The Undertaker is at it Again!

Even though Daniel had fallen out with Obasanjo, TheNEWS sources revealed that what had brought him and Babangida together are the ambitions of both men. While the self-obsessed Daniel, who has just added a media empire to the structures of his public ambition, is desperate to become the leader of the Yoruba, and the most important Yoruba politician to leverage his future plans, the Minna maverick is spreading his influence around the country, not for future, but for immediate political gains. One corner of the country that Babangida assumes to be his political albatross is Western Nigeria. The intellectual, industrial and political elite of Yorubaland helped Babangida to consolidate his hold on power in the early years by giving him an unusual benefit of the doubt. He courted their unexampled leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who, the late Chief Bola Ige revealed, restrained his followers from attacking Babangida in his early years in power. The same elite, particularly their intellectual and political wings, later erected the barricades against Babangida’s ambition when they realised that he never meant well for the country. He has not fared well in Yorubaland, despite his best efforts since then.

However, Babangida and his host, Daniel did not hide the purpose of their rapport well. They paid each other extravagant compliments that suggested that Babangida was not in Sagamu to pay only condolences or settle rifts. The wily ex-dictator said Daniel had “qualities to play a greater role in the future of Nigeria.” He said further that the visit was occasioned by the “great respect” he had for Daniel, describing the latter as a governor who was not only “focused” but was an “exemplary achiever.” In turn, Daniel described the man who annulled the fairest and freest election in Nigeria and pushed the country towards the likelihood of a civil war as “a great man who has been able to keep his friends in and out of power”. Added the Ogun State Governor: “Previously, I had been a distant admirer of the IBB phenomenon but recently, I have been a great admirer.” The only truth uttered by both ambitious men, as widely acknowledged despite his limitations, was that Babangida was an “affable personality”.

Even the otherwise sober Awujale of Ijebuland, who stood at the barricades with pro-democracy forces as far as his office and position could allow, joined in the lavish praise of Babangida at Daniel’s palatial home in Sagamu. The Ijebu paramount ruler, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, asked Nigerians to forgive Babangida for the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Said Adetona: “The annulment of the June 12, 1993 election was a mistake for which General Ibrahim Babangida has apologised to Nigerians and should be seen as belonging to the past which we should all forgive and forget.”

The apology must be known to only the Ijebu monarch. But obviously, the Awujale knew something that most Nigerians were yet unaware of: Babangida’s ambition to succeed Yar’Adua.

Babangida acknowledged the Awujale’s important voice in getting the Yoruba to be amenable to what he has in store for the country. “The Awujale is brutally frank”, replied the general. “He will tell you the way it is. He does not hesitate to say his mind on anything. Whatever the Awujale says comes straight from his heart.”

Indeed, this struggle to return Babangida to Aso Rock Villa is straight from the heart – and head – of key members of the national elite. While some sources close to the Ogun State Governor hinted that Daniel only wanted someone as visible as Babangida to quench the rebellion in his House of Assembly - which could culminate in his own impeachment, close sources revealed to the magazine that the relationship between Daniel and Babangida was a clear case of, as a politician put it, “rub-my-back-I-rub-your-back”. “Both of them”, added another source, “are ambitious. At this stage, they both believe each can facilitate the ambition of the other”.

However, it is the Babangida ambition that is more credible, as TheNEWS found. He has been moving stealthily around the country and within the major power blocs to ensure that he becomes Nigeria’s president soon. The magazine has it on good authority that Babangida, like the few other powerful individuals interested in Yar’Adua’s position, has full information about the state of the health of President Yar’Adua, despite the best effort of the latter to keep the truth of what afflicts him close to his ailing chest. The recuperating legal marksman, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, on return from his treatment in a British hospital, not only disclosed his ailment, but asked the president to tell the country the nature of his sickness. Many believe that the president is allergic to the truth of his health situation.

The true medical verdict for Yar’ Adua, highly placed sources affirmed, is not cheering. TheNEWS learnt that the German doctors have advised their patient that his health is not strong enough for the exertions of his office. The president has, however, through the Financial Times of London told the nation something to the contrary. TheNEWS learnt that, on a regular day, the man saddled with leading the greatest concentration of black people in the world, closes work by 4 p.m. A source in the Villa joked that “the rest of the working hours as president are taken up by Turai”.

