IBB’s book, A Journey in Service

Abubakar Hashim

General Ibrahim Babangida’s 440-page autobiography, A Journey in Service, launched in Abuja on February 20, 2025, is still whipping up waves of burning questions, even beyond the shores of Nigeria.

So many pertinent issues were raised in the book. Babangida’s 8-year rule was as controversial as he himself.

The book reviewer, Prof Yemi Osinbanjo, former VP, admitted that Babangida conceded that the late MKO Abiola won the 1993 Presidential elections but shifted the blame to the late General Sani Abacha, claiming Abacha was “ the biggest headache “ and mastermind behind the June 12, 1993, cancellation.

Was Abacha Culpable?

Sani Abacha was a long and unalloyed ally to Ibrahim Babangida. The former was nursing the same political ambition as the latter. They both played a self-succession plot, but failed woefully!

From left: Tinubu, IBB and Obasanjo

In the book, Babangida claims he was ignorant of the June 12, 1993 elections cancellation, stating that Nduka Iraboh, the Press Secretary to his Vice, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, announced the cancellation without Babangida’s permission and approval. He goes on in the book, to further state, “To suddenly have an announcement made without my authority was, to put it mildly, alarming…. I remember saying, these nefarious inside forces opposed to the elections have outflanked me”.

The Records

1. General Babangida was the Commander-in-Chief, not a bystander. The annulment/ cancellation was done under Babangida’s watch on June 14, 1993.
2. ⁠Abacha was Babangida’s Chief of Defence Staff. He was the only senior military officer left behind by Babangida when he relinquished power, and stepped aside, for the emergence of an Interim National Government ING, headed by Babangida’s long-time business crony, Chief Ernest Shonekan, whom Babangida knew would not last. Abacha elbowed him aside and emerged as Head of State.
3. ⁠Babangida’s claim in the book that Abacha became “a dominant force in a factionalised military “, put paid to lack of loyalty or total control of the regime under Babangida’s watch.
4. ⁠In the book, Babangida also pains Abacha as a schemer who attempted severally to remove him from power. This also is untrue. Abacha saved Babangida during the 1990 Orkar coup from imminent death. Babangida himself showered encomiums on Abacha on his 74th birthday in 2015 for loyalty and coming severally to his aid.

To now label Abacha as a “ headache “, to absolve himself from the cancellation of the most credible elections in Nigeria and indeed Africa, is premature and contradictory.

If Abacha were to be alive, would Babangida utter such a statement to absolve himself from the unfortunate cancellation of the June 12, 1993 elections results?

The “Prince” of the Niger, Babangida, and the “Pele” of Kano, Abacha, were like Siamese Twins, glued together, with an unquenchable thirst for political power.

There were no hidden secrets between the two loyalists since their days as young cadets in the military.

*Abubakar Hashim is the West Africa Bureau Chief  TheNEWS Magazine, pulished in Nigeria. He is based in Sierra Leone. He is currently writing from Liberia.