“I’m Not The Evil Many Think I Am” – Babangida Reveals As He Turns 75

 

General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (rtd), who attained the age of 75 today in his characteristic way of marking his birthday, had a session with members of the Correspondent Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Minna, Niger State where he answered questions on prominent issues that marked his life in public service.

He spoke about an array of things in the interview and here’s the excerpt from it.

Looking back, which of the policies of your time do you wish was never misinterpreted?

    I am not the evil that quite a lot of people consider me to be. I had a very excellent background and by training, we have to love one another. However, I can understand their feeling. But by virtue of the job I was doing, I was bound to be misconstrued and people will take it like that but I consider it as an opinion as long as I am not what you think I was, I feel satisfied.

    I read somewhere some time ago that they said I stole N12.8 billion and I said if I stole such amount, I had no business staying in the country but those are the type of things that one has to live with.

    I hope the younger generation will carry out a research about leadership, people, individual and what role they played in the development of the nation and come up with a different conclusion from what is on the ground now.

How do you feel when death rumours started flying around about when you are still alive?

    It is not new, they have done it to Zik, Shehu Shagari and other statesmen, and it is not new. Whether I like it or not, I will still die, they are only stating the obvious. The only thing we do not know about death is that we don’t know the cause, time or the place. Regarding why some people describe me as a cat with nine lives, it may be because of my survival of some disasters which looked like miracles.

    The first time I had such experience was in Lagos when we had a flight from one of the African countries back to Lagos and suddenly our engine developed a fault and from 29,000 feet, we came down to 15,000 but the good boys were able to control the plane.

    We eventually touched down at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport. The other engine just went off. My entourage before the sudden drop were drinking tea and coffee and shouting but when they heard about the development, there was silence as nobody was talking again. Even when I tried to cheer them up, I failed in the bid and that was the first time somebody described me as a cat with nine lives.