Whispering Drums With Maigani
by Musa Ibrahim
Wai - War Against Idiagbon
Past events and happenings in Nigeria have been pricking the bubble of my enthusiasm for quite some time now. All along, I have pretended not to see, but the more I pretend, the more the stark realities of the events manifest themselves. I have thought over these events, zigzagged them in my mind and, like Felix in the fairy tale, put them off to a more convenient time. But as it is, procrastination, it is said, is the thief of time, and so why hold on any longer?
I don't know which distresses him more: his maggoty brain or his insanitary appearance. Whichever of them (and it isn't important), these are two traits that are easily identifiable in him. In terms of his outward disposition, he does not look like an epitome of brute strength, but like Shakespeare, there is no art to find the mind's construction in his face. Always twitching, his manner of speaking portrays a man that is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Once a military administrator, he soon became an errand boy of the powerful political and emergent elite class in the wake of the civilian era, suddenly transforming into an opportunist who could not conceal his hatred of the new elite class and the fact that he was dis- satisfied with his way of life. But he has a snail's patience and so he bided his time and waited. His time came on the 31 of December, 1983.
Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon, Nigeria's Chief of Staff and the man often referred to as the 'Number Two Man" in General Buhari's government, is today the most powerful and the most con- troversial figure in the eight-month-old regime of the Supreme Military Council, and easily the most despised among the lot by the Nigerian populace. Often in the limelight as the chief spokesman of the government, he has come to be identified with everything that is wrong with the Buhari government. From the draconian Decree 4 and the others, to the formation of the Military tribunals (they have come to be known as the Idiagbon Legal Assembly), to those forming the Kirikiri caucus, and finally to the bemused War Against Indiscip- line, the imposing figure of Idiagbon is all pervasive. With these have come troubles from both within the SMC and outside of it.
Some members of the SMC are aggrieved by what they call the excesses of the regime which to them amount to a betrayal of the earlier intentions of the coup. For, when the coup was being planned, it was agreed that there were to be no detentions, no excessive decrees, no witch-huntings and no victimizations of any kind. Those politicians who were thought to have illegally amassed wealth were to be taken to Dodan Barracks where they would be 'politely' asked to make some refunds to the government, no more no less. But that was not to be, for as soon as Idiagbon, through the blessing of the Head of State, found himself on the most hotly contested seat by his colleagues, things could not be the same again. Together with the Head of State and most of the Civilian ministers, they have between them all the decrees, the tribunals and the infamous WAI. So in the Supreme Military Council itself, there is a War Against Idiagbon and his collaborators brewing.
When Idiagbon faced the press to launch WAI - War Against Indiscipline, there was little cause for jubilation even though the hapless media were there to play the crusade to the hilt. But now in a country where almost half the population is unem- ployed, almost three-quarters are on a brink of starvation and where the leadership is becoming more and more deceitful and dictatorial, busy lining its own pockets and feathering its own nests, the people have now declared War Against Idiagbon, the man now considered as a prime candidate for the electric chair because of the fact that he has become an embarrassment to himself, to his colleagues, and to the entire Nigerian population.
As the deep resentment against Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon continues, I hope it isn't too late for him to pause and tarry a while and see whether he can apply himself to this truth embodied in Anne Reeve Aldrich's poem, 'Little Parable':
"I made the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life's steep calvary.
To think mine own hands drove the
nails!
I sang a merry song,
And chose the heaviest wood I had
To build it firm and strong.
If I had guessed - if I had dreamed
Its weight was meant for me,
I should have made a lighter cross
To bear up calvary..."
A stitch in time, they say, saves dozens. And as Kipling said, on the day of reckoning, it will be everybody for himself.
