I WAS NOT AT THE IBB'S JOS ASSEMBLY
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A friend called me recently and wanted to know whether I was at the Jos meeting of Nigerians who served Nigeria under General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB). Of course, I said I was not invited and he said the he was told that my name was on the list of speakers or paper givers. If that was true that my name was on the list of paper givers it was a fraud. It is true I was never and was not invited. Maybe it was assumed that I would be there, the distance not withstanding. I also received an E-mail from a friend of IBB telling me that a decision was taken not to invite me since the major reason for the meeting was not only to rewrite the history of that period, but also to develop a platform for a political comeback. Knowing what I had since learnt since 1993, a political comeback with IBB as its head is an anti Obasanjo plot and an anti-south plot and it would be a colossal failure and it will fail. Reason; politics of vengeance is visionless.
JOS ASSEMBLY WAS AN ANTI-SOUTH AND ANTI-OBASANJO PLATFORM!
I had since the meeting been told that the mission of the Jos meeting was to develop a platform for a new adventure in politics by a Jos Think Tank either for IBB as an elected President or for IBB as a kingmaker for a Presidential candidate. Both are for a post President Obasanjo politics. There is element of truth in the later motive in view of the Arewa's and IBB's personal disgust with the Obasanjo's regime and the feeling that the Yoruba ethnic nationality Arewa wanted to avoid was now forming the basis of Obasanjo's government.
A careful reading of IBB's disgust with the 'beneficiaries of the annulment' found its way to his VOA outburst reported in the Vanguard of October 24, 2000 when he expressed disgust with the beneficiaries of the annulment, which was a veiled reference to the unanticipated, the Yoruba. You do not plan a political platform from a position of hate by a man who abused the trust of Nigerians and betrayed the sacred rights, the democratic rights, especially of the most articulate and naturally endowed section of the Nigerian society. There is too much bitterness on the part of IBB against the Yoruba as a group and genuinely did not think tha General Obasanjo would act like a Yoruba. This was a blunder of the highest order. Does he appreciate also that there is too much bitterness for him by Nigerians especially the Yoruba who suffered from the political crisis?
I WAS NOT INVITED BUT STILL WANT TO CONTRIBUTE NEVERTHELESS
It was the view of the planners of the meeting that I would not be helpful to the former President either as a group to rewrite the history of his regime or a member of a new political machine in his political adventure. Of course, my views were already public knowledge. It is a matter of record that I was the only person in his administration who ever pronounced the June 12 free, fair and credible before and after the annulment. It is also a matter of record that I continued to defend that election even when IBB and his successors, Chief Shonekan and General Abacha denied that there was ever a valid election and paid dearly for it. For continuing the defense of the election after the he left office and for internationalizing the defense of the election after I came to the US I was told that the former President was not happy with me. Maybe that was why the invitation to me was dropped after my name had found its way to the program. I still want to contribute nevertheless.
OMO OMORUYI AS THE LONGEST SERVING MEMBER OF "IBB's KITCHEN CABINET'
There is no question that I was not only a member of his 'Kitchen Cabinet', I was as Professor Eme Awa asserted in one of his lectures on the contributions of political scientists to the work of his administration 'the longest serving member of IBB Kitchen Cabinet'. What Professor Awa meant was that 'I saw him in, in August 1985 and I saw him out, in August 1993'. This is why Professor Claude E Welch, who studied the CDS contribution to the democratic transition asserted in his award winning book, PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995 p 242) that the 'tales' about the democratic transition program should begin with OMO OMORUYI. He did not say with 'IBB'. Certainly, none of those, who assembled at Jos was mentioned by Professor Awa or Professor Welch.
My longest stay with IBB is a fact for which I shall forever remain grateful for the opportunity I had to be exposed to the reality of Nigerian politics beyond what I could ever have read in the textbooks or discovered through research. This is why I came to the conclusion after my experience with the famed Al Mustapha then a Captain in the service of General Abacha in December 1993 that Nigeria must be renegotiated. That still remains my position today.
IBB WAS CONVERTED TO DEMOCRACY BY ME
There was no doubt that IBB was the President, Commander in Chief. Did he have faith in the idea of 'one person one vote' as the basis of any democratic order? Did he reference to the wishes of Allah support the idea of the vox populi vox dei?
