by Michael John

“Perhaps Sadiq was too young to know that his father was a live Dracula,” he said. “Well I know that my now late grand mother once told me that blood is thicker than water – I think it is thicker than common sense.”

Old soldier Jumbo does not believe that the late General Sani Abacha was the worst thing to happen to the Nigerian Armed Forces. He believes, and says he is ready to swear before any Commissioner for Oaths anywhere in the world, that he was the worst thing to happen to Nigeria (exceeding in evil impact, the mosquitoes, the tsetse flies and Boko Haram).

When I pointed out that Boko Haram and mosquitoes have killed more people than Abacha did, he scoffed at me and stated that Abacha was a human form of the mosquito and the tsetse fly combined. “These flying monsters are vampires and that is what Abacha was,” he said and reached for his snuff bottle.

“A young man who served under me,” he said, “who was with me when it was announced that Gen. Sani Abacha had taken over the reins of government gave me a clue of what to expect. He jumped to his feet and screamed, ‘No! No! No! That is the cruellest man in the whole of Africa and the Middle East – he is fit for the horror movies.’ Then he rolled out more epithets. Epithets that the National Democratic Coalition re-echoed when they described Abacha as a ‘thoroughly nasty piece of work.’ And Gani never tired of telling us that, ‘that man is evil.’”

He paused to stuff his snuff into his nostrils. I protested and told him for the umpteenth time that snuff was not good for him and he should kick the habit.

He ignored me and launched right ahead into another sermon, “However, when my pastor was dying, he told me to use my army connections and fulfill his dying wish. I asked him what that was, and he replied that he wanted General Abacha and one former military president, who you should know, to his bedside. That was his dying wish. I wrote letters to both and made frantic attempts to reach both of them but it was to no avail. I kept wondering why he loved them so much and wanted them by his bedside instead of his sons and daughters. I even wondered whether he had a message for Nigeria and wanted to tell them. I wondered whether God had given him a revelation and he wanted to share it with them for the good of Nigeria. I hoped his intention was not to rebuke them because that would have been very dangerous for me as Abacha would have had me eliminated without anyone batting an eyelid.” He paused again. Snuff.

So what happened? I inquired irritated by his many pauses and his annoying habit of pausing at the climax of a good story.

“Well,” he continued. “I finally went to the pastor and told him that both could not make it and had not responded to all my letters. My contacts too were not helpful at all. His time was getting shorter and it was not fair for him to wait for Godot. In any case could he tell me why he wanted them to come and see him on his dying bed, now that it looked like we could not have them? He replied that all his life he had followed the footsteps of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. As he wanted to die he also thought he should follow his example and die between two thieves.”

“He should have thought of some local thieves,” I intoned, “Not international highway robbers.”

“Sure,” Jumbo replied. “We eventually got the Johnson, the retired policeman and the village head. But I made him promise me that he would not tell them why he wanted them by his bedside. He would have put me in trouble at his departure. I had both of them stand on either side of him and then he died with a big, radiant smile on his face. He even prayed for me and asked God to bless me and give me long life. He managed to give me a wink with his dying breath. Guess what? The village head repented during the funeral sermon. Just like one of the thieves ended up in Paradise. But Johnson? Well the other thief never repented, you know.”

“So between the former military head of state and Abacha,” I asked “who, in your opinion, would have ended up in Paradise if they had come?”

He said definitely not Abacha because he was too evil. To him, he was more evil than Boko Haram because he was the inventor of Boko Haram and the invention cannot be more dangerous than his inventor.

Jumbo has a way of thinking which defies the laws of logic. I was curious to know how Abacha invented Boko Haram. He replied, “That man never went to school and he never passed any examination. He hated education and that is why he was killing anyone who argued with him or his style of governance. He did not have the intellect to enter into any dialectics with anybody. So he transferred his hatred to his brothers who formed Boko Haram. Remember he joined the Army as a non-commissioned officer, and if it were not for nepotism, he ought not to have transited to a commissioned officer!”

“So you support Prof Wole Soyinka’s averment that Abacha should not have been honoured as part of the Centenary Celebrations?” I asked. “If so what do you make of the treatise by Sadiq, Abacha’s son, in defence of the father?

Jumbo raged that who so ever said that we should not speak ill of the death never knew that some day a monster like Abacha would exist. “I read Sadiq’s convoluted logic and curiously as he was making this ludicrous argument the American Government announced that it had recovered $482 million loot stolen by Abacha.”

“Perhaps Sadiq was too young to know that his father was a live Dracula,” he said. “Well I know that my now late grand mother once told me that blood is thicker than water – I think it is thicker than common sense.”

——————————-

This article was published with permission from Abusidiqu.com

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija