By Muhammed O. Bhadmus, PhD
Introduction
My recollection of general IBB dates back to my world of fantasy and time of romantic fascination, I was still largely uncooked, and laid back, my politics and ideology were all over the place. I was a fan of his and bewitched by his headshot adorned, in the famous black beret with a toothy smile starring out at you from the front page of the Guardian newspaper, Newswatch and Tell magazines. Literally, I was his Desdemona and he was my Othello. I have no wife and no children; the stakes were either not high or not even there at all. But things have changed now. Iago is not to blame; I can now clearly see my own death in the hand of my Othello; Nigeria: the Romantic tragedy.
The Unofficial Epithet of a Journey in Service
I am not sure of my source. Rumour has it that the cream of Nigeria journalists was celebrating the birthday of one of their colleagues somewhere in Lagos and the president (IBB) was passing by. Uninvited, he joined the party and shared jokes with them. At departure, he pulled off his wristwatch and handed it over to the celebrant whispering, do not undersell it if you are not going to use it, happy birthday. That is IBB for you; rumours, anecdote, selling a dummy, doing a nut-meg, bearing a Greek gift, plotting a coup, casing a joint for robbery and telling a fibe. I do not seriously mean the last one, it is only a slip of the tongue. I’m afraid of dying a second time. This, for me, is a summary of A Journey in Service and my review of it, you do not have to go on reading if I’m boring you as you will only miss my lustration with the autobiography. Enough of merry-making and rumour-mongering, let us proceed with the book review.
A Journey in Service and IBB do not need any other praise singer as nobody can do it better than Yakubu, I do not mean to be rude, but Yakubu seems more poetic, however, it is used affectionately for the elder statesman. Rub my back and I rub yours, (see the Foreword to the book). The foreword is close to hero-worshipping IBB. But we are not here to praise Caesar, we are here to bury him to continue our theme of Shakespeare. Let us now do an actual review in one or two pages so that we do not sell you another dummy or do a shimmy.
A Journey in Service by Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is a 2025 publication by Book Craft Ibadan. It is classified as an autobiography and it has 13 chapters and 398 pages. It includes a foreword by General Yakubu Gowan, an appendix and an index, making it a fairly standard book. I started its reading on a Friday afternoon, read partly through the night and completed it before noon on the following Saturday. For me, it is a classic example of why people have stopped reading and another nail in the coffin of the reading culture. There is no relationship between the billions rumoured to have been raised at its launching and what I got for my sweat for reading it. In fairness, the attraction was Babangida and not the title and or the brief given on him in the preliminary pages; it is a second classic example of how not to present a book or market it. The concept of sidestepping the truth is used in the title of this piece as an alternative to veracity but not in any way of saying outrightly that the autobiographer is a liar; because after all what is the truth?
Sidestepping 1, sidestepping 2 and sidestepping 3 is a football term popularized by Diego Maradona as he evades the English defenders to rewrite the Falkland War history on the football pitch at a World Cup. This connection would not be lost on those who know why the autobiographer is called Maradona. I am not aware of any other writing by Babangida but I have read a number of his interviews dating back to the early days of the Guardian newspaper, Newswatch and Tell magazines. I found him not only pleasant, and fascinating but equally fluid, intelligible and breathless. (See the appended interview at the end of the book on how the autobiographer is an interviewer’s dream). I was therefore expecting a page-turner in A Journey in Service.