I have reason to believe that he was very contemptuous of the politicians and never wanted to get into power on the basis of what the politicians would decide. He believed in the power of money and that the politician was a purchasable commodity from his experience. He did this in the past and it is a common story that he financed many of the office holders including that of the President in 1999. This is still his idea of politics and those who assembled at Jos were beneficiaries of his legendary generosity in the past, called 'settlement'.
FORMER MILITARY DICTATORS AND SEARCH FOR REDEMPTION
There is something in the former military Heads of State seeking redemption from politics. Of all the former military Heads of State, only General Obasanjo and Abubakar had any track record of having achieved something politically to fall back on. They delivered on their promises and for this history would set them aside from other political generals.
Generals Gowon, Buhari and Babangida were political liabilities to themselves. General Gowon promised a transition and reneged on it. Finally he had no plan and wanted to remain in office indefinitely by default until he was helped out of the administration by a palace coup. General Buhari was the first time Nigerians tasted what it would be like to be ruled by a dictator. He was bent on destroying the political class and there no political plan even for himself and for the country order than harshness. General Babangida had many faces to the political class. He was made to promise a transition by me, because it was the right thing to do and because he wanted to be like Generals Murtala/Obasanjo. His contempt for the political class knew no bound but he believed that through the process of recycling, banning and unbanning he could settle on a section of the political class. He made them to be so dependent on him financially that he was able to use one section against the other until he finally crushed them. If this is the method of operation under the projected comeback, it is doomed to failure.
It should be noted that IBB likes power and wanted everyone to be beholden to him in political survival. He used to boast of how he made this and that person. This is still continuing with this present administration. This is the origin of the expression of I made this person and so on. Is General Obasanjo not suffering from this assertion today?
IBB could not put himself in the position of General Yakubu Gowon who was lured by the northern conservatives to be their candidate in 1993. He believes the northern conservatives in the final analysis would renege on their promises to non Fulani, if you are not a committed defender of the north by all cost. He had problems with them as President in many polices, which I shall not go into here. I recall how he lamented one day and wanted me to reflect it in a government statement that if the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahamadu Bello were to wake up then and still found the northern elite cringing to set asides and quota would lament. Those who are in doubt should revisit the government statement after the Kaduna Polytechnic episode following the creation of states in the north in 1991, which was signed by the Vice President, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu.
Generally IBB had no faith in the political class in the north and he was suspicious of what politicians could do when General Gowon failed to secure the nomination for reasons, which I had discussed elsewhere.
It should also be further noted that IBB does not have the goodwill from the international community enjoyed by General Olusegun Obasanjo. Beside the support General Obasanjo gathered from the retired military officers from the north, he had a lot of international goodwill, which General Gowon did not have and which treated and still treats General Babangida as a human rights violator. The international community is aware that what General Abacha was, was caused by General Babangida. His claim that he made General Obasanjo a President is not usually acknowledged in the international community.
COUP CLIQUE HAD NO FAITH IN 'ONE PERSON ONE VOTE'
I also knew that the clique that engineered his coming to power was led by the duo of General Sani Abacha and General Dogonyaro working with some Colonels and majors whose names would not be mentioned in this paper. They did not have in mind a transition that would be based on the 'will of the Nigerian people'. At what stage did he become a convert to democracy is a subject which I would leave to my forthcoming book on the design of the program. Therefore he was not only the least competent to give a detail analysis of the developments from 1985 to 1993, those around him were also not qualified to discuss the program. If IBB was the least competent to do this, what would be expected of those who assembled around him at Jos other than for politics?
There is no basis in the claim of my brother, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the former Chief of General Staff and later the Vice President that he was an 'insider' with the military regime from the beginning to the end. Without attempting to down play his role during the administration, he did not know what IBB and his clique that assembled in Minna in August 1985 had in mind at the beginning. He did not also have any input into the design and the implementation of the transition program except what IBB told him. Certainly, he did not know of the forces at work leading to the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election. Definitely Admiral Augustus Aikhomu did not know what IBB as a person finally had in mind. Did he know when and why IBB wanted to ditch him twice in 1990 and later in 1992 to make way for Chief Ernest Shonekan?
