not only in office but in power.” He knew when now President Bola Tinubu, Olisa Agbakoba, and editors of The News and Tell magazines, were staked out day and night. Fearless reporters like Alex Kabba were hunted out of the country. Yet, ABN puffed on the streets and IBB could do nothing?

    The most fascinating was his telling of his life at 14. His father died, and he was so distraught that he wanted to join the army. The now orphan boy was dissuaded by his relations. But for a boy whose mother lost child after child, including twins, and only he and his sister survived, and to lose his father and want to join the army? That was an early flirtation with suicide. That was the beginning of his cruelty.

     In his The Rebel, Albert Camus demonstrates how tyrants kill others because they won’t kill themselves. He saw deaths in spades too early and may have wondered why he did not die when his mother was losing several of his siblings. But just like he survived all of that death scare, he survived coups and even a coup against him.

    Many are angry that the donations to set up a library was obscene. Bigwigs donated the fat of the land to evil, and he once called himself the evil genius. No problem, so long as the library is set up to include all the evils of his brutal reign, the death, the air of funeral parlor, the rhetoric of augury, the state of fear that characterised his army with a state rather than a state with an army, a la Bismarck. Those who have nostalgia for military rule can learn. Just like the Nazi Museum in Berlin, with all the madcap personalities and incidents.

  • Babangida comes round

    Babangida comes round

    When on 24th June, 1993, former military president, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, announced the annulment of the June 12 presidential election held that year, he embarked on a journey of willful denialism that has taken 32 years to unravel. Now, he publicly acknowledges that business mogul and frontline philanthropist, the late Aare Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, won that election.

    Babangida, in his 420-page memoir titled ‘A Journey in Service: An Autobiography of Ibrahim Babangida’ that was presented in Abuja last week, openly recanted the narrative he had pushed in and out of office all these years. “Although I am on record to have stated after the election that Abiola may not have won the election, upon further reflection, and a closer examination of all available facts, particularly the detailed election results which are published as an appendix to this book, there was no doubt that MKO Abiola won the June 12 elections,” he said in his book.

    “Upon closer examination of the original collated figures from the 110 polling booths nationwide, it was clear that he satisfied the two main requirements for winning the presidential election – majority votes and geographical spread – having obtained 8,128,720 against Tofa’s 5,848,247 votes and securing the mandatory one-third of the votes cast in 28 states of the Federation including Abuja,” he added.

    In annulling the poll way back in 1993, the military ruler had cited vote buying and the need to protect Nigeria’s judiciary among motivating factors. Ahead of the poll, however, there were strong suspicions the Babangida regime was reluctant to cede power and was changing the goal post severally in the middle of the transition programme. When Abiola’s candidature scaled the many hurdles raised and limped towards certain victory, there were clear indications of unease on the part of the military class suggesting they weren’t just inclined to allow him take the reins.

    Read Also: Ogun to benefit as world’s largest protein producer invests $2.5bn in Nigeria

    Babangida, in his address at the book presentation said the poll annulment was done in “extreme national interest.” He told the audience of dignitaries: “As the leader of the military administration, I accept full responsibility for all decisions taken by me. And June 12 happened under my watch. Mistakes, oversights and missteps happened in quick succession but, as I say in my book, in all matters, we acted in extreme national interest so that Nigeria could survive.”

    It is doubtful that anyone other than Babangida and his fellow denialists did not know before now that Abiola won that election. So, the ex-military ruler really didn’t say much that is new. Still, it is helpful for closure that he outed with it. One thing he didn’t do, though, was apologise for the historical injustice and rather explained it away as being in “extreme national interest.” No, sir, it was more in national interest to have effected Nigeria’s boldest attempt at de-ethnicizing its politics. Every other consideration was selfish interest.

  • A bad case in a bookcase

    A bad case in a bookcase

    Sir: Nigeria stands on extremely fragile foundations and many factors are responsible for the situation. There are to be found among the country’s living, a host of those responsible for her many problems. If Nigeria searches among the dead, even some of those who rendered her empty would be found.

    Last week, a key player in one of Nigeria’s most critical periods, during which the 1993 general election was annulled and the president-elect die in questionable circumstances had it all to bare in a book. Gathering Nigeria’s most powerful power brokers serving and retired, including two former presidents and the current one, Ibrahim Babangida presented his memoir titled” A journey in service”. His image makers have desperately sought to present the memoir as a source of great excitement among Nigerians. But, if there was any excitement at all around the release of the book, it was to the extent that people wanted to read, to know if the true circumstances of the horror they lived would be revealed.

