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The Abacha did it syndrome

Dr. Ibiyinka Oluwole Solarin
[email protected]

It is now the vogue in Nigeria to blame the late General Sani Abacha for the recent past of Nigeria. The vogue is now "Abacha did it " or "Abacha made me do it." It is as if Nigeria had no political history before November 1993.

The late General is now the personification of all evil. His erstwhile associates denounce him, his colleagues denounce him, his subordinates do, his superior officers do too. He is variously characterized as a psychopath, sadist, satan, he is said to be pathological etc, etc.

Many of those castigating the departed officer were responsible for making him, nurturing and furthering his career. Now they tell gullible Nigerians that they never really knew him, or if they did know him, they were afraid of him, he threatened them. He was a thoroughly evil man who was capable of anything. He was a sociopath. It is not possible to catalogue all the opprobriums heaped on the late General since the event of the early morning of the 8th of June 1998. But we can examine the comments of some people, whose views have been widely reported.

The first is General Olusegun Obasanjo.

In order to further demonize Abacha, Obasanjo claims the late General was chiefly responsible for the pogrom directed against our Igbo compatriots in 1966. Since God worked his wonders in Obasanjo's life by using General Abdulsalami Abubakar as the instrument to effect his release from unjust incarceration from an unmerited jail term, he has allowed himself to make a number of claims that cannot stand the test of historical accuracy. Not that we are unaware of his tendency to substitute his whims of the moment for facts in the past, or his penchant for offering his opinion as facts of Nigerian history, even when the principal actors in the events he is commenting on are still alive.

The books he has written are replete with this tendency. Since his release though, this carelessness with facts has reached a nauseating level. He claims he did more than anybody else to help Chief M. K. O. Abiola to win the presidency in 1993, he helped him win the Igbo vote. That he never heard anything about the infamous Interim National Government [ ING] before Chief Titi Ajanaiku came to him to ask his opinion about some people asking her to join that government. Obasanjo seems to view Nigerians as fickle-minded bufoons, afflicted with the degenerative disease of selective collective amnesia. This is the only sane reason one can think of that allows these false claims to come out of his mouth.

To douse the passion and enthusiasm that people felt about the man for whom they voted, and invested their hopes and their children's hopes for a better future for Nigeria, Obasanjo told them and the whole world, that Abiola was not the messiah Nigerians were looking for. We know now of course, that the interim idea was his and he was, as is his wont, scheming to head that illegal government. He says Abacha threw him in jail because he told him [Abacha] that he was not qualified to run the country when Abacha told him to nominate candidates for ministerial appointment. The same General Olusegun Obasanjo, it was, who told Nigerians that Abacha's government at it's inception was 'unfortunate but necessary'.

As regards the 1966 pogroms, Nigerians know those who masterminded it, they were the same people with him at the pinnacle of political power from July 29th 1975 to September 30th 1979. As a result of these sundry claims, political commentator Pini Jason once advised Obasanjo to please 'shut up' and another, Chuks Iloegbunam suggested that he retire to his farm.

The same Obasanjo is now elected President of Nigeria. The Nigerian Army as presently constituted that threw up an Obasanjo, also harbors a lot of Abachas. Perhaps if Obasanjo had kept faith with the Nigerian people, and stood with them in the dark days of June 1993, rather than scheme clandestinely with the criminal annullers, his attempt to paint Abacha as a kind of psychiatric aberration now, would impress discerning and objective Nigerians. Unfortunately, for him and for all of us, he did not. Hence, he is just as much an enabler, as the rest of the serving and retired cabal of Nigerian military officers, who used the instrumentality of the Nigerian army to overturn the verdict of the Nigerian people as expressed in a free and fair election.

The case of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is in a class by itself.

In an interview with TELL magazine, July, 1995, the self-described President was full of bombast. He described himself as a man who likes to dominate his environment. He was combative and not at all remorseful for the contrived crisis he plunged Nigeria into. He told us he took the decision and did not regret it. Now Sani Abacha is dead, Nigerians have now found that our erstwhile 'dominator' is a ruler with the feet of clay. Now, he talks of the agony he went through. Now, 'they' made him do it. In an interview he conducted with the New York Times, July 25th 1998, Babangida now claims the agony he went through 'is really better imagined'. His son, Mohammed Babangida chimed in for him, ' There were other generals, including Abacha…, they put my father in a corner, they threatened him.' THEY?

We are now being told, that the debacle that was the end result of his infamous 40 billion naira mother of all transitions, ' transition to transition', 'eternal and perpetual transition' was because of threats from Abacha et al. It was not him, our erstwhile 'dominator' that was responsible, afterall. This is the height of 'Abacha did it syndrome' or 'Abacha made me do it syndrome'. Here is the self-appointed chief of state under whom the Nigerian Armed Forces became in the words of his own Chief of Army Staff, 'an army of anything goes': a reputable honorable profession became an object of derision, scorn and contempt among its own people. In pursuit of power and wealth, Babangida turned the hopes of his countrymen into despair, their dreams into nightmare, devalued and cheapened our society.

Without our consent, he gave himself the title of the president of our country, and callously disregarded our own wish in a desperate bid to impose his own agenda on us. With him at the helm, his regime made a mockery of soldiering as an honorable profession. Men who were supposed to be soldiers of honor were transformed into soldiers of fortune. Ordinary Nigerians believed Babangida in August 1985, and hoped for a better morrow for themselves and their children.

At the end of his inglorious rule, during which he was unaccountable to no one, he bequeathed to us a legacy of economic insecurity, public corruption as a religion and a confounding malignancy of political and social instability. A military ruler that virtually dominated the Nigerian landscape, literally unchallenged for almost a decade, now says his subordinates [Abacha, Dongoyaro et al] threatened him and compelled him to choose between them and our future.

The rest of the'Abacha did it' or 'Abacha made me do it' choristers can be grouped into the class of itinerant errand political area boys, military contractors, political jobbers and sundry parasitic elements that fed fat on the late dictator's gravy train, including the repentant and otherwise: the Yomi Tokoyas, Arthur Ezes, Abiola Ogundokuns, Gwarzos, the Wada Nas , Oyeleses, Daniel Kanus, Lamidi Adedibus, Godwin Dabohs, Arisekola Alaos, Walter Ofonagoros, Baba Gana Kingibes, Jim [or is it Junaid, apologies to Pini Jason] Nwobodos , David Attahs, Tom Ikimis, Isiaka Adelekes, Tony Anis, etc etc. Individually, they played their own sordid roles in the unforgetable travail of Nigeria and her peoples in the last five years.

The history of Nigeria will remember Abacha for the misery and sorrow he brought to our land : it will also remember those that served him, encouraged him, and used him as much he used them, to pursue their own goal.