There were two things against Admiral Aikhomu's claim. He was a loyal person to IBB but he was from the south and a minority and he was from the Navy. It is axiomatic that successful coups in Nigerian history were the prerogative of the northern officers and of the Nigerian army. I dealt with this in many papers in the past.
COMPLEX NATURE OF SOCIETY BAFFLED IBB
The complex nature of 'military in politics' in a complex plural society like Nigeria posed a lot of problem for IBB. In order to survive, he engaged in many tricks to play one group against another. It was obvious to me as soon as he became the President that he lacked the competence on how to embark on a transition program. If he tells Nigerians as he told the group in Jos that he embarked on re-engineering, he was misleading the country on what he knew little and nothing about. This was why I advised him in March 1999 that he should be made to respond to the kind of question which the Republican Senator, Howard Baker posed in 1974 about the level of knowledge on the part of President Nixon during the Watergate investigation. Senator Baker wanted to know 'What did the President know and when did he know it?'
One could ask President Babangida, 'What did President Babangida know about the problems about the transition in general and of the June 12 in particular and when did he know it?' He should apply this question to many phases of the transition program, which I shall try to identify for him in this initial reaction to his recent utterances.
What the eminent Professors (Awa and Welch) independently found out from their study was that I was not only privy to many of General Babangida's "political adventures", I was critical factor in the 'design' and 'implementation' of the program of democratic transition. Did I regret my role? The regret is not in the input to the program. but in the IBB's betrayal of Nigerians. This will be taken up in my memoir.
I was not conversant with his economic policies; the two persons conversant with the economic policies were the late Professor Tunji Aboyade and Chief Olu Falae.
On the general political program, I know that there have been many distortions and authorial claims by many peoples, some of who would also find their way to the Jos meeting. These distortions and false claims had found their way into many books since 1993 that I decided to name some areas of my involvement without discussing the details of my adventures with General Babangida in the Tell magazine piece in March 1999. I do not want to go back to that. This was what I would have contributed, if I was invited to the Jos meeting.
AREAS WHERE I INFLUENCED IBB'S POLICIES
What I would be doing in this paper is to offer advice to those who are rewriting the history of that period as to certain facts in the design and implementation of the program of democratic transition. What did they know of the following issues:
MILITARY PLAYED LITTLE OR NO ROLE IN THE IBB POLITICAL PROGRAM
What role did the military, as an organization play in the foregoing is a subject, which many of those who assemble at Jos would have to contend with. It is not true that the military had a blue print when it came to power other than what IBB concocted with me at various stages. This will be discussed at length in my forthcoming book.
Each of the foregoing issues will be reflected in my forthcoming book on the design and implementation of the program. I was personally involved in all of them and I shall be bringing in the personal angle never to be found in the published texts and may never be available to researchers. I believe I owe it to the Nigerian political scientist that they should have materials for more textbooks on Nigerian politics.
THE JUNE 12 EPISODE
The annulment destroyed what ever IBB might have achieved during his administration. Unfortunately he did not accept it when he assembled persons who served Nigeria under his administration, but who knew nothing about the transition program and the annulment of the June 12 election. How could IBB era be discussed without casting it in the context of the political order? Those who assembled at Jos ought to have been reminded of the dictum of the Dr. Nkwame Nkrumah that we should seek first the political freedom and other things will be added to us. It was true then and it is true today.
I purposely left out the annulment saga as that had been covered in my book. What shocked me about General Babangida is that he is still fighting the Nigerian voters even after the death of General Abacha and up till today. It is sad that IBB is still continuing with the fight against the resolution of the Nigerian crisis by recognizing the lingering political problems from the annulment of the June 12. It is sad that the whole rational for the Jos meeting is to continue the fight against the June 12. This is what I could not understand in the difference between his private and public postures on the issue of the annulment. The question is why? The last statement issued at the Jos meeting was the most contrite address he ever made since 1993. The interview he granted to the Voice of America (VOA) Hausa Service would still have been an opportunity for him to atone for the harm he did to this country.
Instead, he continued with his claim that the present administration is a product of the annulment, which is further raising other issues. Is he saying that the present administration derived from the annulment or that the present regime was a solution to the crisis created by the annulment? That interview in the English version is pregnant with meaning. The last section of the interview gave the impression that if Allah commands him to seek the presidency he would. Is this not what the Jos meeting was about? Maybe one day, General Babangida would reflect on these issues in his memoirs.
