“Our politicians need the Rawlings treatment!”
If you ever wondered what some Nigerian activists and commentators meant by that, here is a clue: it is not a medical treatment. It is not a pedicure either.
On June 4, 1979, a group of soldiers smuggled Jerry John Rawlings, a flight lieutenant in the Ghana Air Force, out of prison — where he was awaiting execution for a failed coup — and announced the overthrow of Fred Akuffo, the military head of state.
Rawlings, a junior officer, went on to rule for just 112 days before handing over power to a democratically elected government.
By then, though, he had executed, by firing squad, eight military officers, including three former heads of state — Akwasi Afrifa, Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and Akuffo — for “corruption”. Keeping them alive, he argued, meant they would continue to destabilise and corrupt the system because of their influence.
For a long time, the agitation in Nigerian radical circles — where Rawlings was held in high esteem — was that the “corrupt” Nigerian political class needed to undergo “the Rawlings treatment” if the country would ever move forward.
Nigeria is now a democracy and military coups are increasingly a thing of the past, but Rawlings is still held in high esteem among those who supported his “revolutionary” stint in the country’s West African neighbours.
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All Rawlings ever wanted to do was tackle corruption.
VOWED TO CLEAN UP CORRUPTION
Restless, Rawlings was back again in December 1981, less than three years after, with another coup to kick out Limann, whom he accused of allowing corruption to fester.
“They were a pack of criminals who bled Ghana to the bone,” said Rawlings in a broadcast on Accra Radio, January 1, 1982.
”I am prepared at this moment to face a firing squad if what I try to do for the second time in my life does not meet the approval of Ghanaians,” he continued, adding that his team would ”clean up corruption. By God or the Devil.”
For him, it was nothing more than to re-organise Ghana.
Rawlings remained in office for 11 years, and then transmuted into a democratically elected president in January 1993 on the platform of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a political party he founded. He served as president for two terms of eight years, and bowed out in January 2001.
‘GHANA SO CORRUPT… AFTER WE LEFT OFFICE’
The expectation of any good leader is to see a consolidation on the legacy left behind. But Rawlings seemed not to have been impressed with the way the affairs of the country had been managed by his successors. In a 2016 interview, the former president expressed shock at how his country was now being whitewashed.
“Not too long after I left office, I was giving a talk in Tanzanian and I said the world was going to see an exponential growth of terrorism. I had left office and the western media and western governments were desperately whitewashing the image of Ghana in spite of the atrocities and the corruption that was going on in my country after we had left office,” he said.
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“Ghana had become a captive state, being whitewashed. You see how they orchestrate things? This is what I want you to wake up to. Now, it might interest you to know that, while they were whitewashing, making these claims and things were also falling apart, as late as just a few months ago, BBC now claims that terrorism had risen by 84%, creating a false impression at that time. This is the power of the Western media.”
‘ABACHA WAS PATRIOTIC’
In what many Nigerians would see as an irony, Rawlings — who became popular across the sub Saharan Africa for his stance against corruption — described Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s late military ruler, as a patriot.
Abacha reportedly embezzled an estimated sum of $3 billion, stashed in foreign banks and up until 2020, the country is still recovering the sum. However, Rawlings maintained a good relationship with Abacha who was Nigeria’s head of state from 1993 to 1998, the years Rawlings also held sway in Ghana.
In an interview, Rawlings, wondering why Abacha was “caught up in such practices”, said he was nonetheless Nigeria’s saviour.
“But he was one hell of a nationalist and very patriotic. Abacha saved the country. Some of you may not know this. But I also had my fingers on things,” he said.
“Some may not want to hear it. But the departure of that gentleman called Abiola, the one who passed away, saved Nigeria from a probable explosion. Shonekan couldn’t handle the situation and Abacha stepped in. There is also something else we shouldn’t lose sight of. When I am talking about the possibility of an explosion, it’s about the circumstances and the personalities involved. Abiola plus Shonekan (who was a man of integrity) could not even be seen to hold it.”
He argued that, at the time, Nigeria needed retired generals who cannot be intimidated by the military, and that was “how come characters like Obasanjo could come back or for that matter, this gentleman, President Buhari, who cannot be intimidated by the military. It has its value, but I think it is a transition that we are all going through or you are going through.”
THE $2MILLION FROM ABACHA
In July 2016, Rawlings drew the ire of many Nigerians when he admitted that he received $2 million from Abacha. The former Ghana president said he collected $2 million from Abacha when Ghana needed funds for “constitutional activities”.
“We were preparing for constitutional rule. We needed funds for some activities, and we got contributions from few places, The interesting thing is that I never went to, or asked Abacha for any contribution. And this is something that impressed me about the man. I didn’t ask him for a penny. But he obviously understood certain situations, our situation, and graciously sent me a small suitcase of money,” he told The Guardian.
His decision to collect money from Abacha angered many Nigerians, who viewed him as the anti-corruption hero of the West Africa region, following his role in the execution of corrupt leaders in Ghana. Some even asked him to return the money given to him by Abacha.
