A journey into recent Nigerian history: Review of Babangida’s autobiography

No book in recent Nigerian history has been so eagerly awaited as the autobiography of former Head of State/President Ibrahim Babangida. He relinquished power in 1993 leaving many questions unanswered. The hope of many is that this book will provide answers to those questions and resolve puzzling mysteries. Chief among these questions was the annulment of the general election of June 12, 1993. While the author does address some these questions, he makes clear from the start that the account he presents might disappoint some. This is not a memoir – a recollection of certain events but an autobiography – an entire personal history. This is not an apologia but perhaps one mea culpa – the June 12 question. Rather, it is more of an explanation, a defence, a legitimisation, a justification of military authoritarianism and the exoneration of the man at the centre of it all.

Let us begin with an aside. At the pomp and circumstance event that was the book lunch were gathered the great and the also ran, including six former heads of state and the current incumbent, Bola Tinubu. For many Nigerians, this is an assembly of the same group of people, who between them and in variety of ways have contributed to the ruination of the country. Not sated, these men are gathered to chew on the bones after devouring the flesh of the people in a totalitarian necropolitical feasting. Babangida would take issue with this characterisation. He had saved the country from anarchy and destruction, he would argue. Nevertheless, some N16billion was reportedly raised that evening for a library that few would ever visit, let alone use; when that same amount could have been spent building a state of art hospital that would serve the people. The concept of a presidential library is borrowed from the US; it is all about legacy and posterity.

Back to the book and I start with an observation. The book’s cover, by which its contents must not be judged, is quite striking. Apart from the picture of the author, not in uniform, such as we find in Dan Agbese’s biography of Babangida – Ibrahim Babangida: The Military, Politics and Power in Nigeria, (2014) – but in white Agbada or Baban riga. White being the colour of purity is here exonerative. This is the picture of a thoughtful elder statesman. Once a soldier, now a sage, a philosopher even. The title – Journey in Service – is also symbolically striking. The word ‘service’ is written in red. Red is the colour of blood. Blood is spilt in wars. War is what soldiers fight. But whose blood is represented here? One presumes it is the blood of Babangida which he shed in service. The blood of sacrifice. But there is another blood. The blood of the innocent Nigerians. The casualties of wars they did not start. ‘They also serve,’ says Milton, ‘who stand and wait.’ They also serve, who die simply for being Nigerians.

General Ibrahim Babangida is arguably the most significant Praetorian/political figure in recent Nigerian history. If he had died in infancy the history of Nigeria would have been different. This statement is not a value judgment; it is a statement of fact – albeit a counterfactual statement. For half a century he was in and around power, ruling Nigeria for seven years. Under his leadership Nigeria’s fortunes turned, and some would say not for the better. His autobiography is therefore a significant historical document that must be approached with an objective sober head. For to cast Babangida either as a villain or a hero is to reduce this complex man to simple binary categories.

The Foreword is written by the former Head of State, General Yakubu ‘Jack’ Gowon. Jack, now well advanced in years, still found time to praise the achievements of his former protégé. We shall return to these achievements later. Babangida dedicates the book to his three loves: his parents, the military, particularly the ‘fallen heroes’ and his late wife, Maryam. There is no mention of Nigerians, the people he claimed to have loved. This is a glaring remiss, an egregious mistake.

But what are we to make of the book? In ten chapters and nearly 400 pages long, the book is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival account of the author’s time in the military and as head of state. But above all it is a book of many histories. It is a personal history, a military history, a political history and economic history. It encapsulates recent Nigerian history. But it is also a book on the psychology of political and dictatorial leadership. I’m afraid that there is a lot to unpack, and I shall address these histories in turn and interweave them where necessary. While the debacle of June 12, 1993, looms large in the book unfortunately that event is far too significant and too far-reachingly consequential to be addressed in this segment. Thus, the other histories will be evaluated.

