By Tunji Adegboyega
A widow’s failed attempt to whitewash her husband’s image and rewrite history
For a taciturn person like Maryam Abacha, the country should be all ears whenever she opens her mouth. That was why many people did not take it kindly when the widow of Nigeria’s former despot, General Sani Abacha, bared her mind on certain issues on the country’s past, in a rate interview she granted Television Continental (TVC) on June 9. Gen. Abacha died on June 8, 1998.
Mrs Abacha, rather than seize the golden opportunity of the interview to atone for the sins of her husband, chose, sadly, to rise in stout defence of some of his actions and policies.
The former first lady spoke on sundry issues, including security, the June 12 election and the money her husband stole when he was head of state, better known as Abacha loot. I deliberately said the money Sani Abacha stole (and not allegedly stole as Maryam would have preferred, to rub it in) because that was (and still is) Sani Abacha in the eyes of millions of Nigerians.
It is an understatement that Mrs Abacha’s comments in that interview got many Nigerians angry. They said she had such guts to say what she said because she is in a country where corruption is treated with kid gloves. That she could not have had such privilege in a country where their entire family would have been wiped out for the fraud perpetrated by their patriarch!
Coming from people who ordinarily would have been touting rule of law and due process in the circumstance had the matter concerned somebody else, shows the level of their anger and frustration with the former first lady’s comments.
But that is Nigeria for you. We often determine the quality of a message through the messenger. Many of us tune off as soon as we see that the message is coming from a messenger whose face we do not like.
But, it shouldn’t be so.
Unfortunately, that was my position too until Wednesday when I decided to make the Abachas my topic for today. “Oro wo lo wa lenu asegita, to ni ki Oyinbo pade oun lagogo mejo owuro kutu hai”? (What would make a wood seller request for an early morning appointment with a White man?) What would the wife of a man who was hated with a passion by Nigerians, and for good reasons, say on the issues under discussion? Who else would she have sided with if not her late husband? Moreso now that the husband is no longer in a position to defend himself.
I had to drop off the bus of Nigerians who like throwing away the baby with the bath water because it is not usually helpful.
So, what were Maryam Abacha’s views on each of these issues?
First security. Or insecurity, on which the former first lady spoke tongue-in-cheek! On the one hand, she commended the armed forces for their efforts and, on the other hand, wondered why we have not been able to bring insurgency down to its knees. But that was after rubbing it in that there was nothing like that in her husband’s time. Hear Maryam: “You are not even talking about the security of the country. I’m (sic) just a wife in the house. Yes, I’m (sic) close to him as his wife. But was there any insurgency during his time? No, there was none. He was able to tackle… Liberia, he went there and corrected things and Nigeria was at peace”.
She didn’t stop there: “There are other countries, apart from Nigeria, that have insurgents and they have tackled them. And I don’t know what is the matter with Nigeria until now, that we still have insurgents…
“And we have the government. We have the government from the top to the states, to the local governments and so on. So I don’t know how come these things have stayed so long and they have not been really tackled.”
Mrs Abacha acknowledged that we have all it takes to deal with insurgency:
“We have neighbours that have really tackled it. And they are smaller countries. And we are bigger. We are richer. We are more experienced.
“I believe in our military. I believe in our army. I believe in the armed forces and I think they can do better if they wish to do so. And I pray that they do.”
On this score, even though the former first lady tried to engage in some delicate balancing by saying “Now look at what we are in. I cannot say governments have failed. They have not really failed. No government can fail,”, the government should not fail to get her message on insecurity.
As a matter of fact, she merely echoed what many people have said. Insurgency is still with us (apparently) because some influential people are making money from it. This is aside the elites that are also using it for political purposes.
So, government must do more in this regard.
Now, to the June 12 election.
Apparently referring to the claim by former self-styled president, General Ibrahim Babangida, in his book, “A Journey in Service”, released in February, that Gen. Abacha was largely responsible for the cancellation of the election, Mrs Abacha rose in stout defence of her husband.
It was a rare opportunity for the former first lady to give it back to her husband’s boss. The presidential election was won by Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.
We must admit that Maryam was making some sense when she wondered how her husband who was not the head of state at the time could have made such an important decision.
