By Dele Rotimi
As Published by Daily Independent

Must Nigeria in its entirety stop for Babangida to perform all over again his exhibitionist antics in a purposeless theatre of trial and error? Who is Babangida to ever think that the only reason he ever came to this world is to rule Nigerians?
How, without conscience, without scruples and without shame he has been carrying on! Or does he think he can always fool Nigerians whenever it pleases him? Only a man intoxicated by an illusionary sense of his own importance could have failed to conduct a successful programme of return to civilian rule during his own military dictatorship, only to turn round now to seek to return to power through a system of elective governance established by others.

There are countless reasons to suspect that if Babangida ever again becomes ruler of this country by whatever means, be it by coup or by election, many will cease to believe that God exists or that he is a just God. If one man has tried his incompetent hands as a military dictator for eight solid years and achieved nothing remarkable, must other Nigerians who are free of the unpardonable blemish of corruption and failure in governance not be given a chance?

For the benefit of those Nigerians who had not become enlightened before Babangida was forced out of power by the massive political confusion which his blundering created in 1993, let me recapitulate some of the historical evidence of his misrule. If prices never seem capable of falling in Nigeria today, there is only one man to trace the ugly phenomenon to, and that is Babangida. It was not until he devalued the Naira at the command of the IMF, and on the false pretext that devaluation was essential to enhancing the country's export trade, that prices started their soaring to infinity. When once the Naira fell to three against one American dollar, prices followed suit by the same rate. And while thereby the purchasing power of the working class fell acutely, Babangida did nothing to increase the wages of the toiling masses. If you are told by those in power today that it is no business of government to subsidise the prices of commodities, what you are hearing is a doctrine popularised among the elite by Babangida. But it is a doctrine based on ignorance of modern economics, which has strong roots in welfarism.

As a matter of fact, economics in our time has recorded fundamental departures from the free market fixities and rigidities of the classical schools of Adam Smith. From the last century onwards to the present, the Western states have made large concessions to the economics of socialism. Today, all over Europe, even the jobless are paid benefits by government, as against the old doctrine of capitalism that only those who are in employment have a moral right to earn money.

While Babangida, was busy attacking the goodness of price subsidies in Nigeria, governments in Europe and America were busy subsidising the prices of milk, meat, bread, rice and beans, to mention only a few essential commodities, in order to keep them at levels conducive to the welfare of masses.

So convinced was Babangida on the matter of the so-called removal of subsidies that by 1992, he was to remove an imagined subsidy on fuel prices, the result being the immediate skyrocketing of prices. There then followed spontaneous mass protests and street demonstrations in all towns and cities across the country.

Such was the bottomless depth of Babangida's incompetence in economic matters. But things were even worse in the sphere of politics. When Babangida launched his own kind of return to civilian rule in the early nineties, he wanted it to fail so that he could remain in power. It was in that process that Abiola's mandate was cancelled by Babangida's regime.

At all events, to go by universal standards, Babangida does not deserve to be discussed as any democratic species at all. No democrat ever was his mentor to school and to train him in the rudiments of the theory and practice of the system of democracy. Not ever having been an apprentice in the system, he never did become an authentic and committed practitioner of human rights and the rule of law.

When therefore Babangida set out on his own variety of a programme for returning the country to civilian rule in 1989, he invested it with every manner of abracadabra, hanky-panky and razzmatazz. After making out as if there was to be a structure of many political parties and letting a great number of parties be formed at much expense to many Nigerians, he arbitrarily reduced the field to only two parties formed by his own cronies and agents.

It did not matter to Babangida that an authentic democracy must of necessity be a multi-party system, with even room for independent candidates at all elections, as only in such ways can the individual be seen to have both the right to vote and the right to be voted for. Indeed, it was a violation of those fundamental constitutional rights to limit the number of political parties to be formed.

But Babangida did not stop at that. Because he did in his innermost consciousness wish to sabotage the electoral process so as to succeed himself, in 1992, he moved against all such individuals as seemed capable of scuttling that machination. Thus was promulgated a decree excluding many retired Generals and seasoned politicians from taking part in the Presidential election of 1993. Today, it is the same Babangida who, after retirement, is telling Nigerians that he can in all conscience return to power through election.

Unfortunately, it seems that the real trouble with Babangida is that he believes that the solution to every political problem lies in organising false propaganda and building a personality cult based on media hypes. It is difficult to see how this cloak-and-dagger politics of Babangida is going to work this time around.

Dele Rotimi, Garki, Abuja.


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