Nigeria’s former military leader, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), prepared a giant bowl of spaghetti and invited the rich and powerful all over Nigeria to witness him eat.
The food was prepared first for the rich, and then disseminated on social media for common consumption.
It preparation dated back to years of intricate scheming with ingredients that still stank after three decades.
This giant bowl of spaghetti is a tangled, chaotic masterpiece of intertwined noodles, making it nearly impossible to separate one strand from another without an elaborate struggle.
Each noodle clings to its neighbors, twisting and looping in unpredictable ways, forming a web of starch that defies easy organisation.
The more you attempt to pull one free, the more the others tighten their grip, creating an intricate puzzle where every movement dislocates the entire mass.
The bowl attempts to explain how Babangida’s inner devil was innocent in matters that transformed Nigeria into a transformed mass of corruption, misadventure, mismanagement, poverty, and underdevelopment that it has become, despite unquantifiable human and natural endowments.
The “Evil Genius” gathered the cream of society, including the richest by far, as well as the President of Nigeria, former president of Ghana, captains of industry, and politicians still in style, to help him repackage a history that would never weigh in his favour.
After exactly 31 and a half years since his inglorious exit, Babangida apparently thought enough time had passed to rebrand.
So, he tried.
As Babangida attempted to untangle the mess in an effort to put a flashy wrap around it, his difficulty only increased—strands slipped through fingers, sauce flicked onto the table, and attempts to divide the dish evenly became an exercise in frustration, with clumps resisting separation and some portions ending up with too much sauce while others were left nearly dry.
The bowl attempts to explain how Babangida’s inner devil was innocent in matters that transformed Nigeria into a transformed mass of corruption, misadventure, mismanagement, poverty, and underdevelopment that it has become, despite unquantifiable human and natural endowments
The sheer volume of spaghetti in a giant bowl also means that no amount of careful handling would prevent the noodles from spilling over the sides, sauce splattering, turning the meal into a chaotic disaster.
While Nigerians saw through the embarrassment, Babangida and his guests didn’t appear to realize they had danced naked into the public square.
They may have enjoyed themselves thoroughly in Abuja, but they only ended up demonstrating to the world that Nigeria is a rich nation with mostly poor people where rulers had lost touch with the ruled.
The gathering in Abuja to launch the book, “A Journey in Service,” with Babangida listed as the author, was a misadventure, an embarrassing spectacle, and a reinforcement of the belief that Nigeria’s problem is not a lack of resources but a gang-up of the privileged against the common man.
At that book launch, the former military dictator raked almost ₦17 billion from his beneficiaries while reeling out lies about his management of Nigeria, forgetting that before him was a nation with millions of living witnesses to his atrocities.
It is not surprising that since that debacle in Abuja, Nigerians have been writing their own stories about what Nigeria endured under Ibrahim Babangida’s presidency.
The public space is now saturated with recollections that directly contradict Babangida’s revisionist account.
While IBB could still prove that he has the attention of the high and mighty across Nigeria’s political spectrum, his attempt at a total remake has triggered ripples among Nigerians who are still hurt by his misrule.
His assumption that a cleanup was possible was a miscalculation.
Instead of convincing people about his “sincerity,” IBB has only reopened old wounds, and a backlash has become his reward.
It makes perfect sense that a deceptive person like Babangida would wait this long to write a biography. Half of Nigeria’s population consists of those under 35 years old. Most Nigerians were either not born during Babangida’s military dictatorship or were children.
After hiding his story for decades, he has decided to use the grace of long life for his personal benefit.
The gathering in Abuja to launch the book, “A Journey in Service,” with Babangida listed as the author, was a misadventure, an embarrassing spectacle, and a reinforcement of the belief that Nigeria’s problem is not a lack of resources but a gang-up of the privileged against the common man
But Babangida can only try; he has failed.
The former military dictator used his book to paint a picture that looks different from reality. His book is like a cock being passed for a peacock.
Right from the second page of the biography, Babangida continued the lie he has always told Nigerians.
He wrote: “However, his (Babangida’s) pledge to return Nigeria to a civilian government was not realized following the controversial annulment of the presidential elections, which Moshood Abiola of the SDP appeared to have won.”
There was no controversy about the result of the election. Nigerians were resolute and determined, and they accepted the result.
The controversy had to do with Babangida’s own deception through the annulment of the results. But the big lie in that statement was the assertion that Abiola only “appeared” to have won. This book later disproved its own opening.
I haven’t fully read Babangida’s spaghetti, and I can’t be too sure I will read it page by page as some other writers have done, but I have checked some chapters and read media reports and articles.
As soon as the book was released, it was instantly distributed freely on social media as a portable document. My impulsive reaction was to draw attention to copyright infringement.
But I quickly caught myself, realizing IBB is known for his tricks.
I decided it was possible that IBB’s men may have been spreading the spaghetti because they wanted most Nigerians to consume the lie.
IBB didn’t need the money.
The book is an insult to right-thinking Nigerians because it assumes we remain gullible, and that if he could gather some big and sweet-talking politicians to speak favorably about him, we would all fall in line.
The book is littered with falsehoods, excuses, and deflections, depicting IBB as a weak general who always finds faults in everyone but himself.
The divergence for which he was nicknamed “Maradona” will follow him to the grave.
The saying, “once a liar, always a liar” applies perfectly to the “Evil Genius.”