    Read Also: Beta Nigeria trains journalists, influencers to advocate for education reform in Kaduna

    But those that think they matter in Nigeria more than others gathered and without fail, they had some rather warm words for a man many remember only for his chilling cruelty. Maybe it is the passage of time which binds all wounds or the fact that many people are fighting different battles, but the memoir from one of Nigeria’s most ruthless dictators has fetched no more than muted reactions.

    In the memoir, Babangida belatedly summoned the grace to admit that annulling the 1993 general election which led to the death of the presumed winner, M.K. O Abiola was a grave error. What was not clear from the admission was whether there was remorse or not.  Assuming there was any hint of remorse, did it come from his heart, or was it the stirrings of a heart realising its fathomless folly so late in life?

    Given how dangerous and destructive military involvement have been to Nigeria as a country and democracy, it is absolutely shocking that many of those involved in various crimes against Nigeria have not been prosecuted and may never be.

    The book may be one man’s chronicle of his personal life, but given how he took power in Nigeria and went on to force himself on the country for eight years, it is a book that has wider ramifications for Nigerians. There has never been a stronger case of a nutcase and a bad case on a bookcase, but posterity will pronounce the final judgment.

    However, until Nigeria gets better, Nigerians must be wary of the phoney remorse that is propelled only by a certain reckoning with the dust that awaits even deities.

    Kene Obiezu,keneobiezu@gmail.com

  • Heroes of June 12

    Heroes of June 12

    Former Military President Ibrahim Babangida, who annulled the historic June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, the late Chief Moshood Abiola, yesterday admitted the injustice of the criminal cancellation. Although the poll was not de-annulled, the military was forced to disengage from power after a hectic battle coordinated by the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and other pro-democracy forces. Deputy Editor EMMANUEL OLADESU revisits the heroic contributions of the freedom fighters to the struggle.

    Thirty two years after, truth has become the caterpillar that bulldozed the house of lies.

    Truth and conscience have hunted the annuller, who wrecked monumental havoc on the anxious country by dashing their hope of returning to civil rule through the democratic election.

    Former Military President Ibrahim Babangida surrendered at last. During the presentation of his book in Abuja, he admitted that the June 12, 1993 poll was credible, free and fair. But, he did not really apologise to the nation.

    The former leader, who prided himself as the Evil Genius, also admitted the gross error of cancelling the results of the poll won by Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, who ran on the platform of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP).

    Nigerians had endured the over eight years of political experimentation. But the annulment was the turning point. The unwise decision destroyed the legacy of the charismatic General who forfeited a hallowed place in history.

    It was a story of great betrayal by soldiers of fortune. The pain lingers. The scars have not faded. For families that bore the brunt, the agony has not ended.

    The symbol of the struggle and his devoted wife, Kudirat, perished in the war. So was the popular yearning for a new dawn. Therefore, 1993 paled into a year of wasted expectation and illusion of hope.  In 1999, civil rule was restored. But, the main inheritor of the gains of the struggle was another military brand, ably supported by civilian collaborators who subverted the legitimate agitations.

    After five years of serious protest, the slogan of the battle changed, following the mysterious death of the winner in detention. The people insisted in despair that the military must just go. Nigeria ultimately entered the second phase of the struggle under IBB’s pre-determined successor, Gen. Sani Abacha, the pretentious interim contraption headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan not withstanding.

    The labours of pro-June 12 crusaders were in vain. But references would always be made to the contributions of the leaders and arrowheads of the campaigns at home and abroad.

    These leaders include Chief Adekunle Ajasin, Chief Anthony Enahoro, Chief Bola Ige, Rear Admiral Ndubudi Kanu, Air Commodore Dan Suleiman, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, now President of Nigeria, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, Col. Dangiwa Umar, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Gen. Alani Akinrinade, Ayo  Opadokun, Olu Falae, Frank Kokori, Fredrick Fasehun,  Kofo Bucknor Akerele, Ayoka Lawani, Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Chief Cornelius Adebayo, Chief Ganiyu Dawodu, Sir Olaniwun Ajayi, Olawale Oshun, Mohammed Arzika, Amos Akingba, Balarabe Musa, Ibrahim Tahir, Walter Carrington. Wahab Dosunmu and ‘Epetedo Declaration forces- Femi Lanlehin and Tokunbo Afikuyomi; Chief Segun Adegoke, Olisa Agbakoba, and Justice Dolapo Akinsanya, who declared the Interim Government illegal.

