By Suyi Ayodele
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, 1992/1993 academic session: Trendy Professor Adebayo Williams strolled into the class and gave us a term paper to write: “Chaka is a Man sinned against than sinning. Discuss.” Our teacher strolled off.
Professor Williams is a lecturer of delight. He taught my set Literary Criticism in our final year at the university. One of the classics we read for the course is Thomas Mofolo’s “Chaka.” The term paper is about Mofolo’s protagonist, Chaka, a pure-A-heroic character in pure oral characterisation. As Professor Williams strolled off, he left behind a group of rascals shouting, ‘Baba Aro’! What did he want us to write; ‘wicked’ lecturer? We attempted the paper based on our intelligence then. Williams scored every student and then came back to lecture us!
Two weeks later, Professor Williams returned to ‘dissect’ the term paper. The summary of the discourse is that every dictator comes across playing the victim! He passes to the audience, the people, the picture of a victim. And he gains their sympathy more than anyone else. That is what IBB did on our collective sensibilities last week in Abuja.
The legend of a rich man, Olówó-Etí-Ureje (the rich man by the bank of the Ureje River), aptly describes what retired General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) depicts in his memoir, “A Journey in Service.” The book of tales was launched in Abuja last Thursday. It is a book every lover of history ought to have. I paid through the nose to get a hardcover copy last Friday, less than 24 hours after it was launched.
Love him or hate him; IBB remains the darling of any discerning mind; any day, anytime! It must be so because the man his friends and foes call the Evil Genius is one person whose personality we cannot ignore. The aura around him is infectious. He has presence, he has candour, even if he is on the negative side of history.
IBB equally has humour, just as he has a good control of the English Language. He is a great non-acerbic polemicist. That’s a contrast; yes! Same way he says being called ‘Evil Genius’ “is a contradiction” because “You can’t simultaneously be a genius and an evil” (Pg 353). A man who laughs off virtually everything is someone one should be wary of; IBB is that man! He tells you he doesn’t join issues with his subordinates, nor does he engage his superiors. What does he do then, you may ask!
The self-styled Military President has never made any mistake about his audience. He demonstrated that in Abuja last Thursday. Only an Evil Genius has the capacity to assemble the figures that gathered for the book launch last week. Only Maradona, a dribbler and a man moulded in the shape of Thomas Mofolo’s protagonist, Chaka, in the epic novel of the same title, could assemble his ‘enemies’ and ‘friends’ under one roof, and all of them would sing his praises to high heavens the way the Minna retired General did. Does IBB have friends; does he have enemies? I doubt it! At least not by what we saw in Abuja last Thursday.
Like the legendary Chaka, IBB was deft at swaying public sympathy at his book launch such that his numerous ‘victims’ rose to salute him, to praise him for inflicting pain on them. Billions of Naira were donated. Those who had nothing to ‘donate’ bought the book at huge prices. On the spot sale attracted N200,000 for a hardcover and N100,000 for a softcover. At the publishers’ bookstore, the copies go for N50,000 and N40,000 respectively! IBB smiled to the bank because he succeeded in playing the victim. We were all his mugu!
Former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo was the only one who got the gist. Unfortunately, his audience was too laid-back; too torpid, to understand the innuendoes in the presentation made by the professor of Law. They simply laughed off a serious matter of the victims romanticising their tormentors. Such is the prowess, the dexterity of the Evil Genius at manipulating public opinion. Give it to IBB as the undisputed master of that art!
Even the contents of the book (I have read pages of the book as the discussion about it rages in the public space) speak more about the man than any other thing. The TELL Magazine interview of July 24, 1995, published on pages 323 to 359, is my favourite so far. The most interesting material in that interview is the submission of the senior journalists who conducted the interview that “It appears one can never pin you down…” (Pg 153). I read the interview long ago and I find it refreshing reading it again. IBB remained cagey all through the interview. That is vintage Evil Genius!
When juxtaposed with the entire memoir, the interview conducted 30 years ago and the book presented for public consumption less than a week ago, show that nothing has changed in the man, IBB! The length of the interview, a material that takes a whole 36 pages of the book in discourse, and the inability of the senior journalists to pin IBB down to anything, is an indication that till he enters his grave, IBB will continue to dribble us all! The entire “A Journey in Service” itself is about dribbling and “taking responsibility.” IBB is a man who selects his words carefully and understands both the surface and deep structure of every word he utters.
Why did IBB include that lengthy interview in his autobiography? What is the position of an average student of Stylistics on that inclusion? Simple. IBB by that stroke, is saying that there is nothing new to be learnt from “A Journey in Service.” And that is regrettably sad! The Tell Magazine interview of 1995 tells all the stories that need to be told about June 12, 1993, presidential election “won”, according to IBB, by the late Aare Ònà Kankanfo, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola. The only addendum is the act of naming names that IBB introduced in chapter 12, ‘Transition to Civil Rule and the June 12 Saga (pgs 251-288).
Again, why did IBB wait for 32 years before he mentioned those who annulled the June 12, 1993, presidential election? To answer this, we will return to the legend of Olówó-Etí-Ureje (the rich man by the bank of the Ureje River) mentioned earlier.
