and handling of certain sensitive issues. To put it straight, the regime’s human rights
records was alarmingly poor. What is more, the economic recovery plan, which
apparently meant well for the nation, was being pursued with an alacrity that
discountenanced the bourgeoisie; this included those in the military. Knowing how well
this class had been empowered in the past by the status quo, it was not difficult for it to
bring down the regime. So by capitalizing upon the duo’s pilgrimage to Mecca in 1985, a
bloodless palace coup took place and produced a thoroughly bourgeois and dictatorial
military head of government in the person of Babangida.^18
His regime would also be remembered as the one during which there was so much
windfall from the sale of crude oil. But the said windfall was not to benefit the nation as
this would not be accounted for. Babangida’s reign was also reputed to have witnessed
perhaps the greatest level of bloodshed both within the military ranks and the civilian
population. The siege mentality created by his regime and the level of corruption it
indulged in led to a series of coup attempts in the military. The most controversial of this
however was the Mamman Vatsa’s alleged coup plan. The controversy which trailed the
execution of this poet-General as well as others alleged to have plotted the coup is still
very much a matter of national opinion to date. It was therefore not possible for literary
creativity, especially poetry at that time to ignore the despicable phenomenon into which
military dictatorship, personified by Babangida, had constituted itself. Poetry at this point
became a potent counter-weapon with which Nigerian writers engaged the regime. For all
other forms of resistance appeared to have come under arrest by the dictatorship. It was
because of this intractable success of literature in “speaking truth to power” that Ojaide,
in The Blood of Peace , for instance, says:
Neither bullets nor other savages can arrest words
that have already been aired
18
Even at that, Wole Soyinka, reputable for always providing alternative critical history of Nigeria in his
own rights, argues against the corrupt-free credentials of General Buhari. The reason for such stance had to
do with his previous office in the 70s as minister of Petroleum Resources. In fact, he contends that the
corruption scam which the then UPN-led opposition inaugurated had all the potentials of catching up with
Buhari: this was why he staged a coup in the first place to squash not so much the obviously corrupt NPN-
led government, as the Awolowo-led opposition which had demanded a comprehensive probe of the scam.
See, The Open Sore of a Continent (New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996: 91-92).