Last Thursday’s public presentation of former military leader Ibrahim Babangida’s over 400 pages autobiographical book, ‘A Journey in Service’ unprecedentedly brought together all living Nigerian heads of state and presidents, except Muhammadu Buhari. Given how controversial the author’s reign was, it was thought he would never write his biography, despite promising to damn the consequences and publishing it. In the end, Nigerians waited for about 32 years to get the chance to read him, his thoughts, leadership, controversies, and justifications. No book has been so awaited, and no gathering in the past one or two decades has been so striking. There were many suppositions about him and his time in power; now, nearly all those suppositions have been dispelled. What is left, as the pages of the book unfurl before its readers, may not exactly meet the high expectations of a long wait.
Other than the reviewer, former vice president Yemi Osinbajo, a professor of law, no one was sure on Thursday that any other person had read the book. In the next few weeks, thousands of people will have direct access to the book, and probably read it, for the author as well as the publishers, Bookcraft, have not gone to any length to restrict access to the book. It is widely available online. The purpose of writing the book was, therefore, obviously not to make money from its sales; it was to get as many people as possible to read it. It will be read in millions of homes, if not for its stylistic elegance, then perhaps for its revelations; or if not for what it reveals or fails to reveal, then perhaps to accentuate the displeasure millions of sceptics who wrote the former military leader off more than 30 years ago have felt for a long time.
Former president Olusegun Obasanjo warned Gen. Babangida to expect harsh criticisms and blowback over the book. There would be tonnes of blunt, scathing and unflattering dismissals, he said languidly, in contrast to the jaunty steps with which he mounted the platform to give his goodwill remarks. All past and present leaders who said a few things about the author (whether he ghosted the work or not) had been mostly laudatory, whether anecdotes, wisecracks, or allusions. It is in the nature of tributes, either at birthdays or book launches, to be giddy and lyrical about the subject, sometimes saying things the speaker himself would find shocking to his practiced modesty. Prof Osinbajo tried valiantly to balance his review by appointing his allusions to do the work of giving the ‘on the other hand’. But his witticisms seemed more expiatory of the former military leader’s misrule than serve as a harmless and even rhetorical counterpoise. On his own, Chief Obasanjo, who has studiously refrained from speaking about MKO Abiola and June 12, took refuge in his warnings to the author to expect the worst. In the process, he masked and coded his displeasure behind his reservations, and generally sounded unenthusiastic about either his presence in the hall or what the book managed to reveal or hint.
So many commentators have excoriated Gen. Babangida based on newspaper and social media snippets as well as the author’s brief remarks. They dismiss him, all over again as they did in the past, as overrated, both as a military general who displayed lack of courage in the face of his subordinate’s mutinous manoeuvres, and as a head of state who saturated the country with futile social and political experiments without deeply, positively and fundamentally effecting the fortunes of the country. He touched a number of individuals, mostly businessmen and jobholders, and they have remained eternally grateful; but he did little else. Indeed, of all those who have commented so far on the book outside the launch venue, there does not seem to be any who thought him a hero or a role model. They wish he had not written the book. Great reviews of the book will perhaps come in the weeks ahead, as soon as readers overcome the shock of what took place at the Transcorp Hilton venue. But the reviews are unlikely to be salutary or sympathetic to a man, general and leader who is at once stoical and Machiavellian.
Gen. Babangida is also unlikely to care about the hostile and trenchant reviews, for he is too smart and sensitive not to know that he is robustly reviled in many parts of the country, especially in the South and Middle Belt. If he couldn’t be bothered by the unlawful dissemination of the book online, why would he wince at scurrilous attacks against his person or his leadership? For the nine years or so he was in office, and despite his best efforts to curry approval and heroic worship, he received bucketfuls of abuse and hostility. Yet, he bore everything with perfect equanimity. He is now in his twilight years, and he senses without saying it that the verdict of posterity is already sealed, and has in fact been sealed since 1993, regardless of whatever private exculpations he got from his supporters. At this point, therefore, the smooth-spoken and pretentiously genial general has lost all sense of caring. Given the platitudes reportedly redolent in his book, instead of honest admission of truths and uncomfortable facts and revelations, not to say the many reiterations of his presumptions and justifications, he obviously does not hope the book would deodorise his image. He meant the book for other purposes.
That purpose was contained in the unveiling of his presidential library prototype, a concomitant of the book launch. The complex will cost billions of naira, N17bn or so of which was publicly raised last Thursday. It spoke to his popularity among a class of wealthy people, and the enduring fascination foes and friends alike still have for him, that when he called for donations, they overwhelmed him with cash. As they lathered him with donations and pledges, they also spoke fondly and wistfully of his time in office. He may not be able to explain his talismanic hold on this class of supporters, but he has an instinctive grasp of what he continues to mean to millions of Nigerians, particularly from the North. However, Southerners are so pissed off with him that they loath his book launch and describe as it as gratuitous insult to the sensibilities of ‘Nigerians’. Some of them are in fact so angry with him over how tragically his 1993 betrayal set the country back by many decades, that they do not trust him to tell the truth about his time in office or imagine he could ever be so altruistic as to care what fate befell the country.
Yes, many people will take the trouble of reading his book in the weeks and months ahead, not because they care about him or think he has the capacity to analyse the country’s existential issues beyond his jaded philosophies and simplistic exonerations, but because they want to satisfy their curiosities, to find out whether he is not much worse than they had imagined. They will want to read for themselves whether they can find any context in the book to explain the widely presumed dichotomy between his regrets or acceptance of responsibility, which he offered fulsomely, and apologies for the poll annulment and execution of Gen. Mamman Vatsa, which he didn’t give explicitly. Many authors wracked by conscience often hide behind lexical facades; readers will want to peruse the book for themselves to see whether they could detect any stirring in his enfeebled gait, let alone his conscience.
by Palladium @TheNation
