Fazil Ope-Agbe it was who raised the stakes in the controversial Awolowo/Akintola controversy last year. Readers and elder statesmen who were around in the First Republic responded to his article on the two prominent but late Yoruba leaders - some agreed while others disagreed sharply. In this piece, Pa Ope-Agbe is raising another issue which promises to be as controversial as ever. Readers' reactions would be published.
Since the coup of 1966, leadership tussle in the country has been between the politicians and the military, with the common man in the street relegated to the role of spectator. That is why whenever there is a coup-d’etat, the ordinary citizen just shrugs his shoulders, and goes about his business. That situation was created by the fact that governments over the years never gave the populace any reason to believe that they were interdependent and had common and mutual interests.
I participated in the politics of the 2nd Republic and emerged with the conviction that this country would go nowhere but down until our concept, organisation and conduct of politics was drastically overhauled. Babangida effected that overhaul with his transition to civil rule programme that got Chief M.K.O. Abiola elected in the freest and fairest elections ever conducted in Nigeria. When I say “freest and fairest”, I am quoting Babangida’s enemies and detractors verbatim.
That Abiola’s election was annulled does not detract from the fact and does not dilute the achievement that Babangida devised the means to conduct free and fair elections in Nigeria. It is pertinent to ask and I wonder why nobody is raising the question, if as everybody admits, Abiola’s election has been the freest and fairest, why has the system which produced that freest and fairest election been jettisoned? Why was that system not adopted in the subsequent elections that brought President Olusegun Obasanjo to power?
My answer to that question is that there is a very powerful cabal that will not tolerate a leader who derives power from the people. This Mafioso group has constituted itself into king makers and will do anything and everything to interpose itself between the leader and the people he is expected to lead and cater for.
My analysis is that lbrahim Babangida and M.K.O. Abiola belong to this group by virtue of the heights they attained; they are however not comfortable within the group and would like to reach out beyond the oligarchy, to the masses comprising the common man in the street.
A few days before the 1983 N.P.N (National Party of Nigeria) convention in Kano, Gboyega Oshodi then Chief Accountant in M.K.O. Abiola’s business empire came up to me and offered me some money; he said it was a gift from Chief Abiola. He explained that Chief Abiola wanted my support in his bid to wrest the party’s chairmanship from Chief A.M.A. Akinloye at the forthcoming convention.
I told Gboyega Oshodi that if every vote but one were cast for Abiola, at the convention, the one and only dissenting vote would be mine.
I explained to Gboyega that the N.P.N. could not have the necessary impact in Lagos State because the State Chairman, Babs Hilario Akerele, in cahoots with Prince Sultan Ladega Adele handpicked unpopular characters and installed them as LGA (Local Government Area) executives at grassroots level. Babs Akerele and I shared the same dormitory at the C.M.S. Grammar School boarding house at Odunlami Street in 1951; we would have become classmates in 1952 if he hadn’t left for St. Gregory’s College, Obalende.
In the N.P.N., Akerele and I disagreed sharply on his style of leadership and we had a running battle until his fair-weather friends and sycophants turned against him and tried to offer him as sacrificial lamb for the party’s abysmal failure in Lagos State.
To everybody’s surprise, I rose up in robust defence of Akerele. I pronounced him guilty of all the charges leveled against him but insisted that the elders who misled him must also be punished. Ironically his accusers and prosecutors were the same persons who had counseled Akerele to ignore my warnings and protests about his style of leadership.
Akerele showed his gratitude by offering me, on a platter of gold, board appointment in a Federal Government parastatal. I turned down the offer, insisting that I was not in politics for personal gain but to serve my country. In exchange for the board appointment, which I had rejected, Akerele gave me a note to Volkswagen (Nig) Ltd, at Ojo, to collect a car of my choice, which I did.
He also placed me on a sumptuous weekly allowance and assigned me to restructure the party in Badagry Local Government Area (stretching from Boundary Ajegunle to Badagry town and including about a hundred riverine towns and villages in the Lagoon).
I warned him that to effectively carry out the assignment, I must uproot the existing foundation and rebuild the party on a firmer foundation based on democratic principles. Akerele told me to go ahead and do what I thought was proper.
