NEWSPAPERS squirmed last Monday with the startling story of President Muhammadu Buhari’s post mortem on the 1985 coup that toppled his military regime. He took office himself through a coup d’etat in December 1983, whether the motives were pure or not, and was toppled by another coup led by Ibrahim Babangida, an army major-general at the time. There were reports that Gen. Babangida moved against the then Gen. Buhari because of the latter’s inflexibility, autocratic bearing and refusal to carry his colleagues along. There were indeed many accounts of the coup.
To lay the ghost to rest, President Buhari, in an interview conducted some months ago but only now published by The Interview magazine, gave his own reading of the coup. His explanation attempted to rebut Gen. Babangida’s insistence that President Buhari misread the motive(s) of the coup. Said the president: “I learnt that Gen. Ali Gusau, who was in charge of intelligence, took an import licence from the Ministry of Commerce, which was supplies, and gave it to Alhaji Mai Deribe. It was worth N100, 000, a lot of money then. When I discovered this, I confronted them and took the case to the army council. Gen. Malu was the Chief of Defence Staff; Gen. Babangida was the Chief of Army Staff; Tunde Idiagbon was the Chief of Staff, Defence Headquarters and I was the Head of State. I said if I didn’t punish Gusau, it would create a problem for us. It is North versus South; majority versus minority; Muslim versus Christian. That was what it showed. So, I said Gen. Ali Gusau had to go. He was the Chief of Intelligence. That was why Babangida got some officers to remove me. Let him repeat his own story. Ali Gusau is still alive.”
It is not only Gen Gusau who is alive; Gen Babangida is also alive, thankfully. Whether they will react to the president’s account or not is uncertain. And whether the victim of the coup is expected to know more than the planners of the coup is also not clear. What is clear, however, is that the president should have included the rebuttal in his memoirs, assuming he plans one. By joining issues now with his former colleagues over a 1985 ghost probably indicates what many fear about him: that the president keeps grudges and exacts a terrible price from those who offend him. Apart from inadvertently portraying Gen Babangida as chivalrously fighting for Gen Gusau, the president’s version also attempts ingeniously to respond to critics who today accuse him of nepotism, ethnocentrism and bigotry. It is not certain whether that attempt will successfully dispel the feelings many Nigerians hold about his government’s biases.
Overall, the president should have ignored the interview granted by Gen Babangida to explain the motives of the 1985 coup. Asked what he thought of the explanations of those who deposed him, he should have parried the question, especially because he obviously cannot trust himself not to be emotional about the matter, not to talk of the impression of pained grief he appears to be forcing himself to endure over the circumstances surrounding the coup. The fear now is whether he still harbours other grudges in his past, particularly during his military dictatorship. But as for the impression he tried to create of his sense of fairness and justice, the present realities enveloping his presidency instill only partial confidence.
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