His gambit was a flash in the pan. The element of surprise was lost by the rustle of speculations around his ambition to return as civilian President.
When he announced it, his opponents were already waiting, and their counter: they placed a pawn before him to stump or check the move of his knight.
I am talking about Ibrahim Babangida, whom Chidi Amuta has hyperbolically celebrated as “Prince of the Niger” – a sort of Machiavellian archetype from Minna.
It was indeed once said that as dictator, Ibrahim Babangida was guided in his politics by Machiavelli, and if so, no doubt introduced and simplified for him by his close mandarinate of political advisers that included Omo Omoruyi and Sam Oyovbaire – theorists and artificers of the alchemy of politics grounded also on Machiavelli.
Nicolo Machiavelli’s idea is like a practical guide to political chess. It is not such a handful of infamy as most people are wont to regard it, although it does not shy away from infamy.
I speculate that Ibrahim Babangida’s current political moves – deeply self-interested and really ambiguous – came after consultations with his Machiavellian oracles.
There is however something I’m almost certain that Nicolo Machiavelli may have said about Princes' reading their tea leaves well if they must embark on ambiguous adventures which I’m sure the former military president has not heeded. Yes indeed, this move is ambiguous.
Ibrahim Babangida’s knight rides with a huge baggage of history, and it is quite recent history, still fresh in the public mind, of how his rule wasted an entire generation and destroyed Nigeria. This is the wider sum of people’s attitude to Babangida and I’m not quite sure what his advisers are telling him.
But Babangida does not need advise. He is a much experienced man, with a wide network of contacts and secure lines reaching the most unimaginable places.
He has mind-boggling resources. Some say he is restless and uncontainable in a fifty-bedroom house.
There he was one day, folks say, pondering his next move, when the Americans sent Mr. Johnnie Carson – Assistant Under-Secretary of the United States in Africa.
The meeting was secret. It was arranged as a condolence. The elegant Mrs. Babangida was recently dead.
And in the ways of good old friends – the Americans try to make a point about not being fair-weather friends – they sent their man to the Minna hills, with a condolence, and some folks now say, a proposal.
An offer you couldn’t refuse. Because Nigeria is strategic to the United States international security and economic interests, the Americans are never shy of playing a quick hand to intervene – to keep its fields watered for the free market and for Milton Friedman.
Nigeria was in heat that February. Usually, during Nigeria’s political ovulation, it rains cats and dogs – to use a cliché.
And it was raining political cats and dogs with the Yar’Adua situation raging. The sick president in the terminal stages of his ill-health had been brought home suddenly.
His reappearance from a Saudi hideout created an incumbency and succession problem.
Key political interests particularly in the North were insistent that the zoning principle, that specular balance on which Nigerian elite cake-sharing formula vicariously rests, must guide any mandate of succession.
The Americans read a threat on Nigeria’s perennially “nascent” democracy. They came to Minna; to their old trusted friend and ally. They sent James Bond.
It was supposed to be a secret and quiet meeting. But enterprising reporters spotted Mr. Carson chaperoned by the US Ambassador to Nigeria at the hilltop lair of the fox of Minna.
“Well, Johnnie,” they put it to him, “what do you know?” We have come, Johnnie Carson said, “to seek his advise on what he saw happening in Nigeria” the Sun newspaper quotes him. Really? “My discussions in Nigeria and with Nigerians from Washington is (sic) extraordinarily broad, as it should be” the Sun again quotes the American emissary.
Nigerians believe that the Americans goaded the former military dictator to come out and run for the office of president as a civilian. The problem with that is that Babangida’s rule still leaves most Nigerians with bad tastes in their mouth.
Recently, in an interview with the VOA, the former military president said he would not tolerate questions about June 12 and about money from the oil windfall, the controversial subject of the Okigbo reports, and of course, Dele Giwa.
But why not?
These are the crucial highlights of his dictatorship. It was a secretive and brutal administration, much like Chile under Pinochet.
It is crucial for Babangida if he wishes to lead Nigeria in a democracy to understand that the crucial element of democracy is that it has no such rules as “no go areas.”
Perhaps he has not yet got it.
I think it is Ibrahim Babangida’s right to aspire to contest and run for president, especially because there doesn’t seem to be a term bar for those who led Nigeria as soldiers.
Muhammadu Buhari – his military predecessor is in the race too.
It is important, however, to ask Babangida what else he is likely to do having spent eight significant years with dictatorial powers and accomplishing really nothing other than the social disintegration of Nigeria.
Many Nigerians express opposition against Babangida for a question like $12.8 billion Gulf oil windfall, of which he is said, according to the Okigbo report not to have put to “regenerative venture” among some of the really, terribly damning indictments of the regime in that report; some Nigerians oppose him on account of June 12 or the unresolved murder of Dele Giwa. I consider those real blotches on his era.
But far above it all for me is that my generation is the key victim of the Babangida years. We emerged from the universities as young professionals – with no jobs.
Unemployment was extremely high. There was multiple digit inflation. Extreme corruption came to characterize Nigeria’s public system.
His administration fed Nigeria on the poisoned chalice monetarism and the free market based on the ideas of Milton Friedman Reaganomics. We were teargassed, foreclosed, and kept in limbo.
I have seen the waste of this generation sucked into the miasma of nation and Ibrahim Babangida was the architect of our misery. We believe this to be a self-evident truth.
So, on what grounds therefore does he wish to contest? To undo his eight years of incompetence?
Yes indeed, it is a question that we should all ask IBB: after eight years, what did he forget in Aso Rock? Nigerians should let him contest and use their votes as a referendum on his public service.
