IBB, engineering and humanity

By Victor C. Ariole

(…) a fairer assessment of why the armed forces seized power was not to be found in their success or failure to deliver but in the various factors and events preceding the intervention … There exists a world of difference between engineering a nation and ruling it … My goal was to engineer it… (President) General I. B. Babangida in A Journey in Service.

In Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, a Chinese and their best known leader was said to have built Singapore by destroying the marshy surface of Singapore and transforming it to greatly beautiful scenery of great engineering infrastructure. He went further to destroying also the hegemonic Chinese presence and allowing diversity to thrive as Malays, Indians, mix freely with the non-homogenous Chinese people; and, as well, Malay language is favoured as the national language.

Whether social engineering or infrastructure engineering, what is to be destroyed to be able to bring beauty to the landscape is always daunting. Unlike Lee Kuan Yew, IBB’s destruction process never yielded beautiful site and ab initio he was never expecting to deliver success. He was just scheming for survival and survival for his life.He no doubt succeeded in line with his obedient fellow head of state childhood friend who says that a Marabout had already pronounced IBB a president eighty years ago.

His leadership was a perpetual destructive engineering site of the Nigerian State – the only military head of state as well as perpetual coups d’etat participant from 1966 to 1993, over three coups and he remained and survived till deciding to step-aside. Nigeria’s wealth massively squandered as per Dr. Pius Okigbo’s report; Nigeria’s military, especially the middle level officers’ cadre massively decimated in three coups and other orchestrated accidents or schemings that left Nigeria completely bruised.

Furthermore, he embarked on civilian transition that gulped money and time till it ended in cul-de-sac, and ended the life of the undeclared winner as President.With a hindsight, according to him, that must go beyond 20:20, he had already declared himself “President” in military uniform to emulate his hero, Abdul Nasser of Egypt. Like Nasser like turning those presumed unwanted, dispensable humans.

Humanity was greatly degraded and rendered engineeringly irredeemable in Nigeria all through his reign as Head of State. According to him various factors and events preceding his intervention make perpetual ‘destructive’ engineering inevitable. He even asserts that the balance sheet of his reign is yet to be seen as assets’ growing facilitator, and has been more of capital and reserve depleting process till now. “The balance sheet may not be ready yet, but it will eventually manifest… part of the essential outcome of our approach and our method is that Nigeria has changed irrevocably, perhaps beyond recognition”.

Indeed over $36 billion owed to foreign creditors regulated by IMF, partially settled by Obj government and over $12 billion spent on what Dr. Okigbo panel could not identify. Nigeria’s humanity was completely painted as fraudulent humanity as Nigerians turned pariah to other valued humans in the world with 419 activities multiplying; drug cartels blossoming; “Andrew emigration of Nigerians in agogo, culminating in brain drain; Central Bank becoming place of “seating” defraudable fake investors; etc. In short, Nigeria became the kind of scavenging mining sites like the one we see in Zamfara State today. IBB brain process was just bent on eliminating those he perceived as “non new breed” and as he put it: “We know those who will never succeed us”.

His brain process, as one always refers as “Neuronal Disposition”, could easily fit into what a University of California, Professor Ruth Feldman, terms the NeuroBiology of Love and Hatred. To the brain, prejudice is something it does not deem fit registering as long as it has encoded well those human behaviour patterns to bond with as support-group solidarity base and those seen as out-group hostility ones. 

IBB also cultured widely dialogues and conferences in which he isolated those to incorporate in his love group and was willing to protect them in all circumstances as seen in those who appeared for his book launch and in the military, the mostly young majors, who monitored very well the only image of threat for him – General SaniAbacha. Officers like Major Umar then seemed deceived. According to Colonel Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (Rtd), “with the prevailing political situation against the annulment, it was not difficult to imagine mass support of a coup by officers, but it was inconceivable that many officers would stake their lives in order to replace IBB with General Sani Abacha as Head of State… So why did I agree to join Abacha in a coup against IBB? Abacha swore in the name of God that he had no other motive but to restore the mandate of MKO Abiola”.

General Sani Abacha was for IBB the juggling brain process of fluidity of love and hatred and when it dawned on him that his brain process was no more capable of discerning how to handle Abacha, and that Abacha himself is not very well trackable in either accepting the winner of June 12 election or annulling the election, he gave up. And Col. Umar put it succinctly well – the support-group solidarity of IBB started disintegrating. General Ishola confirmed that also on Channel TV in an interview with Akande as he himself tendered his resignation from the Army thereto seeing how the young officers changed loyalty and were all looking forward for expected political appointments that come with new military dispensation.

In all, Nigeria was sacrificed on the altar of two Generals who never saw beyond their immediate self-sustaining enterprise; and that damage continues till now, contingently connected to northwest, northeast multifaceted troubles.

Like President Shagari was selfless till Buhari coup that jettisoned a bigger picture of well-being for all Nigeria, like Obj government; and thereafter another Buhari that has gone on further to destroy the psyche of collective Nigerians and set Nigeria again on an engineering experiment. May 2023 renewed hope engineering experiment never be like that of IBB we beseech Thee O God! So, whither and whence Nigeria’s Lee Kuan Yew?

• Ariole, Ph.D, Professor of French and Francophone Studies

University of Lagos