I start with the personal history. To understand the person that is plain Ibrahim Badamasi, and the personality that became Babangida, one would have to go back to his childhood. Born in Minna in 1941, Young Ibrahim had known death from an early age, which had claimed both his parents. Of his four sisters – Halimatu, Nana, the twins Hasanna and Hussaina- only one of them – Hanatu Gambo – survived to adulthood. The peculiarity of his genetic make-up notwithstanding, these childhood experiences shaped his life in a variety of ways. It made him lose the fear of death, but not the fear of loss which appears to have haunted him for much of his life.

The army into which Ibrahim enlisted in 1962, came to his rescue. It provided him with a berth and a future and indeed, it gave him a home and a sense of belonging. It became his family. When, for instance, he writes about his childhood friends like Abubakar Abdulsalam, Sani Sami, Sani Bello, Mohammed Magoro and others – who later became comrade in arms; he writes about them with brotherly affection; not the brotherhood of soldiering but of blood relations.

Born a northern Hausa Muslim, the name Badamasi had a ring of Yoruba inflection (Gbadamosi) and to correct this mistaken ethnic identity, he adopted his father’s other name of ‘Babangida.’ Upon his enlistment in the army, and the change of name, the legend that was Ibrahim ‘Badamasi’ Babangida or IBB was born. He had demonstrated leadership qualities from an early age, too. He had been head boy at school and had led a rebellion against a prohibition that barred the junior boys from sleeping out in the open air at night when the temperatures soared. This privilege had unfairly been the preserve of the senior boys. He won that battle and equality was restored.

But Babangida was never completely free of the fear of death. When for instance, his driver Sani with whom he was once hiking and chatting one moment suddenly dropped dead, felled by an assassin’s bullet, the fear returned in an instant. Or as he put it, ‘I was petrified and consumed with fear’ he writes. War is a terrible thing, he stresses. Nothing like is depicted on television. Fear is in the atmosphere and is the air or smell that you breathe. It is everywhere you look – right left, front and back. Soldiering does not inure from fear of death.

During the Biafran War, as he led his Battalion into Umuahia, Babangida was hit by shrapnel and was evacuated to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) for treatment. Watching from his hospital bed in LUTH the televised wedding ceremony of General Gowon to Victoria, Babangida decided there and then to settle down. During a stint in Kaduna, he had met this rather beautiful girl, Maria Okogwu, – later Maryam upon her conversion to Islam. She had doubts about him, but he was able to allay her initial concerns and subsequently agreed to marry him. He devotes an entire chapter to his late wife. He describes in some detail what she had meant to him, not only as a dutiful and devoted wife but also her many achievements such as the initiative of the Rural Women for Life Programme which she fronted. He writes movingly about how much support and strength he drew from her. ‘Maryam stood four square beside me’, he writes. But he says nothing about her illness, only that her passing in December 2009 ‘bifurcated’ his life and that he, perhaps being a soldier, never imagined that she would predecease him. ‘The gift of life is in Allah’s hands,’ he says.

Babangida obviously and probably remains, a caring, devoted and dedicated man who priced loyalty above all else. He had benefited from the care, devotion and loyalty of many in his youth, including schoolteachers, the extended family and community. He came to believe in the reciprocity of care and loyalty – betrayal was like death to him, a reminder of loss. It was these caring/loyal and wily/cunning sides that make Babangida an intriguing figure. The descriptive sobriquet of ‘Maradona’ after the legendary Argentine footballer owes much to this wily side of his personality. When for instance, the then Brigadier Danjuma ordered him to go and ‘flush out’ Lt Col. Bukar Dimka, the ringleader of the 1976 coup, who had holed up the at the FRNC radio station in Lagos, Babangida arrived with a troop. But surprisingly, instead of flushing out Dimka, he bravely or foolishly he approached Dimka unarmed. This was Dimka, a man who had only a few hours earlier, with an accomplice, emptied an entire magazine of bullets into the vehicle of General Murtala Mohammed, the head of state, killing all the occupants. Undeterred Babangida approached empty-handed to confront what seemed like certain death. Dimka, still on a full tank of alcohol, cried: ‘Ibrahim, I will shoot you.’
‘Bukar’ Babangida simply called, ‘why didn’t you tell me you were planning this? You and I are supposed to be close.’ ‘Close’ means friends, friendship and ‘why didn’t you tell me you were planning this’ meant sharing. Babangida explains this act of folly by suggesting that ‘as a trained officer, I was convinced that Dimka would not shoot an unarmed colleague.’ This of course is not true. Babangida had relied not on military training but on the trust and loyalty of friendship. After all, Ifeajuna had gunned down an unarmed Maimalari during the January 15, 1966, coup. It was friendship that saved Lt. Colonel Hassan Katsina when Nzeogwu confronted him during the same coup. It was that friendship that saved Babangida from being taken out by Dimka.

