By Chidi Obineche
Some call him “evil genius”, others dub him “ Maradona” after the famous Argentine football maestro renowned for his dribbling skills. Yet others daintily say he is the ultimate bubble bomb that easily and jauntily dig in, manouvre and detonate boxes of puzzles; a sphinx- like creature who is roundly ascribed to the mesmerisms of Nichollo Machiavelli’s evergreen work, The Prince. He is Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, but goes with the sobriquet IBB; Nigeria’s fifth military ruler who ruled in craft and fox and left a doughty consciousness etched on the psyche of the nation. The marksman of immense giddy proportions, last week took on the landscaped lane of restructuring the Nigerian nation to save it from itself. He was not the first to fire the salvo.
But his voice echoed and rang loud in the distance like the hymnals of old.
The arcane word “restructuring” has assumed the form of a dream which they say is not what you see in sleep but the thing, which doesn’t let you sleep. The catcher in his gaudy support of restructuring stems from the fact that if an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. But if from the inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from inside. It is like Unicorn shoving fairy wand up the nation’s consciousness and greatly enthralled groups and individuals are already singing over the rainbow. IBB has come very handy and hardy in the resurgent push for a fair, just and peaceful nation through restructuring. Even at the grand old age of 75, he is dribbling at the top of the key. He may not be your weirdo dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs. He is the master canyon from the flagship of endurance. His call suggests that the fact that Jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains should be instructive to Nigeria. He says in good measure that the trouble with Nigeria is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. His call reverberates with the African proverb that an army of sheep led by a lion can defeat an army of lions led by a sheep. The sheer resonance of his call dripping with guts, vitality and patriotic fervor is like the advice of the owl that insists that life and indeed Nigeria are a hoot. And if his past and lost opportunities of winding down this road must be ignored, he is saying in one stroke that just because he just smoked weed doesn’t mean he smokes weed. This is the riddle in the essential IBB, the pathway to his life stream. He is the matchbox with variegated tongues of flame; a bulwark of intrigues and a diva white golden spark. He is the inflatable dinghy boat with four single – banked oars and a spirit sail. And this is truest in Rick Ricordan’s eternal words that “Genius does not excuse evil”. His soothing advocacy shines in the halo that a man cannot destroy the savage in him by denying his impulses.
He was born on August 17, 1941 in Minna, Niger State. He is from the Gwari ethnic group. He joined the Nigerian Army in 1962 and rose through the ranks to become a General in 1987. He was a key player in most of the military coups in Nigeria (July 1966, February 1976, December 1983, August 1985, December 1985, and April 1990. He ruled Nigeria from August 1985 – August 26, 1993. He attended Provincial Secondary School, Bida, Nigeria Military Training College, Indian Military Academy, Command and Staff College, Jaji. He was married to Maryam King Odogwu who died in 2009 and together they had four children – Muhammed, Aminu, Aishah,v Halimah.