My first step was to nominate for party patronage, the party stalwarts, whom I had decided to eliminate. Some of them got board appointments, others got rewarded in various other ways. Predictably they settled down to enjoy the political booty I dropped on their laps. They made themselves inaccessible to the teeming masses of ordinary party members so they would not have to share the accruing bonanza with anybody. Even I, who nominated them, was kept at arm’s length.
The neglect inflicted on the lower echelon of N.P.N. party members was replicated in the other political parties, the U.P.N. and the N.P.P. The area was inundated with discarded party members, whose parties could conveniently ignore until the next elections. I gathered this political flotsam and jetsam and organized them into a formidable grassroots movement. With my overwhelming grassroots support, I got the erstwhile party stalwarts voted out of office; I had cooked their goose by accusing them of avariciously enriching themselves with party patronage proceeds instead of catering for all party members, particularly the lower cadre.
Finding themselves in the doldrums of grassroots rejection, the discarded leaders, approached one Chief Abdul-Rasaq Ojora, a discarded U.P.N. warrior, who had acquired a reputation for terrorising the common folk in the area. They took him to Chief M.K.O. AbioIa and introduced him as the N.P.N. chairman for Badagry Division. They told Abiola that Babs Akerele had been neglecting and maltreating members of the L.G.A. Executive of the party because of their love for Abiola. Chief Abiola was taken in by their story and he started providing them with funds which he erroneously believed was being used to keep the N.P.N. alive in Badagry Division.
I explained to Gboyega Oshodi that there was no way I could support M.K.O. Abiola whose money was being used to destabilise the party and undermine my authority in the area. Gboyega Oshodi told me that Chief Abiola was acting in ignorance and the truth only dawned on him when none of the persons whom he had been giving money, appeared on the official list of candidates going to the party’s national convention. Gboyega Oshodi came down the next day to tell me that Chief Abiola wanted me to come and see him. I told Gboyega to tell the Chief that I wasn’t in the habit of going to see “big men”. Next day, Gboyega Oshodi said the Chief asked him to book an appointment for him to come and see me.
Again I told Gboyega Oshodi that I didn’t want to see Chief M.K.O. Abiola under any circumstance. Whereupon Gboyega exclaimed in frustration “for God’s sake, the man made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Now he wants to make amends. There must be something you would like him to do.”
I told Gboyega Oshodi that having failed to secure the party ticket for the convention, Chief Ojora and his group were mobilising to go to Kano to give moral support to Chief M.K.O. Abiola and cheer him to victory in his bid to unseat Chief A.M.A. Akinloye. I told Gboyega Oshodi to tell Chief Abiola that I did not want to see Razaq Ojora or any of his group in Kano and I would only talk with the Chief if he kept the renegades from my constituency away from Kano for the duration of the convention.
Neither Chief Ojora nor any member of his crowd showed up in Kano as I stipulated. I later learnt that Chief Abiola had invited them to travel with him on his private jet plane to Kano. They had gathered at the airport in the afternoon of the day before the convention. Chief Abiola had plied them with food and drinks until 4am in the morning just a few hours before the convention was to commence in Kano. Then at that unholy hour, when they couldn’t make alternative arrangements to travel to Kano, Chief Abiola had given them money and asked them to go back home and await his return to Lagos. He cautioned them not to leave town.
Chief Abiola arrived in Kano; he was out smarted and out-manoeuvred by his powerful enemies and was forced to resign from the N.P.N., a party which had been started and sustained largely with his money until the party found itself in power, and could afford to live without him.
Those who accuse Babangida of denying Abiola the presidency should take a closer look at the lot that stopped him from becoming the national chairman of the N.P.N. My projection is that that same lot, with added re-enforcement of Awoists, put unbearable pressure on Babangida to annul Chief Abiola’s election.
Abiola’s pursuit of my one vote, which he didn’t really need and which would not have affected the outcome of an election, had one taken place in Kano, and Babangida’s intervention to secure for me, my money trapped under ldiagbon’s orders, gives both men one character trait in common - the urge to reach out beyond the entrenched egocentric powers and interact with the common man who could not affect his fortune one way or another.
