If I Were IBB…

by Sam Kargbo

Former Military dictator General Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) who some people call Maradona or but he preferred to be called the Evil Genius has finally declared his intention to run for the office of President in the next general elections. According to him, Nigeria is in ruins and disrepair and he verily believes that he has the capacity to repair or fix it. If the speech that I read is representative of his entire beliefs then he is saying that he is the only one that can repair Nigeria. With the exit of the Military and the advent of democracy, many Nigerians had hoped that things would be better for Nigeria, but according to him, Nigerians are greatly disappointed in President Olusegun Obasanjo as he has failed them and dashed their hope of a quick and accelerated economic development.

Babangida did not explain the yardstick he used in measuring President Obasanjo’s performance and the peoples’ assessment of it. I have the feeling that he based his views entirely on the summation of his admirers and sycophants who are gearing up to climb on his back to return to power and affluence. Without any caution, he seems to have taken their flattery for the people’s voice, but I certain that the instant response to his declaration must have driven home the fact that he must have ignored many pertinent issues in his comeback bid. He probably must be chiding those who hurried him to make the hasty declaration. Agreed he had since 1999 made it clear that the only reason why he kept off the political arena was to avoid collusion with President Obasanjo. He had said that until President Obasanjo declares Aso Rock vacant, he was not going to participate in any election. That was wise and commendable. After ruling Nigeria for that long through the instrumentality of force, and after plunging the nation into one of its severest political turmoils on account of his annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, an election Nigerians considered as the most transparent and freest, commonsense would have advised him against taking on an incumbent as ruthless as President Obasanjo.

But by thinking that the only bar he has on his desire to return to the Aso Rock bunker, is President Obasanjo, he made an unpardonable error that he would live to regret for the rest of his life. An average thinking person would have known that his past is in essence his path to Aso Rock. What I mean here is that it is his past that will determine or sealhis political fate. If Obasanjo is a factor in his bid for the Presidency, I consider his past a more critical factor. There is no way he can avoid his past. Already, many issues have rightly come up that will or should engage him. The issue of the killing of his bosom friend, Mamman Vatsa, is making the headlines now, but that issue may not be as telling on him as the allegation that he killed Dale Giwa. The Press may not forgive a man they consider as the killer of one of their own, especially when he ignored the opportunity to dispel the allegation at the Oputa Panel. His spite for the Oputa Panel is in itself an issue on its own and belief that many people went away with is that his rush for judicial protection was an indication of guilt. The Panel was to my mind a beautiful opportunity that he bungled.

The most critical issue in the ambition of IBB is about how he can reconcile his ambition of wanting to get to the Presidency through the electoral process with the general view that he personified the Military’s disdain for the electoral process. It would take and in fact IBB would establish the greatest wonder on earth if he is able to get the forgiveness of Nigerians over his role in the June 12 calamity and get elected as the democratic Executive President of this country. I imagine that those who risked the elements and went out to vote in the historic June 12 elections are still around and would constitute a sizeable number of those that would vote in the forth coming general elections. The children and perhaps the grandchildren of those unfortunate June 12, 1993 electorate would be part of the electorate in the elections that IBB intends to use to return to Aso Rock.

IBB is said to be a very perceptive and cautions person. The way he carried himself over the years support these characteristics, but his decision to return to the political fray betrays some failings that history had kept away from the generality of us. Many people are of the view that the searchlight placed on his son and perhaps his own protégées is to scare him away from the political process, but I have a different view. If for anything I think President Obasanjo is earnestly trying to shore up sympathy for him. Without the scandals of his son and the rumours about his huge investments through fronts, IBB is politically worse off. Without any rigorous thinking, it is easy to tell why IBB can never see the four walls of Aso Rock again.

IBB personified the ugly history of this country. Military adventurism, Political and economic corruption would be nothing more or less than IBB if they were to be human .IBB is the most celebrated military adventurer that this country has ever produced. He features prominently on all the annals of coups in this country. At the twilight of his military career he presided over the regime that ruined the moral fabric of this country. He institutionalised opportunism and corruption. If Nigeria is grappling today with moral crisis it is because of IBB.It was the era of IBB and his fellow adventurers that this country lost all of its glorious past. All institutions and infrastructures of the state were destroyed by IBB and his ilk.

The most singular problem that Nigeria has had to grapple with since the inception of this republic is the issue of what socioeconomic path it should take to fast track the need to return the country to the path of sustained growth and development. The country is yet to build and sustained firm democratic structures and developmental morals due to the military mindset of the generality of the political actors. An IBB Presidency would be a disservice to civilisation and the global effort to win Africa away from its dictatorial past. The outside world would not take Nigeria very seriously if it failed or refuses to breakaway from its sorrowful past. IBB represents that past and if I were him I would spare this country the misfortune and pains of bringing back the ugly pictures of its socio-political past.

If I were IBB I would have gone into self redeeming endeavours. I would have worked earnestly to express penitence and remorse. I would have saved my old life the odium and ridicule that an attempt at the presidency would bring. I would have surrendered some of my ill-gotten acquisitions to the state and cooperate with the EFCC in its efforts to end the culture of graft and impunity.

