By Douglas Anele
If there is still any lingering unbelief that Nigeria has been very unlucky to be saddled with third-rate minds as leaders, the verbal scud missiles (some call it mutual pinging) which former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, and military dictator-turned civilian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, launched at each other must dispel such doubt.
The brickbat between the two “eminent” Nigerians offers us another opportunity to bemoan persistent degeneration in the quality of political leadership. On that basis, one can understand why Nigeria is steadily manifesting unmistakable symptoms of a failing state, especially since 1985. Obasanjo ruled Nigeria for 11 and half years whereas Babangida was at the helm for eight years.
Therefore, cumulatively both men presided over the affairs of our country for almost 20  years. With the arguable exception of avaricious parasites that benefited immensely (and are still benefiting) from the two former heads of state, Nigerians unanimously agree that on the whole both men performed below average while in power, although opinion is sharply divided on whose administration was worse than the other.
Before we present our stand on the issue because in such matters one must be forthright, it is pertinent to observe that Babangida ignited the present quarrel penultimate week on the occasion of his 70th birthday celebration when he scathingly criticised Obasanjo. Obasanjo’s administration, he alleged, lacked foresight and imagination.
According to media reports, the former military President lambasted Obasanjo for wasting the impressive oil revenue that accrued to Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. Babangida, as usual, praised himself: “If I had been lucky like those in the recent past, I would have done more than we did.
In my eight years in office, I was able to manage poverty and achieve success while somebody for eight years managed affluence and achieved failure.” He added that if he had the $16 billion which Obasanjo squandered on failed power projects he would have provided Nigeria with stable electricity and nuclear plant. Babangida gloated about the calibre of Nigerians that worked in his administration, and declared that he was satisfied to remain an “elder statesman”: “Politics? Forget it. I will sit in Minna here and people will come and seek my advice.”
Now, Obasanjo has a reputation of not letting aspersions on himself go unchallenged. Quoting selected verses from the Book of Proverbs in The Holy Bible, he responded by calling Babangida “a fool at 70”. After some negative pithy remarks about Babangida, he enumerated developmental projects completed by his administration.
Expectedly, so-called eminent Nigerians, including religious leaders, have “weighed in” on the issue, some expressing hypocritical shock about the quarrel while others have called on both men to sheathe their swords. Babangida’s factotums have joined their benefactor to insult Obasanjo; they say that the Ota farmer is a bigger fool and an ingrate.
The illusion of grandeur created by these lackeys around their master is clearly evident in the irritating claim by one Ademola Ayoade, chieftain of the comatose National Democratic Party, that without Babangida Obasanjo would never have emerged as Nigeria’s leader in 1976 and 1999. Top members of the cabals in control of critical sectors of our national life generally behave as if they are tin-gods, as if Nigeria is their personal property. That is why Ayoade and other bootlickers entertain the silly belief that a single individual can singlehandedly determine the political fortune of a fellow citizen in a country of over 150 million people.
From our discussion thus far, blame for the dispute must be placed squarely on Babangida’s feet because he deliberately started the verbal war with his former boss. But, why did he start what he cannot finish? Well, it appears Babangida intended to use his birthday celebration to ventilate pent-up anger over Obasanjo’s masterful connivance with chieftains of the Peoples’ Democratic Party to truncate his presidential ambition in 2007 and 2011. As a self-assured chameleon, supported by bands of loyal oti mkpus who have sold their synteresis for 30  pieces of silver,
so to speak, Babangida is terribly disappointed that a man he allegedly helped to become President could outwit him twice in the political chess game, thereby demystifying him and denting his image as a Maradona. Hence, instead of using the opportunity of his 70th birthday celebration to reflect on his grievous mistakes as a military president, sincerely apologise to Nigerians, and dedicate himself to selfless service as a form of penance, he decided to sermonise on Obasanjo’s failures. Come to think of it, who benefited from Babangida’s management “of poverty to achieve success”, as he claimed in his polemic against Obasanjo?
The answer is – indigenous and multi-national companies that mastered the art of using kickbacks to corner juicy contracts of all kinds, as well as spouses, siblings, friends and cronies of members of dominant military, political and business cabals. Babangida manifested serious ignorance of elementary parameters and technicalities for scientific comparative economic analysis.
For instance, he ignored the fact that although more petrodollars flowed in during Obasanjo’s administration, other critical variables such as the status of the world economy (and Nigeria’s economy in particular), exchange rate of the naira vis-à-vis other international currencies, demographic changes and inflation etc. must be taken into account when comparing Obasanjo’s economic scorecard and his own.
Moreover, the negative consequences of official corruption between 1985 and 1993, “misapplication” of the $12 million Gulf War oil windfall, costly and ultimately futile shambolic transition to civil rule, failed social programmes, and serious damages caused by annulment of the June 12 presidential election results were detrimental to the economy and constituted part of the problems successive administrations inherited from Babangida’s government after he “stepped aside” in August 1993. Babangida’s lackeys and morally-twisted “experts” who argue that the Structural Adjustment Programme was good for Nigeria’s economy should study Eskor Toyo’s in-depth analysis of the subject in Economics of Structural Adjustment (2002).
Toyo’s damning verdict is that “SAP is a set of dogmas that are superficial and blind to many things” (p.522). Of course, the telling negative effects of Babangida’s abortion of the democratisation process in 1993, one of the cruelest injustices meted out by the ruling elite to Nigerians since independence, are still with us today.
The visionless and corrupt dictatorships of  the late Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar were direct offshoots of the annulment. At any rate, Babangida’s criticisms of Obasanjo seem more plausible because of forgetfulness which the passage of time usually imposes on subsequent recollections of human activities.