Major Buba Marwa was at the time rewarded with the rank of Lt. Col. and posted to the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, USA, as the new Military Attaché. His rise in the Army was extremely rapid and as Col. returned home to be Governor of Lagos State. Armed robbers welcomed him to his new office with the kind of daredevilry never before experienced in Nigeria. Violence begets violence they say. The armed robbers raided from Mile two to Ikeja, even as he was passing by. Marwa panicked, so Babangida pumped unusual resources into Marwa’s coffers to ensure his success, which is the genesis of his tramping around as an achiever today. His private life does not suggest that he suffered in fool’s paradise.
Marwa, Ogbeha, and Gwazo, have since denied their alleged involvement in Dele Giwa’s murder. Marwa, who now owns an airline and, therefore, knows that it takes less than eight hours to fly across the Atlantic to Nigeria, argued that he was studying in the USA at the time. The implication of this, of course, was that it was impossible to take a few days off his studies.
Marwa, who rose to fame through IBB’s benevolence, is considered in military circles as one of the IBB boys, made up principally of the trusted cronies of the retired dictator. Accused of laundering money for IBB, Marwa again relied on the puerile argument that he was the Borno state governor in 1990, as if state governors are too busy governing diligently to travel out of Nigeria for a day or two, or even a week, on private businesses.
In December, 2005, when Marwa was detained for a couple of weeks by the EFCC, for laundering money for Abacha, he allegedly admitted that he had no choice in the matter as a military officer. He was only doing his duty. Of course, doing illegal duties loyally often goes with silencing, mouth-watering pecks, if nothing else.
In the area of managing the national economy, Babangida bestowed his adroitness and moral degeneracy. His economy was dominated by male-wives, particularly in the banking and oil sectors. Women often brag about the efficacy of ‘bottom’ power. Feminine men sometimes flaunt it too as their passport to economic liberation. Between them and the suddenly very lucrative 419 business of the time, industry was complete. IBB’s chiefs, allegedly colluded with 419 criminals to create the over-night semi-illiterate money-bags without class or shame, (including the 150 members of the National Assembly, that in 2005 sent IBB a birthday card), and who together now form the bulk of his supporters and campaigners, to return him to power.
Babangida (sapped) or totally wiped the middle class out of existence with the destruction of the naira, which he did by fiat in 1985, when he down graded the naira exchange rate from about N2 to N18 to the dollar. By the time he was forced out of office in 1993, the naira was exchanging at N60 to the dollar. Society was now reduced to two social classes of either the very poor or the rich rogues.
Babangida first concentrated on pulverizing his military base by tinkering with the 1985 Decree 17, to give himself sole authority to fire his military chiefs, including the chief of general staff; chairman, joint chiefs of staff; service chiefs, and the inspector general of police. General Domkat Bali said at the time: “Babangida must have known what he was aiming at if you now take those powers of the President as civilian, and you now put them on any army officer who then sits with other army officers, in the name of Supreme Military Council, SMC, who are useless to him, whom he can change tomorrow, that means that name is not Supreme at all.”
Bali was provoked to leave the government when he was demoted from the position of Minister of Defence to that of Internal Affairs. Ukiwe, a senior naval officer, who was IBB’s deputy, was forced to retire even before Bali did, for demonstrating patriotic zeal in defense of team spirit, over our IOC membership saga.
Gideon Orkar’s failed coup of April 22, 1990, provided Babangida with the opportunity to further purge the military. With total control over the military, IBB was ready to pursue his President-for- life agenda, (starting) by dismissing his S. J. Cookie’s Political Bureau programme for the return to civil rule by 1990.
For over eight years, Babangida kept shifting his handing over date and juggling his transition programme by arbitrarily banning and unbanning politicians, particularly the known opponents of military rule. He spent N40 billion on his endless transition programme, and bribed all and sundry, including the NLC with N50 million, NUJ with N20 million, PMAN with N30 million, and so on, to try to silence them. He attempted to compromise some vocal critics by settling them, and those he could not recruit, he sacked where possible, or detained, or killed, or hounded into exile.
Less than two years into his rule in 1987, IBB announced that he was planning to bequeath a lasting legacy of civil rule, through a gradual learning political process. Four years into his regime in 1989, he lifted for the first time his ban on partisan politics, and set up two political parastatals. One was called the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and the other was the National Republican Convention (NRC).
The handing over date to civilian government was postponed once again from late 1990 to the 1st of October 1992. He allowed elections to be held into the local governments in 1990, and in 1991, Babangida instigated intra party squabbles to find excuse to ban 12 of the candidates participating in the governorship elections. Candidates replacing the disqualified ones had barely one week to campaign.
Elections into the State Assemblies miraculously held without too much acrimony, followed shortly afterwards by elections into the National Assembly. In all the elections, known individuals strongly against Babangida or the military in power were sidelined, banned, or hounded into exile, prominent among whom were Ibrahim Tahir of the NPN, Sam Mbakwe, Chris Okolie, Wahab Dosumu, Ebenezer Babatope, etc.
Allegation of massive rigging was invoked on 17 November, 1992, to ban Adamu Ciroma and Shehu Musa Yar Adua, who had emerged from party primaries as presidential candidates for the NRC and the SDP respectively, and 21 other presidential aspirants, (including Chief Arthur Nzeribe, Chief Olu Falae, Alhaji Lateef Jakande and Alhaji Umar Shinkafi), from participating in the scheduled August 1992 presidential election, and all other future elections. The trick was that Babangida was gradually narrowing the field of potential presidential materials to himself. Remember that Babangida had promised Yar Adua the Presidency when Yar Adua helped to actualize the 1985 coup that brought Babangida to power. The ban did not go down well with the political elite in general, and particularly with Yar Adua who had assumed he would take over leadership from Babangida.
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