Hear her: “I’m not here to talk about Babangida or anybody. I don’t want to talk about anything or anybody. All I know is that that annulment was not done by my husband, and then if it was him, then that means he was very powerful.
“He was even more powerful than the president, and if the president is there and somebody else is calling the shots, then that means Abacha was the greatest.”
I stand with Maryam on this, too. Babangida, from many accounts of him in the public domain is not the kind of general that would take bullet with his buttocks. True generals face, not back, bullets. How could such a man say someone else was calling the shots on a matter as crucial as annulling the freest and fairest election in the annals of the country? Something does not add up here.
Definitely, if Abacha was the one calling the shots on Babangida’s transition programme, and was in fact responsible for the annulment of the election, then Abacha must have succeeded because his wish aligned with that of Babangida whose body language on the entire transition programme indicated he was himself not ready to go as agreed and announced by his government.
Now to the main menu: the Abacha loot, stupid!
It was on this aspect that I find Maryam’s comment most ridiculous and distasteful. Even then, as in the other issues, she is entitled to her opinion. This is much more so when her late husband was the ‘thief-in-chief’.
She said, “Who is the witness of the monies that were being stashed? Did you see the signature or the evidence of any monies stashed abroad? And the monies that my husband kept for Nigeria, in a few months the monies vanished. People are not talking about that. Why are you blaming somebody? Is that tribalism or a religious problem, or what is the problem with Nigerians?
“So where would he have stolen the money from? Where would he have stolen the money from? Because Nigerians are fools, they listen to everything”, she added. Let Maryam listen to herself. Where do even lesser people stealing public funds stealing it from?
It was at the juncture where Maryam said her late husband kept some money for Nigeria but which disappeared in a few months that rekindled my interest on this aspect. Much of what we were told and which, in our “foolishness” we believed, was stashed abroad by Gen. Abacha.
Barkin Zuwo who governed Kano State for only three months, from October 1, 1979 to December 31, 1979, kept N3.4m (that is about N5.4 billion at today’s exchange rate and N952m at about N128 to a dollar then). We are talking of the equivalent of about 225 BRAND NEW (emphasis mine) Peugeot 505 GL at 15,000 apiece!. That was what a governor kept in the state government house and when the soldiers who sacked their government on New Year’s Eve in 1983 asked him why he kept such a huge amount out of the bank, he merely told them that he did nothing wrong. “Government money in government house, what’s wrong with that?”, he rhetorically asked.
The point I am trying to make is that whatever Barkin Zuwo’s intention, what was found on him was found here at home.
All the foolish questions about where Gen. Abacha could have got the money that he stole from were misdirected. Maryam should have asked her husband where they got all the private luxury they enjoyed and are probably still enjoying. Or, better still, ask today’s public officials who also have itchy palms to bail her out.
Where has Maryam Abacha been all this while that Nigeria has been collecting money stashed abroad by her husband and his cronies? At least over $5bn of such monies had been recovered as at 2023. That is for the known.
True, a wife properly so-called should try as much as possible to defend her husband, and vice versa. But even then, there should be limits. Maryam Abacha should indeed apologise to us (Nigerians) that she has called fools for believing that her husband was a ‘Grade A’ thief.
It was not because he was smart that we didn’t focus on his thieving when he was around; it was because some other issues eclipsed that aspect of his life, especially after he overthrew Chief Ernest Shonekan’s interim national government (ING) and made himself head of state. The way he ruled repressively, especially in the aftermath of the annulment of the June 12 election engaged our attention more than anything else.
Gen. Abacha had his stars to thank that somebody like Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was no longer around in his time. Fela would have put it to him that ‘e be thief’; ‘he be rogue’; ‘he be robber’ and in fact, that ‘he be ‘armu robber’ (armed robber’). And there was nothing he could have done. The General Obasanjo’s of this world know that for sure.
If Mrs Abacha had said her husband was not the only thief, I am sure many Nigerians can live with that. If she had said some other people had re-looted some of the money recovered from her husband, many of us can still stomach that.
But to say her husband was not a thief; I believe General Abacha himself must be struggling wherever he is to correct his darling wife that that impression is not only far from the truth; it is blatant falsehood; and go ahead to apologise to Nigerians for the misinformation.