Chief Abiola’s philanthropy, which symbolises his love for the masses and the reciprocal love of the masses for “M.K.O.” made him a threat to the power brokers who believe it is their exclusive right to determine who becomes what in Nigeria. It has been an enduring policy of the elitist power brokers to suppress or eliminate anybody who seeks or acquires “people’s power.” As it is in civilian society, so it is in the military. When I met lbrahim Babangida at Flagstaff house in January 1984, he was not in the company of his fellow generals, neither was any colonel, major or captain in sight. All around him were Warrant Officers and below. Babangida loved the lower cadre of the Army just as Abiola loved the poor down-trodden masses on the street. The military top brass must be as apprehensive of Babangida’s comradeship with the army rank and file as the political juggernauts were with Abiola’s dalliance with the common people. It is therefore not surprising as Olowolabi claims that “for senior military officers, Babangida is bad news”. Olowolabi states that the question in the barracks today is, ‘Can you trust this man?”’ For most members of the Armed Forces, according to Olowolabi, the answer is “NO”.
My own question to Olowolabi is, which “members of the armed forces” is he talking about. Is it the officers or the rank and file who out number the officers by at least a ratio of one thousand to one. This question is relevant because the present struggle is between Babangida, who loves the masses and the entrenched powers who believe that the common people do not matter and should neither be seen nor heard. Irrespective of what section or cadre of the armed forces that was polled for Olowolabi’s article, I wish to express concern at his slant, which suggests that Nigerians expect a sizeable and maybe decisive input by the armed forces in the determination of who becomes the next president. I wish to appeal to every writer and commentator to always emphasise that the armed forces have no role to play in the jousting, jostling and manouevres of political parties or politicians of this country.
The duty of the armed forces is to carry out the orders of the commander-in-chief chosen for them by the electorate, in so far as those orders fall within the provisions of the constitution. As for the charge that Babangiba promoted mediocrity and encouraged cronyism in the Armed Forces, if I were military Head of State in a coup-prone third world country like Nigeria, I would only elevate and surround myself with personnel whom I could trust not to start taking pot shots at me. If Aguiyi-lronsi and Murtala Mohammed had built fortresses of hand-picked favourites around themselves, chances are they would have lived to a ripe old age.
Babangida’s Option A4 was designed to make it impossible for anybody without appreciable and extensive countrywide support to became president. What we had at the time Babangida was executing his transition programme were regional and sectional strong men, power brokers and Godfathers none of whose influence covered more than an infinitesimal fraction of the whole country. M. K. O. Abiola was the nearest thing to what could be described as a person with country - wide appeal. The power brokers who put Abiola forward and lent their support, which resulted in his victory, did not do it for love of Abiola.
They only saw in AbioIa an instrument with which they could get rid of Babangida, who was proving too smart for them.
Babangida never got anybody killed the way Abacha, installed by the patriots, got his men to kill Papa Alfred Rewane, Onagoruwa’s son and shot up lbru and Abraham Adesanya’s car in assassination attempts. When I say that Babangida never killed anybody, I expect people to ask, “What about Dele Giwa if things happened the way Babangida’s accusers want us to believe they happened, then the Dele Giwa tragedy will rank as the greatest theatre of the absurd ever to come to my attention.
The story being peddled about is that Dele Giwa had some information with which he was blackmailing or attempting to blackmail Babangida and that was why he was killed with a parcel bomb. If Babangida’s accusers read authors like Peter Cheyney, Leslie Chatens, Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Harold Robbins, Jeffrey Archer, Sydney Sheldon, Jackie Coffins, to mention just a few, they must have known that the most elementary first step a blackmailer takes is to put his blackmailing material in a secret and very safe place and inform his victim that if anything happened to him (the blackmailer), the custodian of the damning material would go public and spill the beans.
Ten years after Dele Giwa’s death, nobody has come forward with any specific and tangible material with which Dele Giwa might have been blackmailing Babangida or that puts him in a position to blackmail Babangida. It could be concluded therefore that Dele Giwa was either too naive or too stupid to take that elementary but imperative precautionary measure to protect himself from such a powerful figure as Babangida was then.
