OBASANJO AND BABANGIDA: DROWNING GIANTS

A bemused nation is watching a public quarrel between two former military leaders who governed Nigeria for a total of 19 years between them. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former General who benefited from an attempted coup that took the life of General Murtala Mohammed, and was later to become a civilian President for eight years, and General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, a military ruler for eight years who gave himself the title of President, are no strangers to controversies. But this public spat between them looks very much like a last hurrah from two persons whose egos and records in office have guaranteed the arrested development of the Nigerian nation. The quarrel is bitter because it involves two people who have tip-toed around each other for a very long time, bearing massive grievances, but unsure whether they could successfully take each other up. The quarrel is revealing in terms of the issues it raises regarding their competence, integrity, maturity and quality of their leadership, which are all being thrown into the fray. The quarrel is useful for those who are involved in writing our nation’s history, because it addresses an important chapter on the role of the military in Nigerian history. Above all, the quarrel is welcome because it will hopefully bring an end to the high profiles of two former leaders who have effectively blocked the emergence of successor generations of Nigerian leaders that are not tied to their poisonous strings. The truth is, there never was enough room in the shrinking waters of Nigerian politics for both Obasanjo and Babangida; and it is fitting that they appear to be going down together.

          Former President Ibrahim Babangida chose the occasion of his 70th birthday to publicly denounce the man he claimed many times to be a senior he will not challenge, and said he wasted historic opportunities and was total failure as a leader. He said quite a few things about the record of Obasanjo in office which should embarrass the former President, if, that is, Obasanjo is still capable of being embarrassed by anything or anybody. This is the same Babangida who dusted up Obasanjo in 1999 against the advise of his kith and kin and many other Nigerians, and helped install him as President. He had wisely kept his distance from Obasanjo when his misadventure against General Sani Abacha earned him a death sentence. This is the same Babangida who chickened out of challenging Obasanjo for the PDP’s presidential ticket in 2003 on the grounds that Obasanjo was his senior, and therefore cannot be challenged by him. This is the same Babangida who kept mute when Obasanjo’s foot soldiers were all over the nation, the media and the legislature seeking to secure for him a Third Term. This is the same Babangida who watched in silence as Obasanjo ruled Nigeria at a time when the nation earned its highest revenue; and lost the most in terms of its basic economic and social infrastructure, and its capacity to develop to its full potential. This is the same Babangida who collaborated with Atiku Abubakar, General Aliyu Mohammed and the Northern Political Leaders Forum to scuttle the effort to subvert the PDP’s rotation policy orchestrated by Obasanjo and President Jonathan, and who failed woefully in that endeavour.

          Whatever motives Babangida had for lampooning Obasanjo at this late hour, he must have expected a vigorous retort from a man who has a reputation for always giving more than he takes. Obasanjo’s retort was to say Babangida is a fool at 70, and this type of fool remains a fool until death. He claims that his records are far better than those of Babangida, and that what he did between 1976 and 1979 laid the foundations for Nigeria’s development, which Babangida’s stint as leader destroyed. Babangida’s camp then released a full salvo, with some sleazy details about the personal character of Obasanjo. The Nigerian media will naturally stoke this fire, in the hope that the two former Generals and Presidents will continue to abuse each other, and amuse a nation desperately in need of some light entertainment to divert attention from the depressing gridlock in which the nation finds itself.

          But the serious side of the quarrel should also be noted by Nigerians. Between Babangida and Obasanjo, there are many issues in our history that are yet to be revealed. The full circumstances and facts behind the abortion of the 1993 elections which may have produced Chief M.K.O Abiola as a winner are still shrouded in mystery. But the responsibility for that abortion for which the nation is still paying a huge price lies squarely on the shoulders of General Babangida. Obasanjo was not exactly in the frontline of the struggle to oppose this most offensive effrontery of the military against democracy, and when he became President himself, Obasanjo resisted every effort to investigate or humiliate Babangida over the abortion of the elections, and the many unproven allegations of gross abuse against him. The public relations stunt foisted by Obasanjo in the form of the Justice Oputa Panel made a mockery of the need to look into one of the darkest chapters of our nation’s history, and ended up raising more questions than answers. History will condemn Babangida for many failings and failures, but it is quite possible that it will also condemn him for complicity in foisting a retired General with a huge chest of personal grievances as Nigerian President in 1999. It is possible that Obasanjo repaid Babangida by sitting on his record, in spite of the most vicious campaign by politicians and their media from the Western part of Nigeria to expose them and ridicule him. If Obasanjo had allowed a genuine and transparent inquiry into the stewardship of Babangida’s eight year rule, the nation would have been spared these childish claims over who is better as a ruler of Nigeria over an eight-year period.

          Both Babangida and Obasanjo are facing imminent extinction from active Nigerian politics, and both are unsure of the verdicts of history against them. Babangida’s humiliation in the hands of the Adamu Ciroma’s quasi-tribal conclave called Northern Elders Political Forum, when he was rejected in favour of Atiku Abubakar as a northern consensus candidate to take on President Jonathan, had effectively put the nail in his political coffin. It was a most inglorious end to a controversial public life; to end up in the trashcan of history because a man who enjoyed the title of evil genius, a former General and President was unable to know when to fight or retreat; whether to outflank the enemy or take him head-on; or even to know when the game is up. Perhaps Babangida’s last salvo against Obasanjo was one he had saved for a last hurray; and perhaps it is intended to earn him a few brownie points for courage and a place in the long line of northern politicians who took up Obasanjo. Whatever his motives, he is not likely to do much damage to a man who is also drowning in his own multiple waterloos. 

          Many people will see Babangida’s attack on Obasanjo as an act of kicking a man when he is down. It is a feeble and ineffective opportunism, and will not damage a man who has more than enough on his plate of enemies. The Minister of Finance he had imported from the World Bank in 2003 and entrusted with the management of Nigerian economy, and then fired in 2006, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been re-imported by a President he helped install. This will raise many questions about Obasanjo’s management of the Nigerian economy. Nearly everything Obasanjo touched from 1999 to 2007 in Nigeria is now in a worse state. Our economy is regressing at such a dangerous rate that it is threatening the very foundations of the Nigerian State. The leadership he contrived to install between 2007 and 2011 failed to lead, and the nation lost four valuable years. His involvement in the controversies around the nomination and election of President Jonathan contributed to the disaster which followed the elections in 2011. His Party lost out completely in his constituency, rendering him a major liability in Yoruba politics. Every time there is power outage, every Nigerian family remembers Obasanjo’s investment of billions in the power sector. Now the nation is being entertained with tales about how Obasanjo subverted due process in the scandalous stripping of many of the assets of the Nigerian people in the name of privatisation, being told by no less a man who was one of his staunchest loyalists and foot soldier, Nasir El-Rufai.

          There are likely going to be many more stories of gross mismanagement and abuse of the nation’s trust and resources which we will hear against these two prominent members of the PDP. Those who think it is embarrassing for elders to trade insults may need to check out the meaning of elders. No one should shed tears over this spat between Babangida and Obasanjo. They may each claim to have better records than the other, but Nigerians will write their own history. It will be a version of history which will flatter neither of them. A military President who ruled for eight years and acquired a reputation for serial subversion of democratic initiatives would have been better advised to keep a very low profile. The stones he is throwing from his glass house are doing more damage to him than to Obasanjo. As for Obasanjo, a man who looks set to soldier on in the belief that Nigeria will crumble tomorrow without his overbearing presence, he does not need the insults of Babangida, when he has many young former Governors of the PDP in the Southwest who insult and upbraid him in public. The tragedy for our nation is that these two people took us for a ride, between them, for 19 years.