Hours after late General Sani Abacha son, Sadiq Sani Abacha uninhibitedly addressed Prof. Wole Soyinka's refusal of a national award -on the bases that he deemed it an insult to share an award with the late military dictator- Mr. Ayo Sorungo responded to the seemingly shifty open letter of Sadiq Abacha...
An interesting read!
Dear Sadiq Abacha,
I do not know you personally, but I
admire your filial bravery—however misguided— in defending your father, the
late General Sani Abacha. This in itself is not a problem; it is an
obligation—in this cultural construct of ours—for children to rise to the
defence of their parents, no matter what infamy or perfidy the
said parent might have dabbled in.
Continue after the cut....
The problem I have with your letter,
however, arises from two issues: (i) your disparaging of Wole Soyinka,
who—despite your referral to an anecdotal opinion that calls him as “a common
writer”—is a great father figure, and a source of inspiration, to a fair number
of us young Nigerians; and (ii) your attempt to revise Nigerian history and
substitute our national experience with your personal opinions.
Therefore, it is necessary that we
who are either Wole Soyinka’s “socio-political” children, or who are ordinary
Nigerians who experienced life under your father’s reign speak out urgently
against your amnesiac article, lest some future historian stumble across the
misguided missive, and confuse the self-aggrandized opinions of your family for
the perceptions of Nigerians in general.
Your letter started with logical
principles, which is a splendid common ground for us. So let us go with the
facts: General Sani Abacha was a dictator. He came into power and wielded it
for 8 years in a manner hitherto unprecedented in Nigerian history. Facts:
uncomfortable for your family, but true all the same.
Now, for my personal
interpretations: between 1993 and 1998 inclusive, when your dada was in power,
I was a boy of 9 to 14 years and quite capable of making observations about my
political and cultural environment. Those years have been the worst years of my
material life as a Nigerian citizen. Here are a few recollections: I recollect
waking up several mornings to scrape sawdust from carpentry mills, lugging the
bags a long distance home, just to fuel our “Abacha stoves” because kerosene
was not affordable—under your father. I recollect cowering under the cover of
darkness, with family and neighbours, listening to radio stations—banned by
your father. I recollect my government teacher apologetically and fearfully
explaining constitutional government to us—because free speech was a crime
under your father’s government. Most of all, I remember how the news of your
father’s death drove me—and my colleagues at school—to a wild excitement, and
we burst into the street in delirious celebration. Nobody prompted us, but even
as 13 and 14 year olds, we understood the link between the death of Abacha and
the hope of freedom for the ordinary man.
These are all sorry tales, of
course. Such interpretations would not have occured to the wealthy and the
privileged under your father’s government, but they were a part of the everyday
life of a common teenager under that government. The economics were bad, but
the politics were worse. And I am not referring to Alfred Rewane, Kudirat
Abiola and the scores killed by the order of your father. Political killings
are almost a part of every political system, and most of those were just
newspaper stories to us. In fact, I didn’t get to read most of the atrocities
until long after your father died. So, these stories did not inform the dread I
personally felt under your father’s regime. And this was true for my entire
family and our neighbours.
Instead, the worry over our own
existence was a more pressing issue. Your father, Sani Abacha was in Aso Rock,
but his brutality was felt right in our sitting room. We were not into politics
and we didn’t vocally oppose Abacha, yet we just knew we were not safe from
him. You see, unlike any dictatorship before or after it—your father’s government
personally and directly threatened the life and freedoms of the average
Nigerian. Your father threatened me. And if your father had not died, I am
confident that I would not be alive or free today.
Think of that for a while...
Now, let’s come to Wole Soyinka.
First: you can never eradicate the infamy of your father’s legacy by trying to
point out the failings of another Nigerian. Remember what you said: A is
A. Abacha is Abacha. And no length of finger pointing will wash away the
odious feeling the name of Abacha strikes up in the mind of the average
Nigerian. Second: Don’t—as they musician said—get it twisted: Wole Soyinka did
not antagonize your father just because he was a military man—Wole Soyinka was
against your father’s inhumanity. Your father was intolerant of criticism
beyond belief. Your father made military men look bad. Your father’s behaviour
was so bad it went back in time and soiled the reputation of every military man
before him. Your father, finally, made Nigerians swear never—ever—to tolerate
the military again. Soyinka may have worked with the military before—but your
father ensured that he will never work with the military again. Do you see?
Three: Evil comes in many forms: there is no qualification by degree. There is
no “good” evil thing. Sani Abacha, Boko Haram, Hitler, slavery—they all fit
into the same category of misfortunes. Soyinka is right: Abacha was just as bad
as Boko Haram is—deal with it. Four: Soyinka has been kind enough to limit his
criticism to the unenviable awards this inept government has given your father.
But, you see, in a saner political system, we wouldn’t just ignore your father,
we would have gone one step further and expunged the Abacha name from all
public records. Wiped without a trace. Abacha would forever be a cautionary
tale against the excesses of political power. In a saner political system.
Abacha was brutal—and Soyinka was
one of those individuals who gave us inspiration in those dark days. He was
part of the team that founded the underground radio station to counter your
father’s activities. Let me rephrase in pop culture language: Wole Soyinka was
the James Bond to your father’s KGB. Most of the influential people either kept
quiet or sang the praises of your father to stave his wrath. But a few like
Soyinka spoke, wrote and even went militant against Abacha. But at the end,
even Soyinka who never ran from a fight had to run from your father. That was
how terrible things were. And now you want Soyinka to join the praise singers
of your father? I’m not certain Soyinka has grown old enough to forget how he
escaped your father,slipping across the border in disguise. You will have to
wait awhile to get that praise from him.
Now, back to you. You have a deluded
sense of your father’s role in the progress of Nigeria’s history. Nigeria has
managed to be where it is today, not because of leaders like your father—but in
spite of leaders like your father. This is a testament to the Nigerian spirit
of resilience, and our unwavering optimism in a better future. You owe every
Nigerian an apology for daring to attribute this to the leadership of Abacha.
Those “achievements” you believe were accomplished under your father were
simply all the things he had to do to keep milking the economy, and thereby
perpetuate himself in power—they benefited Nigeria only if, by Nigeria, you
meant your family and your cronies.
Your tone is that of a white master
who justifies his oppression because he clothed and fed his black slaves. That
is what your father did. The fact that we choose not to regurgitate, and
reflect on that socially traumatic period doesn’t mean we accept it as your
entitlement. We have not forgotten, and we will never forget. Sani Abacha raped
Nigeria. Your father raped us. Your father raped us and then pressed some
change into our hands. And he then tried to marry us forcefully, too. You may
think all this is well and good—but then you’ve never been raped before.
But we now live under a
democracy—the kind your father denied us—and so you are free to talk. And so
you are free to insult the people who ensured that your father had sleepless
nights. Had the revolution your father rightly deserved happened, you—and the
rest of your family—would have been lined against a wall, before you could pen
one article, and shot.
And we would probably have cheered.
But we live under a democracy now—a
system of government where even the scions of former oppressors can talk, and
write freely, about the benefits of dictatorship. That’s a democracy. A concept
your father wouldn’t have understood.
Regards,
Ayo Sogunro
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