My knowledge of Dele Giwa does not portray him as naive or stupid so I am left with no other option but to conclude that Dele Giwa was not blackmailing Babangida and did not have any material with which he could blackmail Babangida, for the simple reason that such material did not exist because Babangida never indulged in any actions for which he could be blackmailed.
Babangida is not an angel. Like any other human being, he has his weaknesses and frailties; I could mention a few, but if his opponents dwell on his darker side as if he has no good points, then it is only fair for me to harp on his good qualities as if he has no blemish. Babangida loves the common man and to encourage him make something of his life, he established the People’s Bank and put Tai Salem in charge.. He established the Federal Road Safety Corps and put Wole Soyinka, who had never been loved by any Federal Government, in charge. He picked men from outside the political mainstream.
He chose them for their abilities; Men like Professor Gordian Ezekwe, Professor Babs Fafunwa, Professor Jubril Aminu, Prince Bola Ajibola, Professor Emovon, Chief Olu Falae, Dr Chu Okongwu, Dr Kalu ldika KaIu, to mention just a few. He chose them on merit These are men who had no blemish before Babangida brought them into government; they picked up no blemishes while in office and are still without blemish till today. His actions constituted a threat to front line politicians and noisy civil rights campaigners who struggle so hard to create the impression that good things could come to Nigeria only through them. Femi Falana made derogatory statements about Babangida but I wonder if it ever occurred to him that he just might have become the governor of his state if the last general elections had been conducted as freely and fairly as was devised by Babangida.
Gani Fawehimni who must always criticise, attacked Babangida in language considered subversive by law enforcement agents. He was detained and was to be prosecuted; Babangida ordered him released into the custody of the Ooni of Ife, the historical father of the Yorubas. He didn’t send any death squad after Fawehinmi as Abacha, NADECO’s favourite ruler would have done; No, Babangida was never in the death squad business. Rather, he paid the Yorubas the greatest homage any Head of State ever paid the Yorubas. A Yoruba adage states: “Before slapping a face, first ascertain whom the face belongs to”. By releasing Fawehinmi to the descendant of the historically acknowledged ancestral father of the Yorubas, Babangida was in effect saying to Fawehinmi, for the sake of the Yorubas whom I love, admire and respect, I will not fight with you”. Yorubas should therefore think long and deeply before listening to exhortations to fight Babangida over Abiola.
I know Babangida is not and never was M.K.O.s enemy. I was making a mental list of Chief M.K.O. Abiola’s enemies when a thought suddenly flashed into my mind. I dropped everything I was doing. I did not have my bath, I did not change my clothes. I just got up and headed straight for llorin to have a chat with Alhaji Yinusa Gada, probably General Tunde Idiagbon’s closest friend, companion and confidant.
I asked Alhaji Gada if he knew exactly how ldiagbon felt about M.K.O. seeing that MKO. was the one who made it possible for Babangida to topple him and Buhari. Alhaji Gada asked me how Abiola could have had a hand in a military coup and I told him the story that has been around for decades and which is still widely held as gospel truth. The story has it that Abiola approached Babangida to topple the Buhari/ldiagbon government and Babangida replied that Idiagbon’s security network was such that no coup had any chance of success as long as Idiagbon was in the country. Chief Abiola thereupon undertook to get ldiagbon out of the country. He went to the King of Saudi Arabia and persuaded the monarch to invite Idiagbon to come to Saudi Arabia and perform the Hajj as the King’s special guest. ldiagbon had no choice but to accept that special invitation which no Muslim could ever turn down.. At the behest of the Saudi monarch who acted in response to Abiola’s request, Idiagbon travelled to Saudi Arabia, thereby making it possible for Babangida to carry out the coup.
My visit to Alhaji Gada coincided with the arrival of some prominent indigenes who had walked the corridors of power in Nigeria. These powerful men told me immediately that my story was not true. I was informed that General ldiagbon went to Mecca as leader of the Nigerian delegation (Amirul Hajj). It was purely a Federal Government decision and Chief Abiola had nothing to do with it neither did the King of Saudi Arabia send any invitation to General Idiagbon or any Nigerian for that matter.
