Kunle Amuwo

Department of Political Science

University of Ibadan

Here, we encounter vintage Babangida, seeking to dominate at once his entourage and the totality of his environment. Shortly after he burst into the country’s highest political consciousness, the signals came almost in rapid succession that the General knew what he wanted to do in power and with power. He was the first military ruler to declare himself president to the consternation of his colleagues on the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC); he was also the first to dismiss his deputy, Commander Ebitu Ukiwe, well- respected in military circles, and personally invited by the General to be his number two; he was equally the first to dissolve and recompose, at his whims and fancies, the military ‘legislative’ council. Hence, the eminently sensible claim by Robin Luckham (1994: 43), that, like Acheampong in Ghana and Amin in Uganda, Babangida "took personal control of both army and State from the beginning". But this has to be demonstrated.

There is little doubt that Babangida inherited, like Buhari before him, a political economy that was at once unviable and unenviable. The economic profligacy and massive corruption of the second republic politicians - particularly the Federal Government under the Presidency of Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) - had created a veritable crisis for the continued financial and economic well-being of the country. At the time the Saint-Sylvester (December 31) coup of 1983 was staged, the country already had a high debt profile as well as an important fall in real terms of federal government oil and other receipts (for details see Amuwo, 1988).

The preferred strategy of Buhari to deal with the crisis was counter-trade and rapid debt-servicing. The latter implied strict discipline and immense sacrifice from all Nigerians, including the new junta. The regime did not tolerate laxity either and its combat against drug trafficking may have been its greatest undoing. When it fell in August 1985, little was known about its economic ‘success’ in a short spate of twenty months. Officially, anyway, it was its alleged political dirigisme that was held responsible for its replacement by the Babangida junta. The latter may have had an initial sincere commitment to revamping the economy from its patent decadence to a fairly well- functioning proto-capitalist system. A well-orchestrated building- block to this policy option was to allow a nation-wide debate on the desirability of taking an IMF loan. Nigerians did not disappoint Babangida: they overwhelmingly rejected any form of externally-imposed solution to the economic crisis.

In a national broadcast, Babangida accepted their decision but pointed to the consequence of same: a ‘home-grown’ Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that would require lots of sacrifice and belt-tightening from diverse groups, interests, classes and individuals. Unknown to the people, Babangida merely got what he bargained for - a carte blanche and leeway to reorganize the political economy as he deemed fit. An IMF-SAP was commenced in June 1986 without the fund’s standby facility. Economic efficiency through a combination of fiscal monetary and structural reformation was the overall goal of the policy. Its elements included currency devaluation; subsidy withdrawal (from consumer goods, social welfare and human development services, parastatals, etc.); trade liberalisation and the erection of the market, rather than the State, as king. Certain sectoral implications followed: formal stoppage of import licensing; shrinking of public sector; scrapping marketing boards; privatisation and commercialisation of several public enterprises; deregulation of the financial system (Rimmer, 1994: 103 ff).

The foregoing was all fine on paper, but rigour, discipline, investment spirit and other Weberian capitalist ethics were conspicuous by their absence. There was not only a patterned relationship of vacillation between dirigisme and laissez-faire, there was, worse, a constant breakdown of discipline on the part of the junta. As early as September 1987, "discipline had been lost" (Rimmer, 1994: 105). According to Nils B. Tallroth (in Rimmer) "fiscal policies and control over public expenditure were the most difficult area to implement". The result was fiscal deficits that kept increasing by leaps and bounds. In 1990, 1991 and 1992, these represented, respectively, 12.4%, 9.8% and about 19% of the respective GDP estimates. The 1993 figure was between 15 and 16% of GDP.

Moreover, the 1992 budget deficits represented 48% of total expenditure (Rimmer). Why this grim picture? Babangida needed a lot of money to run and oil his patron-client network. The money could not have been accounted for to the extent that it was largely outside of the federal revenues and budgetary estimates. But then it had a lot of impact on the latter, resulting, very often, in excess liquidity which the Central Bank would mop up. Ordinary folks were always confounded that whereas government complained of cash crunch 8 for social services and payment of salaries, huge amounts of money were regularly donated by government to sundry manifestations and to government by rich individuals.