The chapter of the book that most captured my attention was Chapter 12, because of its colossal representation of who Babangida is.
The chapter dealt with the June 12 election—a watershed and culmination of all Babangida’s schemes that led to his hurried departure from power.
Pathetically, Babangida blamed everyone but himself for the outcome for which he was accountable.
For those who may have been too young to know, a few details about the June 12, 1993, presidential election and why it remains a pivotal event in Nigeria’s political life may be helpful.
June 12, as it was known, was widely regarded as the nation’s freest and fairest election.
The book is an insult to right-thinking Nigerians because it assumes we remain gullible, and that if he could gather some big and sweet-talking politicians to speak favorably about him, we would all fall in line
Businessman Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (M.K.O.) Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was poised to win against Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC), even securing a majority in Tofa’s home state of Kano.
The election was significant not only for its transparency but also because it demonstrated a shift from ethnic and religious voting patterns, which had been prevalent since Nigeria’s independence.
It was the first time Nigerians united across divides to support a candidate they believed could lead the nation effectively.
That consequential moment, after many twists and turns which the late lawyer, Alao Aka-Bashorun figured out as the “hidden agenda,” was destroyed by the election’s annulment by then-military ruler Babangida, who plunged Nigeria into political turmoil.
The annulment led to widespread protests, civil unrest, newspaper closures, and international condemnation, marking a critical juncture in Nigeria’s struggle for democracy.
Nigerians were shot on the streets like animals for protesting, as many fled the country, including President Bola Tinubu.
The ensuing crisis set the stage for the eventual end of military rule.
In recognition of its importance, June 12 was later designated as Democracy Day in Nigeria, symbolising the enduring quest for democratic principles and honoring those who fought for the nation’s democratic future.
This is why the chapter is so important for examining the trash that Babangida put forth as his biography.
In the book, he gave conflicting excuses for his failure.
First, he blamed a shadowy organisation, the Association for Better Nigeria, led by the late billionaire Arthur Nzeribe, for attempting to derail the election.
I was a news editor at a major newspaper at the time.
Every journalist in Nigeria knew the ABN was IBB’s own creation to truncate the transition to civil rule program.
Secondly, he blamed the United States, which had insisted the election must proceed, for forcing him to go ahead against the advice of his generals.
“Although I remained committed to the June 12 elections, the US intervention was problematic. It was clear that within the topmost hierarchy (who were also furious at the threats from the US) were persons who were opposed to the elections.”
Now, examine these contradictory statements to appreciate how much of a liar Babangida is.
In his book, he conjured this spaghetti: “On Saturday, June 12, 1993, the Presidential elections took place as planned. To my surprise, the polls were not just peaceful but very peaceful indeed! Voting took place in all the 110,000 polling stations in the country, and in keeping with the Modified Open Ballot System (MOBS) as stipulated in Decree 13, counting took place flawlessly in the open, followed almost simultaneously with an open collation that allowed for final results to be attained quickly.”
But in his nationwide speech of June 1993, the story was different.
Babangida stated: “It is true that the presidential election was generally seen to be free, fair and peaceful. However, there was in fact a huge array of electoral malpractices virtually in all the states of the federation before the actual voting began. There were authenticated reports of electoral malpractices against party agents, officials of the National Electoral Commission, and also some members of the electorate.
If all of these were clear violations of the electoral law, there were proofs of manipulations through offer and acceptance of money and other forms of inducement against officials of the National Electoral Commission and members of the electorate. There were also evidence of conflict in the process of authentication and clearance of credentials of the presidential candidates.”
You see the plot of the habitual liar?
He actually told the nation that the election was rigged, while writing 31 years later it was free and fair. When the American statesman wrote, “what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,” he had Babangida in mind.
Ultimately, he blamed the failure on the dead—his trusted assistant, the brutal General Sani Abacha.
IBB wrote on page 275 of his spaghetti: “I would later find out that the ‘forces’ led by General Sani Abacha annulled the elections. There and then, I knew I was caught between ‘the devil and the deep blue sea’!”
Babangida added spice to the spaghetti: “Without question, one of my biggest headaches at this time was Sani Abacha. I knew that Abacha was ambivalent about a return to civil rule.”
At this point of reading, I could no longer understand why Babangida annulled the election. He had told so many lies that the truth became unclear.
He even dared blame the victim of his capricious scheming, Abiola for June 12.
“Unfortunately, Abiola turned his back on any form of rapprochement with me and embraced the gimmicks of deceitful ‘friends’ who hid their real intentions from him. I read somewhere, I believe, in one of Abiola’s newspapers that Abiola thought that the moment these ‘friends’ overthrew me, the elections would be de-annulled and that he would be installed as President by his ‘coup plotting friends’.”
It is too late to ask Babangida to face the truth and apologise to Nigerians.
He is an irredeemable package of deception.
He may have made ₦17 billion from telling lies, but no amount of money can clean up his name.
Those who sat in that room at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja to share Babangida’s lies at the public presentation of the biography represent the worst of Nigeria.
They would embrace any lies to remain relevant.
They are unprincipled and despicable.
Every form of democratic credential that any of them may have had was torn to shreds the moment they accepted the invitation and decided to attend.
For Babangida had succeeded in gathering all of his friends into a room to show us those who are just like him, all in their true colours.
