By Babafemi Ojudu
During his keynote address at the 30th anniversary of the creation of Ekiti State, Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji looked up from his prepared speech and said: “Whatever anybody may say, we thank General Sani Abacha for creating Ekiti State.”
Then, looking towards where I sat, he added: “I know my egbon, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, will not like this.”
He had good reason to think so. Considering the torture, humiliation and imprisonment I suffered under Abacha’s government, gratitude was hardly the emotion anyone would expect me to associate with the dictator.
Yet life has taught me that truth sometimes requires us to hold two uncomfortable things in our minds at once. Abacha presided over a government that inflicted terrible suffering on many Nigerians, myself included. His government also created Ekiti State, fulfilling an aspiration dear to our people. Acknowledging the latter does not erase the former.
This brings me to an enduring insight in Yoruba philosophy: Tibi tire la dá ilé ayé—the world was created with both good and evil.
The saying recognises that human existence contains joy and sorrow, kindness and cruelty, gain and loss. These experiences inhabit the same world and sometimes emerge from the same person or situation. Life rarely arranges itself into the neat compartments we would prefer.
For me, the wisdom in this saying lies in learning to recognise that complexity without losing our moral bearings. Good and evil may coexist, but we must still distinguish between them. A good deed does not cancel a wicked one, just as acknowledging a person’s contribution does not require us to excuse the suffering that person caused.
I have also learnt something about myself: however deeply someone has hurt me, I eventually try to understand what happened and find my way towards forgiveness. The memory remains, but I do not want bitterness to take permanent possession of my life.
Under President Ibrahim Babangida, too, I suffered brutality and torture. Yet I have met him a couple of times since he left office and have been able to recognise qualities in him that I consider positive. Those encounters have not rewritten my experience of his government. They have reminded me that a human being can be capable of warmth in one setting and responsible for grave harm in another.
Such contradictions can be difficult to accept, especially when we have borne the consequences ourselves. But our pain, however justified, need not prevent us from seeing what else is true.
Sometimes, I wish Abacha had lived long enough for me to sit across from him and ask the questions that still trouble me. Why did he do the things he did? What did he think he was protecting? What did he believe men like me had done to deserve such treatment?
I do not know whether his answers would have satisfied me. I would, however, have welcomed the opportunity to hear them.
And if I meet any of his children today, I will embrace them warmly. I have no desire to visit the sins of their father upon them. They deserve to be encountered as individuals, with their own lives and choices.
Perhaps this is where the Yoruba understanding of life’s duality becomes most useful: it encourages us to look carefully, judge honestly and resist the temptation to reduce a whole person or an entire history to a single verdict.
We can condemn oppression and acknowledge a worthwhile act. We can remember an injury and still choose forgiveness. We can welcome the children of a man whose government caused us pain.
So, my dear Governor, I understand your gratitude for the creation of Ekiti State. I share the joy of belonging to a state for which our people struggled so long. Alongside that joy, I carry memories of what I endured under the government that created it.
Both belong to my history. Neither has to disappear for the other to be true.
Tibi tire la dá ilé ayé.
The wisdom is to see both clearly—and, in our own conduct, to choose the good.
Babafemi Ojudu, CON, is a journalist, political scientist, former Senator, and former Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters.
