Daily Independent Online.         * Monday, September 15, 2003.

IBB saved Nigeria from bloodshed, says Rawlings

By Tony Eluemunor

and Moses Ayo-Jolayemi

Daily Independent,

Abuja and Lagos

 

Short of endorsing one-time military President, General Ibrahim Babangida for 2007 presidential polls,  Ghanaian former President John Jerry Rawlings has said “IBB is qualified” to return to Aso Rock Presidential Villa via election, even as he disclosed that Babangida’s intervention in 1985 prevented a bloody revolution that would have swept a generation of leaders.

Rawlings, speaking in an exclusive interview with Daily Independent last week in Abuja, said: “I think he is as competent as any other citizen ...but what is in it  really? Wasn’t Obasanjo a Head of State as a military man?  If Obasanjo was able to do it, why can’t IBB as a military man? 

 The four-time Ghanaian leader also threw some light on how to stop coup d’etat in Africa, advising the leaders to involve the military in governance.

 Commenting on his role while in government vis-a-vis his associates who are still in power,Rawlings said that they were prepared to face trial after they would have  left the office in 2004.

Rawlings, who attended Babangida’s daughter’s wedding recently, said of Babangida: “We’ve been quite through some trying times together; what with Liberia, the internal situations that we faced in our countries, our involvement in 1979 (the Ghanaian coup) and subsequently what happened here. We have walked the tight rope. And if certainly any one has the right in this country, he is certainly one of them. There is no doubt in my mind that he must carry bags of experience.”

 In-between nursing a headache caused by sleeplessness from his meetings and packing for his return trip to Ghana, Rawlings spoke for a passion-filled two hours exclusively with Daily Independent. He challenged African leaders to dare to leave the legacy of “positive defiance.”  Without it, he said “you cannot protect your freedom. If a society is defiant, if you were to bring Satan to come and rule you, Satan won’t have his way because the people will defy him.  When he gives wrong orders, you say to hell with you. Then Satan will then be forced to give the right orders. So government and the followers, we all have the responsibility to stoke the fire of defiance, positive defiance, not negative defiance.”

 Rawlings said that democracy and politics meant “sanctity of the right of choice”   urging Africans to embrace “prayer of action” as there has been too much of prayer of words. He tasked journalists, as guardians of the word, to remember the integrity of the word, as a “liar is a murderer.”

 He said his 1979 coup had a domino effect in West Africa. “Nigeria was hovering and they tried to get rid of us in order to save (former President) Shehu Shagari.  But we survived and Shagari had to go. So the Buhari regime emerged.  He did his bit, but I think the revolutionary spirit was gathering too much in the atmosphere in West Africa and, the Babangida intervention pre-empted something close to a June 4”.

In Ghana, the June 4 revolution led by Rawlings led to the execution of three former heads of state.

“Some of you may not know it, but this is what happened; his (Babangida) intervention pre-empted it. I wish we could wind back the clock to what would have happened if he had never intervened. Someone down the ladder would have taken over because people are suffering because of corruption.”