Steve Nwosu
Several years before he realised his life-time ambition of becoming Nigeria's Head of State, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida had become a recurring decimal in the country's military politics. In the process he had clobbered together an intimidating cult of loyalists - both within and outside the military - that defied all opposition to eventually keep the gap-toothed General on the saddle for eight years. Eight years after he was forced to 'step aside', Babangida has continued to be linked with determining whoever occupies the Aso Rock Villa which he first occupied. Now, as he prepares to celebrate his 60th birthday come Friday, August 17, the permutation is that he could be making a return under a new era that would allow him another eight years in power.
"Nigeria is a country of over 100 million people and there are over 10 million experts who should take over from where we stopped"
These were the exact words of former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, in 1998 when he was confronted, in Enugu with the question of his possibly running for the presidency in the present dispensation.
But it is increasingly becoming difficult to hold Babangida to those words, especially against the backdrop of what the incumbent president Olusegun Obasanjo, is said to have once asked of the then presidential ambition of yet another former Head of State, Gen. Yakubu Gowon. Obasanjo was said to have wondered what Gowon had forgotten in the Government House that he needed a second coming to pick up. If Obasanjo could go back on those words to run for presidency, one would not be surprised to see the man popularly referred to as 'Maradona' dribble his way back to the number one seat he vacated eight years ago.
When Everything Is Possible
"A game of the possible", that is how a school of thought defines politics. This definition becomes even more appropriate when viewed in the context of the Babangida phenomenon. The first and arguably the most junior officer to sit on the highest decision-making body in any of the different military juntas that have run the country to date (He was a member of the Supreme Military Council of the Murtala/Obasanjo Regime), Babangida has got away with things many would ordinarily have thought impossible.
When he ingloriously stepped aside on August 1993 as military president, after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, there was a seeming conclusion that he was headed for the dustbin of national history. It was inconceivable that the likes of the charismatic dictator would be allowed anywhere near public office. But barely two years after, as political associations began to jostle for the recognition in the new transition programme started by the then Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, Babangida's name was already cropping up as nursing political ambition. In fact, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, who was then in the fold of the Social Progressive Party (SPP) was accused of working for IBB. For the past six years thereafter, the name Babangida has remained on the list of presidential possibles.
When the PDP came on stream and the Minna General was unveiled as one of its financiers, it was speculated that the former president was scheming for the chairmanship of the party. And when that eventually went to Chief Barnabas Gemade, attention shifted to the presidency. And gradually, public discourse has shifted from whether IBB will run to "when" and "on what platform".
The Making of a Political God-father
George Moghalu, National Secretary of the All Peoples Party (APP) captured the essence of General Babangida in political equation of contemporary Nigeria when he pointed out that the three registered political parties would be dismissing the Babangida factor to their peril.
The APP scribe who was denying reports that the party was wooing the former military president with its presidential ticket rationalised his position on the fact that Babangida, having superintended over the affairs of the country for eight years, has woven a nationwide network of allies which can easily transform into a formidable electoral force. IBB, according to Moghalu, made ministers, directors, board chairmen, he gave contracts as well as dispensed patronage.
And given the fact that he had a way of developing a personal relationship with virtually everyone who worked with him, the Minna-born General is believed to have made the most friends of all the former presidents and Heads of State the country has ever had.
It may be expedient to also add that many of IBB's friends are eager to reciprocate his benevolence even with their own lives.
A measure of that loyalty is the statement credited to the retired Col. Abubakar Umar who in 1985 was reported to have said that he could go to war blindfolded if Babangida was commanding.
Umar and Lawan Gwadade were among the handful of the then younger officers referred to as the 'Babangida Boys'.
A card-carrying member of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), IBB has remained a source of headache to the party, even as he has been linked, at various times, with happenings in the other two registered party - the APP and the Alliance for Democracy (AD).
Not too long ago, AD Chairman, Ahmed Abdulkadir had to throw in everything in his arsenal to convince the party hierarchy that he was not representing IBB's interest in the party. Even as Alhaji Yusuf Ali, National Chairman of APP, continues to deny any extra-ordinary relationship with IBB, reports have it that he is in constant touch with the Minna General.
