Every June 12 since 1993, Babangida suffers fresh post-partum maladies. Exactly two weeks ago, he was in the pangs once again as Nigerians remembered the day they would have crossed over into a political Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. But Akogbatugbaka struck. Akogbatugbaka? Who is he? Okay, let me tell the story.
In Yoruba folklore, there is the story of Akogbatugbaka, a very powerful farmer, brawny, but unfortunately not brainy. In other words, he had more physical power than sense.
One fateful day, Akogbatugbaka went to his farm at the first light of dawn. Decked only in knickers, he swung his hoe, and began to make heaps, where he intended to plant yam later. Within a couple of hours, drenched with sweat from head to toe, the man had made 200 solid heaps, a feat which would have taken lesser men one clear week to achieve. Akogbatugbaka then decided to have a respite. He needed to use some snuff from the little box he usually carried around.
His head almost flew away as he dipped his hand in his pocket, and found it empty. But he was positive he left home with the small box. How come? Akogbatugbaka surmised that the little box must be under one of the hefty heaps of sand. So, starting from number 200, he began to dismantle them one by one, another energy-sapping exercise. 150, 120, 100, 80, 50, 30, 20. Akogbatugbaka was like a demented soul as he brought heap after heap down in a frenzy. Till he got to the very last one, which was the first one he had constructed hours earlier. And there, like a prodigal son returning home, was his box of snuff. With gusto, he picked it, and attacked his own nostrils with the stuff. It was like nirvana.
IBB is like Akogbatugbaka. For eight years, he ruled Nigeria by force, doing a lot of bad things, and some good things in the process. But at the end of it all, he dismantled all the good things with his own bare hands. A fortnight ago, Professor Adebayo Williams, my old teacher at the then University of Ife, at a public lecture to commemorate June 12, lamented that Babangida would have been the architect of modern Nigeria, but he fluffed the chance. Hear Prof. Williams:
“If the Minna-born General had perished in the process of confronting the principal agents of the annulment; he would have gone down in history as the architect of modern Nigeria. It is noteworthy that there were officers who were ready to lay down their lives to defend Abiola’s mandate. Particularly touching in this instance is the patriotic and glorious example of the illustrious Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, who lost his commission in the process.”
I must confess that I have never been a Babangida fan. I preferred the Buhari/Idiagbon regime which he supplanted for purely selfish, self-serving reasons. Nigeria would have been in a better position today if it was the Buhari regime that lasted for the eight years IBB spent in power. But I equally admit that the regime had some achievements, particularly in the area of deregulation. Broadcasting, the airline industry, telecommunications, and many others, were thrown open. The nation is better off for it today. And to cap it all, the regime gave us the June 12 election, the best we have ever had as a nation. But then, Akogbatugbaka showed his diabolic hands.
Every June 12, IBB is surely not a happy man. How he would have loved it for the day to pass unsung, unheralded. But it is his day of infamy, of opprobrium, of obloquy. And as long as he “contemplates life in the chilly splendour of his Minna hill mansion” (Prof. Adebayo Williams) the ghost will continue to haunt him, the pain will gnaw at his heart. It was the day he visited chicanery on us as a nation, and see what we have suffered since then. See what the Abiola family has suffered, losing their breadwinner, losing their mother, Kudirat. And if the annulment had not happened, we would not have had a murderous ruler like Sani Abacha, neither would we have been whiplashed with eight years of the nemesis called Olusegun Obasanjo.
And to think the villain called Babangida could have been a hero today, if only he stood for truth, fairness and justice. He saw the Promised Land ahead but never entered it. The devil got the better of him, as one of his ministers, Chief Alex Akinyele, said in an interview last week. According to the Ondo chief, who served IBB as Information Minister, “the devil came and disrupted the election. Have you seen a man who will do such an excellent work and destroy it with his own hand? It was the devil.” In other words, Akinyele was confirming that Babangida is Akogbatugbaka. He destroyed his work with his own hands. Pity. But it is not enough to just blame the devil. Blame also the man who made himself available for the devil to use.
When the then Dr Adebayo Williams taught me Literature-in-English at Ife some 27 years ago, he said something about Okonkwo, the tragic hero in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The words stuck in my memory: “If Okonkwo had been a moderately reflective man, he would have known that his psychological priority, rather than being a fear of fear, should have been a fear of fearlessness.”
And I say: IF Babangida had been a moderately reflective man, he would have known that his psychological priority, rather than being a cowardly annulment of the nation’s fairest election, should have been an adherence to truth and justice, even if it meant laying down his life in the process.
Let his post-partum pangs continue.