    The list is inexhaustive. They suffered many bruises, particularly intimidation, oppression, repression, detention, and trials, before many of them went on exile.

    But, apart from these leaders, many demonstrators at home also paid the supreme price in the process of sustaining the struggle. While some leaders abandoned the struggle for a morsel of porridge, many activists, students, and ordinary people faced bullets and endured tribulations under the military rule to the end. They are unknown and unsung in life and death.

    The battle became hotter as the maximum ruler, Abacha, unfolded his self-succession agenda. Scores of protesters died as soldier opened fire along Ikorodu Road, Lagos in 1994. No fewer than 174 demonstrators were wounded. A year later, some students of Edo State University were killed by soldiers for demanding for democracy.

    The media was caged. But, it was fruitless. Up came guerrilla journalism, which was nevertheless costly. The family of Baguda Kaltho is still in deep lamentation that the body of the murdered journalist is yet to be found.

    Reflecting on the ordeals of the forgotten heroes of June 12, Oshun, Third Republic House of Representatives Chief Whip lamented in his book: ‘The Open Grave: NADECO and the struggle for democracy,’ that “too bad today, those who died then are now remembered in figures than in name,” although their deaths were not less poignant than that of Chief Alfred Rewane and Kudirat as they too were murdered in cold blood by blood thirsty operators of the dictatorship.Little is known about the brave people, who agreed to serve as couriers, ferrying messages and documents across the border for pro-democracy movements. They are silent patriots.

    Some of them were intercepted. A case in point was Mr. Laiyemo, Adebayo’s personal assistant, who was bearing a letter from the former Kwara State governor to a friend. He spent 36 months in detention.

    Read Also: JUST IN: Abiola won June 12 election – IBB reveals

    The same fate would have befallen Rev. Tunji Adebiyi, who was bearing a letter from Lagos  NADECO leaders to Ajasin in Owo. He was caught at Maryland during a stop and search operation. He was saved by Kudirat, who made a passionate appeal for his release.

    Who remembers the man called Uncle Johnson, who was drawn from his retirement to manage Radio Kudirat in exile by Akinrinade, or the information technology expert, Gbolahan Olalemi, who installed and ran Radio Freedom in Nigeria, with all its attendant risks? Olalemi had the misfortune of being caught and detained. He was kept in an underground cell, flogged by soldiers and even used as a bait to access Dapo Olorunyomi’s home in Mushin.

    During the dark period, Tinubu’s aides-Benson Akintola and Akeem Apatira-were picked up by security agents in 1994 and detained at the Federal Interrogation and Investigation Bureau (FIIB), Alagbon, Lagos for three months. They were looking for information about Senator Tinubu, who had gone underground and later into exile.

    When soldiers stormed the Ikeja residence of Akingba, the former don was nowhere to be found. They pounced on his nephew, Peter Ogunyamoju, who was later detained in Alagbon. The military planted a bomb in the house which exploded, killing Nelson Kassim and Dr. Omatsola.

    A NADECO chieftain, who had escaped abroad, Chief Ralph Onioha, was helpless as news got to him that one of his boys, Abayomi Kehinde, was arrested as a pro-democracy agent. Also, for being in possession of anti-military  leaflets and posters, Abdulsalam Danladi was detained in Lagos between May and June 1998. Another June 12 traveller, Samuel Asogwa, was detained for three weeks for circulating pro-democracy posters and literature. He was charged with sedition.

    The same fate befell Ebun Adegboruwa, a lawyer in Fawehinmi Chambers. He was detained between November 1997 and June 1998 “for being in possession of subversive documents.” His 75 year-old father was previously held in lieu of him for initially  failing to honour a summon by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI).

    A similar scenario played out in Ijebu-Ode where Ayomide Lijadu was arrested in place of her father, who had organised a rally to protest Kudirat’s assassination.

    Adegboruwa’s colleague at the bar, Bamidele Aturu, was detained for a month because his client, Isaac Osuoka, was in possession of posters denouncing Abacha’s self-succession plan.

    For 18 months, Prince Ademola Adeniji-Adele languished in detention for his NADECO activism. Captured as a prisoner of war at Ibadan, Lam Adesina lost his freedom between May and June 1998.

