Ibrahim Babangida did Nigeria no good by Tunde Akande
What IBB began with annulment, Abacha finished when he arrested Abiola acclaimed to have won that election, and clamped him in jail.
Major-General Muhammadu Buhari's early morning coup on 31st, December 1983 was a new year gift to Nigerians who had gotten tired of the lacklustre democratic and kleptocractic government of late President Shehu Shagari which though democratic had become anything but civil.
Those of us in the Southwest will never wish for that time again as the Mobile Police, Mopol, of late Inspector General of Police, Sunday Adewusi became a thorn in the flesh of the Yorubas all because that part of the country was under the opposition party, the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN. It was either the thugs of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN or the official thugs of the federal government, the MOPOL maiming and killing the people. Nigerians wished a change and got one from Buhari and his colleagues. But no sooner Buhari got in than the gangling general bared his fangs and inflicted on the nation a most dictatorial and Northern irredentist government that Nigerians, at least those from the southern part of the country began to wish for another messiah. Buhari made life so tough economically and politically for Nigerians that he practically sent soldiers to the streets and schools to whip Nigerians and students of secondary schools in line for alleged indiscipline which was not more than the irrational military concept of discipline. Gap-toothed and always smiling then Major-General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida was the answer to Buhari's draconian misrule when he masterfully terminated the Buhari junta in a bloodless coup on August 27, 1985. Babangida had carefully ostracized Major-General Buhari from the rest of the top military brass without the gangling Buhari knowing; only left with his loyal deputy Brigadier-General Tunde Idiagbon who Babangida tricked to go on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and taking the advantage of his absence to strike, leaving tactless Buhari naked. He was captured effortlessly. Babangida was welcome relief from Muhammadu Buhari who had turned Nigeria into one huge detention camp. Buhari's hatred for the southern politicians was legendary. Their counterparts from the north were angels who must be spared from his harassment. That was more an indication of his deep tribal inclination.
Though in military khaki uniform, IBB was more like a civilian, always smiling and a friend of everybody. He is on record as the first military officer as the nation's Chief of Army Staff under Buhari to declare that soldiers are also politicians. Nobody took notice but few weeks after he said that he was on the seat of his boss not as head of state as others before him who came in through coups had chosen but as the military president. Babangida looks every inch a man who could not hurt a fly and Nigerians thought he was the man who will bring the much needed relief to the nation. He surrounded himself with eggheads from the universities and all of them acclaimed that he was a good listener. Aided by the usually neo-liberal policy of the IMF, he launched his Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, which sought "liberalization, privatization, and deregulation with the goal of efficient allocation of resources." Soon unsuspecting Nigerians which included this writer hailed him. Goods which were previously absent in the nation became available but at a very exorbitant prices. From that time in 1986 till now Nigeria entered into a real economic quagmire.
Babangida has the outward look of a friend with a caring heart but inside him he is another person, very hateful. Buhari before him was a tribal bigot but he did not hide it. IBB hid his extreme tribalism until it became impossible to hide that aspect of his persona again. He distrusted Yorubas especially. He is on record to have told one of his confidants, late Professor Omo Omoruyi that everything he became in Nigeria was made possible because he is a Northerner and therefore he has to do what the emirs of the North want; that Yoruba people always had the impression that nothing could happen in the nation without them. He quoted General Abacha, who he carefully and with intrigues planned to succeed him when it became obvious that Nigeria will break if he continued in office, as saying that MKO Abiola who had won an election which IBB annulled will never become president. And Abiola did not, IBB annulled his election which was acclaimed to be the most democratic in the country through a well-acclaimed voting strategy crafted by equally acclaimed Professor of Political Science, Humphrey Nwosu, now late, called option A4 which required voters to queue behind their candidates and be counted manually. What IBB began with annulment, Abacha finished when he arrested Abiola acclaimed to have won that election, and clamped him in jail. Abiola was later reported to have drank tea that he was given in Aso Rock, the seat of the federal government, after which he slumped and died in the presence of a US government delegation.
