By Olakunle Abimbola
The three witches, in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, scammed that tragic hero into regicide.
But the then Thane of Glamis little knew that the actual witch was his wife: the no less tragic Lady Macbeth.
Yes, the three witches teased Macbeth into illicit crown and doom, with co-General Banquo consumed as collateral damage — no thanks to blind royal ambition and paranoia. But the evil Lady Macbeth drove the entire catastrophe.
Still, beyond the avoidable tragedy that consumed both, let no one compare the Scottish Macbeth with Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, beyond that they were both generals.
Before his self-induced fall, Macbeth was a noble general in the Scottish Army.
The doomed but grateful King Duncan confirmed Macbeth’s chivalry, after the “hurly-burly” was done; after “the battle was lost and won”; and Macbeth was romped from Thane of Glamis to Thane of Cawdor.
That promotion was even fore-crowed by the witches, who also “fed” Macbeth with regicide! Poor Duncan! He was fatally naive to have lodged in traitor Macbeth’s castle!
Abacha was none of Macbeth’s nobility, though he shared his treachery.
Contrasted to Macbeth, Abacha was always a thug-in-uniform and a coup rat who, no thanks to military ethnic politics, was promoted above his stark mind into the red-neck cadre, when he ought to have been weeded out.
Even as ratsy Head of State — he ratted the pitiable Ernest Shonekan out of power by sacking his illicit Interim National Government (ING) to impose himself — he was anything but noble: infernal bully, stark killer and ace thief with gargantuan greed. His blasted memory is defined by stupendous sleaze, popularly tagged “Abacha loot”.
Indeed, his name is an eternal stain on the Army rank of “General”. His humongous loot, which over-powering stench from his grave even 27 years after, continues to warn our present service (wo)men: Abacha is a classic tutorial on how not to be a General!
So, does widow Mariam Abacha think an insensitive TV interview, from the loot-cushioned luxury of her private space, would wipe out her husband’s horror from the Nigerian public mind?
On this one, Mrs. Abacha looked rather like the evil, but much less delusional Lady Macbeth, even after she had lost our mind. Lady Macbeth admitted that not even all the waters from the Atlantic could wash her hand clean of King Duncan’s blood.
Mrs. Abacha clearly thinks otherwise in her grand delusion! But she kids no one.
Not even all the looted wealth the Abacha family now wallow in, nor all the insulting platitudes she spewed in that ill-advised interview, could blot out her hubby’s horrible memory: from a country he raped, the people he killed and maimed, the exiled families he split, and the Nigerian Army he disgraced and near-destroyed.
The cheek of it — Mrs. Abacha grumbled about her husband’s unfair demonization; and moaned about fraternal love!
Pray, how can you demonize the demon that her husband was? How?
Then, fraternal love! Wasn’t Abacha, the brute that killed and maimed, to retain grubby power, the violent opposite of love? Weren’t Abacha and love two parallel lines that would never meet?
Where was Mrs. Abacha when her husband was bumping off Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of the Basorun MKO Abiola, whose only crime was protesting her husband-in-Abacha’s gulag, for winning the June 12, 1993 presidential election?
That protest, for the grim and murderous Abacha regime, was high treason — high treason that earned Heroine Kudirat, and hundreds of nameless patriots, the death penalty in the streets of Lagos, from Abacha’s illicit bullets from licit arms!
Yes, to be fair, Abacha didn’t kill MKO. Abacha had expired in disgrace before MKO’s sudden death. Thus, that query belongs to Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who ran a short transitional government that made the political military scurry into the barracks, after an “Army Arrangement” transition that handed power to Olusegun Obasanjo.
But with MKO spending his entire presidential term (1994-1998) in his gulag, Abacha sure dug MKO’s open grave. So, what’s Mrs. Abacha’s newfound “love” to the Abiolas?
That it was okay to be brutally rendered full orphans, for rogue political reasons?
Their patriarch won a free election — the freest and fairest in Nigerian history. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida annulled that election. Abacha, the cursed Khalifa, sustained it.
Now, 27 years later, Mrs. Abacha now preaches “love”, to protest the “demonization” of the brute that her husband was, without any apology for his heinous crimes? Now, is that not raw witchery? Love indeed!
Again, an Abacha/Abiola comparison.
The one stole his country blind, leaving cursed riches for his offspring. The ones he left behind push their democratic right to the inviolability of that loot.
The other — though a military-era contractor accused of sweetheart deals — used his first-class mind and brain to grow his wealth in almost all sectors of the economy, not even mentioning his larger-than-life compassion for the poor and generosity to all.
Now, the lean Abacha cow — to borrow that biblical image — gobbled up the fat Abiola bull, assassinated his wife and destroyed his thriving many ventures, aside sitting on the N45 billion debt the Federal Govermnent owed the man — classic military outlawry!
All his wife could mutter, after 27 years, is growl demonization and moan false love!
Spread the justifiable hurt and noble ire of the Abiola clan, into millions of Nigerian households no less furious at Abacha’s savage power play, and you’ll gauge the level of legitimate anger against the Abachas, because of their patriarch’s grim sins.
If Mrs. Abacha even realizes the tenth of that resent laced with contempt, from millions of Nigerian families, she would not have been so sanguine in her interview.
Her hare-brained lies, to edify her best-forgotten husband, is best dismissed without much ado. She claimed the ace thief didn’t steal but saved money for Nigeria. Really? In his private and coded foreign accounts?
Perhaps Abacha was Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) personified; or the Nigerian state, cloned after the French King Louis XIV: L’Etat, c’est moi — The state, it is me!
The other fib is that her husband was so powerful and well-loved! O sure!
His might was powered by strutting cowardice, so much so that he had to kill whoever disagreed with him, having no brain for civil discourse, anyway!
As for love, Abacha was so well-loved that when he expired, it was thrilling news that Nigerians capered in the streets, screaming “divine intervention” had taken away such a plague!
But the ultimate perverse joy, from the show of shame by Mrs. Abacha — at least for the history-minded — is the umpteenth whodunit over June 12!
IBB claimed Abacha did it. Abacha’s wife counter-claimed her hubby, dead as dodo, didn’t. For the entire clan of the political military, dead or alive, June 12 — and MKO who they thought they infernally cheated — continue to be their nemesis. May their agony last forever!
The Abacha matriarch’s rant again stresses the arch-evil of military rule. May we never experience such plague in our country again — never!
