Babangida’s burden of timeless questions

Ibrahim Babangida

Former military president,General Ibrahim Babangida, spoke with journalists at his Minna, Niger State home when he turned 71 recently. Abiodun Awolaja looks at some of the issues not covered by the interview but which have come to define the general’s place in the polity over the years.

OF Nigeria’s former Heads of State/presidents, General Ibrahim Babangida arguably holds the record for the highest number of unsolved puzzles relating to alleged criminality, treachery and tyranny. In terms of crude brutality and state-sponsored murder, arson and brigandage, not a few would contend that the succeeding regime of General Sanni Abacha (1993-1998) easily dwarfs his administration (1985-1993). IBB, as his courtiers fondly call him, remains the major issue in the polity after General Olusegun Obasanjo, the only Nigerian alive who clearly dwarfs him, in terms of political power and influence. He has managed to build an aura of nobility around himself, helped largely by media coverage, although some of his actions as military president have since remained potent threats to the sovereignty of the same country which he fought gallantly to keep together during the civil war of 1967-70.

Thus, when he turned 71 recently and granted a fairly comprehensive media interview, many who have insisted that they still carry the anguish inflicted by his administration, including the families of former aides and friends assassinated during his regime, might have hoped that he would at least offer one word of comfort by saying that he regretted the cause of their anguish. That was not to be because the influential General studiously avoided speaking on the Gideon Orkah coup, the Mamman Vatsa killing and the June 12 1993 questions, which threaten to haunt his image perpetually.

Although Babangida has addressed these issues at various periods since he was disgraced out of power on October 1st, 1993, critics have not stopped asking questions about them, apparently because they are unsatisfied with his explanations. In a sense, therefore, the Minna-born general may consider this unfair because he has laboured to explain his role in the various issues and has always insisted that his actions were taken in the national interest.

Speaking with newsmen at his hill top, Minna, Niger State residence, Babangida , who spoke on the clamour for state police, the Boko Haram issue, among others, said he was not bothered by criticisms about his administration. Hear him: “Normally, I don’t consider it (criticism of his administration) as a problem. To be very honest with you, in the last 23 or 22 years since I left office, it is the same sing song either by the media or by the columnists and so on.If somebody looks at me and says yes, during his time he liked corruption, now the question is, in the name of God, aren’t you capable of doing something for the last 22 years or you just fold your arms and wait until somebody does the same thing?’’

The Minna general particularly made headlines because he backed the creation of state police despite claims by a former Inspector General of Police, Gambo Mohammed Jimeta, that he (Babangida) actually destroyed the police during his eight-year tenure. His position , directly opposed by President Goodluck Jonathan who claimed that the country was not ready for state police, was retrospective: “During the 1959 elections, the police or the Yan Dokas were used to beat up or harass the people who were opposed to the government of the day . People should try to move forward. It grieves me that because something happened in 1959, Nigerians still think it can happen in 2012. A lot of things like the constitutional amendments have been put in place and I am not sure a governor would use the state police to intimidate the people who are opposed to him because the people can go to court and seek redress .

But during an interview with journalists at his Maitama residence in Abuja while reacting to Babangida’s endorsement of state police, Jimeta virtually took the general and his colleagues to the cleaners, suggesting that he (Babangida) was merely playing politics with the issue. “While serving under him (Babangida), we had serious differences on the issue of law and order. When the military took over the system of budgeting for the police, the police was destroyed. Throughout the country, what you have as police establishments were provided by the First Republic leaders.’’ Apparently, Jimeta refused to believe that the general may have changed with time.