Ureje River, an ancient river around Ado Ekiti, is popularised by so many stories. One of such stories is that of the rich man who built his house by the banks of the river. History simply gave him a descriptive name, Olówó-Etí-Ureje, because as rich as he was, the rich man stayed permanently by the riverside even when his creditors were scattered all over the place. Yet, he kept no records; mental or written. A very forgetful man!
Olówó-Etí-Ureje was said to be a man who lacked discretion and asked no questions. He trusted his debtors to be honest and faithful in their dealings with him. Though he was the richest and the most generous of his time, the rich man’s indiscretion and lackadaisical attitude were his undoing. Within a short time, he lost his fortunes and became as poor as the church rat. Just one debtor ruined him, and he never recovered as all efforts to bring him back to his prime days failed. How did it happen?
The story stated that one chronic debtor named Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé (He who borrows till the creditor forgets), borrowed money several times from the rich man and refused to pay after eliminating all those involved in the processes leading to the numerous loans.
Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé had the habit of using his numerous slaves as pawns for the loans he took from the rich man. He equally used another set of slaves to stand as guarantors for the loans. A few months to when the loans were due for refund, Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé would use a canoe to cross Ureje River to the other side and ask the pawns in the service of his creditor to cross the river in another canoe to his side to collect the money for the repayment of the loans.
On getting to his own side of the river, Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé would impound the canoes that brought the pawned slaves and ask them to swim back to the other side of the rich man. As slaves, the pawns had no option but to jump into the river and get drowned in the process of swimming back. Those who resisted the order were summarily executed. Since he owned the slaves, nobody would question the slave owner for whatever he did to his property.
Having settled the matter of the pawns, Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé would assemble all the slaves who stood as guarantors for the loans and conscript them for a needless war. At the war fronts, those unfortunate individuals would be given ordinary sticks to confront the opposing soldiers carrying guns and cannons. Your guess is as good as mine about the outcome of the battles and the fates of the slaves.
Thereafter, the debtor would approach Olówó-Etí-Ureje for the reconciliation of the loans. Trust Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé to argue that he had repaid all the loans and insisted that the rich man still owed him for the extra labour the various pawns worked on the rich man’s plantations. In most wicked cases, Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé would also ask for his slave-pawns to be given back to him because he intended to pawn them away somewhere else!
With no records to show; pawns and guarantors to corroborate his claims, Olówó-Etí-Ureje would be forced to give more money to his debtor and also monitise the ‘loss’ of Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé’s slaves! That was how the rich man by the Ureje River became poor and the one who used to borrow money from him became stupendously rich. IBB must have a version of this tale in his Nupe background. The man, like the chronic debtor, Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé, waited for over three decades to tell us the ‘true’ story of what happened to our darling June 12, 1993, presidential election! He told us that MKO won the poll! He mentioned those who cut Abiola’s victory short. Then he took “responsibility” as the man at the top then! Whether we like it or not, no version of that episode can be more authentic than the one from IBB himself. Unfortunately, many of the people IBB mentioned, like the pawns and guarantors in our story above, are long dead and forgotten. The dead don’t tell tales, so they say!
How do we authenticate IBB’s story? Difficult as it was for Olówó Etí Ureje! And what did we do to IBB, our modern-day Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé? We, of course, rewarded him with more credit facilities! If you are in doubt, just check how much IBB raked in from the launch of “A Journey in Service”. Also check out those who gathered to ‘honour’ the man and the beautiful eulogies showered on him by all the Olowo Etí Ureje who gathered at the public book presentation last Thursday. We are a unique people-what in Latin is called: sui generis!
It is only in Nigeria that we can get that kind of crowd that gathered in Abuja for IBB and raised such a huge amount of money! If you add the figures to the ones that were not announced and the ones that will still come from those IBB “made’, you will agree with me why Nigerians have remained poorer and why their oppressors have continued to be richer by the seconds. And what more: the man who rules over us today said he owes his political ascendancy to the man IBB who made it possible for him to go into politics. That was the summary of the testimony of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at IBB’s book launch!
God knows that I don’t begrudge IBB for whatever he is worth. I have read several comments about the book launch and the ‘anger’ expressed over the June 12 saga. And in all honesty, I see nothing in those comments beyond the usual crowd resentment that will, again, amount to nothing! Pity! If after watching the Abuja book launch and the unity of greed by the attendees, and you still have faith that these locusts in power have the interests of the masses in the hearts, then, you are indeed and, indeed, a man of great faith!
IBB, the man of ‘destiny’, whose future was predicted by a Dibia almost eight decades ago, is 83 years old. I believe so much in the account of the childhood prediction for IBB as narrated by General Abdulsalami Abubakar, the former Head of State. I believe it because I have witnessed such predictions in the past. And on that, I take a bet: if IBB lives to commission his Presidential Library, he will get more donations than it happened in Abuja last week. Why?
It is apodictic that every Ayáwókíolówógbàgbé will become richer at the expense of all Olówó Etí Ureje. We don’t keep records here. We are too forgetful, too forgiving. We are all victims; all Olówó Etí Ureje, including yours sincerely. Even at my level, IBB and his publishers still ripped me off my hard-earned N50,000, the cost of a hardcover copy of “A Journey in Service!” Do I simply say: My head will judge them, or I should ask: who send me?