Political Re-engineering
The effort to rebuild Babangida began almost as soon as he left office. And like the calculating politician he is, the former president maintained a studied silence while his aides went to work. He kept that silence for almost five years, only granting occasional interviews. In one of those interviews, he described himself as the "Evil Genius".
Books, lectures, biographies and symposia were put together by such trusted aides as Prof. Omo Omoruyi, Maj. Gen. Tunji Olurin, Tunji Olagunju, Adele Jinadu, Duro Onabule etc., who all tried to convince Nigerians that Babangida was not the bad man everyone thinks he is.
Transition to Democracy in Nigeria 1985-1993, a book written by Omoruyi, Olagunju and Jinadu was the height of the image-laundering effort.
Late last year, the Babangida friends and cronies assembled again in Jos to do yet another laundering exercise. They described the IBB years as revolutionary and made all efforts to convince us even if Babangida did not do well, he meant well.
There have also been efforts to present the annulment of the June 12 presidential election which remains the darkest spot in the eight-year reign of Babangida as a collective decision that was taken by the ruling military elite and political class - rather than a furtherance of the ambition of Babangida to remain in power.
But the gap-toothed General played his own best public relations man when he, in an interview with a foreign publication, apologized for the annulment - arguing that what ever reasons that may have been adduced for the action notwithstanding, the bulk stopped on his desk.
But while aides and friends went about publishing a supposedly battered image, IBB took steps to expand his area of influence as well as make appreciable inroad into the subsisting political order.
He sponsored candidates to both chambers of the National Assembly, took total grip of the politics of Niger State where some time ago, advertorials were running on the state radio and television stations extolling the virtues of the ex-president. The authorities of the stations have had cause to restate that IBB remains one of their most valued patrons.
Today neither Senator Idris Kuta nor Arthur Nzeribe, among others, masquerade their link with the Hill Top Villa in Minna. Even Obasanjo cannot deny that some members of his Executive arm were directly nominated by Babangida.
That the incumbent President is always having cause to invite the former dictator to Aso Rock is a confirmation of the appreciable grip and influence the Minna General has on Aso Rock.
The New Parties
With the advent of new political associations positioning for recognition to stand election as political parties in the second leg of the present dispensation, the IBB machine roared to life again. It planted men in virtually every new association with the aim of preparing a soft landing for the General in any one of them that eventually gets registered.
Although it was only the National Solidarity Association (NSA) that did not deny its links with IBB, none of the National Frontier, Forth Dimension, UNDF was totally independent of control by Minna. Until Wednesday when it eventually merged with NSA and several others to form the United Nigeria Democratic Party (UNDP), the NF denied every insinuation that it was a twin brother of NSA and that they would merge with time. If the new group is eventually registered, it is expected that it would provide another option for the calculating and effective General from Niger State.
What Does Babangida Want?
The answer, simply put, is: The Presidency. But even that answer would not be given with all certainty. For now, the nearest the world has come to confirming Babangida's presidential ambition is the privileged information which he gave to THISDAY a few months ago that he would only run in 2003 if Obasanjo is not running. Beyond 2003 however, it is assumed that IBB will run in 2007.
Even at that, IBB is bent on ensuring that Obasanjo does not run with Atiku as his Vice President again.
Although a school of thought reasons that this opposition to Atiku has to do with the fact that the incumbent Vice President frustrated IBB's bid to take control of the PDP, political pundits posit that IBB's desire that Obasanjo drop Atiku has to do with the fear that if Atiku is allowed to consolidate as Vice President in the next four years after 2003, it would be difficult for Babangida, or anybody else, to snatch the presidency from him in 2007 - by which time the PDP would have zoned it to the North (and expectedly, to the North-east zone where the VP comes from).
Even if IBB fails to clinch the presidency, his plan is that he remains relevant as a kingmaker. If he does not get to be president again, Babangida desires to run the affairs of the Aso Rock Villa from his Minna Hill Top Villa.
His Chances
Babangida is reported to have offered to provide Obasanjo with another candidate for VP as condition for his support for the president's re-election and given that Obasanjo has stubbornly stuck to Atiku with whom he has a near perfect working relationship, it would then be expected that IBB will either stand election against the Obasanjo/Atiku ticket on the platform of any of the other parties or sponsor a candidate to do so.
