Babangida and his critics

Babangida and his critics

'I am old enough, sensitive enough and politically conscious enough to appreciate the passion of those who are opposed to the return of Nigeria's former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, to active and open politics which may blossom into his leadership, once again, of the Nigerian state'. With these words, Edwin Madunagu began his recent article,

"Hysteria over Babangida of April 26, 2000, seeking to warn against hysteria on the part of those opposed to the evil genius. I suspect, however, that the seasoned commentator that he is, he was conscious of the ambiguity and so, possible unintended meaning, that his article could engender. Hence, the unnecessary opening words, for anyone half familiar with Madunagu's contributions to public discourse would not need this self-justification to grant him his bona fides.

I am one of his circle of dedicated readers, believing earnestly that in the epoch of triumphant corporate and military-industrial capitalism aided by information technology, Madunagu is a sorely needed voice of the humanist, Maxist-socialist possibilities for our world. So, I read and re-read his article in an effort to dispel the niggling feeling that he could be misconstrued to the very opposite end of Babangida and by extension, General Obasanjo's apologists. My fears were concretised by the clear regrets expressed by Chinua Achebe in a very recent interview. Asked why it has been so difficult for the country's leaders to turn things around after the exit of the military, Achebe referred to a piece he had done for the Financial Times when Obasanjo's government came to power. There he had said that Obasanjo underestimated the problem he was going to have, and made promises. He concluded: I discovered I shouldn't have said that because that is what the government is now saying, and I really didn't want to give any government that kind of escape route. Might Madunagu one day express a similar regret on this issue?

Daily, Babangida gains more confidence to sally forth into the open space. And we grow wiser as to why in spite of his manifest crimes against this country, he will remain a sacred cow in an unconvincing war against corruption and the restoration of moral probity in governance, the only thing close to a manifesto from General Obasanjo. As the news has it, Babangida was recently the president's emissary to Sudan. In the whole of talent-ridden Nigeria, no fitter ambassador of peace was found. Might an official rationale be heard to go as follows: after all, even his arch-critics concede that he is no worse than any of our former heads of state. Can this be fuel too for the professional cynic who excels in the wholesale pessimism that all Nigerians are corrupt; if you (the critic) get there (position of power) would you be different.?

I am not persuaded that Madunagu is entirely right in dismissing the strident opposition to Mr. Ibrahim Babangida's second coming as sheer madness, frenzy or fits as his chosen word suggests. His premise is the world of difference between, Babangida's regime and Babangida the person. Ordinarily, this is a fact obvious enough to prove his thesis without more. But the manner of Babangida's forceful seizure of the centre stage in Nigeria's political space is not ordinary. I think this is the first pitfall of his otherwise brilliant position on the need to distinguish between the two phenomenons. But, before I go further, I must query his curious decision to except Gani Fawehinmi from the hysterical or madding crowd. His reason, viz, that, the basis of his opposition is strong, principled and convincing is in my view selectively denied the many others whose basis for opposition is no less strong, principled or convincing selectively. The difference, of course, is that whereas Fawehinmi commands an awesome media attention which enables him to state, re-state and clarify his positions as many times as he wishes, these others do not.

Madunagu's summary assessment of all the military dictators that have inflicted themselves on Nigeria does in the narrower sense justify his poser, why should we be hysterical over Babangida. However, in the broader sense, I believe we would be able to furnish him a few reasons. First, the matter is not simply one of who from among the ranks of Nigeria's ex-military-dictators, is better than Babangida. Nor do I think that the army of hysterics opposed to Babangida has arbitrarily chosen to fix on him in the belief that he is the worst human being among them. Rather, they have fixed on him as a SYMBOL of all that is most loathsome and odious in the military's usurpation of political power in Nigeria. They believe as Madunagu, that Babangida it is that dealt, perhaps, the heaviest blow yet to the socialist (read progressive) movement in Nigeria. That he it is that raised monetisation of politics or the practice of Epolitical settlement, to the status of state policy. Personally, I believe that he raised it beyond mere policy which is subject to review to the raison d'etre of governance, and this has survived him.

It seems to me that Madunagu focused too much on the institutional machinery by which the ruling class or alliance of classes sustains their political dominance to see the other motive causes of history to be found more readily in the individual. To him, it is safe to conclude, the Babangida phenomenon was produced ONLY by the forces that threw him up. I see more than that. Even without being able to determine the extent of the individual's impact in the shaping of historical forces, I'd would retain a prominent place for it as Leo Tolstoy did in his War and Peace while pondering the Russian defeat of Napoleon's invincible army in Russia. What was responsible for it, the genius of the generals? The elemental fury of the Russian climate as best manifested in its bitter winter? The hysterical courage of the standard-bearer who raised the cry and charged into a battle that apparently meant his death?

I'll argue that individuals are produced by history as much as they produce history. I think I can peg the first argument for this on Madunagu's observation on the difference between Abacha and Babangida. The former, he says, lacked the charisma and ability of the latter to swim through contradictions and emerge with new synthesis (sic). Now, paying all our attention to the forces of dominance under the regime of Babangida, will anyone doubt that Babangida was shaped by them as much as he himself shaped them? Given his absolute power to appoint, remove and retire service chiefs; to constitute and re-constitute at will the military law-making body a power that would lead even a one-time number two to describe Babangida's so-called regime as, a one-man show. How far might we be able to say that Babangida was the product of his regimes as that his regimes was his product? And what exactly is the synthesis that results from such a largely individual-determined historical process but one bearing the birthmarks of the individual rather than of the regime's.

Is this the place then to consider Plato and Nietzsche's chest-beating man of megalothymia? Indeed, under a personalised military dictatorship as Babangida's, isn't the head of state somewhat akin to the ultimate machinery of repression? Thus making the famous boast of "L'etat c'est moi" I am the state by that French despot of old a truly applicable one to him? In that case, is it not something far removed from hysteria to take Babangida as the symbol of the most virulent face of the autocrat and so train the preponderant amount of popular anger on him? Is this not the obverse of that social psychology that elevates a Mandela or Ghandi to the hallowed status of a symbol for emulation and adulation? For me, any opposition to Babangida is in itself a good thing as it represents the objectification of the popular feeling of outrage. What is more, of all the past military dictators, Babangida alone is the one with such an over-arching ambition powered by dubious wealth of fabled proportions as to deserve to be seen as an institution by himself.