18th December, 2013
There are some events which, over the last 50 years or so, remain indelible in the memory of those who were alive at the time they happened. It is said that those Americans and indeed non-Americans who received the news of the assassination of John Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President of the USA, carry the circumstances of that murder in their mind for the rest of their lives. Such was the profundity of the shock waves which went all round the world in the aftermath of that moment of madness on a street in Dallas, Texas, incidentally the home state of the Vice-President and successor to Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson. The Kennedy assassination was a global event but one which at least in Nigeria struck a similar chord was the equally mad incident which took place in Lagos in the morning of t19 October 1986 when the nation woke up to the news that Dele Giwa, the charismatic journalist and one of the founders of Newswatch magazine, had been assassinated when a parcel exploded in his hands as he unwrapped it within the safety of his own home.
Many people have been assassinated in Nigeria since that incident but no other assassination has provoked as much response from the Nigerian public as the murder of Dele Giwa as this was the first and only time that the dastardly device of a parcel bomb has been used to dispatch a Nigerian to the great beyond. But even more than the unusual character of the devise used to kill Dele Giwa, was the suspicion that the perpetrators of this heinous crime were government agents acting on instruction from the highest authority in the land at that time. Since then, the longest-running question on the minds of millions of Nigerians remains: who killed Dele Giwa? This question has however remained unanswered and it is for this reason that the book, Honour for Sale- An Insider Account Of The Murder Of Dele Giwa by Major Debo Basorun (rtd.) deserves to be closely interrogated and is sure to be over the next few months.
The unsolved murder of Dele Giwa is important for several reasons, perhaps the most important being that this assassination marked the end of the period of innocence for Nigeria and Nigerians as after it, a culture of cynicism and mistrust of government was instituted and it will take a great and sustained effort to bring Nigerians back to a state of trust in those who as soldiers or civilians are involved in steering the rickety and treacherous ship of the Nigerian state. It was the first sordid episode of gross impunity exhibited by purported agents of the Nigerian state and it has set the tone for the governance of the Nigerian nation.
Since then, several high-profile killings have been laid at the door of Nigerian rulers, especially the infamous Sani Abacha whose judicial murder of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists continues to represent the nadir of government impunity and insensitivity not only in Nigeria but all over the world. This extant state of mistrust of Nigerian governments needs to be changed and a clear solution of the murder of Dele Giwa is a necessary first step on the road of reconciliation between the people of Nigeria and those who are set up in authority over them.
By his own repeated admission, Major Basorun was an important member of the Babangida administration and on many occasions he was the voice of the Babangida government, he being the public relations officer and spin doctor to Babangida when he was Chief of Army Staff, COAS, and later on for nearly three years when his principal was the self declared Military President (what nonsense) of the country. Although he was as close to the seat of power as anyone could be without actually occupying it, it is clear that the author could, by no stretch of the imagination, be regarded as an insider in that government as he had no power base and could not get anything done on his own authority, hence his constant need to see Babangida for the authority he needed to get anything done.
It is unlikely therefore that he was privy to the inner workings of the body, that is, the government to which he pledged his allegiance and which for a long time he thought he belonged. Unlike Akilu, according to him, the physically insignificant but extremely powerful chief of intelligence to the government and the man who has been identified or perhaps mis-identified as the brain behind Giwa’s assassination, the Major was not capable of any independent action and had to follow all the orders issued to him not just by his boss, the President, but by other officers even if it is because they were senior to him in the military hierarchy or because even though they were junior to him in the pecking order, they had powerful connections which placed them outside Army protocol. As an insider, one who moved in such close proximity with the President, he would have been involved in the planning of the murder of Dele Giwa and would not have needed to stumble on clues which as he surmised, pointed accusing fingers at Babangida and his henchmen, one of who was definitely not Major Basorun.
The Major may not have been an insider as he thought he was but he was definitely very close to the seat of power and had the opportunity of observing the principal actors in that macabre dance of death and cold deceit at very close quarters. For this reason the Major deserves to be paid close attention to. Just as a man cannot hide anything of note from his valet, Babangida could not keep his disguises on in the presence of his image maker. From Major Basorun’s account it is easily apparent that his boss was a character the study of which would have benefitted a whole tribe of psychologists not to talk of psychiatrists who would have had to propound new and extremely powerful theories to explain their findings. By many accounts other than that of the author, Babangida was a very charming man who was capable of going that extra mile to accommodate his friends and even on occasion, his acquaintances. This side of him made it possible for him to cultivate s large pool of loyalists some of whom have been quoted as being ready to die in his cause. It is quite clear from these memoirs that one of such acolytes was the Major who, to all appearances, is still under the spell of the general even if his mentor has been translated into a mortal enemy, one who, at one time, harboured seriously dangerous intentions towards him. Maybe it is the distance of time that has mellowed whatever grievances Babangida evinced in his onetime protégé but from this record the possibility of reconciliation between the two men cannot be ruled out.
The Babangida government, for many reasons, captured the imagination of Nigerians in a way that no other government has done. The government came in riding on giant waves of what was thought to be realistic expectation but it not only betrayed all the hope invested in it but paved the way for another government which waged a relentless war of terror on the people of Nigeria. Babangida and his government moved Nigeria into new and dangerous channels from where we are still seeking a way out twenty long years after they ‘stepped aside’ under a unprecedented wave of well deserved opprobrium. Never have so few betrayed so many in the history of Nigeria. It is the work of people like Major Basorun who can give us an insight into the workings of Babangida’s government of ‘settlement’, deceit, nauseous exhibitionism and naked violence. For this reason, the Majors book must be regarded as a source document, one which must be studied with great care as such accounts are the only tools we have to provide answers to some of the questions which that government poses to the future of this nation.
One aspect of the book and one which the author may not have intended is that it shows the human side of Babangida and it is a side which, but for the proximity of the author to the people he was writing about, we would have found difficult to believe. Babangida was presented to us as a man of action, one who was easily capable of facing all obstacles head on. What was not common knowledge was that the general’s fiat did not cross the threshold of his own home where he was subjected to physical abuse by the woman who was presented as his alter ego and one whose death had a visible effect on the general.
The man may have been capable of all sorts of anti-human behaviour but he was also one who worshipped at the perfumed altar of Venus. It is almost a relief to find that the man has a human side after all. This man with all his Jekyll and Hyde attributes, who ruled with a bloody and destructive iron fist artfully concealed by a delicate velvet glove, was subservient not only to his wife but to a coterie of egotists who had him in close bondage and in the end brought him to the valley of impotence and disgrace. He appears on the pages of this book as a tragic figure who can be pictured as rattling around his mansion in Minna wondering how on earth everything has collapsed precipitously around his ears.
One question that this book raises is: can we find it in our hearts to have some sympathy for his condition? Major Basorun has a great deal to say in his book and even if he does not make any attempt to add something to the already bulging but far from complete Dele Giwa dossier, the book has enough gravitas to stand on its own. It is most welcome that some of the soldiers who were actors in the various sectors into which the Nigerian Army trespassed with resulting calamity for 30 long years are standing up to be counted on the side of the violated peoples of Nigeria. Those of them who are still thinking of picking up their pens rather than the guns which they dropped or were forced to drop all those many years ago should be encouraged to bite the bullet and make their observations public as a means of bringing some healing to our bruised and battered polity.