Abiola’s friendship with IBB, Abacha led to his death – Don

Posted by admin Ibrahim Babangida (1985-93), Latest Politics, Presidency, Sani Abacha (1993-98) Friday, May 17th, 2013

The friendship among General Ibrahim Babangida, General Sani Abacha and the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola has been described as “disastrous friendship,” Empowered Newswire has reported.
It is a kind of friendship that leads to death and destruction. This statement was made by a Nigerian scholar who teaches at the University of California, Davis, USA, Professor Wale Adebanwi, while delivering the 2013 annual lecture of the African Studies Centre at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University, the United Kingdom.
Adebanwi, who is the author of ‘Authority Stealing: Anti-Corruption War and Democratic Politics in Post-military Nigeria,’ also analysed the friendship between Babangida and his late friend, former Minister of Federal for the FTC, Abuja, Major-General Mamman Vatsa, Abacha and the late Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and former Bukina Faso leader, Captain Thomas Sankara and President Blaise Compaore. He concluded that the friendship that existed among these competing and ambitious leaders contained the possibility of danger and death.
Professor Adebanwi stated that it was not a surprise that the kind of “instrumental” friendship that these leaders shared among them led to the death of some of them in their quest for power, position and prominence. He cited the example of the execution of Vatsa by his friend and best man, Babangida; the assassination of Sankara by his friend, Compaore; the alleged murder of Yar’Adua through the injection of a killer virus into his body by the agents of his friend, General Abacha; the annulment of Abiola’s election by his friend, Babangida; the imprisonment in solitary confinement of Abiola by his friend, Abacha, and the assassination of Bola Ige while serving under his friend, former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He added that it was ordinarily surprising that in spite of the gruesome way in which Ige was killed and his loyalty to President Obasanjo, Obasanjo later dismissed his friend as someone who did not know his left from his right.
He told the audience that Ige was assassinated while planning to return home to stop Obasanjo’s party from rigging the 2003 elections in the South West. The lecturer also reminded the audience of the famous statement by the philosopher, Aristotle, “O my friend, there is no friend!”
In a lecture entitled, ‘What are Friends For? The Fatality of Affinity in the Postcolony,’Adebanwi challenged African scholars to pay attention to friendship among powerful people in understanding the nature of power and political competition in Africa.
He cited philosophers who states that friendship can be used for three things, including virtue, pleasure and utility. He added that in the context of political competition, friendship is often not used for virtue but for utility thereby turning friends into enemies.
Stated the former Bill Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, “First, from the profile of all these men, their roles, and the positions they occupied in Nigeria’s national life, it is already evident that their friendships could not but have been politically consequential. However, the fact that their friendships were also fatal in virtually every case invites us to examine the potential fatality of friendship when friendship intersects with the search for power in (Africa). Two, the friendships and ambitions of these men have largely defined the political history of Nigeria in the last three decades and half…. Three, the friendships of these men were largely cross-cutting.”
The chief host, Dr David Pratten, the Director of the African Studies Centre, Oxford University and Fellow of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, stated that the university was happy to invite Adebanwi to give the annual lecture, which had been delivered in the past by distinguished scholars from all over the world.

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