Under IBB corruption shot above the roof. The height of that corruption is well-illustrated by a rumor that ran around in those days in Abuja and the whole nation. A well-acclaimed professor of geography and town planning whom Babangida had appointed to head a government department had gone to civil servants to ask for the allocation to his department. He was told to bring a certain percentage of that allocation in order to collect it. He went to complain to the president, but did not find succour, rather IBB was rumored to have told him smiling: "Professor give them now." Government money became nobody's money that every Tom, Dick and Harry picked and spent without any accountability. Civil servants became owners of properties that cannot be explained for in terms of their legitimate earnings. IBB did nothing about it, rather he encouraged it. IBB had interest to rule Nigeria perpetually. When he started his intrigues, late former civilian governor of Ogun State, Chief Olabisi Onabanjo of the UPN and also a gifted columnist named IBB as Maradona after the Argentinian mercurial football dribbler now late, Diego Amanda Maradona. Before Nigerians would grasp the importance of what Chief Onabanjo pointed out in his description, IBB had taken the nation through unending circles of promises of returning the nation to democracy, promises which were observed rather in the breach. Nobody could pin IBB down to anything. Trust the Nigerian elite who love to reap where they bestow no labour, they went along with Babangida's dribbles. In his dribblings, IBB took Nigeria secretly to the Organisation of Islamic Conference, OIC and çommitted billions of Nigeria’s scarce resources to the funding of that exclusively Islamic organization. Thus began the unfolding of a secret plan to Islamize Nigeria. When that OIC membership by Nigeria became known it drew the ire of the Christian community who complained very vociferously through their organization, the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN. This began openly a Christian/ Muslim conflict in the nation which today is threatening whatever remain of the fragile fabric of Nigeria's unity. The author of religious disunity in Nigeria is therefore IBB.
Many are the evils that IBB afflicted Nigeria with. Whatever will suit his perpetuation in office he did. A very renowned and celebrated journalist, Dele Giwa suddenly received a disguised parcel bomb which he said was from the presidency before he opened it and it subsequently blew in his face killing him one eerie morning in his Adeniyi Jones house in Ikeja, Lagos. Not a few Nigerians believe that the delivery of the parcel bomb and the way it was delivered and exploded had the imprimatur of IBB and his corps of military intelligence boys though no probe was established to determine who actually did it. Police investigation was frustrated. Very significantly it is surprising that 32 years after IBB was disgraced out office on February 20, 2025, IBB who had made some serious attempts to contest election as president under a democratic dispensation but failed at each turn, gathered his acolytes and a coterie of people who collected rents in his government to launch his autobiography titled-Journey Through Service in Abuja, the federal capital.
The huge presence of many of Nigeria's past leaders at the launching of the book and the unveiling of the architectural design of a planned IBB Presidential Library did not bother me so much, after all they were a collection of ruiners of Nigeria. If these people look at the present situation of the country, the deep division into ethnic and religious camps, the deep misery and hunger on the faces of Nigerians everywhere, the insecurity, banditry, Boko Haram insurgency, the IPOB secessionists agitation in the East, all of them should be ashamed to gather for that launching. But Nigerian leaders are the owners of Nigeria. They don't care a hoot, they have captured the nation for themselves. They live in palatial mansions built with money looted from our Treasury. They don't walk or drive on the road, they fly in the sky in their private jets and so do not see the agony of the poor. How dare IBB title his book "Service." Did he know the meaning of servanthood. If as Jesus demostrates it in the Bible which is to wash the legs of people leaders served, IBB should be least deserving of that worthy title. He did not serve Nigerians, he rather bossed and ruined them.
What irked me the most was the commentaries on the social media by some youths, especially from the North where IBB hails from who praised him to high heavens thinking that he is a hero. Perhaps that is a further reflection of the tribal divide of the nation inflicted on it by the selfish leaders who use tribalism to feather their nests. The reason for this piece. Perhaps many of them were not born while IBB pillaged and ruined Nigeria or maybe they are short in memory and therefore need to be reminded of the duplicitous era of Ibrahim Babangida. History will never record IBB favourably.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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