It was immediately after the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Bashorun MKO Abiola had won decisively all over the country, even defeating Bashir Tofa in places you would have expected ethnic affinity to guarantee him success. Then Messiah Ibrahim Maradona Evil Genius Badamasi Babangida had a vision: Declaring Abiola the winner would be endangering his life so he annulled the election to protect the billionaire, and many lives were lost to the crisis his ill-advised decision precipitated.
Some days back, Babangida spoke with Arise TV and spilled the gibberish about country’s freest and fairest election. He said some top officials in the military would have staged a violent coup if he did not annul the election.
Many coups in the country’s history had this son of Niger State playing one major role or the other. He was there when Murtala Mohammed overthrew Yakubu Jack Gowon; IBB backed Muhammadu Buhari to terminate the democratic administration of the late Shehu Shagari; and he was not missing in action when Buhari was shown the exit for him to take the crown. He is also credited with foiling the Dimka coup which killed Murtala Mohammed.
He came to power pretending to be the messiah. He started by talking about the rule of law, about ending poverty, about human rights, and about a government with a human face- an obvious criticism of the Muhammadu Buhari government he overthrew, which had zero respect for human rights, rule of law, and press freedom. He set up committees to work out the implementations of his ideas. Some of the best brains in the academia, the Bar, and others agreed to work with him because of the smokescreen he put up. Natural critics of government urged the people to give him a chance. Time, however, told that a political Diego Maradona was in the saddle, and he dribbled Nigeria into a tight corner, and it is shameful that he is claiming that corruption under him was lesser than what we have now without taking the exchange rate into consideration.
IBB got his Attorney-General, the respected Egba Prince, Bola Ajibola, to assemble a National Committee on Corruption and Other Economic Crimes. The late Justice Kayode Eso chaired it. As Eso recalled in his book, ‘The Mystery Gunman’, the committee called for the enactment of rules against Nigerians living beyond their means. It also recommended the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. On the day the report was submitted, IBB showered encomium on Eso and his committee members and described the recommendations as the real panacea to the ills of the nation. He promised to act on them, and he did act on them by dumping the report.
The Maradona gifted us political parties, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republic Convention (NRC). In his recent interview, he was still justifying two-party system as though ideology could be decreed. He was like the sole administrator of the parties and kept disqualifying candidates. It was these qualifications that threw up Abiola who, despite a Moslem-Moslem ticket, won to the chagrin of the Maradona, who quickly annulled the election. The heat soon became too much for him to deal with and he installed a puppet in power after introducing another lexicon by announcing he was stepping aside. The decree IBB rushed in to justify Ernest Shonekan’s contraption had no provision to enable anyone to appoint an Interim National Government, and a Lagos judge declared the government illegal.
Meanwhile, IBB’s right-hand man, the late Gen. Sani Abacha, soon ‘slapped’ Shonekan out of the Villa. Evil followed evil after that. It was all IBB’s making. There were protests, there were bombings and deaths visited many a home. Prominent figures were clamped into detention; and a few were lucky to escape abroad. Madam Kudirat Abiola and Pa Alfred Rewane were gunned down. Bagauda Kaltho, who was a correspondent with The News, was bombed. Groups campaigning for Abacha to become a civilian president poured pepper on our injuries. The most popular of them all was the Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA) led by Daniel Kanu. It was a terrible era in the annals of the country. All thanks to IBB’s error of judgment. The heavens eventually intervened and the man who wanted to be a life president became history in circumstances we are yet to fully unravel.
In 2002, there were talks of IBB returning as civilian president. It continued in the run-up to the 2007 polls. He thought he could get the nod of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), but Olusegun Obasanjo, the man he helped midwife his ascension from prison to power, checkmated him and the Maradona finally settled down to full retirement in his sprawling Minna Hilltop mansion.
The Nation
