Olisa Agbakoba, former president
of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), says Babagana Kingibe benefitted from
the June 12 struggle despite not being a part of the agitation.
Kingibe, alongside MKO Abiola,
was recently conferred with the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger
(GCON). He was the running mate of Abiola during the June 12, 1993 presidential
election.
In an interview with PUNCH,
Agbakoba, a prominent human rights activist, described Kingibe as “a big-time
traitor”.
He berated Kingibe for accepting
a foreign minister position in the government of Sani Abacha, late military
head of state.
Agbakoba said he warned Abiola
that Kingibe could not be trusted but he did not listen to him. He said Abiola
would have been president if had heeded his warning.
He said: “He is a traitor; he is
a big time traitor. I warned Abiola. Abiola didn’t listen to us, that was the
problem. If he had listened to us, he would have been the president. We said
this guy, we were not sure about him o. But Abiola is also at fault because he
was so driven to become president that he lost sight of some very fundamental
points. Then, he made a mistake of not following the advice of the
pro-democracy community. Rather, he was listening to the politicians who wanted
to be ministers. That was all they wanted.
“So having failed to follow
advice, he very quickly fell into many errors, the first being that he now
kowtowed to Abacha.
“It was Kudirat who had a great
sense of decency; Abiola was a bit a too ambitious in wanting to become president.
He went to Aso Rock to meet with Babangida in the course of which Babangida’s
wife and Kudirat started fighting. It led to a fight. Babangida and other
people had to rush out to separate them. My point is that Abiola really failed
to see some of the pitfalls.
“I had meetings with Kingibe to
say ‘don’t you think that being appointed foreign minister under Abacha’s
government when the mandate was still alive and being pushed for, betrayed the
mandate?’ He tried to justify it by saying it was Abiola who caused it. He said
Abiola was not communicating with him, strategy, what to do, blah blah blah. So
(he) said okay, ‘if Abiola himself has virtually rubbished the mandate, then
why would he be fighting for it?’ Those are the circumstances under which he took
the appointment.
“I said ‘I don’t think anything
justifies it, I think you should have stood by the mandate notwithstanding what
Abiola did. But you see, the irony today is that he is benefitting from
something he did not fight for even for one day. That is the irony of life. He
didn’t fight for it for one day, but well, he is entitled since he was Abiola’s
running mate.”
When asked if Kingibe deserves
the national honour, Agbakoba said: “I would say he should not have been given
because he didn’t believe in June 12 and why would I give somebody who didn’t
believe in June 12 an honour? For me, it is an irony.”
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com