Consider it as God’s punishment for your dastardly conduct in office that you will never dwell in Aso Villa again. If you like, blame it on Dele Giwa who laid a kingsize grouse against you at the foot of God, to the effect that you sent a letter bomb to blow him to bloody bits and pieces on Sunday October 19, 1986.
Blame it on your personal friend, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, who stammered to the hearing of a shocked congregation of angels that you conducted an election recognised as the freest and fairest on June 12, 1993, and yet annulled it by wicked fiat purely for your personal gratification.
Epistle To Babangida by Nengi Josef Ilagha
FELLOW NIGERIAN, how are you today? How is Minna? How is your gubernatorial namesake? I hope you are both on the best of domestic terms, if the conversation I overhead between you two on your flight to Benin last Saturday is anything to go by. Please give Aliu my regards.
I trust that you are your cheerful self, and that your famous smile is plastered to your face. How much wider is the enchanting gap between your teeth, that permanent trademark by which your austere soul has come to be known so far? I will go so far as to ask you this. Just how tight around your waist is the new belt you recently acquired?
Before I proceed any further, let me be civil. Let me hasten to reiterate my personal regrets at the loss of your truly admirable wife, Maryam Babangida, by all accounts a First Lady who brought vanity to that office, one did her best to bring a better life to the home front. I have no doubt that she was a principal anchor in your life and a good mother to your children. May her soul receive fresh enlightenment in the afterlife.
I am led to direct a few words to your eminent person on account of certain pronouncements recently attributed to you. Did you really say nothing and no one can stop you from being the next President of Nigeria? Having been at the head of affairs in our nation for all of eight years, I am sure you realise that whatever you say or do inevitably rolls into the news of the day. History evidently has a chapter for you, IBB, and you should be grateful for that alone. Whether or not the contents of that chapter are sacred and worth celebrating is another matter altogether.
Whatever the case may be, fellow Nigerian, I assure you that you will not have a chance to correct any apparent errors in that chapter, certainly not by being at the helm of affairs in your nation again. Take it from me. I know what I am talking about. I am the last ambassador from Heaven.
Frankly, it will be far better for you to remain a private citizen, and do well to redeem your image in the eyes of God by small acts of penitence. I suggest you begin by confessing all your sins against Nigeria before the public jury. Conscience, after all, is an open wound. Only the truth can heal it, said Othman Dan Fodio. Be a true prince of the Niger. Be a genuine kingmaker in Minna. Be the best statesman behind the curtains. Be generous with your advice on the worthwhile direction of our nation. Do so with a clean and honest heart.
Of course, as one citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria among one hundred and fifty million, you jolly well have a constitutional right to print posters and aspire to an elective office, but do well not to seek a mandate as President and Commander-In-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It is not your portion any longer. I dare say that office is not vacant, as far as you are concerned. In point of fact, that office has been taken over by none other than God, and it will be foolhardy on your part to contest this. At best, I suggest you think up real solutions to the security challenges facing our nation, without giving in to the temptation of plotting another coup.
Allow me to bring to your notice that I am a full-fledged Nigerian like you, possessing a royal mandate in my own right, and that I have lived a meek, gentle and humble life so far. Having entered the university before your maiden coup broadcast, I remain a personal witness to your policies and programmes and have a fair idea just how far you took our country.
Verily, verily, I put it to you that we were as close as we could get to the edge of a real precipice. As a matter of fact, our corporate head was already down there in the valley of the shadow of death, and our legs were flailing in the air. If not that my Father in Heaven stretched out his gracious hand and held our sovereignty intact, Nigeria would have tumbled over into that gulf of chaos. That, at least, I remember.
I will not waste valuable space recounting your odious transgressions against the land and people of Nigeria during your eight-year rule as self-acclaimed military president. You know yourself only too well. That is why you revealed yourself as the evil genius. Besides, the internet is inundated with every detail of your misdeeds in the course of that ignoble chapter in our history. I will simply convey to you what I have been given to say.
