Babangida & Other Troublesome Corpses

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Over the weekend, I read a story in the Daily Sun newspaper about how a funeral undertaker, Prince Daniel Menkiti Okosi, deals with troublesome corpses. It was a fascinating read.

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Prince Okosi, with about thirty years in the industry, has seen it all. He told a story of how the corpse of a ‘powerful’ woman grounded his ambulance. This woman, estranged from her husband, was killed by okada while crossing the road to buy ice blocks. Members of the woman’s family were divided on where she should be buried because she was living at her father’s house when she died. The decision by some family members to bury her at her husband’s house so infuriated the dead woman that she prevented the engine of the ambulance from starting after she was loaded into it. Finally, young men pushed the ambulance and it started. Prince Okosi noticed that the ambulance was making a funny noise. The engine was not picking up. Once again, the engine stopped. When pushed, the ambulance started again only to stop once more. Then, two Umuokpu women spoke to the corpse. The women explained to the corpse that it was the family’s decision to bury her at her husband’s house and that she should obey the decision. Thereafter, the ambulance started and drove smoothly for the rest of the journey.

People were surprised when the ambulance pulled into the husband’s house. They did not believe any ambulance could bring the woman into the house because of her ‘supernatural powers’. Relatives of the husband who were impressed by the feat of the driver gave him money for hot drinks.

“The job of an undertaker,” Prince Okosi said, “Is about dealing with spirits.” At the end of each day, he congratulates himself with some shorts of hot drinks. While some in his line of business demand fowls, tubers of yam or soft drinks, Prince Okosi demands hot drinks. You can understand why, can’t you?

Prince Okosi has a simple way of dealing with troublesome corpses. He said that when corpses are noisy and restless, he would reverse the position of the corpse in his ambulance. Instead of placing the head directly behind the driver’s seat, he would simply turn the legs to the direction of the seat. The head is positioned near the trunk. It makes the corpse to remain silent and frees the vehicle.

After reading Prince Okosi’s tale of troublesome corpses, I read an interview Ibrahim Babangida granted to the Nigerian Tribune newspaper. The interview was not Babangida’s most revealing in terms of substance. The interviewer was aggressive, quite unlike a typical Nigerian journalist. In fact, it was Saharareporters style. At one point, the interviewer asked Babangida pointblank if he was a drug baron. The question did not make Babangida to break down or boil over. Instead it made him more sarcastic. Reading behind the lines, one realizes that the interview exposed Babangida’s emotions like never before.

Because Babangida is sensitive about being called names, I will try not to do so in this review. I do not want to see another of our garagara general cry. One crying general is enough humiliation for our generation.

It is very important to deconstruct the logic of Babangida as manifested in that interview because of his capacity to mesmerize frail minds among us. Despite the dance of the enchanted he performed, it is clear that Babangida’s tragedy is that he does not know how much he needs to know before he knows how little he knows. He confuses the ridiculous with the brilliant. When he is cornered, he slips away. He confuses slickness with virtuosity. What he does not see is that, like a dazed infidel, he is crawling deeper into the mud.

His scorn of the Nigerian is subtly expressed in his mischievous laughter. Nature denied him any faculty for humility but it also bestowed on him a sense of immense vulgarism.

Babangida’s sense of history is so screwed up that he is a danger to himself. In his mind, he thinks that history will be kind to him. He believes that somewhere in the future he will be vindicated. In his delusion one can see that the penalty for failure is to be obsessed with the sanctification of history. Let it be clear to Babangida that his place is secured amongst the ignoble lot who ruined the best chance of Nigeria in the 20th century.

On going through the interview, there is this sense that Babangida takes interest in reading about himself. He is fully aware of how the media portrays him. He seems to laugh off his depiction in the first draft of history. His belief is that the second and third drafts would be better. But the plot is out of his hands. His effort to change the narrative spoils his mediocrity the more.

Like all egomaniacs before him, Babangida would not accept any responsibility for his failures. It was always the fault of some other people. In fact, he is sure that it is Nigeria’s loss that his genius is underutilized. He told his lies with careless abandon and his truth with malicious purpose.

“When you are too much for people,” Babangida said, “and they cannot do anything to you, it is often easy for them to resort to name-calling.”

I agree with him on that. Babangida is too much – he is too much shit. It is the kind of cheap shit that stops smelling immediately it is covered with sand.