The Nigerian military is a close-knit community. In the business of arms and death you lived and survived not only by your wits but by the support of your colleagues. You made friends as quickly as you made enemies. A friend today could become an enemy tomorrow. Indeed, Babangida uses the word ‘friend’ several times in this book, sometimes it is ‘trusted friend’ – and there were many to whom the term is applied – Salihu Ibrahim, Abubakar Umar, Dele Giwa, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Chidi Amuta and countless more. This friendship/loyalty might also help to explain the debacle of June 12, 1993. This relates to his relationship with General Sani Abacha, who later succeeded him as head of state. As mentioned, this story cannot be adequately dealt with here.

But if Babangida priced loyalty and friendship highly, why did he sanction the execution of his former childhood friend, General Mamman Vatsa? Indeed, he had been best man at Vatsa’s wedding. But on this matter, Babangida is unrepentant. He explains why. Vatsa had planned a coup to topple him. Vatsa had recruited willing accomplices, paid N50,000 to one of them to join the rebellion. Vatsa, however, denied the plot. But according to Babangida the evidence was incontrovertible. Although the evidence Babangida presents is not iron-clad, he explains that much of it was based on intelligence, intelligence corroborated by supporting statements and confessions. Vatsa was guilty. His fate was sealed. And despite pleas from many, including two of Nigeria’s greatest writers, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, Vatsa could not be spared. But he, Vatsa, knew the score. Every military man knew the score, the risk you run if you plan a coup. It was therefore a truism that if you plan a coup, you must make sure that you succeed since the price of failure was death. As Babangida explains, it was a choice between saving a friend and saving a nation. He chose the latter.

But this is a rather puzzling narrative. It is not clear why Babangida thinks that by sanctioning the execution of Vatsa, he was saving the nation. If indeed Vatsa had planned a coup and the coup had been successful, how would he or anyone else for that matter know in advance what kind of leader Vatsa would have turned out to be? Babangida appears to believe that he knew the answer to this question because he knew the manner of man that Vatsa was. But this is not so much the point. The point is that Babangida believed in his own morality and sense of duty. He believed through military training and discipline that he had mastered the art of leadership which had equipped him with qualities that few even in the army possessed. Vatsa lacked these qualities.

Babangida also addresses the Gideon Orkar coup which shocked him, he writes. Again, he felt betrayed by men he believed were loyal colleagues. But why was Vatsa’s alleged coup or the Orkar coup illegitimate and treasonable and not the Babangida palace coup of 1985 or the Buhari coup of 1983? Babangida shares an anecdote by the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo who claimed that a coup is legitimate or good only if it is successful. If it fails, then it is treason. This is true only in military folklore. There are no good or legitimate coups. Overthrowing a democratically elected government is treason. So, what reasons could there be to justify military intervention in politics? Babangida has an intriguing explanation, which relates to political history. But we shall pass this over for now.

