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Babatunde Adenodi
Pharmacist
East Orange,
New Jersey
 USA

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If he is allowed to run, he will win only in his ward in Minna if the elections are free and fair. This is not to say that I would let him run if I were the President. May God help him if I became Nigeria’s president!

Which Nigerians would not know this dictum: fool me once, you are a fool; fool me twice, I am the fool?! Anyone who allows Babangida to fool him again is a compound fool! Only a mumu would let IBB become Nigeria’s president again!

Babangida’s threat to run for President.
 by Tunde Adenodi.

 

 

There he goes again, threatening us with a run for the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He did the same thing four years ago under Gen Obasanjo who told him in no ambiguous terms to stay away from the elections of 2007. He tried to save some face by insisting that he had merely withrawn from the race in deference to Yar’Adua who was his junior brother! But if he is the true son of his father as I am sure he is and a product of the exploited Delta Region as I know he is, President Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent president, will not hand over to Ibrahim Babangida even if he wins in a free and fair election.

Babangida has had the dubious honor of helping General Obasanjo to become President of Nigeria twice in the past. First, when he accosted Colonel Dimka at the Ikoyi station of Radio Nigeria in February 1976 during the attempted coup against General Murtala Muhammed. He succeeded in talking Dimka out of the rebellion thus paving way for Obasanjo to take over without any hiccup. Then after the death of Abacha and subsequent release of Obasanjo from Abacha’s jail, Babangida was the first to visit Otta to offer the presidency to Obasanjo in 1998. With this antecedent, I had thought that Obasanjo might feel obliged to return the favor to Babangida in 2003 when it was obvious that Obasanjo would have to hand over. But I was wrong.

Obasanjo would not hand over to Babangida even if he won! He would not allow anyone else to share the distinguished honor of being President of Nigeria twice in their lifetime. At that time I wrote the article titled “Run, IBB, run!” in Gamji and other sites. I urged him to run in order to prove once and for all that he was a political nobody in Nigeria! He has a 50-room mansion in Minna. I had predicted a win for him in his ward in Minna and that was all I gave him.

Since his encounter with Dimka in 1976, IBB has worked assiduously to become Nigeria’s President. His efforts paid off in 1987 when he assumed the presidency against tradition of the military calling themselves: President. It was clear from this action that he did not wake on that day to pronounce himself President. It was well thought out. This is one of the reasons why he is taken seriously by every one when he insists on running again for the post of the President of Nigeria.

He “stepped aside” in 1993 because he had to. He put it this way because he had come to believe that the post had become his by birth; and since then he has worked to make himself relevant in political discourse in the circle of the mighty and the powerful in Nigeria. He believes, rightly in my mind, that once you are chosen by the power brokers in Nigeria as the flag-bearer, you will easily be rigged in as President. But he has forgotten his shameful antecedents! No! He believes that Nigerians have had a collective amnesia about his tyrannical record of 8 years as President. He is led to believe that Nigerians can only remember the one thing that was positive in all that he did while in office: organizing an election that was considered the freest and the fairest in the history of Nigeria. He is now taking credit for some positive thing he had done in error! And that positive thing he did in error is his undoing! By now, Nigerians would have forgotten about Abiola’s election if it had been fraught with fraud as all elections were before then and have been, since. Yes! Babangida did do something good for Nigeria: he organized a free and fair election in Nigeria and secondly, he made the south aware that a southerner can win if the candidate is good and the campaign is well-run! He also made southerners aware that the north had not always won elections in Nigeria. They had always rigged elections with the machinery of state at their disposal.

One more thing: He annulled the election and thereby denied Abiola the presidency even for one day! People who think they are smart always do some dumb things: He could have allowed MKO Abiola to rule for six months and have his men in the army organize a coup to depose him for whatever reason they would come up with! They had done it before. But he didn’t do that! His hatred of Abiola and his undeclared ambition to be President for ever blinded him to all reason! And when you cannot reason, you do dumb things. This is the cross he is bearing. And he will go to his grave carrying this burden.

Babangida knows that he can never win an election in Nigeria if it is free and fair. And he does not wish to run on the premise of an election that involves ballots stuffed in boxes. No! He is hoping that an incumbent president of Nigeria will be dumb enough to annoint him and rig him in as Obasanjo was, to some extent, or as Yar’Adua was to a larger extent.

Only Major General Aguiyi Ironsi was that naïve in the process of Nigeria’s political development. He had foolishly put Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma and his buddies in his personal security outfit after benefitting from a coup that killed all Danjuma’s heroes! Of course, he was killed along with his host Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi in the counter coup of 1966. There are no more people like that in Nigeria. Certainly not from the Delta area of Nigeria. He will have to contend with President Jonathan who, it seems, is adjusting fast to his new position as President.

Babangida is only testing the waters to know whether he is still relevant. He will withdraw at the appropriate time when he starts hearing only his own voice. He will realise that the market has dispersed. Why did he not test the waters while Abacha was Head of State? Because he knew that Abacha was not afraid to give him the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and Obasanjo treatment. And now that Jonathan appears to bow to public pressure that IBB must be probed on the USD 12.5 million Gulf Oil Windfall, he is going to lie low for a while in order to stay out of public glare until the controversy appears to be over. If the President becomes a little more bellicose towards the President who stifled democracy by annulling a free and fair election, IBB would keep quiet for good!

Babangida has at his disposal tremendous wealth. And he is eager to spend it. The work he put into making this wealth is not in any way commensurate with the stupendous wealth. So, spend, he can. And he will! Tell him what he wants to hear: that people of Ondo support him or the people of Owu, Abeokuta, Obasanjo’s hometown also support him. He would believe it if told that Abiola’s daughter is prepared to vote for him!

If he is allowed to run, he will win only in his ward in Minna if the elections are free and fair. This is not to say that I would let him run if I were the President. May God help him if I became Nigeria’s president!

Which Nigerians would not know this dictum: fool me once, you are a fool; fool me twice, I am the fool?! Anyone who allows Babangida to fool him again is a compound fool! Only a mumu would let IBB become Nigeria’s president again!

 

 

 

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