Oops! It looks like I’m calling him names already. My bad!

Babangida thinks he is the most vilified of Nigerian leaders. And it follows that he is the most misunderstood- meaning that he is great. His logic is nauseating. It makes me want to puke. Babangida thinks he has Abraham Lincoln’s problem. He believes that 1000 years from now, history will give him an exalted chair. He has the audacity to call himself a victim of June 12. His reason? Because he had to leave.

This spineless wonder considers it a wrong choice of words when he was told that he killed his childhood friend, Mamman Vatsa. As far as he is concerned, Vatsa was found guilty of plotting against the state and the punishment was death. It would have been admirable if this man’s footsteps on the Nigerian space were not that of an unprincipled rascal simply interested in saving his soft skin. He saved his head and let the state go to hell.

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Babangida wants the weak minded among us to believe that because he exchanged notes with Dele Giwa, notes he is willing to make public, it is not possible that he killed the journalist. His strategy is to get readers thinking of the content of the notes and forget that he did not answer the question asked.

“Are you a drug baron?” the Tribune asked. After a dose of laughter, Babangida answered. “What do you expect me to tell you? I don't even look like one (laughter), because if I was or am, I wouldn't be looking this good at my age.”

Who told him he looks good? What an over-pampered adolescence! Yeah! I said it. I called him names. I invoked my right to throw political insult at him. I bet you, Olusegun Obasanjo would have preferred to be called names than to be punched by a mad man.

Babangida thinks that Abiola will embrace him if they meet now. Well, it won’t be long before he finds that out. Unfortunately, he won’t have the chance to add that to his memoirs. That, and many others like that, would be mountains in front of Babangida that he will soon see that he cannot go through.

Babangida’s illusion is grand. “During my time, there were no power cuts,” he said. “If we wanted to cut power, they gave notice and such never exceeded 24 hours. We now hear of the level of theft. People now steal billions...Who institutionalised corruption? Is it me, with N8 billion in a year or somebody with N1.34 trillion in a year?”

Imagine! It is either that Babangida is suffering from an early onset of Alzheimer or that he ruled a different country than the one I grew up in. NEPA never gave notice before it cut power in my neck of the wood.

Let me burst Babangida’s bubble. The N8 billion of the 80s is equivalent to the N1 trillion of today. And let him know, there wasn’t Nigeria 100 years ago and there won’t be Nigeria 100 years from now. And this idea of being satisfied ‘that we are still together as a country’ is old, weak, and tired. It is not an achievement. What use is a country that is together when the people in it are almost dead?

When asked about antics attributed to him, Babangida rattled off that Nigerians have a fertile imagination. But when he was asked why he bombed Nigerians on Independence Day, he said that Nigerians lack imagination.

Which one is it, Babangida?

I will recommend to Babangida to spend his remaining years thinking about how his great grandchildren will alter history in his favor. While at it, he should take another wife, too. He should not do so to mock those who think he is so bad that he couldn’t even get himself a wife. He should do it to mystify those who think he is gay. If after marrying a new wife, he cannot find Viagra, I can get him some for free.

Asked how he reconciles his promise to support an Igbo candidate for president in 2015 with his replacement of Ebitu Ukiwe with Augustu Aikhomu, Babangida said, “You and I were in this country where somebody said that, in any country where a civil war was fought, the defeated persons should remain defeated for at least 100 years.”

When pressed to reveal who said so, Babangida will not. Like a chicken hearted manipulator that he is, Babangida crawled back into his shell.

Glorified sissy!

Through out the interview, Babangida was in his flamboyant element. He said that he came before his time. In his inflated sense of importance, he believes that generations coming behind would look at his role in Nigeria and elevate him to the pinnacle of Nigerian leaders- high above the gutters where he currently is.

Let me now step it down. Let me target my aim above the belt. The mildest way of summing up this latest Babangida’s interview is this: Question after question, Babangida leaves me with no doubt that he is the first fool in history who admires a bigger fool – himself.

Babangida is a troublesome corpse. He is restless, noisy and stalling the movement of our ambulance. Talking to him is of no use. Calling him names is shining his spacious ego. It is time to borrow the undertaker’s strategy of dealing with troublesome corpses. Let us position his head near the trunk.

Only then shall we sip our hot drinks in peace.