    Between May 1995 and July 1998, Kunle Ajibade had the worst experience. He was jailed for “accessory after the fact of a coup.” He was jailed for 15 years over a story by The News.

    It was not the best of times for journalists. Chris Anyanwu lost her freedom between June 16, 1995 and June 15, 1998. She was charged before a military tribunal for accessory after the  fact of treason. Her Sunday Magazine’s coverage of the phantom coup trials was infuriating to Abacha. She was initially jailed for life. Later, the sentence was reduced to 15 years.

    Also, a journalist,  Moshood Fayemiwo, was detained for a year and seven months. His paper published materials that revealed the looting of the treasury by the military while also campaigning for the revalidation of June 12 election.

    For Nosa Igiebor, it was a hell of time. For seven months, he was detained. His offence was that his magazine published a story exposing Abacha’s plan to ‘punish’ neighbouring countries that showed sympathy for pro-democracy movements.

    Labour activist Joseph Akinlaja was detained for days for partaking in an illegal meeting where bombing of oil refineries and depots were discussed and for being in a crowd of pro-June 12 crusaders.

    A soldier, Major Akinloye Akinyemi, was detained for four years for coup plotting. But, it was believed that he was picked up because he is the younger brother of Prof. Akinyemi, a NADECO chieftain. The elder Akinyemi was in exile for four years.

    Eminent banker and politician Olabiyi Durojaye’s case was pathetic. He was detained for seven months. The reason was unknown. “They told me they were just directed to keep me here,” he said.

    For declaring Abacha regime illegal, Senator Polycarp Nwite was detained for one year. The NADECO member was accused of planting bombs. In 1995, Rev. Peter Obadan was also held for calling for the revalidation of the annulled poll.

    Others detainees include Prof. Omo Omoruyi, who was shot and wounded for calling for the revalidation of June 12, Babafemi Ojydu for his anti-Agacha stance, Soji Omotunde for decrying dictatorship, Mrs Iluyomade, wife of Gen. Iluyomade, and daughter, who lost a pregnancy in detention, Arthur Nwankwo for harbouring anti-Abacha pamphlets, Olorunyomi’s wife, Ladi in lieu of her husband, 80 year old Chief Solanke Onasanya, who was asked to explain what he did not do; Kudirat’s murder; Abdul Oroh of Civil Liberty Organisation(CLO) for his links with Soyinka and pro-June 12 campaigns, Onome Osifo-Whiskey for criticising Abacha, Bayo Osinowo for his association with Abiola, Niyi Owolade for anti- government May Day riot at Ibadan, and Chima Ubani for for inciting Nigerians against the military government, and Lam Adesina, who became a prisoner of war.

    Others are Nike Ransome-Kuti, Solomon Sobande, Emeka Ugwuoke for circulating pro-democracy posters, Olusegun Mayegun, Popoola Ajayi, and Jerry Yusuf for hijacking a plane in protest against the Interim National Government and calling for the restoration of Abiola’s mandate.

    Human rights leaders-Dr Beko Ransom-Kuti, his brother, Prof. Olikoye Ransom-Kuti, Femi Aborisade, Chima Ubani, Joe Igbokwe,  Olisa Agbakoba,  Ayo Obe, Bishop Mathew Kukah Osagie Obajuawana, Felix Tuodolo, Debo Adeniran, Ima Niboro, Babafemi Ojudu, Bayo Onanuga, Akinola Orisagbemi, who was Personal Assistant to Mrs. Kudirat Abiola, Innocent Chukwuma, Bunmi Aborisade, and numerous activists under the banners of the Nigeria Bar Association, Nigeria Medical Association, the divided Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), NUJ, PENGASSAN, NUPENG, Kayode Fayemi of Radio Kudirat, Lagos Justice Forum, June 12 Collective, the media, and NANS made invaluable contributions to the struggle. The list is endless.

    Evidently, the restoration of civil rule was not achieved on a platter of gold. It was a collective enterprise involving the mighty and the low and suppressed masses; professionals, youths, students, artisans, peasants and the ordinary man in the street.

    Nigeria has witnessed transition from civil to civil rule. The accompanied crisis and stress were also managed. But, the fruits are inadequate.

    Tinubu was a great financier of the pro-democracy activities at home and abroad. The onus is on him to reposition the country through the building of institutions, politico-electoral reforms, security, restructuring and restoration of federal principle, and abolition of poverty, which was the Abiola’s cardinal objective.