It is not my position to convince Nigerians that I knew a lot, which the President himself might not know. I knew more than General Babangida would ever know because I went to serve the country through him not as a 'military officer', or as a 'politician' but as a Political Scientist and a loyal friend who genuinely wanted to make him make history. There are some Nigerians who accused me that I was privy to his evil design and his plan to betray Nigerians. I do not have to spend time and waste energy stating the circumstance, which brought us together. I have done it and I cannot go back on the life I led with IBB.
This is a matter of hindsight and I have been asked if giving the opportunity again if I would serve. I would not refuse. I would be more careful and would demand international involvement. I tried this at a later stage but the international community abandoned the Nigerian pro-democracy groups at the critical stage after the annulment and during the Abacha years because of oil.
My main aim of getting involved in the IBB regime was to make him make history, but instead he decided to make a negative contribution to history. History would be violent with him. This is all I can say. Maybe the eminent Nigerians he assembled at Jos wanted to correct this. But how! They cannot correct mistakes unless one first confesses. IBB is still holding on to the lie and show of arrogance that he did nothing wrong and that whatever he did he took responsibility. How do you take responsibility for what you are still denying?
I would urge General Babangida to address this in his memoir. But how he would do this I am afraid he would have to search his conscience very well and ask God to guide him. This was what I did as soon as it became obvious that lie was taking over the country after the annulment especially after he left Abuja in August 1993.
I begged God to guide me as soon as I came to the US in August 1995 that during my 18 months as a Visiting Fellow, Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School, Harvard University, I should be able to reflect on two issues. One was where we went wrong in the design and the second was where we went wrong in the implementation of the program of democratic transition. My first book, THE TALE OF JUNE 12 is now in circulation. The second book on the ISSUES IN THE DESIGN and IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROGRAM OF DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION (1985 to 1993) is also completed and will be with a publisher soon. There is a third effort under way by some of my friends at Harvard, Boston and Lagos Universities who agreed to edit for publication over 50 unpublished papers I wrote since I came to Harvard in 1995 on the crisis of democratization in Nigeria.
The northern clique would have wished I were dead after the annulment so that I did not live to talk about what I knew about how the geo-ethno-military-clique denied Nigerians their right to human dignity after the annulment. I was not therefore surprised that even when I was hospitalized in London after the gun shot would from unknown assassins, Alhaji Uba Ahmed speaking for the Northern Elders Forum unleashed a blistering attack in various media in Kaduna. The most publicized one was in a Kaduna newsmagazine, The Sentinel of December 19, 1994. This came at the time when I was awaiting my third surgery in London and I felt it.
What was Alhaji Uba's grouse? It was with the way I got the President to stop the attempt he hatched to make his party, the minority party (NRC) in the National Assemble from taking over the National Assembly from the majority party (SDP. Thus was the way the northern clique thought they would protect the northern interest. That still forms part of the history of Nigeria. Was this part of what the Jos meeting would want to address? Do they have the facts? How much of this did the President know from his aides who were also in the plot? What he knew was what I told him.
They should explore what Alhaji Uba Ahmed meant when he said, "I Don't blame Babangida" for the crisis. Who is to blame for the crisis over the annulment? Alhaji Uba blamed the CDS, which according to him "has taken most of the functions and works of the presidency itself like the supervision and the writing of speech for the President, the supervision of the National Assembly, .the supervision of elections which is a function of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) the teaching of people politics"..(The Sentinel of December 19, 1994, page 28).
Even on my sick bed in London, I was still under attack and I had no one to come to my rescue. I did not know whether General Babangida who at this time was in his home at Minna also believed that I was the cause of his problem. To the Northern leaders, they forgave General Babangida according Alhaji Uba; but they blamed OMO OMORUYI. It would therefore be obvious that I would not have qualified as a member of those who assembled at the Hill Station, Jos for the purpose of rewriting the history I knew so well. I would not have joined them in more lies and more deceits.
I was shocked with the catalogue of crimes and the power, which the northern leaders attributed to me under President Babangida. There was nothing that that I made IBB to do which did not flow from our discussion. It is true that many of the decisions did not flow from the relevant organs of the military government. It should be noted that IBB did not trust his colleagues and this was the nature of the 'military in government'.
