IBB’S MEA CULPA

By Nick Dazang

Seismic occurrences are defining. They tingle our ears and they etch themselves onto our memories. Everyone remembers such momentous events. Everyone also recalls, with clarity, where he was and what he was doing when they happened.

By the same token, most memoirs and autobiographies are self-serving. They offer opportunities for rationalization and justification. Apart from Bertrand Russell’s exceptionally forthright autobiography and Deidre Bair’s biography of Samuel Beckett, most memoirs and autobiographies are glorified hagiographies.

Just as candid as Russell’s autobiography was Beckett’s biography. Beckett told his biographer, Bair, that he would neither “help nor hinder her” and that all she required to author his biography were already encapsulated in his works.
But let us go back to where we were when the placid presidential election of June 12, 1993 was egregiously annulled. A few days prior, one of this writer’s bosses was summoned to the presidential villa, Abuja, from Lagos.

On his return, my perplexed and flummoxed boss in turn summoned this writer. He confided that the then military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, had informed him that he was coming under increasing pressure over the conduct of the June 12 election. He wondered what that implied.
When this writer suggested that the election would be annulled and that General Babangida was merely setting the stage for it, he took offense. He nearly marched this writer out of his office. This was about the best election in our annals, my boss argued. How could anyone contemplate annulling it?

Sensing what this writer suggested had put up my boss’s danders, I excused myself. Nonetheless, this writer braced himself for the inevitable. Every morning, this writer made the point of checking for messages either on radio or fax in the newsroom before heading to his office at the Editorial Board.
On June 23, the day of the grotesque annulment, a statement signed by Nduka Irabor, Chief Press Secretary to Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the second -in-command to President Babangida, came out of the fax machine. It was not yet 10.00 a.m. This writer observed that though it was signed, it was not on the government’s stationery. Strangely, neither did it have any presidential seal. Shortly after, another statement, signed by Colonel Umar Dangiwa came via fax. It was a resignation letter.
These two documents presaged a frenzy of tempestuous events, leading to Babangida’s stepping aside, the sack of Ernest Shonekan’s Interim National Government (ING) by General Sani Abacha and protests against both the annulment of the election and the ascension of General Abacha to power. The two aforesaid documents also spoke eloquently to the divisions/disagreements in the government. Why was such a statement coming from Mr. Irabor? Why was Colonel Dangiwa, who was one of the officers that played a key role in the palace coup that ousted General Muhammadu Buhari and brought in General Babangida, resigning his commission?
General Ibrahim Babangida’s memoir, A JOURNEY IN SERVICE, which was presented with pomp and pageantry on Thursday, 20th February, 2025, proffers some insights. Reminiscent of Robert McNamara’s memoir entitled:I IN RETROSPECT:THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM, General Ibrahim Babangida threw a MEA CULPA. Like McNamara, who as Defense Secretary under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson(for seven years) supervised the escalation of American troops in Vietnam, General Babangida apologized and took responsibility over the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.
Like McNamara who confessed in his memoir that the Vietnam war, in which by his accounting, more bombs were dropped than in the entire World War II over the entirety of Europe, was “wrong, terribly wrong”, General Babangida said:”The nation is entitled to expect my expression of regret. As a leader of the military administration, I accept full responsibility for all the decisions taken under my watch. And June 12 happened under my watch.”
Someone once remarked that to confess to sin was next to being innocent of it. But this can seldom apply to General Babangida, irrespective of his penitence or show of contrition.

The havoc wreaked by the annulment was simply gargantuan. From snippets and excerpts of the book, General Babangida had fore knowledge of his colleagues’ opposition to democracy and their determination to scupper the transition from military to civil rule. Why did he not retire them or stop them in their tracks? Was it that he lacked the nerve or that he was beholden to them?
From his telling, it was clear, contrary to his chest thumping at the time that his administration was in government and in power(a parody of then Prime Minister Tony Blair), it was that General Sani Abacha held the government in thral. He held the aces. It is also clear from his book that except General Salihu Ibrahim, all other Service Chiefs plus his second-in-command, Admiral Aikhomu, were not on his side. This explains Irabor’s audacity in signing and issuing that annulment statement.

If the annulment speaks to a regime sundered and one at the end of its tether, it is instructive that nearly all the dramatis personae that General Babangida blamed for the annulment have since died. They are, therefore, not in a position to speak for themselves or to take issues with him. The book, coming in the aftermath of their deaths, thus reeks with the unpleasant stench of opportunism.
Even more instructive and tragic is that thousands of lives, which were negatively impacted, could have been salvaged if he had summoned the courage to extirpate the anti-democratic forces which he alleged were led by former Chief of Defense Staff, and later Head of State, General Sani Abacha. Several pro-democracy activists, including Pa Alfred Rewane and Kudirat Abiola, were assassinated. Many people died, protesting against the annulment and continued military rule. Many others went on exile. Yet many others were traumatized. These could have been averted if General Babangida had summoned the requisite courage or patriotism. In fact, the advent of the General Abacha administration could have been foreclosed.

By announcing, with brio and fanfare, that Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola won the June 12 election, General Babangida was not disclosing anything new. By virtue of the collation of presidential election result, which was suspended under duress, Chief Abiola had already crossed the constitutional threshold required to win the Nigerian presidency. So all General Babangida did was to affirm what we all knew three decades ago.
In authoring this book and releasing it at the twilight of his earthly existence, General Babangida behaved true to type. He tried to be clever, as always, and to bring himself back into reckoning. He assumed, too, one supposes, that most people would suffer amnesia. Alas, he was clever by half. Like F.W. Boreham once wrote, “We make our decisions. And then our decisions turn around and make us”.

photo Credit: PM Express