Buhari Vs IBB: Finally the defining moment, By Louis Odion, FNGE

With the foregoing account, President Muhammadu Buhari has sensationally reopened a deep wound the nation has nursed for the past 31 years. In disrobing the Daura-born general in the palace coup of August 27, 1985, his failings listed by erstwhile comrades included arrogance, inflexibility and emptiness.

In the December 2015 edition of The Interview magazine, General Ibrahim Babangida had dismissed the notion that there was an ulterior motive other than the catalogue of transgressions read by Brigadier Nimyel Dogonyaro in the dawn broadcast announcing Buhari’s ouster.

Asked if the coup was prompted by the fear of imminent censure by the Buhari administration, Babangida stated: “Do not forget that I was one of Buhari’s closest aides. I was the Chief of Army Staff. So I had an important position, an important role to play within that administration. I don’t think it had to do with a memo.”

But in the conversation published in the current edition of wave-making The Interview, not only did the president dismiss IBB’s theory as false, he laid bare the acute moral bankruptcy of those who brought his reign as military head of state to an abrupt end. According to him, the desperation of a few tainted generals to evade justice, rather than national interest, inspired the regime change then. And in what could perhaps be described the most pointed challenge in recent history, he dared Babangida and Gusau to controvert him: “Let him (General Babangida) repeat his own story. Aliyu Gusau is still alive.”

Buhari’s revelation only adds to the existing and by far more salacious myth of Gloria Okon often whispered in informal public chat. Back then, the media had reported the arrest of one Ms. Gloria Okon while allegedly trying to smuggle hard drugs out of the country at a time the no-nonsense Buhari regime had imposed capital punishment on such. In fact, same law had already been invoked retroactively to publicly execute some Nigerians for attempting to smuggle heroine.

So, naturally, there were fears that Okon would be next on the death-row. Then, a twist. The rest of the suspenseful drama is already meticulously captured in a documentation by the nation’s leading legal historian and consistent human rights crusader, Richard Akinnola. It turned out that the suspect was reportedly only a courier for a powerful figure in the sitting military administration.

Soon afterward, the nation was told the suspect had suddenly dropped dead in custody! But in reality, the real Gloria Okon was said to have been smuggled out in a high-stake conspiracy while the corpse of someone’s else was presented as hers. The then commander-in-chief smelt a rat and set up a panel to unravel the mystery. It happened that before the panel could submit its report, power had changed hands at Dodan Barracks! End of inquiry. A year or two later, the real Okon was reportedly sighted at a high-society soirée in London, attended by the glamorous spouse of a key figure in the government of the day!

Another account, though unsubstantiated, states that it was the general who arranged the escape from custody of the real Gloria Okon who later found himself ironically being implicated in a subsequent coup plot and was eventually executed alongside other convicted co-conspirators. A further twist was brought to the narrative with the claim that it was in an attempt by a Lagos-based news magazine to piece all these dark happenings together into a thriller cover-story that eventuated in its chief editor being bombed to death one Sunday morning in Lagos. This October marks the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of star journalist Dele Giwa.

While circumstantial evidence may weigh heavily in public opinion, it is less admissible in the court of law. So, for now, in the absence of cogent proof, the Gloria Okon story will, at best, still be entertained as merely speculative, if not entirely fictitious.

But with Buhari’s weighty salvo in The Interview, IBB, undeniably a key player in the nation’s political history in the past four decades, has undoubtedly now been put on the spot, from where there seems no easy escape. Silence is sometimes romanticized as golden. But not in the present circumstance. How the self-styled military president explains the weighty charge may now effectively define his place in history as either an unacknowledged saint or the ultimate patriarch of grand larceny.

Well, there is no doubt about Buhari’s motive for revealing a dark secret. Time is said to be the greatest healer. But it is obvious Buhari will carry the bitterness of 1985 to his grave. Attempts by some do-gooders to reconcile them over the years have only achieved cosmetic results. Deep down in Buhari’s heart is the hurt from the pain of losing power and the trauma of his subsequent ordeal in custody. For instance, when Buhari lost his mother, IBB refused to allow him one last opportunity, even if on compassionate grounds, to see her remains before burial. Just as another account says that the “irreconcilable differences” that led to the collapse of his first marriage to Safinatu arose from how she chose to comport herself around his traducers while he was languishing in solitary detention in Benin.

