I have just finished reading General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s 420-page autobiography, A Journey in Service, a bold, lucid, thought-provoking, detailed and well-written personal experience. The book is an important addition to the library of institutional memory on our nation.
The book walks you beautifully through a chronology of the old General’s life, while occasionally moving you back and forth in time to illustrate the points being made. Most engaging for me is the graphical introduction of the beginning years, which provides the context for the IBB life story.
However, beyond the open face of the narrative is the subtext of the book which effectively yield the thematic preoccupation of the embattled military president. It also navigates the reader through an atlas of the mind of the character called Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida.
Beknownst through the subtext, the thematic ambition of the book is the struggle for freedom from anguish and torment, by a lonely man who is consistently flayed by Karma and its children. Contrary to the coy and decoy thrown by IBB, in his own prologue to the book; that his story seeks not to address the controversial issues of his stewardship in government, the book’s central mission is, for the umpteenth time, to rationalize his tenure and decisions, seek and get redemption and join the league of former men of power, living in peace among the jaded and disillusioned Nigerians.
An excursion into the narratology of the book lends credence to the precepts of the Russian Marxist literary criticism which explains the relationship between Form and Content of literature as both interdependent. It was both Leon Trotsky and Michael Bakhtin that settled the matter; that every form is a form of content just as every content is a content of its form. In effect, this means that once a text gains life by reason of its production and consumption, the politics of its meaning goes beyond the intention and craft of the author or producer.
The text, Trotsky argued, due to the interrelations among its internal and external constituents, becomes self-determinate. It provides its own meaning or a set of meaning, all of which have relevance with the realities of times or context. In simple terms, a book, once produced, is not under conscription to obey the set of meaning imposed on it by the author. Rather, as corroborated by that German poet, playwright and theatre practitioner, Bertolt Brecht, every text has a minimum of three sets of meaning: what the author is saying, what the text is saying and what the reader/ consumer is saying.
Babangida’s book faithfully obeys this worldview. The book depicts a man in chains and pains, a soul in regret and severely taunted by Mephistopheles. A structuralist and stylistic study of the 420 pages reduce the entire meaning and purpose of the book only to, perhaps, the contents of chapter 12. All said, the book is simply about the June 12 1993 presidential elections, its drama and a quest for restitution. The topic sentences of the chapter and indeed the whole book is as escapist as its author, ‘I did not annul June 12, it wasn’t me that aborted it, walahi, it was Sani Abacha and my deputy Aikhomu’. I am merely taking responsibility as the overall leader of the brotherhood of arms in charge of the country’
This is a recolouring of the old Babangida way and tale of that ghastly event that wasted the life of this country, wounded hope and committed the nation’s future into gloom and doom. The tale resonates with the fortune and fate of a blind man, searching for a black thread under the bed in a darkened room.
Whereas one funny thing about history is its disdain for drama, it is ironic that the strange thing about Nigerians also is their love for drama. But in spite of all, drama loves history, for it is history that provides drama with the events it depicts and uses to prick our conscience to action. But how come Nigerians love drama and without loving history? How come Nigerians pay least mind to events and meaning and yet pray for a worthwhile future with meaningful heights? Perhaps this a subject of research into how egregious we are.
It was the drama of history that moved England, Ireland and Scotland to execute by decapitation, its king, Charles I of England (1600 – 1649) and Romans to execute by assassination, Julius Ceaser (100BC – 44BC) the dictator. It was also the lessons of history that led the Romanians and the French to end the vagaries of their remorseless leaders, Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) executed by firing squad and King Louis XVI (1600-1793), executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793. At home here, it was the loud bugle of experience that led to the destruction of the almighty and imperial Alaafin Aole Arogangan (1550 – 1570) and Basorun Ga’a in the old Oyo empire of the Yoruba race.