Let us see the book as containing 3 separate texts. The appended interview is a sample of its brilliance but the appended speech for the United Nations (another text in the book) which is equally fairly good could have been written by any of the speech writers of those days; take your pick, if you have read the Nigerian writers and scholars of those days, it is either that the elder statesman had little or no writing skills, especially in relation to his brilliance at speaking, we are not talking about the mechanics of written English here, but the spellbinding natural gift of an essayist. It is as if the main text of 13 chapters was ghost-written for him by a poor writer and narrator. The book, is to me, a biography rather than an autobiography. It is only in its not shedding any new light on key issues that the book is a typical IBB. While I am in no way saying that he is at liberty to shed light on what I consider to be key issues in his well-spent life and neither am I competent to tell him or the reading public what the key issues in his life are, but autobiography is part of what we call nonfiction prose in my field of study, which suggests that the book is not a mere novel, but an attempt by this autobiographer at self-narration. It was therefore insult upon injury for me to go through 398 pages of drudgery at reading and being not wiser at the following: What is Babangida’s true ethnicity? Is the office of the First Lady justifiable? Who killed Dele Giwa? Why was the election annulled? What was the significance of the IMF loan he took? Why did he join OIC? Why did we need a separate dedicated account under his regime? What is the justification for a man who seized power by coup-de-tat to kill alleged coup plotters under his regime? Why is he not taking responsibility for the annulment of the June 12 election? What is his true relationship with the late General Sani Abacha? The list of issues he side-stepped is endless when you compare this book to the waves and momentum of his time in the saddle of power in Nigeria. Let us go back to pecking at some of the grounds he supposedly navigated without outrightly lying to us.
According to him in the book, his grandfather was a migrant and his father equally travelled from Bida to the neighbouring towns but the wives of these two people were Gwari. He even reflected on one of them being light-skinned. The father worked as a translator for the colonial officer under some clerks but he equally said he was a messenger and died while IBB was only 14 years old. Switch the narrative back to the grandfather who was supposedly an Islamic cleric fascinated with the text entitled “Badamasi”, which led him to give the name to IBB’s father. Since it is so easy for IBB to clearly state the ethnicity of his grandfather and father’s wives, why is he dribbling us with the travels of their husbands, gatana gatana, I smell a rat. It is either that IBB’s father was an interpreter, (I wonder from what language to what language and even his level of education which was not given), how he could have been an interpreter working with clerks and still a messenger may not be impossible. But I rather think that an interpreter-father is rather attractive to me than a messenger- father may God forgive my profligacy, as most autobiographers hardly concede that they were wetting beds early in life, the preference is always to be the brain of the class or the life of the party. Ordinarily, this is not an issue but the autobiographer made it an issue later in the chapter where he reported that he was categorically asked whether he is Yoruba by ethnic extraction because the name Badamasi is more of a Yoruba name according to the questioner. Me ya kawo maganar rami tunda akwai gada. You need to excuse my mischief or not being a native Hausa speaker. Note this was about when he was already a commissioned army officer and was only known as IB (Ibrahim Badamasi), not Babangida. Rumours were rife about this during his government. He supposedly cleared the air on this rumour by categorically refuting this and justifying his introduction of Babangida, his father’s second name. Is this suggesting that he is an ethnic Hausa or a cultural Hausa by the third name? IBB would have saved us a lot of energy by simply saying this just as he clearly stated the ethnicity of his grandfather and father’s wives. I am a student of narrative and text mechanics. Let us go back to the early chapters.
