True to its self-prided tabloid tradition, The SUN newspapers a couple of weeks went after retired Commodore Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe. Its reporters asked Nigeria’s first Chief of General Staff (CGS) a number of provocative questions concerning his exit from the General Ibrahim Babangida government in October, 1986. This aspect of the Ukiwe phenomenon appears to intrigue Nigerians the most, even though his story, when eventually published, has a lot more exciting episodes than that. It is, however, understandable because it was the firs time a disagreement of that level would occur in government (a military one at that) at the federal level. And it was the first time a deputy head of state would have to leave office in that fashion.
The newspaper was able to draw a lot of hot stuff from the usually press-shy retired naval officer, which it described in its headline as an explosion. Ukiwe seized the interview opportunity to describe, once again, the events and the personalities within and outside the Babangida regime, that combined to bring about that unprecedented and unceremonious exit. A week later, one of the names frequently mentioned in that interview, Professor Jibril Aminu, now a Senator and at that time an influential Minister of Education, bought newspaper pages and registered a "counter-explosion". He defended himself and the side of that history he belonged to. Fair enough.
It all came down to the old sociological reality of Nigeria’s explosive (that word again) and unresolved diversities. Three major cultural inclinations are at play in the psyche of Nigerians. They are: the indigenous African fashion, the Western civilisation and the Eastern/Arab(Islamic) culture. In the southern parts, the Western civilisation was the first to come in contact with the Africans living there, and these included Ukiwe’s people, the Abiriba/Igbo. In the far north, Islam had virtually wiped away the indigenous ways of life of the people (including the Fulani, to which Aminu belongs) centuries before the coming of the West to that area.
Any time the Westernised African from the south encounters the Islamised African from the north on the political terrain, conflict, or more appropriately, a game of nerves, tends to ensue. Even though Nigerians have lived together as people of one country for exactly ninety years (forty four of them as a politically free people) little has been done to blunt the sharp edge of the native forces that define their cultural, ethnic and geographical differentiation. People are not yet sure of Nigeria as their heritage, but they are pretty sure of the particular corners of Nigerian they come from as their inalienable birthright. This was the root cause of the collapse of the Babangida/Ukiwe combination. It was simply a clash of fashions.
On the one end was Ukiwe, an Igbo man, and therefore seen as a former "rebel", who was "graciously" conceded the post of Deputy Head of State. On the other hand were the northerners, who felt they owned the government in power, as well as having led the civil war coalition that "kept Nigeria one" at the expense of the Igbo. Ukiwe insisted on keeping with traditions in the military, where the deputy head of state was allowed to be a very effective executive officer. It happened during Obasanjo/Yar regime, where Yar’ Adua had to be promoted in order to put him in a good stead to be in effective command of his job, both militarily and politically. Major General Tunde Idiagbon was also very strong under the Major General Muhammadu Buhari regime. In fact, he was so strong in the prosecution of the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) that most Yoruba people still refer to that era as the "Idiagbon regime". Ukiwe merely wanted to keep with that tradition.
But unfortunately, Ukiwe "did not belong" as Yar’ Adua did, and so his rank could not be adjusted to enable him be an effective Deputy President. Compared with the Service Chiefs, he was wearing an inferior rank despite the fact that he enrolled in the Nigerian armed forces before even President Babangida. In fact, he was admitted into the elite Royal Naval College at Dartmouth along with Augustus Aikhomu, even though Aikhomu reportedly was not found fit to complete his officer training at Dartmouth and had to be relocated elsewhere. But at the time the rank problem was telling against Ukiwe, Aikhomu, who was selected to replace him after he left the government, was already wearing the rank of a Rear Admiral. The civil war, which devalued the Igbo race in the Nigerian scheme of things, had been brought to weigh against Ukiwe as he grappled with the odds that history imposed upon him in the Babangida cabinet.
Apart from this, and unknown to Ukiwe and most other Nigerians, the Babangida advent was unlike any other in the history of military adventurism in Nigeria. Before August 28, 1985 when the Babangida coup took place, the Nigerian military political class had a consultative junta system where the Head of State ruled-in-council. Everybody knew the jobs and powers the Head of State, his Deputy and others. But Babangida came to build a one man dictatorship, even though he raised the motion of "consultation" to a high art throughout his years in power. Babangida was a player, and intriguer, a dissembler. That trait was later to be known among Nigerians as "Maradona". Ranged alongside Ukiwe who is blunt, straightforward and direct to the point, and surrounded by other players who seemed to savour Babangida’s playing style, something was bound to give eventually.
There was simply no way Ukiwe was going to remain in office for longer than he did under the stress that the three factors of history - his rank, the civil war/tribe and his perception of his place in that government - imposed on him. The way he saw reality was simply different from the way Babangida, General Sani Abacha, Professor Aminu and others saw it. And these were the people who were perceived as the "owners" of the government and political power in Nigeria generally at that time. When Admiral Aikhomu was appointed to replace Ukiwe, he seemed to understand exactly what was expected of him.
He was docile, almost supine, and lasted the entire distance under his mercurial boss, though he was retired from the military earlier. Aikhomu achieved a lot of personal success by so doing, but when he returned to his native Irua in Edo State, the angry youths of his hometown razed his multi-million naira mansion. He lived in "exile" in Lagos for years after that. His people felt that he, unlike Ukiwe, volunteered himself to be used to further the political interests of the north to the detriment of his own area.
We have a couple of conclusions to draw from the Babangida/Ukiwe fiasco. Number one is that our leaders are very narrow-minded people. They pontificate about patriotism and nationalism, and yet little of it informs their decisions and actions in public office. The tribe, religion, state of origin and region of every person or issue are the ruling parameters of decision making. Every government formed at the end of a coup or election is "owned" by one section of the country or the other, and the "owners" always regard other Nigerians as privileged strangers who should be glad to have been considered for appointment.
Every "owner" group feels the triumph of a conqueror. Many times in the past, the northern parts of the country was widely detested for their repeated attempts to make their culture the "national" culture.
They were widely accused of seeking to Islamise Nigeria through various means, including the introduction of the sharia penal codes and the use of public fund for pilgrimages. The forced enrolment of Nigeria in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), which created the final impetus for Ukiwe’s exit from the Babangida cabinet, was just one of such attempts. This is why Nigerians feel the best way to guarantee the survival of Nigeria as a united entity is to call a genuine national conference to renegotiate the basis for it.
But when the reins of power was still firmly in northern hands, this call was firmly rebuffed. The answer to this problem is not this apparent prolonged bitterness which the Ukiwe - Aminu media exchanges have betrayed. If Ukiwe and Babangida were not friends they would not have opted to pair up in government. Let us seize the opportunity of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s apparent new inclination to have a "national dialogue" to explore ways of creating a new Nigeria founded on equity, justice, true federalism, genuine democracy and good governance.