Alas, the truth is that you messed up a golden opportunity. Be reminded that Nigerians granted you a massive goodwill when you came to power, in spite of the fact that you were actively involved in all the coups that served to derail our destiny up to this inglorious point. One of my former lecturers even wrote a glowing biography in honour of your princely self. If only you had made excellent use of those eight years, who knows, I might have been campaigning on your behalf by now. But how can I give a thumbs-up to a man who repeatedly called all Nigerians fools?
On April 1, 2010, another fools day, you were at it again. You attended a birthday party in Ogun State, and gave a dribbling speech that left your audience wondering if indeed you would dare to step out as a presidential aspirant. Ten days later, memories of your years in office flooded you when you arrived Asaba, the home town of your late wife, to commission a dual carriage way named after her. It struck you as a grand occasion, one that combined empathy with politics, suitable enough to make a landmark proclamation on your proposed second coming to the helm of affairs, this time as civilian president.
It so happens that your second coming, proposed as it is, has coincided with the second coming of Jesus Christ, no less. And it is fit and proper that the King of kings should manifest in Nigeria, a land full of corrupt kings and princes, to complete the process of restoration. Do you, then, see yourself standing in opposition to he who laid down his life that you might be saved? Do you know what it means to wear a crown of thorns? Do you want to contest the certain victory that has already been given to the Son of Man by Jehovah himself?
I doubt it. Verily, verily, that would be very presumptuous of you. The last time, you stepped aside like a gentleman, after all of eight years in the presidential office. This time, I suggest you step down even before you step up, to say nothing of stepping in. By the way, how much have you set aside for billboards and the media? What’s the rest of your itinerary? What does your entire campaign budget look like? I bet it is far in excess of Governor Alao-Akala’s N20 billion reserve for the 2011 grandstand.
Whatever it is, fellow Nigerian, I suggest you don’t spend another kobo forthwith. Reserve everything you have now in all your accounts worldwide, for the great day of reckoning has arrived the gates of your stupendous mansion. God wants to know just how rich you are, in the face of the starvation regime that is ruling our land like a gluttonous governor.
Consider it as God’s punishment for your dastardly conduct in office that you will never dwell in Aso Villa again. If you like, blame it on Dele Giwa who laid a kingsize grouse against you at the foot of God, to the effect that you sent a letter bomb to blow him to bloody bits and pieces on Sunday October 19, 1986. Blame it on your personal friend, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, who stammered to the hearing of a shocked congregation of angels that you conducted an election recognised as the freest and fairest on June 12, 1993, and yet annulled it by wicked fiat purely for your personal gratification.
Blame it on Dr Pius Okigbo who testified beyond heaven’s gate that you mismanaged a fortune of $12.4 billion in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war. Blame it on the unrelieved cry of Nigerians who continue to labour under a tradition of betrayal you planted in the national psyche, to say nothing of a culture of corruption that you caused to flourish like a malignant tree erected by a devious genius. Blame it on all the walls of your 50-bedroom mansion, each of which carries a message that you have been too blind to see scripted, no less, by the hand of God, saying as follows: mene mene tekel upharsin.
Fellow Nigerian, on a final note, how popular have you been these past two thousand and nine years? Have you ever endured six hundred and sixty-six strokes of the cane as I did from blood-thirsty Roman soldiers? Have you ever logged a weighty cross upon your shoulders, and staggered under it across the open lawns of your wide estate? Have you ever taken six-inch long nails into three separate parts of your body, watching the next hammer blow coming down hard, gnashing your teeth and groaning from the depth of your soul, locked in a battle of endurance with the devil?
If you have not suffered any such travails, my friend, take heart. It is truly kind of you to present yourself as our long-awaited saviour. You are not welcome, thank you. In short, Ibrahim, you will not have a second chance to bite the hand of God, I assure you. In short, Badamasi, the earlier you realise that you are bad news, the better for your soul. In short, Babangida, a gentle word is enough even for one who sees himself as the wisest egghead in the land. I have come, as promised, like a tell-tale thief in the night.
Your fellow Nigerian,
Pope Pen The First
Prince of Peace
President, Nigeria Peace Party, NPP
“Pope Pen”