The man constantly bashed by the media for institutionalizing corruption in Nigeria, General Ibrahim Babangida has now rated his regime best on the Nigerian corruption index.
He said his regime was saintly, in comparison with successive governments, especially the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Babangida, Nigeria’s former military president between 1985 and 1993, spoke in an interview published in the December 2014 edition of Zero Tolerance Magazine, a publication of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Reacting to a question that his regime institutionalized corruption in Nigeria, he 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.
Babangida said the $12 billion Gulf war windfall was not stolen, but rather used to build infrastructure like Abuja 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.
Asked about his financial investments, Babangida said he was a major share holder in an unnamed Nigerian bank. He said: “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. “Unless you can tell me that you haven’t been very efficient in your investigation, that’s your problem and not mine.”
Asked why most Nigerian leaders leave office richer than they came into it, he said, “Now you said most, let me tell you on my own. When I got into office August of 1985 I made a declaration and it is there on record what I had, what I possessed, everything and when I left not much has changed. Before I became president I was living in this environment, nobody seems to remember that.”
Speaking on the devaluation of the currency, Babangida said his government wanted to compete effectively with economic development of other countries at the time, pointing out that “we were able to keep it down to 22 naira per dollar, when I left, it went up to 85. Abacha was good; he kept it below 85 and 90.”
