IBB’s ‘A Journey in Service’: Yet another view
Nigeria’s former military head of state, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) recently stirred the hornets’ nest with the launch of his book, ‘A Journey in Service’ at the prestigious Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, and at which gathered the crème la crème of Nigeria’s power circles. Along with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu were virtually every former […]
General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida
Nigeria’s former military head of state, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) recently stirred the hornets’ nest with the launch of his book, ‘A Journey in Service’ at the prestigious Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, and at which gathered the crème la crème of Nigeria’s power circles.
Along with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu were virtually every former living head of state, from General Yakubu Gowon, except the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented at the occasion. To accentuate the top-heavy essence of the occasion was the review of the book by no less a personality than the immediate past vice president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo – a distinguished professor of law in his own right. And trust Osinbajo, he delivered as no one else would have done better.
Expectedly, reactions have trailed the book launch, with each reaction harping on one aspect or another as presented in the book.
Given that IBB ruled the country as a military leader with full play-out of the culture of regimentation and air of impunity as is typical of the military whenever in control of political power, the book’s merit or otherwise lies in its success not only attempting to provide answers to several questions which hallmarked his tenure and had been blowing in the wind for the past 38 years he had been out office. It also raised some fresh concerns and questions that the present leadership of the country needs to heed for take-away lessons from his tenure. For in leadership – more than any other aspect of life – does the line by Mark Anthony in William Shakespeare’s classic play, ‘Julius Ceaser’, holds graphically true that “the evil that men do lives after them while the good is oft interred (buried) with their bones.”
While in the case of IBB as Nigeria’s ruler, the annulment of the results of June 12 1993 presidential polls and the denial of Chief Moshood Abiola of his duly earned electoral victory constitute the major low-points in IBB’s tenure, the fact remains that a disastrous end for the entire charade of the transition programme which spawned it was predicted but not heeded. Hence it will be of more utility if Nigerians belly-ache less with attempting to reverse the march of time and roll back bygone events and rather focus more on preventing a repeat of past mistakes.
For just as the play-out of impunity drove the leading lights of the IBB tenure to misstep and end up throwing the country into the existential setback it suffered and had been haunted by since then with the annulment of the presidential poll, so some current tendencies in governance at the various tiers of government mimic the failings of that time.
Put in perspective, what is referred to as the June 12, 1993 imbroglio had its root in the political alchemy by the IBB regime, of fostering a political transition of the country from military rule to civilian administration, even by excluding the very people to be ruled from deciding how to be ruled.
History records that the transition started well with the appointment of Dr Samuel J. Cookey’s Political Bureau in 1986 to conduct a national debate on the political future of the country. Adjudged to be the most comprehensive political consultation at that time in the country, it yielded among other recommendations, the now famous bi-polarity of political tendencies into the conservatives and the progressives.
Altogether, Cookey’s team received as many as 270,000 submissions from Nigerians across the country and presented 10 recommendations to the government, which rejected most of such but accepted only three. These included the registration of two centre-right and centre-left parties for the country, creation of two additional states, namely Akwa Ibom from Cross River State in the Niger Delta and Katsina State from Kaduna State in the North. Also accepted by the IBB administration was the establishment of a political mobilisation programme under the parastatal, Mass Mobilisation for Self-Reliance, Social Justice and Economic Recovery, with the acronym (MAMSER).
The eventual weakness of the otherwise beautiful transition programme of the IBB era was the emergence of unmistakable signs of his intention to transmute into a civilian president, which was accentuated in the skewing of the mobilisation enterprise of MAMSER along that direction. The turning point was the establishment by the government of two state-sponsored political parties, namely, the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) at the federal, state, as well as local government and ward levels.
From then on, the administration commenced the promotion and adoption of the principle of diarchy – the sharing of political power between an elected civilian president and an unelected military leader. Expectedly, not a few well-disposed Nigerians accepted this booby-trapped leadership dispensation in spite of its apparent odiousness, but the government went ahead to impose it on the country.
Working along the doctrine of diarchy, the government, in 1990 launched a political timetable with which state governors were elected into office in 1992 with the proverbial ‘big elephant in the room,’ the presidential election slated for June 12 1993. This was just as the entire transition programme was so tightly controlled by IBB that whoever was not in the good books of the administration was frustrated out of the race for elected public office. So, exited from the political jostle were the likes of the late General Musa Yar’adua and others. In fact, it was an open debate over whether the military establishment would accept Chief Moshood Abiola as an alternate president of the country under diarchy if he won the presidential poll, given his cozy relationship with some but not all of their top brass; hence, it was in a compromised political space that the iconic June 12, 1993 presidential poll was conducted.
That is why, as some observers have noted, the annulment of the June 12 presidential poll falls into the same dispensation of coup d’états, whereby the success of same puts smiles on the faces of the executors while failed attempts bring the pain of death for perpetrators.
In that context, therefore, the June 12, 1993 imbroglio was a successful coup, where the executors also shared their booty while the fall guys paid various prices.
Unfortunately too, not much else can be heard or said about it beyond what IBB’s book, ‘My Journey in Service’ has offered.