    If these goals are accomplished, then, the unsung heroes will heave a sigh of relief that the struggle was, after all, not totally in vain.

  • Why was the election annulled?

    Why was the election annulled?

    In his 422-paged book, ‘Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition (1989 – 1990),” eminent scholar and journalist, Prof. Olatunji Dare, writes on how former Military President Ibrahim Babangida could not adduce a reasonable justification for cancelling the results of the historic June 12, 1993 presidential poll. Excerpts:

    The outcome of the June 12, 1993 presidential election heralded great promise not just for democracy but for Nigeria. The people had made a free and unfettered choice in an election largely untainted by the vices that had marked the series of elections that spelled the doom of the Second Republic. As if by a collective resolve, voters across the nation cast aside the divisions of tribe and tongue and creed to elect a ticket featuring two Moslems. That choice contained powerful intimations of the possibility, if not the desirability, of forging one nation out of the hundreds that inhabit Nigeria, and of harnessing the abundant energy and ingenuity of the people and the country’s vast natural resources to launch it, finally and irreversibly, on the path to prosperity and greatness.

    The annulment turned that conjuncture into another false dawn, setting off a series of spasms that shook Nigeria to its fragile roots. A regime that had set out to battle the forces of a past it considered ignominious summoned those very forces to smother an election outcome that it should have claimed as its finest hour, as the happy culmination of a transition that had been eight years on the making.

    Not since the civil war had Nigeria gone through the kind of convulsion that followed the annulment.

    Why, then, was the election annulled?

    Babangida’s testimony

    Going by the undated, unsigned statement on plain paper issued by Nduka Irabor, press secretary to the Vice President on June 15, 1993, the election was annulled “to rescue the judiciary from inter-wrangling”, to protect the legal and judicial system from being ridiculed and politicized both nationally and internationally.” By that statement, the Federal Military Government terminated all pending court cases and appeals on the election, repealed all the laws under which the transition had been conducted, dissolved the NEC and nullified all the acts it had carried under the decrees that had governed the transition.

    The purpose of all this, the statement said, was “to end a ridiculous charade which may culminate in judicial anarchy”, and to ensure that “the insatiable political desire of a few persons” did not “tarnish” the reputation of judiciary built on a solid foundation.”

    It was not until some two weeks later, on June 25, 1993, that Babangida finally deigned to address the nation to explain why the election was annulled. It had to be annulled, he said, precisely for the very reasons the August 1992 presidential primaries had been annulled. She earlier poll did not represent the un-coerced preference of voters, showed no respect for the electorate as the “unfettered final arbiter in elections, was vitiated by a deficit of “decorum and fairness” s” on the part of electoral umpires, and was not staged in conformity with “absolute respect for the rule of law.”

    The same flaws, he went on, had characterized the presidential election, right from the primaries. The Government had “full knowledge of the bad signals pertaining to enormous breach of the rules and regulations” but overlooked them so as to keep faith with the August 27 deadline for the return to civil rule. But the breaches had continued on an even greater scale, right up to the presidential election proper.

    Despite “allegations of irregularities and other acts of bad conduct” made against the presidential candidates, as well as “proofs and documented evidence” of widespread use of money, in the amount of 2.1 billion, NEC still went ahead to clear the candidates for the election. In addition, Babangida continued, there was also the moral issue of “documented” and “confirmed” cases of “conflict of interest” between the government and both candidates which would have compromised their duties were they to become president. But the National Defence and Security Council again decided to overlook all that.

    Although the presidential election was “generally seen to be free, fair and peaceful,” Babangida said, there was in fact a huge array of election malpractices virtually in all the states before the actual voting began, plus “authenticated reports” of election malpractices against party agents, officials of the National Electoral Commission and also “some members of the electorate”. And despite “proofs” of “manipulations through offer and acceptance of money and other forms of inducement” against officials of the NEC, and “conflict of interest in the authentication of and clearance of candidates,” the government, determined to keep the transition deadline, chose to overlook “vital facts”.

    But after Justice Bassey Ikpeme issued an injunction against holding the election, the NDSC considered postponing the election by one week, to allow NEC enough time to reach all the voters, especially in the rural areas, about the postponement. But the Council dropped the idea, following assurances by NEC that it could reach the electorate within the few hours left before the election.