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4 comments

French Dafinone October 2, 2010 - 1:32 am

Happy Independence to Nigerians from French Dafinone

While we celebrate our independence, it is imperative that we know the most vital stepping-stone to political power under both civilian and military rule since Nigerian gained its indepen…dence. Many dominated issues in the public since our independence about our democratization and development has made much ethical matters, and giving rise to the widespread futility and dissatisfaction that characterizes our political life today, it will be nice that we get this right that since we gained independence, no government, civilian or military has made much lasting progress until the regime of President Ibrahim Babangida. Because of the evil that was done to Nigeria, General Ibrahim Babangida with sympathetic consideration and firm belief for greatness, seized power in 1985 decided to make democratization the centerpiece of what would be a brief period of military rule. Many observers were convinced because IBB was ever strongly committed to democracy or civilian government and never strongly committed to military government.

Many detractors who saw the progress, swept the truth under the carpet and made many evil plans to destroy the efforts of IBB. IBB justified a temporary basis only to prepare the return to civilian rule. Many journalists, and other people that were jailed during Buharis’s regime was given freedom by IBB as evidence to the new plans he intended to establish. The next thing IBB did was to assess what had gone wrong in the First and Second Republics, in particular the way that ethnicity gave rise to conflict and corruption. The seventeen member team he designed to engineer institutions through which a more cooperative and unbeatable politics could operate started a different thing entirely by banning all leading politicians and parties and brought many problems that would have turned things upside down if IBB was not powerful.

Students of political science in America who were studying global politics during French Dafinone’s study period in school before he got the degree came to him and said. “We have chosen IBB as the only President in Nigeria who took his government at its word without assumption to his government’s motivation but were stopped half way by many detractors, and some evil people who wanted Nigerians to suffer.” These students came to French Dafinone and said, tell us more about Nigeria because we have a project to write and we have chosen IBB. French Dafinone who was on his careful study at that time about IBB personally, when he heard the praise and the plans of what IBB wanted to do to help Nigerians, felt proud in the presence of over 700 political science students. French Dafinone called the students attention and said, you all have done well because “IBB IS THE DEVELOPMENT ECONOMIST, A FACTORY FOR PEACE THAT WOULD HAVE BUILD NIGERIA TO A STATE OF COMFORT.”

As we celebrate our independence, let us consider voting IBB as the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Presidential election is not far the conner. Nigeria may enter into the dragon if they do otherwise. Monkeys in the Lions den do not make trouble. People in the lakes are more careful than those in the other side. If we can drop off, no longer used words about IBB, Nigeria will find it very easy to succeed in this modern time. IBB was the only President who recognized the indigenous people, the native ethic and cultural inhabitant population within countries ruled by a government of the people, by the people and for they people even when it was military time. Abuja was made Abuja with the effort of IBB, Asaba in Delta State, and many other States became a state during the time of IBB. Lagos was redifned to a place of habitat. The difficulties before the regime of IBB was turned into difficulty during his time, just one difficulty for us to overcome, we misused and overused the opportunity and turned our back against IBB. Since then, have we excel so high that we can now say, it is better now or are we not in the same inevitably happenings like most of the initial regimes? Our official currency has has been a terribly one, IBB made value of it but Nigerians choose to trade on the black market in which naira is worth quite a bit less than the official exchange rate. We made Nigeria by our own hand fallen flat on its face when IBB attempts was all about development.

We cannot excel because many of our old features are in the present. Let us do so briefly, take every negative stories from you and join or affiliate with IBB so that our next independence celebration will be the best we ever had, a celebration of party individually. How can we celebrate our independence in our personally economy state? when many Nigerian are still suffering with no stimuli because we still maintain the isolation, our economy is falling behind many other third world countries.

IBB wants to put a stop and change the direction to a university standard, a career that begins with the development of you!

Therefore, French Dafinone a political scientist is calling all Nigeria into order. Let us produce what will make Nigeria invariably leaves the third world vulnerable problems and fluctuations. Every day, economic changes took a good turn and Nigerians still have abstract statistical habits of taking us to the past of what went wrong. The story of he was will not help us. Politically, it created more problems than good. Let us come together and vote IBB for President, come 2011.

French Dafinone is a 100% supporter of IBB and together with other supporters home and abroad over 77 countries, wish Nigeria a happy independence.

Vote IBB for President.

French Dafinone

Political science

Science of Arts

USA

Reply
EZE August 30, 2006 - 11:38 am

All of a sudden,Babangida's vision is clear since he feels he can do for Nigeria today what he had the capacity but could not do when he was the Head of Shame.We need some new young bloods,I'm tired of all these old vultures trying to reap where they did not sow.Did anybody say Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu?Holla at me.

Reply
Yomi Dawotola August 30, 2006 - 4:46 am

It is only a parousia. The option is either to hail or to war the second coming. To stop the parousia, lambs must become lions.

Please whip up the frenzy. You are doing a good job.

Yomi Dawotola.

Reply
bob August 29, 2006 - 8:07 am

I verily believe that IBB deserves a second chance, if not for anything, that he should win and get his mandate stolen the way he did Abiola's. But that will bring us back to square one, so there we are.

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