Babangida Compares His Government With Jonathan’s, Others Says He Was A Saint

Former Military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida
(IBB) has compared how he left Nigeria in 1993 to the
way things are now and declared himself a saint.

Babangida, who spoke in an interview published in the
December 2014 edition of Zero Tolerance Magazine, a
publication of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC), also explained why he toppled the
government of Gen Muhammadu Buhari in 1985 coup.
Widely believed to have institutionalize corruption in
Nigeria, IBB, in his reaction, said, “Yeah I know. Maybe
I have to accept that, but anybody with a sense of
fairness has no option but to call us saints. I think my
government was able to identify corruption prone areas
and checked them.
“I don’t have the facts but if what I’m reading in the
papers is currently what is happening, then I think we
were angels. In a year I was making less than seven
billion dollars in oil revenue, in the same period there
are governments that are making 200 to 300 billion
dollars. With seven billion dollars, I did the little I could
achieve: with 200 billion there is still a lot to be
achieved,” he said.
Commenting on reports that $12 billion Gulf war
windfall was stolen, the former president said it was
used to build infrastructure in the country, such as
Abuja, the country’s capital and the third mainland
bridge in Lagos.
“I built Abuja. Today we have a brand new capital, we
used that money. I gave you a third mainland bridge,
Lagos; you cannot build it now for all the money Nigeria
is making. And what did it cost me? 500, 600, 700
million naira,” he said.

He further dismissed allegations of corruption, saying
he was the most investigated president in the country’s
history and no one had been able to indict him.
“Let me tell you something, I have been the most
investigated president Nigeria has ever had. By now
somebody should have come forward to say here it is.
Every government that came after me investigated me
because of that perception. Because they wanted to
retrieve the billions I stole,” he said.

Explaining why he staged a coup against Buhari in
1985, Babangida said coups are usually a response to
the yearnings of the people.
“A coup or change comes about if there is frustration in
the society, just get that right. There was frustration in
the society between 1984 and 1985; the ground was
fertile for a coup.

“It wasn’t fertile, thanks be to God, in December, 1985
when the first attempt on me was made, neither was it
fertile in April 1990 when the second attempt was made
and we had the support of all of you sitting down here.

“You write, you analyze, you talk, and you
demonstrated. It was not unusual then to hear, in the
case of the democratically elected government in 1983;
a common phase was ‘the worst military regime is
better than this government’.
“So you were giving us the impetus to stage a coup. We
are not dummies, if we didn’t have the support of all of
you we wouldn’t venture into it,” he said.

file photo below is IBB with former heads of state Olusegun
Obasanjo amd Muhammadu Buhari