Okey Ndibe
Columnist:
Okey Ndibe
One sad tendency in Nigerian
politics is the habit of arguing
that one mediocre politician has
a better record than another
mediocre colleague.
Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, it
appears, has become so
desperate – with his
presidential ambition going
nowhere – that he has adopted
that mode. In a recent
televised interview sponsored
by his campaign and aired on
AIT, Mr. Babangida tried to size
himself up against former
President Olusegun Obasanjo. It
was, as political strategies go,
both a rather desperate move
and highly revealing.
Since disclosing his interest in
the Nigerian presidency,
Babangida has insisted that the
job of running Nigeria is not for
young, unfledged Nigerians. He
stuck to that line in this
carefully orchestrated
interview. He touted his thirty-
two years “in public service”
and contended that the
challenge of governing Nigeria
“ requires not on the job training
but experience.”
Asked why he was wading into
the murky waters of politics,
Babangida answered: “The
water is murky, but somebody
has to get into that water and
clean it. ”
The interview became
interesting, in my view, when
the interviewer brought up the
issue of Dele Giwa ’s
assassination in October 1986.
Despite Babangida’s best efforts
to appear unruffled and
imperturbable, it was clear that
the question rankled this retired
general and former dictator. So
how did he deal with the
question?
First, he alleged that the Giwa
issue and other questions that
continue to nag him – among
them, the $12.4 billion in oil
earnings that went missing
during his reign and his
annulment of the June 12, 1993
presidential election – had been
resolved. That must be news to
most Nigerians.
Then he introduced an angle
that, depending on one ’s
perspective, was either a stroke
of genius or a mark of the
hollowness of his credentials. He
sought to juxtapose his legacy
against Obasanjo ’s, seeking to
persuade his audience that the
latter was the worse “leader.”
In a country where no politician
ever takes responsibility for his
or her failings, Babangida
described the charges against
him as “trumped up.” Then he
took the discussion to a
comparative terrain.
“ After all,” said the ex-general,
“people died in Odi. You know
how many people died there,
not long ago? Nobody is talking
about that, but talking about
Babangida and Dele Giwa. ”
Sensing that he had hit upon a
profitable line, the soldier in
Babangida pressed the
advantage.
“You’ve been reading the
reports from the National
Assembly. People stealing
billions; nothing has happened
so far. But when you talk about
corruption, then there ’s this
somebody from a village called
Minna who institutionalized
corruption. ” He continued: “It
may interest you to know:
What my government got in
eight years is what the
democratic government of my
elder brother Obasanjo got in
one year as revenue. ”
Having made his case,
Babangida might have
permitted his audience to
consider the evidence and
reach its verdict about the two
men. Instead, seized by a sense
of entitlement, he went ahead
to spell out our debt to him. “I
believe I should be
commended for managing
scarce resources. You travel all
over the country. You can see
Abuja, you can see Third
Mainland Bridge, you can see
Kaduna-Kano [road], Kaduna-
Abuja [road]; you could see
states being created and people
now have a place they call their
own – all within that meager
resources.”
The devil deserves his due. The
truth is that Babangida ’s oblique
reference to Obasanjo’s
corruption and squandermania
is hard to contest. In fact,
Obasanjo ’s eight-year tenure
seemed driven, on some level,
by a perverse determination to
beat Babangida ’s regime in all
the dubious categories:
corruption, the arrogant
privatization of public resources,
and the manipulation of the
instrument of power to reward
friends and victimize foes,
perceived or real.
Yes, Babangida will always be
remembered for the unsolved
mystery of the parcel bomb
that terminated Giwa ’s brilliant
career as a journalist. Obasanjo,
on the other hand, will be
bracketed with the equally
heinous assassinations of Bola
Ige, Harry Marshall, and A.K.
Dikibo, among others.
Babangida invited opprobrium
on himself by annulling the
June 12 election. But Obasanjo
(and Atiku) pulled off a rigging
regatta in 2003, and then
Obasanjo shocked and awed us
on the way to setting new
rigging records in 2007.
Babangida is welcome to
fantasize that Nigerians owe
him credit for astutely
husbanding scarce resources.
Truth be told, the man owes us
an explanation about his
stewardship. What wizardry of
economic management
enabled him to purchase a
private jet, to own Rolls Royces,
and to sneer at the residents of
the valley of Minna from the
supercilious heights of his 50-
room hilltop mansion? What
lottery did he win to account for
his astonishing wealth? How
does his stupendous fortune
square off with Nigeria ’s
economic misfortunes? The
historical record is that
Babangida unleashed a so-
called structural adjustment
program that sapped life out of
the citizenry and pauperized
the middle class.
Obasanjo’s tragedy is to have
set himself the goal of
modeling himself after
Babangida. Like Babangida, he
fitted himself with an obscene
mansion dominating the hilltop
of Abeokuta. Like Babangida,
he tried to reduce Nigeria to the
size of his desires. He strived,
like Babangida, to illicitly
perpetuate himself in power. He
was prepared to gut the
Nigerian constitution in order to
allow him to remain in power.
In his AIT interview, Babangida
sought to burnish his political
credentials by arguing, in effect,
that Obasanjo was worse in
corruption and in human rights
abuses. It was one mediocrity
pointing a finger at another
mediocrity and exclaiming,
“ You’re more mediocre.”
Whether Obasanjo was a more
disastrous head of state than
Obasanjo is a judgment call. I
believe that more was
expected of Obasanjo, and so
his disappointing performance
had more dire reverberations.
But Obasanjo is not threatening
to return and lord it over us;
Babangida is.
In a credible election,
Babangida stands no chance. He
must know it, too. His campaign
has been a bazaar of missteps
and miscues. He chickened out
of a much-heralded rally in
Ibadan. His campaign website is
plagued by negative
comments. Many of his
erstwhile associates won ’t be
caught dead in his company.
Babangida’s presidential dream
is fueled by a species of hubris,
a disdain for the sensitivity of a
people whose political and
economic lives he helped ruin.
In a way, his decision to run
provides Nigerians a great
opportunity to tell him how
little – despite his inflated
image of himself – they think
of him.
My suspicion is that Babangida
and Obasanjo are locked in
some vain psychological
brinksmanship. There ’s a chance
that Babangida is dismayed by
Obasanjo ’s acquisition of hilltop
mansion in Abeokuta that rivals
the one in Minna, or begrudges
Obasanjo and his coterie those
billions in oil revenue that were
stolen between 1999 and 2007.
There’s no question that
Babangida believes himself to
be less bad than Obasanjo. But
Nigerians deserve a good – if
not excellent – leader, not a
demonstrably bad one who
brags that his record is not as
wretched as another ’s.
Nigerians don’t owe it to
Babangida to award him
another opportunity to gamble
with their destiny or to continue
his macabre tug of war with
Obasanjo.

wow, some column. really nice and very agreeable

IBB is a drowning man struggling to survive by any means. We know his tactics and he can't fool us again.

How I wish there would be a gathering/rally where we would just laugh at the disgraced general after jan 2011 like this

"One sad tendency in Nigerian
politics is the habit of arguing
that one mediocre politician has
a better record than another
mediocre colleague.
"
Very Very Very true. Like any of such comparison is better.
"His campaign website is full of negetive comments"
Before nko wetin im dey expect? Accolades for a job badly done?
This particular statement got me lafin in convulsion on my bed: "one mediocrity point accusing finger at another mediocrity shouting you are more mediocr! . . .hahahahaha. . . This Okey Ndibe guy is just funny with words. Spot on brother, spot ont!