Expired intelligence is always batched in the same chamber with stale information. The two are inter-related in their near worthlessness. Invariably,both expired intelligence and stale information usually lose their once much sought-after ingredients to interest due to unnecessary delay. It is partly in this light that many view the recent acknowledgement by former military President General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida that the late Chief MKO Abiola won the June 12,1993 presidential election.This was a piece of information most Nigerians would have given virtually everything to have some thirty-two years ago.All entreaties in the past for their once famed military President General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) to reveal the intrigues behind the annulment of the June 12,1993 presidential election met defeaning silence and engendered interest. But not any more.
The umpire at the election Prof Humphery Nwosu had in a belated memoir affirmed what was generally believed “Chief MKO Abiola won the election ” fair and square. Unwittingly, President Muhammadu Buhari had put the imprimatur of his office to the saga by conferring the nation’s highest national honour posthumously on Abiola and naming the national stadium in Abuja after the once famous Pillar of Sports in Africa. This was years after a tepid attempt to rename the University of Lagos (UNILAG) after Abiola by President Goodluck Jonathan was resisted by the vibrant, if not boisterous UNILAG community. Perhaps to further rub mud on IBB, the mercurial Buhari declared June 12 Democracy Day.
A past master in the art of brinkmanship,IBB is attempting to burnish his hugely tarnished image with the public presentation of his autobiography A Journey In Service. What a journey it has been for IBB.
Nigerians first took notice of IBB’s journey in service during the Nigeria–Biafra war.He was wounded in battle but he returned from the battlefield with the juiciest of laurels; Maryam, an Asaba born beauty who was to redefine first ladyship in Nigeria.
IBB stood to be counted among “the revolutionaries ” that saw to the unceremonious exit of the decadent regime of General Yakubu Gowon on July 29,1975. A few months later,on February 13,1976, he rose to the occasion and put the final nail in the coffin of the abortive coup led by Lt.Col.Bukar Dimka.Never mind that his unobtrusive and almost cavalier manner in which he engaged a drunken Dimka almost cost IBB his life.Mercifully,Dimka was too trusting not to heed the murderous advice of some of his co-travellers who urged him to extinguish IBB.Though IBB survived he did not escape the ire of his machiavellian boss Lt General Theophilus Danjuma to whom “orders is orders”.Danjuma sent IBB back to Dimka with clear instructions to,if need be, level the famed Radio House from whence Dimka’s rejugigurated coup speech was being replayed at intervals.
Under the civilian administration of President Shehu Shagari, IBB deftly took a back seat so as to properly “sidon look.”He emerged on December 31,1983, to co- lead the overthrow of the quibbling Shagari administration in which his next-door neighbour in high brow Ikoyi Cresent Dr Alex Ekwueme was Vice President. IBB emerged Chief of Army Staff and ,once again, registered forcefully in the nation’s consciousness.Twenty months later on August 27,1985,he ousted his hitherto co-conspirator Major General Buhari and became Nigeria’s 8th head of state and the first military leader to ascribe to himself the more endearing title of President.
He had barely settled in as President when the Major General Maman Vatsa led coup plot was uncovered, and all those implicated in it were shown no mercy as they were made to face the firing squad.Similar fate befell most of those who participated in the April 22,1990 foiled coup led by Major Gideon Okar.
The IBB Years recorded significant strides in innovative governance and integrated development.He was about to breast the tape as arguably Nigeria’s most outstanding military head of state when he slipped on the treachery laden June 12,1993 tartan track.
Conscious and painstaking efforts by IBB to pick himself up from the debacle of June 12,1993, has not yielded the desired fruit.Will his rather belated memoir be able to turn the table in his favour? Or will it pale off as another swan song? Time will tell.