By Obi Nwakanma
 |
| General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida |
When he announced it, his opponents were already waiting, and their counter: they placed a pawn before him to stump or check the move of his knight.
I am talking about Ibrahim Babangida, whom Chidi Amuta has hyperbolically celebrated as “Prince of the Niger” – a sort of Machiavellian archetype from Minna.
It was indeed once said that as dictator, Ibrahim Babangida was guided in his politics by Machiavelli, and if so, no doubt introduced and simplified for him by his close mandarinate of political advisers that included Omo Omoruyi and Sam Oyovbaire – theorists and artificers of the alchemy of politics grounded also on Machiavelli.
Nicolo Machiavelli’s idea is like a practical guide to political chess. It is not such a handful of infamy as most people are wont to regard it, although it does not shy away from infamy.
I speculate that Ibrahim Babangida’s current political moves – deeply self-interested and really ambiguous – came after consultations with his Machiavellian oracles.
There is however something I’m almost certain that Nicolo Machiavelli may have said about Princes' reading their tea leaves well if they must embark on ambiguous adventures which I’m sure the former military president has not heeded. Yes indeed, this move is ambiguous.
Ibrahim Babangida’s knight rides with a huge baggage of history, and it is quite recent history, still fresh in the public mind, of how his rule wasted an entire generation and destroyed Nigeria. This is the wider sum of people’s attitude to Babangida and I’m not quite sure what his advisers are telling him.
But Babangida does not need advise. He is a much experienced man, with a wide network of contacts and secure lines reaching the most unimaginable places.
He has mind-boggling resources. Some say he is restless and uncontainable in a fifty-bedroom house.
There he was one day, folks say, pondering his next move, when the Americans sent Mr. Johnnie Carson – Assistant Under-Secretary of the United States in Africa.
The meeting was secret. It was arranged as a condolence. The elegant Mrs. Babangida was recently dead.
And in the ways of good old friends – the Americans try to make a point about not being fair-weather friends – they sent their man to the Minna hills, with a condolence, and some folks now say, a proposal.
An offer you couldn’t refuse. Because Nigeria is strategic to the United States international security and economic interests, the Americans are never shy of playing a quick hand to intervene – to keep its fields watered for the free market and for Milton Friedman.
Nigeria was in heat that February. Usually, during Nigeria’s political ovulation, it rains cats and dogs – to use a cliché.
And it was raining political cats and dogs with the Yar’Adua situation raging. The sick president in the terminal stages of his ill-health had been brought home suddenly.
His reappearance from a Saudi hideout created an incumbency and succession problem.
Key political interests particularly in the North were insistent that the zoning principle, that specular balance on which Nigerian elite cake-sharing formula vicariously rests, must guide any mandate of succession.
The Americans read a threat on Nigeria’s perennially “nascent” democracy. They came to Minna; to their old trusted friend and ally. They sent James Bond.
It was supposed to be a secret and quiet meeting. But enterprising reporters spotted Mr. Carson chaperoned by the US Ambassador to Nigeria at the hilltop lair of the fox of Minna.
“Well, Johnnie,” they put it to him, “what do you know?” We have come, Johnnie Carson said, “to seek his advise on what he saw happening in Nigeria” the Sun newspaper quotes him. Really? “My discussions in Nigeria and with Nigerians from Washington is (sic) extraordinarily broad, as it should be” the Sun again quotes the American emissary.
Nigerians believe that the Americans goaded the former military dictator to come out and run for the office of president as a civilian. The problem with that is that Babangida’s rule still leaves most Nigerians with bad tastes in their mouth.
Recently, in an interview with the VOA, the former military president said he would not tolerate questions about June 12 and about money from the oil windfall, the controversial subject of the Okigbo reports, and of course, Dele Giwa.
But why not?
These are the crucial highlights of his dictatorship. It was a secretive and brutal administration, much like Chile under Pinochet.
It is crucial for Babangida if he wishes to lead Nigeria in a democracy to understand that the crucial element of democracy is that it has no such rules as “no go areas.”
Perhaps he has not yet got it.
I think it is Ibrahim Babangida’s right to aspire to contest and run for president, especially because there doesn’t seem to be a term bar for those who led Nigeria as soldiers.
Muhammadu Buhari – his military predecessor is in the race too.
It is important, however, to ask Babangida what else he is likely to do having spent eight significant years with dictatorial powers and accomplishing really nothing other than the social disintegration of Nigeria.
Many Nigerians express opposition against Babangida for a question like $12.8 billion Gulf oil windfall, of which he is said, according to the Okigbo report not to have put to “regenerative venture” among some of the really, terribly damning indictments of the regime in that report; some Nigerians oppose him on account of June 12 or the unresolved murder of Dele Giwa. I consider those real blotches on his era.
But far above it all for me is that my generation is the key victim of the Babangida years. We emerged from the universities as young professionals – with no jobs.
Unemployment was extremely high. There was multiple digit inflation. Extreme corruption came to characterize Nigeria’s public system.
His administration fed Nigeria on the poisoned chalice monetarism and the free market based on the ideas of Milton Friedman Reaganomics. We were teargassed, foreclosed, and kept in limbo.
I have seen the waste of this generation sucked into the miasma of nation and Ibrahim Babangida was the architect of our misery. We believe this to be a self-evident truth.
So, on what grounds therefore does he wish to contest? To undo his eight years of incompetence?
Yes indeed, it is a question that we should all ask IBB: after eight years, what did he forget in Aso Rock? Nigerians should let him contest and use their votes as a referendum on his public service.
By Obi Nwakanma
evil genius...u want to come back again? nay nay, am quite sure there is no longer space for pple like u
ReplyDelete