In Yoruba homes, elders often say: A ni ki a je ekuru ko tan, eyin tun ńgbowó yín sínú awo – “We said: Let’s manage and finish up the bean pudding, yet you still dip your hands into the communal bowl.”
But history is not ekuru to be chewed carelessly. It is awo – heavy, shared, and once you dip into it, everyone’s fingers are stained.
By some strange logic, the grotesque devotion of his lieutenants and the weird rebirth of his myth in Nigerian memory make the life and death of Nigeria’s seventh military ruler intriguing.
Like a phoenix refusing to die, General Sani Abacha just wants to be etched in the people’s consciousness for good or for ill. No doubt, he was no ordinary autocrat. He was the very embodiment of every antidemocratic instinct, his reign a kaleidoscope of fear, his legacy a parable of corruption and cruelty.
His departure was unlike any before him: not felled by bullets, nor undone by mutiny, but shrouded in controversy – a word far too mild for the adjective’s history has since applied.
