This morning we published an open letter to Professor Wole Soyinka by Gen. Sani Abacha's son but as the season of open letters continue, here is a swift reply by Ayo Sogunro to Sadiq Abacha's open letter to professor Wole Soyinka.I find these letters educative and interesting as well...Find full details after the cut. #Enjoy
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.
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
____________________________________
Ayo Sogunro is the author of The Wonderful Life of Senator Boniface and other Sorry Tales. A lawyer by profession, he also indulges in socio-legal philosophy on this blog. Interact with him on Twitter via @ayosogunro.
This was first published here To Sadiq Abacha – Ayo Sogunro
Credits:Omojuwa
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