IBB: An arid historian with a purpose.

Oscar Wilde Intentions (1891) “the critic as Artist” part 1, states that “…Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who
writes the biography. That, retired General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB); Nigeria’s former dictator and un-elected president is a great man is
irrefragable. His greatness is the type that can be described in the words of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, “Beneath it nothing but a
great simulacrum.” That is, a sham. IBB’s greatness was earned and misused and now, his loyal disciples are the Judas in our nation who are attempting to forge our history by reminding us that we were not at the auditorium of our theatre, when the theme of their misuse of power, incandescent abrogation of decency in governance and rapacity of the highest degree plunged us into the hands of General Abacha, who modelled his government on the inheritance from IBB.

The unfortunate aspect of the IBB years for which he claims “we have re-engineered Nigeria” by obfuscating his accounts with sorties that are
evidenced in broken lives and broken dreams of his fellow country-men and women, who did not grant him the plebiscites to tamper with their lives and who at the earliest opportunity made clear to him that his was an undesirable government is that the history he is attempting to rewrite is a
living one. And, it is history that is being written without the arms with which he blighted our lives.

The man and his disciples gathering at the Hill Station Hotel, Jos, to remind us that it was the Will of God to destroy our country: Nigeria and
IBB was the Site-Engineer to accomplish the task is blasphemous and a humbug. These are IBB’s words “ I take full responsibility”. I am satisfied
that I did my best in the circumstances as a mortal working within the will of Almighty Allah.

Does it not irk, when all portions of blame is heaped on Allah for the folly of men? It sure does. In accepting full responsibility, IBB did well
but as expected, he disappointed when he asked us not to blame the mortal engineer and he inferred that our collective anger is misdirected. This time, we have an option to reject his attempt to confuse and confute us with meaningless fine words like “as mortals…. operating within the broad parameters set by Providence, we are bound to encounter situations and events some of these situations and events are and can be anticipated, contemplated or contrived. Some we do not and cannot easily anticipate or contemplate, let alone contrive. Others are unfathomable and beyond human control…”

We must reject his contrition not because to forgive is divine but because the man and his team herein confess their ineptitude in governance despite
ample time to handover power to competent hands. IBB is now resorting to blasphemy in order to blackmail us. He knows that ours is a society that
lacks the ability to differentiate between facts and fiction. You see, blaming God for every wrong decision we have taken, is our national past
time. Remember Senator Waku? When, early this year, he advocated for a military takeover and he was criticised by his fellow senators and the
nation at large; guess whom he blamed; God and in Him as well he claimed to find refuge. Another instance of a blame worthy God is in the comment of the same IBB, at the funeral of General Sani Abacha. IBB referred to Abacha as “…. a servant of God.” All of these references make the devout wonder about the irreverence of Nigerians.

IBB meeting with his disciples to rewrite history is nothing new. It is a persistent occurrence. Take the United States Watergate scandal as an
example; Richard Shenkman: the author of Presidential Ambition: How the Presidents Gained Power, Kept Power, and Got Things Done (HarperCollins,
1999), writes “Remember Watergate? That was the scandal which brought Richard Nixon down after it was disclosed that he or his minions, among
other things: spied on Edward Kennedy, played a dirty trick on Edmund Muskie, broke into the Democrat’s national headquarters, planned to break
into McGovern headquarters, compiled an enemies list, ordered the IRS to audit political opponents, arranged for illegal wiretaps, faked diplomatic
cables to implicate John Kennedy in the assassination of South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, offered clemency to keep some witnesses quiet, paid other
witnesses hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep them quiet, destroyed evidence, plotted the fire bombing of the Brookings Institution, and schemed to kidnap leading student radicals so they wouldn’t disrupt the Republican National Convention in 1972.

That, anyway, is Watergate as most Americans—and historians—remember it. That is not, however, how many right-wingers do.In what seems like a surreal continuation of the original Nixon cover-up, intellectuals on the right have been arguing in a shelf-full of recently published books that Watergate was really little more than the third-rate burglary Press Secretary Ron Ziegler initially said it was. Whatever oath-breaking offences Nixon may have committed—and some right-wingers are not willing to concede he committed any—they argue vehemently that his crimes were relatively minor.

In their Rip Van Winkle history—written as if the writers went to sleep before any of the charges against Nixon were proven true—Nixon has become the aggrieved apostle of right-wing resentments, the good president driven out of office by bad liberals before he could complete his conservative reforms of the federal government. Conservatives, to be sure, still have not forgiven the SALT-treaty-signing, Mao-meeting, Taiwan-selling out president known for détente.

When Oscar Wilde wrote, “ the one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it (Intentions (1891) part II). IBB and his disciples were taking heed of an
old apothegm. After all, IBB may have read the works of Jean Cocteau; French playwright and film director, in Journal d’un inconnu(1953) ‘De
l’’invisibilite’ where he wrote: ‘History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth. The IBB congregation assembled at the Station Hotel must have embraced Cocteau to the extent that they wish for their fables to
become our reality. Otherwise, retired Admiral Augustus Aikhomu would not have displayed such effrontery in these words: “......I can also testify
with impeccable credentials about the enormous challenges, contributions and assets to national development made by the regime (IBB’s regime (sic)).