Tellingly, Sambo Dasuki currently at the centre of $15b arms fund scam was part of the team that physically seized Buhari from his residence on August 27, 1985 and would end up as one of the influential “IBB boys” who wielded enormous power between 1985 and 1993.

But any allusion to Buhari’s ancient malice will hardly provide any back-door for IBB to escape scrutiny here. For at issue is the question of public morality. Could it be possible that the nation was deceived and taken for a ride then with the quest to protect the illicit transaction of a few greedy generals falsely presented so seductively as a patriotic intervention to defend national interest?

From Buhari’s sketch of Gusau, the caricature that emerges is that of a buccaneer, a profiteer ready to barter public trust away for material gain. It gets more disturbing considering that he is easily regarded today as the most influential player in the nation’s intelligence community in the last three decades during which he was recycled as national security adviser by successive administrations.

It is open secret that the Zamfara-born general directed single-handed the drafting of Olusegun Obasanjo by the military establishment to becoming the president-elect in 1999 on PDP’s platform. Going by this damning testimonial of his one-time boss, how are we now to believe the stated value deficit did not also corrode all Gusau’s later engagements in public office? Worse still, here is a man who could have ended up as elected civilian president in 2007 and 2011 having put up a strong bid in the PDP primaries.

Taken together, in case IBB prefers to shy away from Buhari’s categorical claim that graft was at the bottom of his overthrow in 1985, the Minna-born general risks having his reputation further cemented in infamy as one who formally inaugurated sleaze as the cornerstone of governance in the nation’s history. If corruption has now morphed into a humongous industry today, some historians have always identified the man fondly called Maradona as the one who provided the seed capital decades ago.

Such reading is based on empirical proofs. His rise in 1985 is seen as signposting not just the shift in the character of national politics, but values as well. As months rolled by, every thing the nation had held high was cheapened. No measure was considered too extreme nor institution too sacred in the ensuing orgy of contamination. Even in music, vulgarity became the new lyrics as fast-tempo beat gradually displaced meditative sound of old that placed more emphasis on philosophical messages.

In social space, the culture of “settlement” supplanted the tradition of due process. Ostentation replaced modesty.

In the academia, violent cultism soon overshadowed the chivalrous exuberance of what used to be known as student confraternity as might became valorized over right. Outside, philistinism flourished as some palace intellectuals formed a cult around the crafty general who seemed to prefer the ill-fitting apparel of a philosopher-king. Just as the state clamped  down on “undue radicals” in the varsity classrooms intent on “teaching what they are not paid to teach.”

At a personal level, IBB was quick at prefacing any commitment in the public with the chant of “Insha Allah”, but his deed later often reflected a willful betrayal of that solemn invocation. He was never in short supply of great fanciful ideas. But lacking personal disciple, whatever he planted with the right hand was soon subverted with the left as cronies were issued blank cheques to plunder such undertakings.

By the account of now late Pius Okigbo, foremost economist, a staggering $12.8b of the 1990/91 oil windfall could not be accounted for under IBB.

Where the cultural damage inflicted on the nation is perhaps most deep and enduring is politics. In a fevered bid to clone a new generation of actors in his own grotesque image with little or no ethical grounding, the national landscape was soon besieged by monstrous creatures. An affliction that has in turn haunted the nation till date as it became fashionable to play politics without principle, with parties seen merely as a make-shift vehicle to capture without fidelity to any ideology.

As the genetic re-engineering continued in Babangida’s derelict lab, the test-tube babies that mutated were laughably christened “new-breed politicians” to be engaged in what at the time became the longest-running transition programme in modern history, guzzling estimated colossal N40b (when naira was still strong) by the time it finally unravelled in the June 12 crisis of 1993.

Actors in Babangida’s political roulette were banned, unbanned and re-banned in a manner that defied logic nor accord respect to human dignity.

But, as events later revealed, behind all the chicanery of eight years was Babangida’s incestuous desire to parlay the entire transition programme to his own coronation as civilian president. By the time he was forced to surrender power in August 1993, Babangida left the nation in the cusp of chaos.

In summary, IBB’s eight year reign set the nation on a ruinous course from which she is yet to recover. A cardinal sin for which he is yet to atone, let alone show any remorse.