    “Now, we know better,” Babangida said. “The conduct of the election, the behaviour of the candidates and post-election responses Continued to elicit signals which the nation can only ignore at its peril.”

    In all this, the behaviour of the courts was deeply to be regretted, Babangida said. They had been intimidated and subjected to the manipulation of the political process and vested interests, and the entire political system was in clear danger. Consequently, the NDSC decided to annul the election, “in the supreme interest of law and order, political stability and peace”.

    “To continue action on the basis of the June 12, 1993 election, and to proclaim and swear in a president who encouraged a campaign of divide and rule among our ethnic groups would have been detrimental to the survival of the Third Republic, “Babangida declaimed with finality. “Our need is for peace, stability and continuity of politics in the interest of all our people.”

    Another election, to be conducted by a new Electoral Commission, under rules to be spelled out in a new decree, was to be held before the end of the year. Candidates for the election must be at least 50 years old. They must not have been convicted of any crime, must believe in the corporate existence of Nigeria. Their business interests must not conflict with “national interests”, and they must have been registered members of one of the two official political parties for at least a year prior to the election, for which all previously banned persons who had no criminal record would now be eligible. These conditions virtually eliminated Abiola and Tofa from contention.

    From the foregoing, it is clear that the NSDC approved the election. If the election was held in breach of the rule of law, the blame could not be pinned on NEC chairman Humphrey Nwosu and the NEC alone. Military president Ibrahim Babangida and the NDSC are as much to blame as Nwosu and NEC.

    If the “proofs” and “documented” malpractices Babangida invoked ex post facto were genuine, why was the Attorney-General of the Federation not asked to commence prosecutions against the perpetrators? If Abiola had “encouraged a campaign of divide-and-rule among Nigeria’s ethnic groups,” why did the same Nigerians hand him a decisive electoral victory? By authorizing the elections despite having “proofs” and “documented evidence” that the process was gravely tainted, should the NSDC not be regarded as accessories to those malfeasances, and to whatever new malpractices might have occurred during and after voting?

    Read Also: Katsina will support Tinubu, Radda’s re-election in 2027, says minister

    It is also disingenuous to compare the annulled party primaries with the presidential election. The primaries involved only electors of each party and were basically a party affair. The presidential election involved a national electorate and was witnessed by accredited local and international observers. It was the dissatisfied candidates in the primaries who called for its cancellation, with 10 of 12 aspirants declaring that the entire exercise was a conspiracy to impose Yar’Adua on the SDP as presidential candidate by fraudulent means.

    The Federal Military Government’s initial response was that they should learn to be “gallant losers”. + was en calls for cancellation persisted that the Government, as supervisor of the transition programme, stepped in and obliged.

    It is a great irony that a military regime that routinely voided the jurisdiction of the courts, made laws that took retrospective effect and violated with impunity fundamental human rights of citizens, should now use fidelity to the law and “absolute commitment to the rule of law” to justify the annulment of the election.

    In whatever case, none of the parties to the election had sought any court order one way or another. It was Arthur Nzeribe’s ABN, a thinly-disguised Babangida proxy, that had sought the injunction which launched the process that culminated in the annulment. Babangida and the Attorney-General Clement Akpamgbo were joined as co-respondents, but neither of them entered any representation. They left NEC to its own devices.

  • Ex- Eaglets Ibrahim Babangida dies at 47

    Ex- Eaglets Ibrahim Babangida dies at 47

    Tijani, wife hospitalized

    Former Golden Eaglets star, Ibrahim Babangida reportedly died  in a road accident along Kaduna/Zaria Road yesterday.

    The younger Babangida, who was in the Nigeria Under 17 squad that won the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Japan in 1993, reportedly died instantly in the car crash which also had his elder brother, Tijani Babangida, an Olympic Games gold medallist in 1996 and the President, Professional Footballers Association of Nigeria (PFAN), and his wife on board.

    The younger Babangida’s former teammate, Emmanuel Babayaro, who is the General Secretary, PFAN, announced the incident in a statement.

    Read Also: Court admits Sirika, daughter, son-in-law to N100m bail

     “Comrades! Let us be in prayers for our president, Tijani Babangida, who just had a ghastly motor accident along the Kaduna-Zaria Road,” Babayaro wrote in a press statement.

    “Ibrahim Babangida, his younger brother, died on the spot from the accident while Mr President (Babangida) and his family were taken to the hospital.

