Nation where time turns villains into heroes
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Mr Peter Obi, provoked a public outrage recently with his declaration that the late iron-fist military ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha,
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Mr Peter Obi, provoked a public outrage recently with his declaration that the late iron-fist military ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha, was a better democrat than President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the crew of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the assemblage of brilliant minds who staked their lives and those of their family members to fight the Abacha-led junta until they relinquished power in 1998.
In a sacrilegious post on his Twitter (X) handle amid the crisis that has engulfed the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the political platform on which he seeks to pursue his presidential ambition in the 2027 elections, Obi surmised that yesterday's defenders of democracy had become today's destroyers of the time-honoured system of government.
He said: “What an irony of history that the acclaimed defenders of democracy and human rights, who claimed to have fought for democracy during the era of Gen. Sani Abacha now find themselves worse than the men they opposed. Today, Gen. Sani Abacha, once presumed face of oppression will be remembered as seemingly more democratic and more respectful of human rights than the so-called champions of activism from the NADECO days.”
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For context, the late Abacha was the ruthless army general who seized power from the Interim National Government of the late Chief Ernest Shonekan, which was put in place by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida junta after sustained pressure from pro-democracy groups to return the country to civil rule forced him to “step aside” and return to his Hilltop mansion in Minna, Niger State. Unfortunately, Shonekan had barely stayed in office for 83 days when he was pushed out by Abacha and his coterie of friends in the army to set up a regime that came to be regarded globally as one of the most ruthless in human history.
Among the numerous victims of the regime's heartless killings were ingenious minds like Kudirat Abiola, wife of Bashorun MKO Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, who was kept in confinement for demanding the restoration of his mandate from the annulled poll. There were also others like the famous playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other environmental activists who were executed by hanging for protesting the degradation of Ogoniland by oil prospecting multinational companies in Rivers State. NADECO chieftain, Chief Alfred Rewane; Nigeria's former number two man, Gen. Shehu Musa Yar'Adua; Ibadan-based business woman, Madam Suliat Adedeji; Admiral Olu Akinterinwa (rtd) and Bagauda Kaltho, a journalist, were also among the hapless patriots felled by Abacha's dreaded killer squad.
Obi, no doubt, derived the courage to link Abacha's name to democracy from an ungodly culture that seems to have made it a taboo to appreciate the efforts of a sitting government no matter how palpable or impactful, but long wistfully for former ones no matter how woefully they performed. That explains why rather than commend the vision and audacity of his policies the President and his party are objects of baseless vilification and wicked innuendos. While the World Bank, Fitch and other highly respected rating agencies around the world are holding Nigeria up as a perfect example for other economies desiring reforms, haters and sworn political enemies of the President are busy condemning such laudable and audacious policies as subsidy removal, floating of the naira, students loan scheme, the liquefied natural gas initiative and construction of physical structures like the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and the Sokoto-Badagry Expressway. The irony is that the Tinubu they are vilifying today will become their hero the moment he leaves office.
Such is our nostalgia for the past that former President Goodluck Jonathan, under whose watch Boko Haram festered into the monster successive regimes have been trying to tame, is being flaunted in some quarters as the perfect specimen of the leader Nigeria needs. Some who are even longing for his return as president and are mounting pressure on him to throw his hat in the ring for the 2027 elections in spite of legal encumbrances. Obi, who many are touting today as an emblem of unblemished leadership was in his time as Anambra State governor the butt of public condemnation.
Standing as testaments to his forgettable reign are such atrocities as his failure to build a single classroom in his eight years as governor. Up until now, a question mark hangs on his neck as to the cause of the death of numerous Anambra youths whose bodies were found floating on a river while he held sway as governor. Obi presided over a state in which medical doctors went on strike for eight months without a solution.
Today, he is lining up in the same party with the others who engineered the destruction of the Nigerian edifice, which the current administration is trying to rebuild. Among the 'calabash' (to borrow Tinubu's word), is former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who superintended the sale of more than 40 assets of the federal government, which today have become national liabilities. Former Kaduna State governor, Nasir Ei-Rufai, is currently held in custody by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) over allegations that border on financial crimes and abuse of office. Apart from being a former Kano State governor, Kwankwaso is also a former Minister of Defence. But there they are, parading themselves as the Messiahs the nation needs to rescue it from the edge of the precipice.