Patronage was Babangida’s major plank for the pursuit of an inclusive politics and, as we show below, repression, its corollary for groups and individuals that resist political entryism. Like some of his predecessors, the oil industry was perceived as the inexhaustible mine for financing the patronage network. But Babangida had nurtured other business interests before coming to power. They became intensified while in power, with oil providing the unyielding backbone. Like several of his peers - the ‘new class’ of political generals and propertied serving and retired ex-soldier rulers and senior officers - Babangida had vast interests in construction and real estate (Abacha’s privileged domain). The Foundation Mira Construction Company (Abuja) the name of which "does not appear in the corporate registration records in Abuja" and whose senior director, Mustapha Wushishi is Babangida’s first cousin (Africa Confidential, 22 October 1993) is only one of the many companies in which he had vast interests. There were three others, one of which with initials FN, was nicknamed ‘Finish Nigeria’ Company by Abuja residents.

Towards the end of his reign, Babangida tried his hand on news papering but the dilapidated Triple Heritage building, also in Abuja, is a testimony to the failure of that attempt.

The foregoing is nothing compared to Babangida’s oil business. Oil may well have been his second love. His claims to nationalism and altruism all fell in one fell swoop by virtue of intricate business ties with sundry foreign interests at the expense of the nation’s oil development and the well-being of the people. The General ran the oil industry like a personal fief, granting oil-lifting rights in flagrant violation of stipulated procedures. Indeed, oil ministers rose and fell from grace to grass according to their attitude to this personalization phenomenon. Under him, Marc Rich’s Swiss-based Glencore Company was the most in view in getting short-term oil-lifting contracts.

The latter accounted for no fewer than 50% of the country’s total production. An official of the company was quoted as boasting that "we have got 80% of Nigeria (sic), now we are going for the rest" (Africa Confidential, 18 November 1994, p. 8). Abacha has maintained these ties, only to add the Chagouri brothers to the list of privileged oil dealers. Yet, the racketeering of Nigeria’s oil industry did not start with Babangida. It was inaugurated by General Gowon. Today, the array of personalities involved in the scramble is bewildering. According to a source :

Through a combination of direct control of the oil industry and an expedient implementation of SAP, Babangida was able to foster "economic windfalls for an array of private sector beneficiaries" (Lewis, 1994: 337). These benefitted from diverse opportunities in non-productive sectors of the economy. The list here is a long one: foreign exchange (forex) speculation and hawking by proxy; privatisation of even profitable government companies, sold off in the main, at give-away prices; agricultural exports; petroleum smuggling and drug trafficking (6); a free-for-all banking system; urban real estate, etc. These practices did little to help SAP achieve it stated objectives. The question, of course by advantage of hindsight, is whether SAP as implemented was not mounted basically to bolster the rentier- class and, logically, create an institutional base of support for Babangida’s private political project?

Consequently, economic and political reforms were aimed, in practice, to realize the following objectives.

One, grant Babangida a large champ de manoeuvre to determine his preferred political trajectory.

Two, bolster a big, if inefficient, State to consolidate resources in the presidency, which could then be used for patronage and spoils. There were sufficiently important loopholes and leakages, however, to allow a disparate set of elites to benefit as well as distribute the benefits. This is part of the politics of SAP which as in much of Africa, was subtly played by the regime to mobilize the ruralites, putative beneficiaries of SAP, against the ‘dispossessed’ and ‘frustrated’ urbanites. It is a neo-indirect rule system, a pax britannica of sorts to divide the people in order to control better human and material resources. But as Yusuf Bangura (1992: 66 ff), has argued, this policy option is not always crowned with success (see also various essays in Bayo Olukoshi (1993).

Three, allow the regime the perfect opportunity to use pure and cheap blackmail against reform beneficiaries, who would later be accused of using money to corrupt the electorate by a pre-voting purchase, en masse, of voters. A vicious cycle of disqualification of one set of beneficiaries would provoke another until the ‘political class’ - oldbreed and moneybags in particular - was totally discredited. The Newbreed, Babangida’s own foster baby, would be too dependent and fragile to make a go at the presidency. They would naturally ask the General to continue in office until a suitable civilian successor is found. 9

This was, mutatis mutandis, the ball game. But as we show below there is always a gap between self-perception and self-reality. Now, the Babangida patronage network was meant to constitute a formidable national constituency of strategically placed elites. The constituency was to be anchored on his military faction - afterall a military regime’s first consideration is security and survival - but with vertical and horizontal tentacles nation-wide. A largely truncated national constituency was created and was made up of two layers. The first layer consisted of a mixed grill of mainly right-wing elements from the various factions and fractions of the national ruling clique - military, political, bureaucratic, intelligentsia, commerco-business, chiefly estates (or Royal Fathers) (7).