     “May the soul of Ibrahim Babangida Rest In Peace with God, amen,” he added

    The late Ibrahim aged 47 who was a member of the 1993 FIFA U-17 World Cup-winning Golden Eagles squad in Japan featured for local sides Bank of The North, Stationery Stores and Katsina United on the domestic scene before joining Dutch side Volendam in 1997 until 2002.

    He never made it to the Super Eagles but was in the infamous ‘ wobbling and fumbling’ squad of Fanny Amu Flying Eagles in 1995 African Youth Championship which Nigeria hosted and got a bronze medal.

  • IBB: Identify yourselves as Nigerians at all times

    FORMER military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, has charged Nigerians to ensure they identify themselves as Nigerians all the time.

    He said Nigeria is a country to be proud of; adding that whoever wants to denounce his citizenship should have a rethink.

    Speaking with newsmen during the celebration of his 78th birthday at his Uphill residence in Minna, Babangida said Nigerians do not have any other country apart from Nigeria.

    He stressed the need for everyone to work towards ensuring the country survives its challenges.

    “We do not have any other country except Nigeria, let us all work together, men and women, young and old, to make sure that this country survives.

    “We need to work to ensure that the unity of this country is maintained and make sure we identify ourselves as Nigerians all the time,” he said.

    On his 78th birthday, the former military leader said, “I give God thanks for sparing my life up till this time. God has been very kind and I remain grateful.”

    The Uphill residence of the Babangida was flooded with family, friends and well-wishers from all walks of life who were on ground to celebrate with him on his birthday.

    Most of his friends and well-wishers came with greeting cards of different colors and sizes with different inscriptions.

    Among the early callers were former Chief Justice of the Federation, Alfa Belgore, lawmakers from the National Assembly, former military administrators and governor, as well as relations.

    Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated the former military president, on his 78th anniversary.

    In a message to Babangida, Buhari said “On behalf of the Federal Executive Council, my family and all Nigerians please accept my warm felicitations on your 78th birthday.

    Read Also: IBB: The lonely long distance runner

    “On this special day of your life, the reminiscences of your courage and invaluable service to the army in protecting the sovereignty of the country come to the fore. Thank you for the role of statesman you are playing in the affairs of the nation.

    “As you age gracefully, the country will continue to look up to you for guidance and wisdom. May Allah continue to increase your health and grant you the strength to give your best to your family and the nation,” he stated.

    Also, former vice president and the presidential flagbearer of the Peoples Democratic Party in the February 2019 polls, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has extolled Babangida’s virtues describing him as “a great patriot, statesman and iconic visionary leader.”

    In a special congratulatory birthday message, signed by Paul Ibe, his Media Adviser, Atiku praised the nation-building roles played by the Minna, Niger State born former president, who turned 78 yesterday 17.

    “General Babangida as a young officer fought for the unity and indivisibility of our fatherland. And as head of state, he not only spearheaded the physical relocation of the nation’s capital from Lagos to Abuja, but politically too, championed and implemented the ideal of a two-party system which enlisted majority of Nigerians.

    “In and out of office, general Babangida carries himself with immense grace, comportment and dignified charisma,” the Waziri of Adamawa said.

    Atiku further prayed for good health and long life for IBB in the continued service of our nation.

    Other dignitaries who sent their congratulatory messages to Babangida early yesterday included the Senator representing Niger East Senatorial District, Senator Mohammed Sani Musa and former Niger State Governor; Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu.

    The duo who spoke at different occasions said Babangida is a nation-builder who has continued to champion the unity and indivisibility of Nigeria.

    “General Babangida is indeed a leader whose influence traverses beyond the shores of Nigeria. While he was the president, he played a great role in the unity of Africa, particularly in the struggle against apartheid regime in South Africa.

    “We are proud of him, and will continue to celebrate his iconic leadership and lifestyle. This is why many leaders go to him to seek his advice,” Senator Sani Musa said.

    Former Niger State governor, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, who spoke to newsmen in Minna, said Babangida is the most experienced leader in Nigeria, adding that Nigerians need him around as an elder, leader and an adviser.

    “I am happy that he is still alive and helping us. He advises us; he warns us, he reconciles us and he has been very busy with affairs of Nigeria and the world over.

    “We are happy he has reached 77 and we are counting. We hope he stays far longer for us. He is the most experienced leader we have had in this part of the world and we need him around as an elder, a leader and an adviser,” he said.