I knew Alhaji Uba as the theoretician of northern control or domination of Nigeria from our days together in the Constituent Assembly and he could be speaking unless the northern leaders signed off on it. When he accused me of taking over the work of the Presidency, Uba Ahmed did not credit IBB with the capacity to understand the intricacies of political intrigue. This was why he accused me of "forging" statements for the President to use without the knowledge of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, as if the President was not capable of knowing what was given him to announce to the country. Let me state briefly what they were accusing me about.
Maybe what I thought was unknown to General Babangida was actually known to him. The President must have been party to an orchestrated attempt by the NRC members of the National Assembly to take over the National Assembly through the nomination of SDP members sympathetic to the NRC as the Senate President and the House Speaker respectively.
Maybe the agents of the military President were at work directing some of the elected State Governors especially of the NRC to also push for the President to work with them and forget about the presidential election. Common to the plan from the National Assembly and the plan from the State Governors was the attempt to foist on the country an entirely new transition program, which was to end with what they called 'diarchy'. The coordinator of the 'diarchy' plan was the Secretary to Government of the Federation, the late Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed. All these issues had documents, which are still in my possession. What are the history writers at Jos be doing with the rewriting of history?
I genuinely thought I was trying to save the transition program and I thought that my friend was anxiously interested in making history. I was wrong; this I strongly regret it. Maybe one could plead with General Babangida to reflect on some of these issues in his memoirs.
I was asked to comment on the latest Tell magazine report by the IBB when he still called me "his friend". (TELL December 7, 1998) Yes, General Babangida is my friend. There is no question that my involvement began from our friendship and ended on that note. I had opportunity to read some of the responses to press questions posed to him on the events leading to the annulment. I found some of the responses normal when he pleaded that he would take full responsibility for what happened.
WHAT DID GENERAL BABANGIDA KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?
Speaking frankly, I do not know what General Babangida knew and when he knew it. I knew he had personal reasons to embark on the take over of the junta from General Buhari. Democracy was not one of the personal reasons even though it became part of the rationalizations after the coup and in the statement justifying the coup by then Col. Joshua Dogonyaro on August 27, 1985.
What I would want to say through this medium is that General Babangida did not know all the things that were happening around him during the period of transition. There were too many forces at work at any given time.
What I would also try to say is that General Babangida's innate distrust with human nature made him to be many things to many people in his two constituencies, the north and the armed forces. Even to me until when he ran into difficulties, IBB was an enigma. Was he innately dishonest, I would not say so. A lot of the personality characteristics people attribute to him are unfortunate and he is not doing anything to change them. That up till now he had not come to term with the harm he did to this country and the most populous African country.
IBB and his new handlers who assembled at Jos ought to have known that no achievement in economic field would make up for the betrayal of the democratic rights of Nigerians. IBB's economic crimes would have been forgiven if he had concluded the June 12 as planned and executed.
He made me to embark on too many fire fighting and rescue operations just because he had misled his colleagues and the northern elders. I ran to his rescue on many occasions especially after he had been caught red handed by his colleagues and the northern leaders. I will not go into details of these situations in this forum. None of those who assembled at Jos can play back the many situations I am referring to. IBB could play back those cases.
Yes, he knew about the annulment. Maybe he agreed with it not knowing that the aftermath would be what Nigeria had to live with since 1993 and after. I warned him that the country would not withstand the effect of the annulment. Only a mad man would knowingly plunge this country into what the Nigerian people, NORTH, SOUTH, EAST and WEST have been going through after the annulment. This is what I would expect him to deal with at some stage. It is a matter of sadness that IBB is still standing by the annulment as if that is what reasonable persons would do. This baffles me. Did he anticipate that the country would suffer this much when the annullists descended on him after the election?
DID GENERAL BABANGIDA KNOW THE MOTIVES OF THE ANNULLISTS?
It will be unduly pretentious on the part of General Babangida to claim to know what was in the minds of the various military officers and political leaders. These were the ones who did not want the transition to be concluded on the basis of one person and one vote before the June 12 election. He certainly did not know what was going on in the minds of those who vehemently pushed for the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election after the election.