With that story punctured, I had to strike out General ldiagbon’s name from the long list of Abiola’s enemies I had compiled. I did not get confirmation that General Idiagbon was one of those who had cause to hate M.K.O. but I got confirmation that the bonds of friendship between Babangida and Abiola were such that Babangida could never do anything that was not in Abiola’s interest. One of the big men at Alhaji Gada’s place, told the audience of a day when he called on General ldiagbon and on his way in he met Babangida and M.K.O. coming out. He said when he went in to General Idiagbon, he greeted the General “E ku alejo (a Yoruba greeting for someone who has guests or who had just received important visitors).
He said ldiagbon replied, “those two, don’t mind them”. The General then explained that Babangida had come along with Abiola to plead for the release of Abiola’s confiscated newsprint. The big man said that ldiagbon expressed great surprise that Babangida could stick out his neck so dangerously for “someone like Abiola” (whatever that meant). ldiagbon, according to the big man, said he seriously warned Babangida never ever again to come and plead for someone with whom the military government was not pleased; ldiagbon told Babangida that he (Babangida) could get into serious trouble if he did not purge himself of the habit of helping friends. That story confirmed my impression of Babangida as a “helper”, and not only of friends (I was not a friend but he helped me) but of everybody who approached him for help.
One morning last December, I heard the B.B.C. announce that the American Central Intelligence Agency had handed over to the Nigerian Government a list of Nigerians who had money stashed away in foreign banks.
According to the B.B.C. the money involved was in the region of $l50bn (one hundred and fifty billion American dollars) of which Babangida’s own stash was $30bn (thirty billion dollars).
My reaction was, “if it is true then God really loves Nigeria and He is moving in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”
If Babangida has $30bn (thirty billion American dollars) then take it from me that God put that money in his custody for safe keeping pending its eventual release for disbursement for the benefit of Nigeria’s deprived millions. If Babangida had left that money in the treasury, successive governments would have made it disappear without trace; in fact, we would riot have we been aware that such money ever existed. Take the Abacha loot for instance, not all of it has been recovered, but people are already asking, “what has happened to the bit already recovered’?” and nobody is giving any answer to that question.
Whatever money Babangida has, he removed it from the system and out of the reach of deeply entrenched, traditional and experienced looters and he is now poised to return it to the down trodden masses. What makes me feel so confident that he will give it back to the poor people who really need it? Yemi Olowolabi inadvertently answered that question: he writes that Babangida draws his support from “an assemblage of famished youths, failed politicians and expired people in search of new efficacy;” i.e from the poor, the hungry and the wretched who constitute an overwhelming majority of the Nigerian populace.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo was quoted as declaring that “God so loved the poor that he created them in much larger numbers than the rich.
“Babangida, according to Olowolabi, finds support among the poor whom “God created in much larger numbers than the rich. Olowolabi further states that the rich and the powerful will stop Babangida in his tracks; which is exactly what they did with Abiola and are now putting the blame on Bababangida. The poor should now gird their loins and counter the moves of the high and mighty whom Olowolabi counts on to stop Babangida.
Olowolabi describes as profligacy, the N50 million Babangida gave to the Nigeria Labour Congress, the N20 million he gave to the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the N30 million he gave to P.M.A.N. For God’s sake, those organisations to which Babangida gave money, are 100 per cent Nigerian. Each member has family — father, mother, wife, children, uncles, cousins etc. Short of asking the Nigerian populace to come and line up in front of his house as the (twin masses do in front of Dr. Olusola Saraki’s house), I want Olowolabi to tell me how better Babangida could have given Nigeria’s money to the greatest number of Nigerians, except through such organized bodies.
It is easy to shout Babangida is not good. What I now want to hear is, Who is good?. Babangida is my candidate for 2007, Who is your candidate? I invite Nigerians to come up with their choice and highlight their qualities as I have tried to do with Babangrda. I offer free service to those who cannot write to contact me through the Features Editor, Vanguard Newspaper and I will come and do a write up for them on their favourite candidate. This is the year 2004; we have three years to go before the 2007 elections. I appeal to ordinary Nigerians to nominate their candidates.
Let us examine them through objective debate, compare and contrast their good points and bad points. Those of us poor Nigerians whom God created in large numbers must not leave the selection of the next president in the hands of the handful of elitist power brokers in the Arewa Consultative Forum or the Ohaneze Ndigbo or in Afenifere.