Incidentally, I share the same surname with IBB. Let me confess that I have no idea of its meaning or source growing up. It was during my PhD research years that I saw on the news bar on the television in a CNN broadcast on the Israeli and Palestine conflict, a man using what I thought was an Anglicized spelling of a name like mine (Bhadmus). I later mentioned this to a prominent Nigerian Arabist with whom we share the name who was not pleased with the Israeli-Palestine connection that I gave. He countered that the name is originally ascribed to a famous Qur’anic reciter or his place of birth; Badamasiyun. This I must confess I have not checked. Excuse my windy foregrounding, the autobiographer in sidestepping or telling his truth gives his own version of the name Badamasi, preparing the ground for his refusal of its Yoruba association in the pretext of a book of the same name which his grandfather loved so much to a point of giving its name to IBB’s father. I do not know how much of Yoruba IBB speaks especially since he categorically said that he is not Yoruba, but the Yoruba were a major ethnic group in his Minna of growing up. Note that in talking about his surviving sister who was born after a set of twins and named Gambo, which he curiously explained as meaning Idowu among the Yoruba which he is not, why this fixation with Yoruba practices without corresponding explanation? Is this not an attempted own goal?Anyway, we eventually got one that even the VAR could not overturn. IBB in the concluding chapter returned to Minna after years of glorious service to the loving arm of his paternal people. It is not my business if you want to teach the General the difference between maternal and paternal. It is however easier for me if he had said he returned to his maternal people as I do not see anything wrong in that, damn the rumour mills. But you know nothing is easy with IBB. I am not saying he is sidestepping the truth; he is only doing self-narration. It is only fair to let a man tell his own story rather than try and tell it for him. Aunty Idowu is in no way a bad name for IBB’s sister in the Minna days of his growing up, you know the Yoruba are good at rumor-mongering. On a lighter note, Prof IBK once told me he loves rumor-mongering, I wonder whether he still does or is he equally Yoruba. This is a little exercise in reading the text(s) against the text(s). His narrative did not equally improve our knowledge of the death of Dele Giwa, the significance of the IMF loan he took, his relationship with General Sani Abacha especially on the annulment of the June 12 election and the botched transition to civilian rule which has generated a number of responses following the launching of the book. In my recollection, it was IBB as the president of Nigeria who annulled the June 12 election putting in place the interim government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan. His claim of being far away in Sokoto and somebody using an ordinary piece of paper to make an official announcement of this gravity which he later upheld publicly is only conducting a campaign after an election have been lost. I doubt if anybody is buying this, even Constable Amusa, as a God-fearing Muslim in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman refused to talk evil about the dead when his superior officer Pilkins threatened him with imprisonment. I am not holding forte for late General Sani Abacha and who am I to remind IBB of his religious obligations. IBB’s saying that MKO Abiola won the June 12 elections is not only a second own goal but deserving of double jeopardy; I think the referee for this football game (sidestepping the truth) should use his red card. IBB held the ball with his two hands; he included the result of the election in question in this publication. I honestly do not see the need for this; this is plain mischief. You do not need to be a trained reader even if you miss where he categorically used the specific name of another General to guess whom he was blaming. Go back to his claim of being like a bystander during the Nzeogwu Kaduna coup, his narrative on his participation in the Civil War, the Dimka coup, the Orkar coup and the Vatsa coup. It is not difficult to guess the truth about the tension between him and General Abacha one may not say he was afraid of him but definitely he was wary of him, especially where he stated that Abacha is somebody you don’t really know as he says little. Exploring this relationship would have been a great narrative but the autobiographer as usual side-steps these or shall we say he side-steps Abacha. Let us turn to the coup he survived as president as we come to the close of this book review by going back to the foreword generously given by General Yakubu Gowan.
Conclusion
The foreword reflects its writer as not completely honest, laid-back and generous but sounds more like what is called quid pro quo in Latin. Gowan was implicated in the Dimka coup and was even stripped of his rank and barely avoided paying the ultimate prize by being out of the country at the time of the coup. His relationship with Dimka and Dimka’s confession and finger-pointing were documented in this book. But IBB in the saddle of power freed Gowan of all blame and returned his full ranks and honours. It is therefore not difficult to see the gaps in the foreword written by Gowon. Professor Bala Usman or General Abacha would have been my own choice for the foreword in finding a central defender and/or a holding midfielder to stop this extra-terrestrial dribbler. I would leave the historians to take him up or apart on his take on the Nupe Kingdom, the Kontagora Kingdom and the other ethnic groups and towns revisited and reconstituted in this book. In the name of Lucifer, Maradona, ESHU as the Evil Genius we hereby lower the casket of a journey in service. Can we please leave the dead to rest or let the sleeping dog be?
*Bhadmus, a professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance, Bayero University Kano presented this review on February 28, 2025 at the Reading Circle, Kano
