General Ibrahim Babangida covets the centre stage. He performs best on it. Being 83 years old has not changed anything. Babangida is who he is. Last week, the retired general who took on the exceptional title of president, while he lorded it over the country, was at it again, as he seized the moment. He always plans out his moves and the stars seem to acquiesce.
There couldn’t have been a better time to arrest the attention of Nigerians than this moment. At a juncture of pervasive listlessness among citizens towards issues of governance, occasioned, essentially, by the chasm between what the government is declaring and the reality of daily existence, Babangida stepped out.
A cursory content analysis of the media platforms since his book presentation on February 20,2025, will confirm that he got his projection right, again.
There are, as should be expected, divergent views about both the book, A Journey in Service,and the event of its presentation.
Although, former vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who reviewed the book at its maiden outing, tried to give a shine to an aspect of the Babangida gathering in Abuja, what he ended up calling attention to, was a huge predominant character deficit of Nigerians and the contemporary Nigerian society. Was Osinbajo speaking tongue in cheek?
The proclivity of the leadership elite and by extension the society, to wear lack of principle as a virtue, remains a major statement in the lack of soul and dignity in the contemporay Nigerian society. The absurd situation on display last week, where individuals who were toppled, jailed, or purportedly tormented, in the course of serving in the government (without being duly tried and convicted), have no reservations sharing public banters with their nemesis and tormentator, and even acclaimed him, for doing a good job, is not just grotesque, but scaring. What manner of people are these? What exactly, are the principles that guide their conduct?
Of course, there is virtue in forgiveness. Before that, however, comes penitence. Neither at the event of the book presentation, nor in the content of the book, was penitence, a prominent plea, even as several activities of the author and his associates, call for effusive public remorse.
Take the issue of “Igbo coup” for example. It is well and relatively commendable that Babangida publicly put paid to the lie of 60 years. In truth however, it has always been widely known that the whole “ Igbo coup” narrative, was a cold scheme, an ideological contruct, that found, in the undue costly radicalism of young majors, from across the country, an opportunity to deal with the Igbo finally. The narrative was cultivated and deployed, without qualms, to achieve a dark purpose within the dynamics of contention for power and advantage in the Nigerian state.
No logic, or hard fact, ever supported the Igbo coup narrative. The attorney, Mike Ozekhome, had forensically made the point over time. As Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, a key factor in Nigeria’s history and the events of the troubled late 1960s, wondered in an old interview that was thrown up online, in the last few days; if it was an issue that many of the young majors who carried out the coup in reference, were of Igbo extraction, how come it was not a big issue that it was a set of Igbo officers who foiled the same coup?
In spite of what Babangida and most of his associates knew, from the onset, about the truth of the “Igbo coup” narrative, the falsehood was allowed to fester, leading to the reprisal killing of millions of innocent Igbo. Shockingly, some individuals are still fighting their own wars against the Igbo, till today, purportedly because of the “Igbo coup”.
It must be conceded Babangida, that in his personal and public activities, including at the apex of Nigeria’s affairs as military president, he was open-minded and never reckoned with the falsehood of the “Igbo coup”, or any hangover from that. That cannot be said of some of his colleagues and leaders of the Nigerian state, till date.
Indeed, it does appear in recent times,that the very ideology that promoted “Igbo coup” and the ‘Igbo must be contained policy’, was hatched for the All Progressives Congress (APC) that only came into existence in 2013.
Led by Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu, APC has been tenaciously pursuing programmes nutured by “Igbo coup” ideology ,that insists on a policy of exclusion of the Igbo from getting its due in the Nigerian state. The blatant, rather astonishing policy of the APC governments, as led by the duo, to wilfully delete the Igbo land, in every annual list of beneficiaries of federal capital projects and infrastructural development, points to a group of people still in the psychological grips of the “Igbo coup” ideology.
Nothing else could explain the mindset.
If the belligerent disposition is a result of being rejected at the polls by the region, the normal reaction, under democracy, is for any candidate so rejected, to work hard to win over the sceptics.
It is unfortunate though, that while Babangida lived and worked without “Igbo coup” hang over, he did not deem it necessary to put paid to the false narrative all through his long years in power. What a huge difference it would have made, if he said then what he has just said. It is still better late than never.
Like Babangida, President Olusegun Obasanjo, has also been making effort, after office, to debunk the Igbo coup narrative. He has been heard, at various fora, counselling sections of the country, to ignore the falsehood. While his presidency lasted, he too, did not exhibit an overt mindset of a hangover with “Igbo coup”. Like Babangida, he too ran open-minded government that promoted national cohesion. Like Babangida too, he too did not say what he is saying now while he was in office. Also, contradictorily, he too, like Babangida, observed the state policy of starving the South East or Igboland of its due share of federal infrastructural development. Perhaps, it had to do with political survival, not wanting to confront those who find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the truth.
In all of the six, or so odd coup d’état that dotted Nigeria’s history through the years the military strayed into the arena of governance, the common fact is that when military officers embarked on coup enterprise, they were essentially driven by calculations of gaining and controlling power, within the dynamics of their group competition.
That was not less the fact in the January 1966 coup, even as it has been testified to, over and over, that the majors intended to install Chief Obafemi Awolowo as prime minister of the country. They plotted as soldiers and acted as conspirators in the barracks.
The coup of January 15 1966, splashed so much blood to offend everyone. Yet, even as some Igbo officers rallied against the coup plotters and did their part in quelling the coup, an entire race was made to appear as if they gathered at a village square to plot a coup.
In July 29 1975, when Col. Joseph Nanven Garba was the face of the coup that toppled General Yakubu Gowon, such was not the case. It was not ethnic. In February 13,1976 when Lt. Colonel Bukar Dimka assassinated Murtala Muhammed in a failed coup, it was not ethnic.
In December 31 1983, when Ibrahim Babangida and co toppled the democratically elected government of President Shagari and installed Muhammadu Buhari, it was a barrack matter, with no ethnic coloration. So also, in 1984 when Ibrahim Babangida pushed aside Buhari in another coup. In April 22 1990,when Gideon Orkar, with his associates mounted a failed coup against Babangida, a couple attempt that even forcefully talked of balkanizing the country, there was no ethnic interpretation of the venture. That coup attempt,actually, forced Babangida, soon after, to flee Lagos to Abuja.
Of course, in November 1993 Gen. Sani Abacha shoved aside Chief Ernest Shonekan’s Interim Government. It was not even tagged a Kano coup.
Now that Babangida, from the top rank of leadership in the country, has formally made a public repudiation of the false narrative of the “Igbo coup” that has held both the Igbo and governments in Nigeria captive for over half a century, those trapped in the mindset of purportedly reacting to the “Igbo coup” can free themselves, if they will. Who knows? With any such a liberated mindset, the stagnation and despondency across the land may ease.