If he stands, he can as well forget the block votes of the South-west even if he stands on the platform of the native AD. The votes from the North-east -where Atiku has become something like a demi-god, even in the APP states - can also be taken for granted.
That leaves only the North-west and the North-central as well as the South-east and the South-south geo-political zone.
Babangida is tipped to put up his best performance in the North-west but if voting is to be viewed along party lines, even this zone would be too close to call. The North-central is essentially PDP, except Kogi. And even there, the governor is said to be pro-Obasanjo.
How the votes go in the South-south - which gave the PDP its largest votes - and the South-east - which continues to cry of marginalisation by the Obasanjo administration - could be dicey. But in all, it would take more than just a toothy smile to swing the votes.
However, having stated times without number that he does not intend to run against Obasanjo, it is only proper to also view Babangida's chances of electoral victory against the possible candidacy of Atiku. In this respect, the financial war chest at the disposal of the IBB group comes to play. But it is hardly in doubt if the group cannot be matched naira for naira by the Atiku group.
And when it comes to actually going out to the field to deliver, the Atiku camp is peopled by young men rearing to go. Young men who have in the last five or so years demystified the fearsome political machinery of the old NPN and NPC that comprise the IBB camp.
While the IBB camp is made up of politicians doing their swan song, it is morning yet on creation day in the Atiku camp.
IBB's Dark Spots
The drawbacks to the Babangida ambition are essentially the dark spots of his eight-year rule. And these include the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and the institutionalisation of the policy of "governance by settlement"
June 12
Although Babangida had a knack for throwing almost every issue from the membership of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) to Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), the proposed loan from the IMF and other fiscal and monetary policies to public debate, he also had an even more legendary knack for throwing away whatever came out of those debates, to revert to whatever position he had originally settled for.
Babangida, however, could have got away with all his policy somersaults but for the decision to annul the June 12 elections of 1993.
Although recent developments seem to point to the fact that other military politicians as well as civilian politicians partook of the decision to nullify the results of that election,, it remains impossible to divorce the annulment from Babangida's wish to perpetuate himself in office.
The annulment took place June 24 and by August 27, he was out of office. But eight years after, Babangida's eight-year reign has continued to be compressed into the events of the last three months. Those three months have also continued to determine his place in the history of Nigeria. And until Babangida completely and comprehensively explains the June 12 debacle and apologises for the annulment, many Nigerians, especially in the South, will not forgive him or give him a chance to play any leadership role again.
To probe or not to probe ?
His handling of N12 billion Gulf war oil windfall was another drawback, which could have been better managed. But his friends point to his regime's infrastructural development of Abuja as one major achievement explaining where the Gulf windfall was spent and which has endeared him tothe heart of the northern political establishment
But even with speculations of official corruption during the Babangida era and calls that the retired General be probed, successive governments have been reluctant to probe him. The incumbent administration says it has yet to get any evidence of the said corruption.
But sources close to government insist that it has become impossible to probe Babangida because he "liberalized corruption". In other words, Babangida did not eat alone. Probing him could therefore lead to a free-fall that could pull down virtually everybody that has had any business to do with government and governance.
Matters are made worse by the fact that the General is said to have kept a dossier on virtually everyone who either worked for him or got a contract from any government IBB was connected with. Materials said to be in these dossiers include such little things as those careless messages one dropped at the back of call cards to government functionaries.
A former head of the various electoral bodies that supervised IBB's endless transition programmes was said to have refrained from making public statements as to how he was teleguided when he was shown some of the contents of his own dossier, with a veiled threat that the press boys would be interested in them.
The perpetual loyalty of another of the many Information ministers who served the General was said to have been won when the ex-minister was reminded that he could be made to account for what happened to the remainder of the N300 million that was given him for propaganda stunts, knowing that he had requested N30 million for the project.
And to buttress how effective the General is in collecting these materials, he told THISDAY last December that Abacha had compelled that three revisions be made of the report of the Okigbo panel in other to ensure that he (IBB) was implicated and that eventhough he was already out of government by then, he managed to get all the three revised copies as well as the original copy submitted by the late Okigbo.
