The publication and formal public presentation of a former military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida’s memoir, A Journey in Service, last week has expectedly opened up conversations and debates around the eight years rule of the retired dictator. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB, now 83 and wheel chair-bound, also used the occasion to raise money for a presidential library (an anomaly for a dictator as far as the history of such projects go) which would serve as a monument to his time in office as Nigeria’s maximum ruler.

The event brought together Nigerians from across the country’s political spectrum, serving or retired, military or civilian, as well as traditional rulers, religious and business leaders. In all, Babangida was able to raise a princely N17 billion that is expected to go into the establishment of his presidential library. 

The idea of a presidential library has its roots in America, emerging within the context of that country’s democratic practice in the late 1930s under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That we could speak of a presidential library in relation to a military despot is a Nigerian invention. Before IBB,  Olusegun Obasanjo who is a retired General and former head of state, had established the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library or OOPL as it is otherwise known in Oke Mosan area of Abeokuta, in his home state of Ogun. This happened during the second of his two terms in office as an elected president. But Ibrahim Babangida’s attempt at becoming an elected president never quite took off. It ended in stillbirth in 2010.

As a military head of state and dictator, however, he had adopted the title of president, the only Nigerian dictator of the eight that ruled the country, to do that. It was again an anomaly that underlined the deliberate contradiction that is the Ibrahim Babangida enigma. It was this carefully curated image of a dribbler, an Esu figure, that earned Babangida his deceptively innocuous monikers: “The Evil Genius” or more affectionately, “Maradona” for his deft political moves that had Nigerians either eagerly eating from his palms or utterly exasperated. All of this, until he dribbled himself into scoring an own goal with the annulment of the presidential election of 1993. 

Babangida’s memoir has been long anticipated, if not for any other reason than that many believe (erroneously, it seems now in hindsight) that it would address the questions that have trailed the many controversies that defined the IBB years in power. The most pertinent of these are questions around the conduct and annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the controversies surrounding the alleged abortive coup led by Babangida’s childhood friend, General Mamman Vatsa, and his execution; the murder of Dele Giwa, the founding editor of Newswatch; the Gideon Orkar coup, the plane crash that took the lives of about one hundred young military officers in Ejigbo and many other controversies that have sustained both the truth and myth of who Babangida is. 

So far, the book seems to have opened old wounds and raised more questions than it has provided or can provide answers to. Rather than closure, IBB’s memoir is opening up the abysses of more controversies as old animosities are awakened and past grudges flare up anew. Babangida has in his practiced way, honed over many decades before, during and after his self-styled presidency, sidestepped the major questions to which answers have been sought. He has taken responsibility for the past deeds and misdeeds of his peculiar presidency by shifting the blame to others, all of whom to the last man is conveniently long dead. Dead men don’t talk, or do they? Coming three full decades after he left office, the so-called revelations that filled this work of memory are a rehash of old stories sometimes akin, in their political worthlessness, to old wives’ tales as not a few of them have been overtaken by time and the accounts of previous actors that inhabited the Babangida years. Yet, this is the story of Babangida, the ultimate he-man, now a fading icon in the evening of his life.  

The only new thing, perhaps, in his story telling is the way he managed to deflect attention to others while portraying himself as a victim of circumstances. Babangida has neither built on the truth-claims of previous works nor offered new insights about those issues that have exercised Nigerians for the better part of the country’s six and a half decades as an independent entity or the eight years of his dictatorship that ended nearly three and a half decades ago. I will be commenting next week on one or two of the more controversial claims, namely: about whether the first military coup was ethnically motivated, that is whether it was an Igbo coup as some have less charitably described it. Space would not allow me to go into that right now. But it speaks to the Babangida persona that this particular talking point of past controversies (Nigerians were on it last October when General Yakubu Gowon marked his 90th birthday), never a potential point of debate as far as Babangida’s eight-year rule or his entire military career is concerned, is now a major point of debate. 

With nothing close to being earth-shaking in all he has to say about June 12, the murder of Dele Giwa or the alleged coup that resulted in the execution of Mamman Vatsa, Babangida has succeeded in given our dog a useless bone to gnaw at- the debate as to whether the first coup was an Igbo conspiracy. What actually did Babangida say and how come that has now constituted grounds for demands for national apology and paying reparation? What is making Babangida the latter-day hero of some of our compatriots? How did IBB pull off this sleight of hand in the bound covers of his memoir? The Babangida enigma is certainly still very much at play in all we have been allowed to learn or relearn from his memoir, starting with the steep price tag placed on it.

A copy of the 420-page book goes for a pocket-drilling N40,000 for the hard back. But intriguingly the electronic copy is being freely shared across social media platforms. Whose idea was it to pirate the book this massively? Was it part of the author’s strategy at swaying the minds of Nigerians in his favour by ensuring it gets to as many of us as possible? Babangida is not your two-penny author or publisher who organises a book launch in order to cover or cut the cost of producing a book through donations or sales. He is too rich for that and with N17 billion already in the kitty, he can do without the pittance from ordinary Nigerians.