Nigeria: Ode to Baba Iyabo

opinion

Baba Iyabo is the quintessential hero in every drama of his own scripting or adaptation. If he isn't the originator, initiator or lead actor, hush! It means the play ain't worth it. Therefore, those who presumed to put it together must be impaled on the flagstaff of their impunity. But Baba Iyabo was an unknown quantity until his replacement of Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Adekunle (Black Scorpion) as the commander of the 3 Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Army during the civil war. After the conflict, he claimed the title of the Ultimate-Commander-that-defeated-Biafra. But his stint at the battlefront had been over a spare six months; the war had lasted for two and a half years!

Baba Iyabo, the soldier-turned-author published My Command, (Ibadan. Heinemann Educational Books, 1981), his account of the civil war. Thirty-three years later, another officer who fought alongside Baba Iyabo, published a counter to the book. Reviewing it at the launch in July 2013, the journalist, Kunle Ajibade, observed that: "The total lack of (a) generous spirit in General Olusegun Obasanjo prompted General Alabi-Isama to write The Tragedy of Victory. [Ibadan. Spectrum Books, 2013]. Three years ago, when Alabi-Isama turned 70, he came to Nigeria from the US to celebrate his birthday. His close friend, General Alani Akinrinade who attended the ceremony, gave him two copies of General Olusegun Obasanjo's My Command. By that time Alabi-Isama had heard about the book but had never read it. Akinrinade had told his friend that the book would turn his belly. It surely did. General Alabi-Isama discovered that there were so many distortions of fact in the book, and he immediately dismissed it as a tapestry of inaccuracies. As he read it, he marked out not less than eighty two passages in My Command where General Obasanjo simply told outright lies to massage his ego and damage the reputation of his colleagues. Alabi-Isama then thought that since he was still a moving encyclopedia on the 3 Marine Commando Division, it was time to tear the painted mask of Obasanjo's lies."

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