An abiding feeling one gets reading this book is that Babangida believes that the people have little idea of what government is like, that they misconceive the nature of power and misperceive the intentions behind policy decisions. This no doubt is true. He uses words like ‘laughable’ to describe ‘idle speculation.’ He treats the speculation about the murder of the journalist and newspaper editor Dele Giwa with customary incredulity. Many saw Babangida’s boot-prints all over the assassination by a parcel bomb. He asks why he would he wish Dele Giwa whom he counted as a friend dead? Assassination by a parcel bomb was truly and ominously revolutionary in Nigeria. ‘I was shocked by it all’, Babangida claims. ‘I had just lost a friend’ he followed. But to suggest that the government was responsible was ‘cheap and foolish’ he stresses. Here again, Babangida’s naivety floats to the surface. Giwa was a crusading journalist who had been critical of a government that had censored the press. Few in the country possessed the technical sophistication and expertise to make a parcel bomb. This is not to suggest that his murder was a government-sponsored act; but for Babangida to think that it was cheap and foolish for people to sniff the poison of suspicion in the direction of government is rather surprising. In a febrile climate where fear ruled the roost, what were people to think – that some foreign cells had infiltrated the country and carried out this terrible deed? Despite the mobilisation of all government security apparatuses, the murder remains unsolved. Also, what Babangida fails to consider is that whether government-sponsored or not the murder happened on his watch; a risk society had grown riskier; Nigeria had entered a new phase of criminality in its history. So, when Babangida writes that these speculations and baseless accusations ‘helped the real criminals to escape…’ we must take this granu salis.

In addressing the C-130 H plane crash, which wiped out a generation of promising military officers was more than a tragedy. Yet, many appear to believe that this also had the print of Babangida’s handiwork, an accusation that seemed to jar with him. Why would he plot such a colossal death just to stave off a potential coup? Why indeed? The efficient cause of the crash was ultimately mechanical. The flight was domed before it left the ground. Three engines failed upon take-off. According to Babangida the unfounded spurious speculation was an ‘indication of the level of decay in our level of discourse that some citizens would blame such a tragic incident on the administration…’ But Babangida again misses the point. It was not the level of decay in public discourse that was problematic – poor, though that might have been, – rather, it was the decay in general systems and structures in the country. Poor maintenance was the cause of the crash – a poor maintenance culture. No doubt it is not the president’s job to repair aircraft engines and ensure that they are air-worthy; but it is the job of the president to foster a culture in which military aircrafts ferrying military personnel on military missions do not fall out of the sky and nosedive into swamps. The buck stopped with him. Babangida seems stung by these accusations and given his belief that he was not personally responsible for these tragic events, he cannot and should not be held personally culpable for such occurrences. In some countries such occurrences would be sufficient reason for him to resign.

Babangida turns out to be a complex and ambivalent man, a man full of contradictions and irony. He is more a fox than a dribbler. He has a ready smile and a weakness for pretty girls. But he settled and dedicated himself to one in particular. The military was dear to him, an organ he treated like an antique vase of great value or sometimes like a second wife, if you like. Babangida also has a fondness for intellectuals. This was a gift he felt he lacked. His best subject at school was English language. He wished he had been better at more. So, the presidential library is no gimmick. He really does believe in education and knowledge.
Only an uncharitable cynic would argue that his time in office was without notable achievements. Gowon has mentioned some of these achievements. The problem is that they have been dwarfed or overshadowed by June 12, 1993. Towards the end of the book, Babangida speaks of his hope for Nigeria, a Nigeria that belongs to all but particularly the youth who must now shoulder the heavy burden of leadership and responsibility. In retirement and now in the sunset of his life he has had time to reflect. His main regret remains June 12 and the election annulment. About this he writes ‘I don’t remember who first said that ‘sometimes, life can only be understood backwards.’ The name of the author that Babangida is looking for is Soren Kierkegaard, who in his existentialist musings wrote in his journal in 1843 – Journals and papers – that ‘Life can only be understood backwards: but must be lived forwards.’ According to Babangida, ‘If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it differently.’ But what exactly he would do different is not entirely clear. Santayana did also say that we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past if we do not learn from history. The sad thing is we never do. Life indeed is understood backward, understood as history. This is a history of recent Nigeria by a man who lived it forwards and now understands it backwards.