The IBB Game and Buhari as a pawn
By Hamisu Abubakar
Ibrahim Badamasi Babagida is a man versed in war games, and, of course, political games. Shifty as ever, he does not like to be caught on the unpopular side, because the last time he was on that side, he was shoved aside as a non-event in Nigeria's history, after he had spent the required two terms in office as a President! Like his former boss after him, Olusegun Obasanjo, he was more or less disgraced out of office for contemplating to stay longer than the constitutionally-required terms. The only difference was that Obasanjo was disgraced by a civilian parliament, while it was a groundswell of public opinion and unrest that forced Babangida out.
Not up to 15 days after a celebrated interview was published on him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) publication, Zero Tolerance, on why he overthrew Buhari, Babangida was speaking tongue-in-cheek about how retired generals, ostensibly including himself, were going to back his Katsina brother.
Babangida knows he was not fooling anyone. He would not back Buhari, and neither would a majority of those who sacked Buhari or benefited from his sacking do so. They know Buhari very well as an unforgiving Fulani head of the herdsmen's association. They also know that when we say we leave things in the hands of Allah, we are only waiting for the right time to strike.
Babangida told the coterie of All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftains and journalists in tow that he was proud of the persistence and perseverance of Buhari in seeking the presidency. “You have beaten some of us in proving Gen. Douglas Macarthur's theory that old soldiers never die but fade away gradually. But you have refused to fade away,” he added. He congratulated members of the party on the honour of nominating his colleague, General Muhammadu Buhari, as its presidential candidate for the 2015 election.
He cheekily accused the media of misrepresenting his relationship with Buhari, saying, “You media men have created this impression that we are fighting each other. Look at us here today; he knows what I mean and I know what he means. We both fought to keep Nigeria one when we were young majors then. We were well travelled.” The master dribbler went on to massage APC's ego: “I want to commend APC for choosing our colleague as its standard-bearer. All of us will support you (Buhari) in this course to salvage this country.”
Buhari, according to newspaper reports was so overwhelmed that he said he had earlier met with former President Olusegun Obasanjo whom he failed to lure to APC, but had given him confidence to pursue his (Buhari's) aspiration. Buhari is so naive he quickly forgot details of Obasanjo's “banned” book, “My Watch”, in which he drew his own psychological profile as a conniving and conspiratorial general and politician. Obasanjo is up to a game and I suspect it is to fan a situation that will give rise to an interim government he hopes to head or put together.
Just 11 days earlier, the Minna-based General had made the following comments, in apparent denigrating reference to this colleague of his: (The question) The military regimes before you, Murtala Mohammed/Olusegun Obasanjo and General Muhammadu Buhari/Tunde Idiagbon had programmes that frontally tackled corruption. Will you say your government fought corruption? (His answer): Well, we had different approaches; I think my government was able to identify corruption prone areas and checked them. If you remember in this country, there were things they call essential commodities. These are also sources of corruption; you go and buy omo or food or whatever it is and we got government to take its hands off such activities. Let people use their own brains, hands and labour, nobody has to do it for them. So we did but I am proud to say that was much more effective.
(Question) I asked that question against the background that during the Buhari administration, there was War Against Indiscipline, you didn't have a programme like that. You came in and the programme died as it were. Why didn't you put up something similar to deal with corruption, knowing that corruption was very prevalent?
(Babangida) Because I was learning from the mistake of those before me. If you take for example the War Against Indiscipline, they were teaching you how to queue, to say sorry when you march somebody! It hasn't solved anything. It was trying to make you to be civil in your approach to things. Ok I accepted I am going to queue before I get into a car but I might have bribed somebody before I got a ticket to go into the vehicle. We tried not to fall into the same trap, by tackling the source and making corrections in those places.
(Question) The circumstances surrounding your emergence as military president in 1985, some people believe that it was more of self-preservation than national interest. Can you tell us what happened?
(Babangida) First of all, we planned a coup towards the end of 1983 that truncated the democratically elected government and the military government came in January 1984. Then that government also suffered the same fate as the democratic government when the military staged one of the finest coups in this country, because there was no blood, nothing was lost, smooth and everybody was treated with the most civility and our administration came. When we came in August of 1985, there was a plan to kick us out in December 1985; it didn't work, they went into operation again in 1990. I think the country was going through a phase at that time; it's a developing country and we always had one reason or the other for doing what we did at that time.
(Question) But the talk at that time was that there was a rift between you and Buhari and he wanted to dismiss you from the Army.
(Babangida) No, let me give you a lesson today. A coup or change comes about if there is frustration in the society. Just get that right. There was frustration in the society between 1984 and 1985. The ground was fertile for a coup. It wasn't fertile, thanks be to God, in December, 1985 when the first attempt on me was made. Neither was it fertile in April 1990 when the second attempt was made and we had the support of all of you sitting down here. You write, you analyze, you talk, and you demonstrate. It was not unusual then to hear, in the case of the democratically-elected government in 1983, a common phase was 'the worst military regime is better than this government'. So you were giving us the impetus to stage a coup. We are not dummies. If we didn't have the support of all of you, we wouldn't venture into it.
With the above comments by Babangida, it will be fool-hardy for Buhari to go home jumping for joy over the Minna general's endorsement. If he did, then he owes us another crying session on network television. That is if the certificate scandal does not nail his political coffin.
Abubakar sent this piece from Kaduna through [email protected]
The post The IBB Game and Buhari as a pawn appeared first on Pointblank News .