The second layer was made up of a hodge-podge of upstarts, from all walks of life. Some of them may have genuinely believed in the regime’s ‘grassroots’ democracy and new political culture and therefore offered themselves for politics and public service. Others may simply have wanted to have a go at rent-seeking and the relatively easy life that it entailed.

The first layer was referred to by the regime as the oldbreed or moneybags who, having been implicated in the corruption of the previous republics, were no longer fit to lead the nation. The Nigerian Press, nicknames them ‘Any-Government-in-Power’ (AGIP) people. One is always fascinated by their longevity in holding power. They have lived virtually all their lives in the public arena; living off and on the State. Theirs is an indefinite discourse in the composition of a ruling clique. Those of them who fall from grace in one regime have a way of bouncing back in the next.

Precisely because of their experience and good knowledge of the political terrain - with all its class and non-class differentiations or dissimilarities - they are not just beholden to government; the latter is forced, some of the time, to succumb to their pressures and wishes. The point here is that the Babangida network was a two-way traffic of power and resource relations. To be sure, as the sole purveyor and dispenser of largesse, Babangida tended to often dominate proceedings to the extent that the greatest vulnerability of this layer of support system was that it got broken easily. Given the ease with which financial resources are procured it is not surprising that these resources dry up as soon as they are obtained.

This vulnerability would also be a major set-back for progressive, pro-democracy groups and individuals who, under a SAP regime, sometimes found Babangida patronage, in whatever form, irresistible. Indeed, the General perfected the act of what came to be known as the politics of settlement, namely "timely doses of cash to anesthetize the opposition and buy off labour unions and other powerful grumblers" (Peter da Costa, 1993: 53-57). The aim was always to implicate as many social groups as possible in the corruption of the network in order to render them politically impotent thereafter. For all of the seeming subservience of the oldbreed and moneybags to Babangida, they were never fully trusted. Not only did he keep a tab, in particular, on the commercial-business elites, in order to temper their resistance and antagonism, occasionally publicly vented (Lewis, 1994: 337), but the entire network was a thick layer of surveillance and counter-surveillance. Babangida himself had a solid reputation for being an active nocturnal worker. He spent much time on the phone, particularly after the gubernatorial elections in December 1991, solicitous after reluctant politicians to join the race for the Presidency and the Senate (8), the House of Representatives having been reserved for ‘his’ newbreed politicians, many of whom he personally sponsored.

Each presidential aspirant that got personal phone calls and letters of support from Babangida kept the information close to his chest supposing he was the favoured candidate. The controversial cancellation of the presidential primaries of the two political parties, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC) in October 1992 - after retired General Yar’Adua had won the SDP ticket and Adamu Ciroma and Umaru Shinkafi were set for a run-off for the NRC ticket - was the first eye-opener. The last two politicians and Bamanga Tukur, who ran a close third, discovered, to their chagrin, that Babangida had been sending his agents to each of them urging him on. At a press conference thereafter in Kaduna, the trio declared the military "the greatest obstacle to democracy in Nigeria" (9).

Yet, that lesson was lost on the new set of presidential aspirants including M.K.O. Abiola and Babagana Kingibe. After clinching the SDP ticket in Jos in March 1993, literally at photofinish, it was a herculean task for the party to firm up a running mate for Abiola. Sixty four meetings after, Kingibe, former party chairman and second to Abiola in the primaries, was finally chosen. Each of them went to Babangida for consultations. Abiola –9 Each of them went to Babangida for consultations. Abiola -10who would confess after his presidential mandate was annulled on June 23, 1995, by the regime that he consultedwith the highest office in the land before contesting -, was advised to reject Kingibe. The latter was said to be toomuch of a party man, who could ultimately undermine a future Abiola presidency. Kingibe was also at Aso Rocks where he was advised not to tarry in accepting the Abiola offer (10).

It would appear that for Babangida and his clients what was most important was the mutual utility of the network. He opened the politico-economic space for his clients to pursue their rent- seeking activities. And rent-seekers are not particularly enamoured by democratic theories and practices because "they will see democratizationas a threat to their livelihood" (John M. Mbaku, 1994: 283). Since one good turn deserves another, Babangida’s clients would later provide the necessary foot troops to bring succour to their patron and help massage his deflated ego just before he hurriedly ‘stepped aside’ on August 26, 1993.