So, how come the coterie of Nigerian men of power, whose names bear the anguish and curses of Nigerians, had the bravado to gather themselves in one room to celebrate a man whose life and times tormented the spirit of Nigeria? How come the mass of Nigerians, slayed over a period of 50 years by the searing sickles of the gentlemen in the room, glued themselves to TV and watched the strange drama of obscene profligacy rammed into their guts with drama and arrogance? How come Nigerians only like to make a noise of a storm in a teacup after the deed is done?
A peep into the speeches by the selected ‘statesmen’ in the room shows unity, cooperation, intransigence and confidence. You can prove that by the school of off-chord claps and teeth-gritting approval grins that follow every bold-faced sophistry spewed to humanize the crippled monument decked behind the top table at the event. While the cheeky chicken farmer, Olusegun Obasanjo, 88 started the spree with words of solidarity and courage for brother IBB, shrill-voiced fugitive, Yakubu Gowon, 90 provided an history made of pomade to dress the celebrant as a saint from birth. Childish and inane Goodluck Jonathan, 67 provided the comic relief while Abdulsalami Abubakar, 82 and absentee Mohammadu Buhari, 82 and President Tinubu, 72 were pacific and deliberately collaboratively marooned sailors.
But not against the grain was the brash and uninoculated multibillionaire garage “garagean” boy, Arthur Eze, 76, who broke the calabash of meaning by confirming the form and content of the drama of plundering of the nation, through his “Babangida made me what I am today” speech. And the clap was thunderous!
So, what has the book said? By its apt chronicling of Babangida’s own admittance to have masterminded and participated in several coup plots to undermine the sovereignty of Nigeria, the book provided a well laid tapestry for chronicling the character trait of the evil, mindless and selfish leadership gang killing Nigeria. The publisher’s note at the beginning of the essay pages of the book, in a bid to paint him as an hero, reminded us, in flowery language, of how Babangida, its protagonist, negotiated an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and accepted World Bank loans leading to the devaluation of the Naira and the Nigerian life worth. It presented to us how the Minna boy embarked on an endless and worthless transition to civil rule, annulled June 12, denied MKO Abiola a victory he truly won, foisted a contraption on the nation as a punishment for denying him his way and worsted the worth of Nigeria both living and yet unborn.
Without doubt, A journey in Service by Ibrahim Babangida, GCFR, 83 is a masterly artistry, carefully put together by the best narrative managers that money can buy, to enrich discourse about the chequered history of our nation-state. Apart from provoking rich discussions and worthwhile debates, it, by default, provides a binary oppositional narrative against the known realities of our national experience.
Beyond the foregoing and entrenched in the subtext, is the agenda to manage a proposal for restitution and restoration. Anyone who fails to see this does not understand the ways and manners of grief. The pains, gloom, regret, loneliness and ostracism tormenting the protagonist’s soul and spirit can only be imagined. At the easiest say, it can only be compared to the grief of brother Judas Iscariot in the Jewish tale of the Bible. Unfortunately, the technology and civilization of those days did not afford the brilliant ‘accountant’ son of Iscariot the luxury of an option better than suicide. Ibrahim Babangida understand the options and he can afford it. Besides, the days are different, so also is the society. It seems now a society of Bala-blu, blu-blu, Bulaba! It is definitely a society of selective amnesia and convenient reaction.
In conclusion, reading chapters 6,7,8,10 and 13 of A journey.. in the context of the topical chapter 12 amplifies the eloquent voice of the book itself. It is a simple message that retribution is real and that it is what it is. That every vile against humanity shall be surcharged and paid for in full, if not openly but silently, if not when we are strong, but when we are frail, if not to men but certainly to God, if not on earth but certainly in the afterlife. The expertise of the Babangida enterprise chronicled in the document introduces us to the psychology of wickedness and the mechanics of Karma. It warns that nor stroke, nor disability, nor impotence, nor wealth ill-gotten flays the soul more than the trials and cries of a conscience deluded.
Of what the reader/audience is/should say, Omoyele Sowore’s recent words is enough.