But the president tried to dispel the rumours in his recent Financial Times interview. Nigerians, he advised, “should be concerned about Nigeria itself, and that they should be rest assured that, working, carrying out responsibilities of President, I am fit and able to do that, and I am doing it, in fact, at times, even overdoing it.” Contrary to the four or five hours he is rumoured to be spending in office daily, Yar’Adua claimed that he “hardly (affords) more than five hours, four hours of sleep a day and I believe for the kind of work I do, it has to be, because there is an inner energy propelling me to do it. Sometimes when I look back, I just wonder that I am able to do what I am doing, and I believe Nigerians should have confidence in their leaders, and they should not be gullible to all kinds of rumours.”

“Inner energies” of the president apart, the absence of the outward validation of what is “inner” in regard of the health of the secretive president has put ambitious players on the political scene to their test. A few options assumed to be open to Yar’Adua are being considered. One, the president might face the reality of his failing health and decide to resign his office. Two, if the Supreme Court annuls his mandate, widely believed to have been stolen for him by Obasanjo and company, Yar’Adua will not re-contest, thereby opening up the stage for Babangida and others.

TheNEWS learnt, however, that even though he is the leading contender, Babangida is not the only one who wants to replace Yar’Adua, “just in case”. Others who are currently jostling for power in a post-Yar’Adua arrangement are the Vice President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan; former National Security Adviser, Lt. General Aliyu Muhammed Gusau and Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe. While Jonathan placed his ambition on the altar of the succession method as stipulated by the Constitution, Gusau has argued that as the one who came next to Yar’Adua, even though a distant second, he deserved to be installed president as the choice of the north if anything happened to “northern candidate” Yar’Adua.

On his part, Kingibe has always had an ambition to be president of Nigeria and once announced that the position of vice president to Basorun Moshood Abiola was beneath him. That was before he was forced by his governor-friends in the Social Democratic Party, SDP, to accept the position. Abiola was to rue that controversial decision to make a scheming super-spook his running mate. Sources within the ruling People’s Democratic Party, PDP, disclosed that one serving and two former governors have failed to draft former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, into the race. They were said to have approached Atiku Abubakar to return to the PDP and wait for “the eventuality” so that he could be elected as the party’s candidate to run for the presidency in a post-Yar’Adua arrangement, but Abubakar, sources close to him revealed, forswore any route to power that would force him to return to the PDP.

TheNEWS learnt that Babangida and Kingibe have since “neutralised” Jonathan in the race to take Yar’Adua’s position. What happened to the man who has come to assume himself as a literal manifestation of his name - after his experience in Bayelsa State - is a matter of horrid details. Babangida and his co-conspirators may have checkmated the vice-president for now and details of how they did it may emerge soon. Again, it is a la IBB, the ever tricky evil genius whose deft moves could only be matched by the tortoise in Yoruba folk tales.

For a man at home with a protracted trench war, Babangida is said to be coasting home dry. His remaining two opponents have very crushing disabilities. Kingibe is the most cautious of the lot. After his ambition was revealed by a weekly newspaper some months ago - for which he almost lost his job - he had decided to tread more cautiously about his ambition to succeed Yar’Adua. Yar’Adua and his supporters did not take the matter lying low. Kingibe is a grandmaster of the art of supplanting the boss or leader, they knew. A tested operative, tactician and strategist, Kingibe methodically worked towards snatching the soul of the party built and financed over two dacades by late Major General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua from the man. Yar’Adua had made Kingibe Chairman of the SDP in which the Yar’Adua faction, the People’s Front, was the senior partner by default. This and many other efforts were geared towards the commonly held decision that Yar’Adua would become the party’s presidential flag-bearer. But unknown to the leader, Kingibe had the same ambition. He used the platform and the resources of his leader to supplant the man. In the end, Kingibe almost snatched the party’s presidential ticket as the banned Yar’Adua had to produce the then relatively unknown Atiku Abubakar as his successor. Kingibe went on to also supplant Abiola. He was first the Foreign Minister and later the Internal Affairs Minister in a military regime that held Abiola and later Yar’Adua in captivity for four and two years respectively. Neither of the men came out alive.

