Selective amnesia has become a national vice in Nigeria. Just as former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida attempted to rewrite the history of the June 12 debacle in his recent autobiography, Maryam Abacha, the widow of Nigeria’s most vicious head of state, Sani Abacha, is now striving to cast her late husband in a favourable light. She cannot succeed.
Abacha was initially part of the Babangida junta that annulled the June 12, 1993, presidential election, which was overwhelmingly won by MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party against Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention.
The annulment triggered a national crisis, eventually forcing Babangida to step down and install an Interim National Government led by Ernest Shonekan on August 26, 1993.
Curiously, while other key senior officers were retired, Babangida retained Abacha in Shonekan’s cabinet.
It took less than three months for Abacha to overthrow Shonekan on November 17, 1993, and seize power as head of state.
He later captured and detained Abiola, who had declared himself president on June 11, 1994 (the Epetedo Declaration), based on the ballot he rightfully won in 1993.
While Abacha died on June 8, 1998, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Abiola died mysteriously on July 7, 1998, in detention during Abdulsalami Abubakar’s regime.
In a wide-ranging interview timed to coincide with the anniversary of Abacha’s death, Maryam sought to absolve her husband of all accusations, painting him in a positive light.
She appeared shocked that Abacha is still vilified so many years after his passing. In truth, she and her husband deserve all the scorn Nigerians continue to pour on them.
Unlike Maryam and her co-travellers, many Nigerians are not living in denial. They remember. Many older citizens remain petrified when recalling memories of that diabolical regime.
For those who lived under Abacha’s suffocatingly oppressive and murderous rule from 1993 to 1998, time cannot erase the trauma of his brutality.
Abacha, often referred to as the ‘Dark Googled Maximum Ruler,’ was a kleptocrat, a totalitarian, and a violent despot. Because Maryam and her family were shielded, it is convenient for her to boast about her husband’s supposed achievements, such as saving money for Nigeria.
She conveniently forgets that Abacha was not the CBN, Nigeria’s official bank. In a decent society, he would have ended up in jail; in China, he would have been executed.
Nigeria is yet to recover from Abacha’s grand larceny. The Federal Government is still in the process of recovering part of the money looted during his ignominious tenure. The looting spree was macabre, despicable, and odious, indeed, bordering on insanity.
Widely regarded as one of the most corrupt dictators of the 20th century, Abacha brazenly plundered Nigeria’s treasury. His method was simple: sign off on dubious security invoices, take the cash directly from the CBN, and stash it in foreign bank accounts in Switzerland, Guernsey, Liechtenstein, the UK, the US, and other safe havens.
By conservative estimates, Abacha stole between $4 billion and $5 billion in just four years. His family members are still contesting many assets he acquired as head of state in court!
Maryam claims her husband stole nothing, yet as of 2022, a total of $3.65 billion has been recovered from the Abacha family, according to tallies by Transparency International and BudgIT.
The Olusegun Obasanjo administration sparked an international treasure hunt for the Abacha loot during his first term (1999-2003).
After him, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, who saw nothing distasteful in Abacha’s conduct, also received various sums of recovered money.
Even President Bola Tinubu’s government received $150 million of the Abacha loot from France in November 2023, 27 years after his death.
Beyond his looting, Abacha’s hands were stained with blood, the blood of innocents from Kudirat Abiola to the Ogoni Nine, Bagauda Kaltho to Olu Omotehinwa, and Alfred Rewane to Shehu Yar’Adua. Obasanjo and many journalists were jailed. He wrecked many businesses. Countless others fled; others died prematurely.
He ruled with fear. During his visit to Ibadan, soldiers mowed down women traders at the new Gbagi Market. Soldiers shot protesters on Ikorodu Road in Lagos on many occasions.
His primary constituency, the military, suffered as many officers and men as possible were arrested, tortured, tried, and sentenced to death for coup plotting.
The officers’ messes became empty, as innocent conversations could be mistaken for coup plotting
Some of his ministers, including Alex Ibru, suffered assassination attempts. Another one, Olu Onagoruwa, lost his son to bullets from the dictator’s goons. Abraham Adesanya, the then Yoruba leader, survived a gory assassination attempt. Bombs detonated at several locations.
He shut down media houses, including this newspaper. He used the DMI to devastate innocent citizens, locking them in dungeons in Apapa, Lagos, and elsewhere.
This repression spurred the formation of the National Democratic Coalition, which bravely resisted the regime both within and outside Nigeria. Many fled into exile.
Credit is due to Wole Soyinka, Ndubuisi Kanu, Gani Fawehinmi, Tinubu, Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele, Frank Kokori, Kayode Fayemi, and others who confronted Abacha courageously.
Brazenly, he ousted the jurisdiction of state high courts, authoring a decree that ceded their authority to the Federal High Courts, further bastardising Nigeria’s federalism.
The unitarist 1999 Constitution bears his imprint with its centrist provisions. Under Abacha, a band of middle-level military officers, especially Hamza al-Mustapha, became irreverently bold. Only in Nigeria would al-Mustapha even contemplate running for president after all that happened under his boss.
Abacha was obsessed with power. From a military dictator, he aspired to become a civilian president. He decreed five political parties, described by the late Bola Ige as the “five fingers of a leprous hand”, to further his insidious agenda, which ultimately died with him.
Unfortunately, Nigeria still lacks a national consensus against corruption; the country is mired in a cesspool of moral collapse. Consequently, Abacha remains a revered figure in the North. Many federal and state monuments, including roads and the Kano Stadium, still bear his name.
This is reprehensible. His memory should be wiped away entirely. Tinubu should rename all federal assets named after Abacha in honour of the heroes and heroines of the June 12 struggle. State governments should follow suit. Indeed, some of Abacha’s allies remain in government; Tinubu should expel them all.
His co-conspirators point to the Petroleum Trust Fund (headed by Buhari), the Failed Banks Tribunal, and the six states he created in October 1996 as evidence of his good intentions. All this is trifling compared to his brutality and larceny.
As it recovers more stolen money, the Federal Government should prosecute everyone linked to the massive heist that crippled Nigeria financially and made it an odious spectacle around the world.
