GENERAL BABANGIDA’S BRAVADO

General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida made maximum use of a recent opportunities for exposure to re-state his claim as a deserving elder statesman in Nigeria. He used the Daily Trust Annual Dialogue which he chaired to warn that those questioning the unity of the nation will have to fight people like him, the same way they fought him when he was in the military during the Nigerian civil war. He insisted that Nigeria’s unity is a settled issue, and cannot be revisited by forces which have recently emerged around the fiasco over the subsidy removal. Other issues he said are settled as far as the nation is concerned are its federal structure, its republican character and its capitalist economy. General Babangida specifically took on the groups who have emerged in defence of President Jonathan and his policy on subsidy, and who are alluding to the possibility of a break-up of the nation in the event that the President himself, or his administration is harmed. He said he is willing to fight again to preserve the unity of the nation if need be, in spite of the fact that he is 71 years old, and still carries a bullet in his body from the last civil war.

            Ordinarily, former President Babangida’s bravado will amuse the nation and many would have seen his comments as typical of a man who has built a life-long career of remaining politically relevant. But these are not ordinary times, and General Babangida’s comments will only serve to remind the nation of its fundamental weaknesses which are rooted in its poor leadership. Even more worrying is the fact that the elderly General has since lost his national elder statesman toga, owing to his disastrous misadventure in the PDP Northern Consensus candidate saga. He is today largely seen as a northerner with a very tenuous claim even to its leadership. His comments in defence of Nigeria's unity are likely to be interpreted as a defence of northern interests only, and far from serving as a clarion call to patriots to defend the nation, it will be seen in the tradition of a north defending its interests under the cover of national unity.

For the north, it is indeed a cause for serious concerns, that it requires political pensioners like former President Babangida to speak for it. From the moment the ethnic flags began to be raised in and around key sections of the south arising from the failure to deal with the Boko Haram threat and the mismanagement of the decision to remove fuel subsidy by President Jonathan, not a single credible and relevant voice has been raised from the north to defend its position, or counter damaging propaganda and threats which portrays it as the threat, not the victim. The overwhelming outpouring of anger across the land from ordinary Nigerians over the President’s decision to remove subsidy was in the end, reduced to a threat by northerners and the Yoruba to achieve regime change. The strategy worked. The imperatives of the survival of democracy and national security were invoked by the Jonathan administration to scuttle the resistance against the decision on fuel subsidy removal. The West successfully fought back, and ultimately succeeded in reversing the occupation of Lagos, and exposing the administration as lacking in political finesse, and rich in its capacity to use force. But the north suffered one more humiliating defeat, in spite of the fact that it stood to suffer the most, because of its relative poverty, in the implementation of the subsidy removal decision. It was being accused of plotting for regime change because it was unhappy with Goodluck Jonathan as president, and its leaders accepted this damaging accusation by their loud silence.

The frightening escalation of the threat and damage from the Boko Haram insurgency is also being used by groups in the south to demand a radical review of the nation’s structures, or even a future. The crude arguments which inform this position is basically that Boko Haram represents a violent resistance of the North against Jonathan’s presidency. Since the North is unhappy with President Jonathan, to a point where it will unleash a religious insurgency against it, then other groups from the south have a right to question their continued stay in a country where the north will either rule in perpetuity or ruin the nation if they lose control over it. The north can be left with its demand for an Islamic state, its poverty and its millions of northern Christians to sort out its problems, while other parts of Nigeria move on.

The north lost the propaganda war even before the first shots were fired; and its aging Generals such as Babangida have little control over the terrain, and they lack the resources to fight its wars. The north appears to be fighting when it is weakest, and has no strategy to reduce this weakness. It should demand a genuine effort to re-examine the Nigerian federal system in the light of trends which make it progressively poorer, while other regions take away the lion share of the nation’s resources. Instead, it appearing to fight for the preservation of an entity in a manner which will create the impression that it is the only beneficiary of a united Nigeria with its present federal structure.

The north is bleeding from multiple wounds inflicted by its weakness, and the most serious to its political economy is the Boko Haram insurgency. The north is by far the biggest victim of this insurgency, and it is being made to pay the political price for it. People like General Banagida do not speak with the type of noise or effectiveness Boko Haram makes about the north. Northern leaders like Babangida can say that Nigeria’s unity is a settled issue; but they are not engaging Boko Haram which says they will fight the Nigerian state until it accepts to operate only on the basis of an Islamic system, whatever all citizens, muslims and Christians alike, feel about it.

The comments by General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida regarding the unity and survival of Nigeria can at best be summed up as an attempt by the elderly general to remain politically relevant. If the north had an effective and courageous leadership, there will be little room for people like General Babangida to speak for Nigeria or the north. If the north had leaders, they would have resisted every effort to punish the north for the incompetence of President Jonathan or the frightening damage being wrecked on the nation by the Boko Haram insurgency. The north is weak because it cannot engage Boko Haram and take away the political centre stage from it. It cannot demand a radical review in the manner national resources are being distributed because it appears to have accepted that it has no right to do so. It cannot engage other parts of Nigeria in the debate on current challenges and future of the Nigerian federal state, because it lacks the quality of the leadership to do. Because it lacks good leaders who can take up its current challenges and deal with them, it makes room for elderly politicians like General Babanagida to assume roles for which they are currently ill-suited.