In a piece in The Guardian when Kingibe’s appointment was announced, a political analyst described him as “a subversive political genius who, admittedly, expresses himself with compelling lucidity” and one with an “awesome capacity for devastating political mischief practised on friends and enemies alike”.

A political operative in Abuja told TheNEWS that “it would be sheer poetic justice if Kingibe successfully supplants Yar’Adua because only the president knows why he appointed a man who betrayed his elder brother to such a sensitive post. Kingibe knows no ambition except his own”.

But Kingibe is in the game with a far smarter and deadlier gamesman. With Babangida oiling his awesome network in the service of his ambition, Kingibe, despite the crucial office he holds, may be no match for the ex-tyrant in Minna. This magazine learnt that Babangida may have secured the nod of key persons in the north as the man most able to protect the interest of the region if Yar’Adua vacates office. For the traditional rulers and the retired military chiefs, the political elite and the intelligentsia in the northern laager, Babangida remains a most viable option. Having largely secured this region, the former martial president has been making successful sorties across the political divides. He is even said to be involved in finding a new leader for the Yoruba after the death of Adesanya. Babangida wants a man who can do his bidding as the leader of the most vocal, most progressive section of the political spectrum. The division in the House of Oduduwa, as the crisis in Yorubaland is sometimes described, sources close to Babangida revealed, is a source of joy for the ambitious soldier. Whether Gbenga Daniel in particular fits the bill or not is, therefore, not as important to Babangida as ensuring that a man favourable to him emerges or that, otherwise, Yorubaland is sufficiently kept in crisis to prevent any strong opposition to the kind of brinkmanship that he would be compelled to display in the months ahead.

Babangida is not leaving it at that. He was said to be dropping words in important places as regards what the Supreme Court needs to do on the appeal raised by two of the candidates - General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigerian People’s Party, ANPP, and Atiku Abubakar of the Action Congress, AC, in the April 2007 elections. Babangida was also said to have suddenly discovered that the best traditions of electoral politics have to be sustained by the apex court. What happened in April 2007, Babangida now reminds those who have the ears of their Lordships at the Supreme Court – some of whom he appointed to the bench as military president - was a travesty. He had organised elections before, he insists, and he knows a good election when he sees one. Despite his cynical, and some would insist, treacherous annulment and eventual dismissal of the sanctity of the 12 June 1993 election, Babangida is now eager to remind the Justices of the Supreme Court that the 1993 election was widely acclaimed to be “free and fair” and remains the freest and fairest in the nation’s history. Who else but the man who supervised such elections, Babangida boasted in hallowed chambers, that should have the credibility to identify a badly rigged election when he witnesses one.

A few sources stated that even though Babangida is being clever by half, he had had his way on many occasions by such trite cunning. In classic military method, the coup general is not only building arsenals to pursue his political war objective, he is also neutralising the moves of his likely opponents and destroying their political armoury. He is said to be one of the brains behind the probes of the Obasanjo era. Although Babangida is doing this to get what African Americans call “getting some get-back” at Obasanjo for the latter’s derisive dismissal in 1993 of Babangida’s regime as “a fraud” that was “deficit in honesty, deficit in honour, deficit in truth”, more importantly, the magazine gathered that he wants to demobilise Obasanjo who is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the PDP. This is to ensure that the latter would not stand in the way of his ambition. IBB’s ambition to run for president in 2007 was stalled by Obasanjo who got the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to intimidate him to forget the ambition.

Indeed, in 2006, during a meeting between IBB and Obasanjo, Obasanjo told him pointedly that he would not back him and that IBB should join him in anointing a younger candidate. THis was the subject of a cover story in TheNEWS. The retired military president was disappointed because, having helped in clearing the path for Obasanjo in the aftermath of Abacha’s death and backing Obasanjo all the way in 1999 to become president, Babangida had expected Obasanjo to repay the compliment in 2007. It was for this reason that he resisted the temptation to criticise Obasanjo during his tenure as President (1999-2007).  