I am not a lead speaker at this symposium, yet I must say it loud and clear that events were not as sections of the media and other opinion leaders and formulators had tended to dramatise since the end of that regime in August 1993," he said. According to him, the regime, at its origins, was propelled by great challenge about the economy, society and the political process. "It went about its programmes, social reforms with a clear methodology, focus, philosophy, dedication and devotion such that many structural break through were undertaken.” Aikhomu is best served to learn that in the same Nigeria, where his retirement pensions and proceeds of breaches of fiduciary protect him, his family and friends from the reversal of fortune brought in the trail of SAP and annulments of elections; the realities of life since 1985, are not those of “impeccable credentials” but of the penury for the masses; lack of respect for life and property; reversal of education standards and gross abuse of human rights.

Hear the words of Executive Director Abdul Oroh of Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) of Nigeria: “"…. but we at CLO have published a book
"Human Rights in Retreat", which documents the human rights record of Babangida's regime. It was under Babangida that state repression became
arbitrary, widespread and state policy. In all aspects of human rights, whether in the muzzling of the press, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), student unionism, he destroyed all the vibrant and viable institutions of democracy. This is the verdict of history for the Chief Executive of Nigeria Plc 1985 – 1993: Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.

It is excruciatingly painful to note that the former captains of our nation cannot see that our nation has been run aground and we are sinking in the
morass of their tinkling. These men cannot absolve themselves. The current problems in Nigeria have been incubating since their time in government. They cannot pretend we sang the song of victory over our problems when they were kicked out of office. Ours was a song of victory but it was the victory that IBB and his cohorts, no longer retained the power to determine the destruction of our national hope.

If only these men would consider President Abraham Lincoln’s words in his annual message of 1st December 1862 to the American Congress, he said, ……” Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history…. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial we pass will
light us down in honour or dishonour to the last generation.” As for the majority of Nigerians, who consider decency and honesty are quintessential
in national life; IBB’s government of ‘who dares win’ implies the governed lost out because his “re-engineering.” That begs the questions; when did
governance turn into a competition rewarding agility and vitality?

Governance is about caring for the weak against vagaries of the State and the strong and protecting the strong from the State. Governance is about a broad church that welcomes all opinions and accommodates all dissents. It is against this crux of patent guilt that posterity will continue to berate IBB.

There is a need for IBB and his disciples to wake up and realise that history can only be re-written by winners who retain all sources of communications from which their fellow-men and women source information. IBB without the realms of power will remain the former dictator of Nigeria as he is often referred in the West and his legacy for which he cares so much would remain a ruinous one.

George Orwell penned the following about the tyrannical and totalitarian State described so vividly in his chilling novel, 1984: “The past is
whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its
members, it follows that the past is whatever the party chooses to make it.” IBB’s account of his records and our minds save for the minds of his
acolytes are at a divergence. And it ought to be noted that in the present day Nigeria, IBB cannot determine who or what we believe of the records for which we are living witnesses. In essence the congeries of accounts of men whose control of our nation was self-serving cannot be didactic to propel IBB into a Statesman or a Saint. He is neither.

General Abdulsalami Abubakar opined, “It was high time the achievements of General Babangida were documented.” Abubakar seems to be impervious to the available records on Babangida. It is a regrettable reading and it is not a document that will serve the memory of IBB and rationalising the statesmanship or sainthood of IBB is not imperative because no living sinner can pervert the account of history.

It is now clear from the speech at the Jos parley that IBB’s conscience is not at ease. His account does not depict a man craving relevance in the
current dispensation. He is a man seeking to be understood and granted the benevolence he denied the governed. If this presumption is correct, ergo, he is going about the titivation of his image in a wrong way. There are two reasons for averring this position.

Firstly, the ‘impeccable credentials’ and legacy of IBB were destroyed by what the man represents. He can be surmised as a man in whom there is guile and one who could not be taken at his words. Simple. It is him alone who can rectify that image and no amount of congeries of postulation by the likes of Major-General John Inienger, former ECOMOG Field Commander; Air Vice Marshal Nura Imam, Major-General Tunji Olurin, Brigadier-General Halilu Akilu, Brigadier General John Shagaya, also former ECOMOG Field Commander and Brigadier General Raji Rasaki will change the evidence on the ground. No one feels safe in a leader that cannot be trusted. A leader whose principles are chameleonic is never trusted for his utterances, whether in power or out of it.

Secondly, IBB’s continued attempt to rewrite history by his relevance in politics opens the man to suspicion and ridicule. The reason is not
multi-faceted, in fact it is in the role he confessed to have played in the Obasanjo’s presidential election and his reported sectional defence in our
national politics. IBB’s rehabilitation will only be found in championing a noble cause that is neither destructive of the Nigerian project nor
sectional. Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon seem to have rewritten history after their departure from office. Albeit, in Nixon’s case, he died with a
ruinous legacy but he also bequeathed a periscope to be seen differently form Watergate. May be from the life and times of Richard Milhous Nixon,
Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida can take a cue.

The writer is a solicitor of the of the Supreme Court, England and Wales and a Lawyer at a Firm of Solicitors in London, England