Thoughts on Ebino Topsy

Sallimichegani

Watching Ebenezer Babatope (alias Ebino Topsy) these days is like watching a once magnificent building slowly dissolve into rubble. It’s never a pretty sight, and in this particular case, the spectacle is all the more sorrowful because the estate in question used to be among the most solid, certainly one of the most colourful, on the block. History may not remember him as a deep thinker, but there is no doubt that Ebenezer Babatope put in his shift for the cause. Pamphleteer, writer, organizer, columnist and logistician, Ebino Topsy answered the progressive cause whenever he was summoned. As Director of Organization of the Unity Party of Nigeria, he accomplished the improbable by making the thankless drudgery of everyday management of men, information, and resources almost sexy. Most Awoists, including many of those with whom he has since fallen out, still credit him for most of the UPN’s sensational success at the grassroots, especially in the western part of the country.

In retrospect, this was the high water mark of his political career. Although he had caught public attention as early as 1974 when General Yakubu Gowon rewarded his efforts as the editor-in-chief of the Lagoon Echo (a University of Lagos campus magazine) with a stint in detention, it was his portfolio as the UPN’s Director of Organization that effectively thrust him into the national limelight. Throughout the short-lived Second Republic (1979-1983), he stood toe to toe with the National Party of Nigeria, and would soon return to jail following the Buhari-led putsch of December 1983. So, let there be no doubt: We are speaking here of a fearless man who has paid his dues, often in the exorbitant currency of the safety and well-being of loved ones.
But that was then. Ebino Topsy is now a different animal, a card-carrying, chest-beating loyalist of the People’s Democratic Party, last seen in the company of alleged vote riggers in Ekiti state; before then, in the company of alleged vote riggers in Osun state, and before then…Oscar Wilde, in one of his most memorable quips, said that while to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness. It may not be unusual for someone of Ebino Topsy’s political pedigree to lose their ideological faith, but to carouse so openly with one’s former ideological enemies, and characters that the late Obafemi Awolowo, Ebino Topsy’s self-avowed mentor, would have branded as politicians of easy virtue, is the equivalent of throwing into a flaming crematorium, every point of principle that one had ever stood for. No, carelessness does not begin to capture what has happened to Ebenezer Babatope. This is self-demolition of the worst sort. How is this calamitous political riches to rags story to be explained? Where did Ebenezer Babatope, now firmly in the twilight of his political career, press the self-destruct button?
While the long arc of time may yet furnish us with more illumination, many will, with considerable merit, trace Ebino Topsy’s rapid decline to his decision to accept the portfolio of Transport Minister under the Abacha regime. Babatope, notably, has never wavered in his defence of that decision to serve under the military- it was the act of a political group, he insists, not just a solitary individual. As he never tires of pointing out, he was not the only progressive who believed they saw a rare integrity behind those dark goggles. There was Jerry Gana. There was Lateef Jakande. There was Solomon Lar, etc. His 1995 book, The Abacha Regime and the June 12 Crisis: The Struggle for Democracy is a repetitive and often tedious attempt to explain the circumstances surrounding his appointment, and other progressives’, into the Abacha cabinet.
But why did he ignore the same political collective when, further down the road, as Abacha’s real intentions became tragically clear, he and others were asked to quit? Babatope’s defence is that quitting at that point would have put him and members of his family in mortal danger. But did he also face a threat to his life for the entire duration of the Obasanjo presidency? Why did Babatope continue to support Obasanjo even as the latter waged an open war against the Awolowo legacy, acting in sharp contradistinction to the very values and mores that the late Obafemi Awolowo articulated and embodied? Why hop in bed with a patron whose ideals (and to accuse Obasanjo of having any ideals is to do him a huge service) run parallel to those of your self-declared mentor?
To ponder these questions is to begin to speculate, primarily, on the reasons behind Ebino Topsy’s political transformation, a transformation that has seen him act in cahoots with characters like Senator Iyiola Omisore and Osun state governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, men who have never allowed morality or principle to stand in the way of their political objectives; and who, if recent events in Ekiti state are anything to go by, will do just about anything to subvert the popular will.

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At a broader level however, Babatope’s disintegration raises social issues that go beyond his individual experience. Using his travails as empirical backcloth, we can begin to pose critical questions about the nature of politics in Nigeria, the quicksand that is ideological affiliation, and the perils of progressive politics. Ebino Topsy has been shaped by a series of social forces, all centering on the composition of politics and the co-optive character of the Nigerian state’s ruling elite. The poor man himself may not even know what has hit him. The onus is on the intelligentsia to explain Ebino Topsy “and through him the topsy-turvy nature of the real and aspiring members of the Nigerian ruining elite.