While visiting the Ogun State governor to console him over the death of his mother, Babangida told the press that there was nothing wrong with the probe of the Obasanjo era, since the man embarked on a similar exercise when “he first came”. Declared IBB: “There is nothing new in it (probe). My boss, President Obasanjo did it when he first came, it is not a new thing.”

TheNEWS gathered that when Yar’Adua was flown to

Germany recently over his ailment, a former Governor of a North West state went to meet IBB and sought his support in the event that Yar’Adua cannot continue in office, but as soon as the ex-governor (names withheld) left IBB, he phoned Yar’Adua to report the ex-governor to him.

The IBB strategy is also to attempt to present himself as very loyal to Yar’Adua, while discrediting other people who could also be interested in the presidency. He thinks if the ailing President were to settle for a successor, if his health will not permit him to continue, he could get a look in. He badly wants to be in the good books of Yar’Adua and his aides.

TheNEWS gathered that while Yar’Adua was in Germany to take care of his health, powerful northern leaders held a meeting where it was resolved that should the Supreme Court annul Yar’Adua’s election, he will, on account of his ill-health be persuaded not to recontest. So, IBB fancies his chances if the election is thrown open once again. Many powerful Nigerians, it was gathered, are still behind him, especially up north.

Now, IBB has been trying his best to show his government was not as bad as critics paint it. He even claims that his government was not as corrupt as OBJ’s. In one instance, he said if he had the kind of money

Obasanjo had at his disposal, he would have opted for nuclear energy for power generation and that Nigeria will not be in the darkness that it is today. IBB is coming out more these days. Some of his top aides like Kazeem Afegbua appear regularly on TV, thoroughly attacking the OBJ regime. Babangida wants people to have that notion that his government was good and believes he stands a good chance of winning election to the presidency of Nigeria.

Meanwhile, President Umaru Yar’Adua, whose health is the basis of much speculation and expansive tactical moves, told the Financial Times that speculations about his health had merely allowed him to realise that Nigerians expected him to possess attributes which are beyond normal human. “When I hear these rumours, I always feel more elated. They confirm to me that I am not what those peddling the rumours want to believe I should be. I am an ordinary human being; Iam not a super-human being. I don’t know one yet, but certainly I am not one. I am a normal human being who can fall sick, who can recover, who can die, who can have feelings, who can be angered, who can laugh.”

It is the first two negatives in what the President told the Financial Times that the likes of Babangida would like to manifest as soon as possible. As a member of the Armoured Corps, Babangida knows that when an “enemy” – as soldiers are trained to see anyone standing between them and their ambition – is in such a weak position as this, it is time to move in. One of the operatives close to Babangida told this magazine, “There you have the next president of Nigeria! Never say impossible. Someone whose greatest ambition was to be a Senator was conscripted to be president in this country; someone who was generally believed to possess the brain of a rat, became head of state; another who neither asked for votes nor fired a shot spent 84 days in power; yet another who was in prison and dying became president; still another who neither dreamed of it and was too sick to even contemplate it was given the office on a platter of gold. My friend, never say never again”.

Indeed, if there is anyone in Nigeria’s political history who never says never, it is Babangida. The general never gives up. Even when overwhelmed by circumstances, he “steps aside”, bids his time and waits, with a debonair attitude and cynical watchfulness, for another day. Some would swear that he would have loved to be the head of state when the soldiers shot their way into power in 1983 on the eve of a new year. The preferred Brigadier Bako lost his life during the coup in what coup-watchers described as mysterious circumstances. Despite this, Babangida did not get the coveted prize. He spent the next 20 months planning how to propel the new political heads of the martial seizure of power, the unsmiling duo of Generals Mohammadu Babangida and Tunde Idiagbon, towards fatal errors, tactical idiocies and strategic stupidities from which he would profit. By the time he relieved Buhari and Idiagbon of power in August 1985, not a few Nigerians were relieved that the semi-religious zealots who possessed little administrative capacities but abundant moral indignation corrupted by their tyrannical proclivities, were upstaged. Babangida then began a systematic process of reducing Nigeria to the limits of his evil genius and tragic ambitions. Is the season of the evil genius here again or will Babangida again, as Professor Adebayo Williams once wrote, “compound his fundamental political folly with more terrifying mistakes?”