On another plane, the Vatsa story illustrates the absurd comedy of military intervention in Nigerian politics. A marabout was said to have prophesied during the civil war that each of Babangida, Abacha and Vatsa would become president of the country at some point. A conspiracy theory thus holds that Vatsa was the victim of personality/power politics, particularly given his intellectual disposition as a soldier-poet. Major-General Vatsa , Minister of the Federal Capital Abuja and a member of the Supreme Military Council, was executed on March 5, 1986 following accusations of his involvement in an abortive coup. Vatsa and his fellow victims were tried by a Special Military Tribunal set up by General Domkat Bali, the then Defence Minister, at the Brigade of Guards Headquarters, Lagos. The accused officers included Lt-Colonels Musa Bitiyong, Christian A. Oche, Micheal A Iyorshe and M. Effiong; Majors D.I Bamidele, D.E. West, J.O Onyeke and Tobias G Akwashiki; Captain G.I L Sese, Lieutenant K.G. Dakpa; Commodore A.A. Ogwiji, Wing Commanders B.E. Ekele and Adamu Sakaba; and Squadron Leaders Martin Luther, C. Ode and A Ahura.

Chaired by Major General Charles Ndiomu, the tribunal, comprising Brigadier Yerima Yohanna Kure, Commodore Murtala Nyako (now the governor of Adamawa State), Colonels Rufus Kupolati and E. Opaleye, Lt. Colonel D. Muhammed and Mamman Nassarawa, a commissioner of police, tried the officers under the Treason and Other Offences (Special Military Tribunal) Decree 1 of 1986. The charge against Vatsa was that a farming loan he gave to Lt-Colonel Bitiyong was actually for the purpose of planning a coup against the government. As stated by Nowa Omogui, a military analyst in his essay, ‘The Vatsa Conspiracy’, Musa Bitiyong, was allegedly tortured to implicate Vatsa by making reference to certain private political conversations they had, claims which Vatsa vigorously contested.

Decades after his death, Vatsa’s ghost still haunts the seat of power. His widow, Sufiya, wrote former President Olusegun Obasanjo a letter dated 15 June, 2006, canvassing the trial of Babangida for the ‘murder’ of her husband: “Although there was no iota of evidence linking my husband with the phantom coup, he was convicted and sentenced to death by the Special Military Tribunal which purportedly tried him and other coup suspects. My husband’s appeal to the Armed Forces Ruling Council against his illegal conviction was yet to be considered when the Head of State, General Babangida had him secretly executed along with the other coup convicts, she said. Evidence that Vatsa may have been set up was provided when, speaking in a 2006 interview, the man who announced Vatsa’s execution, Bali, said “My regret is that up till now, I am not sure whether Vatsa ought to have been killed because whatever evidence they amassed against him was weak. My only regret is that I could not say, don’t do it. I am not so sure whether we were right to have killed Vatsa.”

Babangida himself, speaking with THISDAY newspaper when he turned 60 in 2001, offered a rather lame logic for the conviction of the general. According to him, “Vatsa tried to escape through the airconditioner hole. I couldn’t understand why he was trying to escape if he was not involved in a coup plot. But while watching the video of his execution, I turned my eyes away when I saw him remove his watch and ask a soldier to give his wife. I couldn’t continue watching.” Babangida’s logic, impoverished in its failure to grasp the practical reality that even an innocent man would try to escape from the jaws of death if he thought he had a good chance of making it, grumbled that he could not retire or imprison Vatsa because he (Vatsa) could still have planned a coup either in retirement or in prison. “Rawlings did it in Ghana and you know Vatsa was very stubborn,” IBB said. Presumaby, even more so was Gideon Orkah, arrowhead of the aborted 1999 coup who equally met a grievous end despite organising the most bloody coup in the country’s history.

Nor did the IBB at 71 interview touch on the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late business mogul, Chief MKO Abiola, by all means his major albatross in the polity, a sure campaign tool against him or any of his family members, including his son Mohammed, who is reported to be nursing a gubernatorial ambition. Had the general not annulled the globally acclaimed 1993 election, he would easily have picked a presidential ticket like his former boss, Obasanjo, and returned to office in Babaringa years after leaving in a heavily starched khaki. For Babangida, then, the lesson of leadership may be captured in the Yoruba proverb that the pounded yam of 20 years’ standing may still scald one’s fingers. There is obviously many more battles ahead of the mercurial general.