Jakin Babangida

Here again, we are reminded that nothing in nature exists alone. Alas, the sun is setting on a very significant era of Nigeria’s political history. As with all natural phenomena, change and an eventual/eventful end are inevitable facts; and human beings have a morbid fear of both facts of nature – especially if both were to mesh and occur at the zero-sum precipice where breaths gather firm for that last onset when the King be seen.

It turns out that the sun is setting on the era of the great generals who ran the show in Nigeria for the best part of its independent history. Sometime back, I came across a number of YouTube documentaries detailing all the military coups Nigeria has endured and the one I found most intriguing was the one led by former military president, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, known in Nigerian pop culture as IBB to topple another military regime headed by Major General Muhammadu Buhari.

The most enthralling and foreboding, however, was the one he aborted as a young colonel, in the manner of a hero from an action blockbuster. Apparently, he was dispatched to confront the principal character of that coup, an officer who happened to be a close friend, Lt. Col. B. S. Dimka.

Dimka had just snuffed the C-in-C in broad daylight and had already taken over a radio station from where he made a broadcast announcing the violent “deletion” of General Murtala Muhammed. And as one of the favourites of that regime, IBB was said to be on the hit list as well. Maybe he knew that before staking an existential wager to negotiate with Dimka, maybe he didn’t. In any case, he approached the inebriated Dimka, leveraging his friendship to calmly try talking him into standing down. 

Of course that effort failed, and Dimka certainly knew that Babangida would return with the cavalry. Yet, he let Babangida go – perhaps, because at that point he was well aware that the stuff had already hit the fan and it was game over.  

The military establishment was stunned by IBB’s uncommon valour, walking into the lion’s den unarmed to negotiate with an armed adversary who clearly had no qualms, pumping anyone in his way full of lead. He had just mowed down his own commander-in-chief, a Nigerian folk hero, so it was safe to assume that no one was immune to his macabre wrath.

That legendary episode was the beginning of the beginning of the rise and rise of a phenomenal military politician, and to many if not most, a Maradonic evil genius. There are whispers that the 2IC of the regime, General Obasanjo took to his heels and had to be intercepted and brought back at a border crossing trying to flee to Benin, having dodged his own hit team by the whiskers after being delayed at home by a friend who wanted the general to provide a name for his newborn child. But those are of course just rumours. The point is that Col. Ibrahim Babangida was not only an evil Maradona, but also had what it took to walk through the valley of the shadow of death alone.

Most VIPs begin drafting their memoirs a few days after leaving power, but it took 32 years for this Maradona to tell his own side of the story, most likely ghost-written and that is of course not a problem. But because nothing exists in nature alone, it is anyone’s guess why now.

IBB is, for the most part, a history of the past today. I remember visiting his fabled hilltop residence on a school field trip as a pupil of Abu Turab Primary School, Minna, sometime in the late 90s. The whole experience was a scene straight out of a Kubrickian epic. It was like stepping into a world that did not belong to the world I had known even on TV screens. 

We were warmly received by his late wife, and he was able to manage a very brief appearance to meet and greet and left, because he was still a hot commodity with an endless menagerie of pilgrims waiting their turn – some to simply pay homage, while most were supplicants whose prayers he evidently was able to grant by a mere wave of the hand.

These days, IBB is confined to a wheelchair… and maybe that symbolises the fading stars on his elbows and feet. Yes, he still receives pilgrims even today but they are in trickles, and his relevance is all but negligible in the grand scheme of Nigeria’s political reality.

The moguls and cream-of-the-crop who fell over themselves to dump N17 billion at the launch, a sum that is supposed to finance a presidential library in an age libraries are decisively obsolete may contradict the idea that IBB is a spent force. All living past presidents and heads of state, bar one, who I think does not need to be mentioned to be known, were in attendance.  

One of the slangs I picked up during my time in Kano is something called “jakin-Babangida”, a speed breaker, a speed-bump, a frustrating necessity. Now, I must admit that I have not read the entire book myself, but have read excerpts, every review, summary and annotation I could find about it, and what was apparent from that cursory probe is that there was no new revelation in the book, no new insight or dimension added to the pop culture narrative of the IBB era… in effect, it was a tome riddled with lots of jakin-Babangidas including one classical expression of his iconic maradonism – the argument that Abacha was responsible for the June 12 affair. There is no closure for anyone who wanted one, only contradiction, only confusion, and did I mention the many, many jakin-Babangidas on the road to any prospective closure?

Nevertheless, IBB is not the demon-king some like to think of him as. Even though he did more than most human beings would be willing to do on February 13, 1976, he is just a human being with both a good and a bad side. Indeed, nothing in nature exists alone.

While it is fair to associate his regime with the institutionalisation of political/administrative perversion as a constant of governance, inadvertently perhaps, through the systematic disavowment of the politics of principles and ideology in favour of the humdrum Machiavellianism that defines our democratic culture today, that same regime was also responsible for the foundational reforms that saved this country from collapse and paved the way for much of the progress that made Nigeria a force to be reckoned with, not only on the African continent but globally too. 

No doubt, Babangida put Nigeria on the global economic map. When we made USD12 billion dollars overnight, the world HEARD about it. Yes, HEARD, even if a large portion of it went into heavy investments in “stomach-infrastructure”, the world did take note that we’ve got a bank.

I don’t know how jakin-Babangidas became a metaphor for speed breakers, I also don’t know if it is an exclusively Kano slang. The term literally means “Babangida’s donkey” in Hausa… but I can clearly see why this autobiography, “A Journey in Service” is a frustrating necessity that might be an apt jakin-Babangida. It wasn’t palatable, but we got to hear from the horse’s mouth.