Finally in this section, there was yet another modality in keeping clients happy and busy: creation of more States and local governments, even at inauspicious moments was meant to widen networks of patronage to new State and local government elites and to delay return to civil rule for as long as possible. To be sure, persistent fractionalization of Nigeria under Babangida tended to reinforce the centrality and criticality of the federal government. In a fundamental sense, Babangida exploited this "centralized configuration of State power to impose his own whimsical vision on Nigeria" (Tunji Lardner jr, 1990: 51).

The rationale for the politics of repression by which I mean the curbing of associational life and the dwarfing of the civic public realm within the context of the transition programme, was furnished by SAP. Bangura (1992: 73) offers a sophisticated interpretation of democratization by the Babangida regime with SAP: democratization would appear to be a strategy to regulate the anticipated popular opposition to the economic reform programme. In this regard the military wields considerable authority in determining the evolution of the transition plan.

Whilst the foregoing was clearly a class project, it was more of the workings of a pathological crave for personal power. As usual, the issue was presented in corporatist terms; non-State actors were routinely accused of sabotaging the impeding new order and the hand-over plans. The political alibi used until after the annulment was that the regime would not hand-over in chaos. I will rapidly examine two levels of analysis here.

This is a more subtle form of political repression. Yet, it is a no-win situation. As summarized by Luckham (1994: 64), "military rulers like Babangida… in Nigeria… have placed obstacles in the way of democratic openings at every turn" (see also Amuwo, 1990; Agbese and Kieh, 1992; Rotimi and Ihonvbere, 1994; D. Bach, 1995 (a) and (b)). From the outset, the regime made it clear that the transition programme was sacrosanct; it was a top-down ‘liberalisaton’ process, the timing and contents of which only the regime could decide. Yet, each phase lent itself to severe contestation on account of several inconsistencies and much panel beating and fine-tuning. Similarly, high political and electoral standards that could not possibly have been met by any mortal (e.g. volume of registration papers by the political associations that would later be outlawed in October 1989) were set ostensibly to discredit the political class in the eyes of the public.

It was, in this respect, very curious that the regime did little to protect Newbreed politicians who had been presented, as already pointed out, as the torch-bearers of ‘a new socio-political order’. By 1993, a close observer of the transition concluded that Babangida wanted an indefinite stay in power. Written in a rather gadfly and condescending tone, Lewis (1994: 131-133) noted: "The evolution of events during the final years of the transition process led many observers to conclude that Babangida never had any real intention relinquishing power to civilians".

He provided evidence: while NEC was a "modicum of proficiency", because under Professor Humphrey Nwosu, it "functioned with diligence and integrity as an overseer of the electoral system’, nonetheless it was "continually subject to the dictates of the Babangida regime and was largely relegated to implementing military stipulations".

The political class was another proof. For Lewis, under Babangida, the politicians were "more reliant on the magnanimity of the generals, as the president intermittently recertified and reshuffled the political elite according to whim". 10 who would confess after his presidential mandate was annulled on June 23, 1995, by the regime that he consulted with the highest office in the land before contesting, was advised to reject Kingibe. The latter was said to be too much of a party man, who could ultimately undermine a future Abiola presidency. Kingibe was also at Aso Rocks where he was advised not to tarry in accepting the Abiola offer (10).

It would appear that for Babangida and his clients what was most important was the mutual utility of the network. He opened the politico-economic space for his clients to pursue their rent- seeking activities. And rent-seekers are not particularly enamoured by democratic theories and practices because "they will see democratization as a threat to their livelihood" (John M. Mbaku, 1994: 283). Since one good turn deserves another, Babangida’s clients would later provide the necessary foot troops to bring succour to their patron and help massage his deflated ego just before he hurriedly ‘stepped aside’ on August 26, 1993.

Finally in this section, there was yet another modality in keeping clients happy and busy: creation of more States and local governments, even at inauspicious moments was meant to widen networks of patronage to new State and local government elites and to delay return to civil rule for as long as possible. To be sure, persistent fractionalization of Nigeria under Babangida tended to reinforce the centrality and criticality of the federal government. In a fundamental sense, Babangida exploited this "centralized configuration of State power to impose his own whimsical vision on Nigeria" (Tunji Lardner jr, 1990: 51).