One could ask some pertinent questions. Did General Babangida know what Generals Abacha, Dongoyaro, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, Diya and other military officers might have had in mind at the different stages in the events leading to the annulment and after? Did he know what was in the minds of those called the 'criminal clique of the north' by Colonel Yohana Madaki who according to him had 'held on to power since independence' and 'still thinks that it is their God-given right to rule Nigeria' (TELL of November 9, 1998, page 32,). These my some of the issues, which General Babangida wants to respond to in his memoirs?
I still believe that General Babangida did not know what actually happened, despite his claims, especially when he was too preoccupied with the pomp of office. It would be pretentious on his part to claim to know what was going on in the minds of the political leaders in the north and in the minds of his colleagues.
Let me ask another set of questions. Could IBB claim to know what were in the minds of those Ndi Igbo leaders, who came to the support of the annulment and provided the rationalization for it? Did he know the minds of the committee members led by Professor Ben Nwabueze, who crafted many anti-Abiola Decrees during this period? One could also ask if these Ndi Igbo leaders who supported the annulment knew that the reasons for the annulment of the June 12 were also the same reasons why an Ndi igbo person would not be allowed to be President later? The decision of the same annullists to ditch Dr. Alex Ekwueme in 1999, because he was supported by the Ndi Igbo ethnic nationality ought to have been an eye opener today I hope.
Let me further ask another set of questions. Did IBB know that Professor Nwabueze said that the Decree on the Interim National Government (ING), which he drafted was not the one used by General Abacha on November 17, 1993? Was the Decree used to demand the resignation of the ING a fraud? Did the President know that there were many versions of the ING Decree in circulation? What version of the Decree was IBB referring to when he talked of the ING Decree and the end of the ING envisaged by him? The whole INH contrivance, which was originally conceived with some turned out to be a fraud in the end.
General Babangida would need to tell the history writers, if the briefs supposedly from him given to the Committee of Legal Drafters headed by Professor Nwabueze by the late Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, the SGF reflected the President's position on some of the provisions in some of the Decrees. Did the SGF tell the Committee how the President's mind was working? All I can say now is that some of the Decrees were in conflict with and contrary to what I thought then was General Babangida's deeply held beliefs about democratic rights. One would want to know from IBB today with the present knowledge whether he subscribed to the anti-Abiola Decrees crafted by ghost drafters, who even pushed him to sign Decrees 'ousting' the jurisdiction of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights.
I still recall that it was IBB as the Chairman of the OAU, who led the OAU to pass for the first time in the OAU's history resolution pushing for democracy and human rights in 1991. I happen to know that General Babangida had since I knew him in 1979 been a firm believer in the "will of the people" as the basis of government. To buttress my point, these anti-Abiola Decree drafters did not know that the President was in the process of ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights at the time of the June 12 election. I was not surprised that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was actually ratified before he left office on August 26, 1993. Maybe the subsequent decrees drafted after August 27, 1993 would have been ousting the UN Human Rights Committee, if the General Abacha's handlers had known of the effects of the International Covenant on the country. And if General Abacha's handlers had realized that the 1991 Harare Declaration of the Commonwealth was applicable to Nigeria, the junta's Decree drafters would have done something about that in their Decrees.
I am raising some of the above issues in order to emphasize that what General Babangida knew and when he knew it should be left to his memoir as he promised and should not be for press interview or for ghost writers or for a seminar. If he approaches me, I will make available to him my recollections of some of the issues and the way they were dealt with at critical moments between 1985 and 1993.
Maybe a TRUTH COMMISSION would be an appropriate body to get at the root of the events leading to the annulment. All of us, who had some role in the events leading to the annulment and in the later anti-human rights posture should be invited by the Commission. Specifically such issues as the extra-judicial execution of the Ogoni 9 and the death of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola and the detention and death of Chief MKO Abiola are the sources of the lingering political issues, which should be adequately raised, discussed and resolved to the satisfaction to all concerned. The series of election, which led to the present dispensation is now clear would not be the solution even though it could offer an opportunity for all concerned to come to terms with the post annulment Nigeria.
I am waiting for the paper by General Tunji Olurin at the Jos meeting entitled 'Babangida's Regime and the Armed Forces'. I have the long interview he granted to This Day in the issue of November 15, 1998 after the death of General Abacha. I intend to use the paper to illustrate the nature of the 'military in government' and how the Nigerians were misruled by soldiers of fortune for so long.
November 2001