HOW I CHOSE MY MINISTERS - GENERAL IBRAHIM BADAMASI BABANGIDA (RTD), Nigeria’s First Military President (1985-1993)

‘IBB,’ as he is popularly known is a native of Minna, born on August 17th 1941 to his late parents who earlier migrated from Kuta to Wushishi. He lost his parents at the age of fourteen; he was left with the Herculean task of facing the world alone.

IBB had his elementary education in Minna from 1950-1956 and gained admission to the Provincial Secondary School which was later changed to Government Secondary School Bida, from 1956-1961. He was selected and recruited with other young men from the North in 1962 to attend the 6th course of the Nigerian Military College, Kaduna, now called the Nigeria Defense Academy. After completion, he proceeded to India to complete the first-level Officer’s course at the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in late 1963. As a young Officer, he continuously proved his steadfastness through hard work, courage, intelligence, humility, attendance, dedication, fitness, loyalty and professionalism in the various military locations he was posted to in the Military.

IBB was appointed Chief of Army Staff in January 1984, after the return of military rule in December 1983. He held his position under Major General Mohammed Buhari Regime, until the bloodless coup-d’état of August 27th 1985 that overthrew the Buhari Regime. IBB got into the steering wheel of the country’s most prestigious seat as President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces in 1985. He was able to introduce many programs linked to political, social and economic reforms, paving the way for emerging and possible good governance. He ruled Nigeria from 1985 to 1993, before handing over to a Civilian Interim Government.

IBB is undoubtedly the most controversial, the most popular and the most influential President Nigeria has ever had. IBB fashioned out programs for our great country. His highly calculated strategies are simply out of this world, his unpredictability, foresight, actions and reactions made the people marvel about this wonderful man earning him the name ‘Maradonna,’ named after the world most famous football player and juggler from Argentina.

When former Nigerian President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida clocked 70, he played host to a delegation of Unity School Old Student Association National Exco led by the Sec. Gen, Hajia Fathia Habiba Shua’ibu, who came to felicitate with him. He took time to chat on the state of the nation with the Editor, Unity Watch Magazine Taiyelolu Ojo and Mariam Mamman Nasir, a member of the editorial board. We present to you, excerpts from the Interview, in commemoration of his 78^th birthday.

UNITY WATCH: Over 90% of Government Officials or the top echelon of the Private Sector in Nigeria today are products of the Public School Systems; they benefited so much from the system, yet the education sector in Nigeria today has gone comatose, with parents taking their children or wards to study abroad even to places as far as Azerbaijan and Papua, New Guinea. What went wrong and how do you think the lost glory and high standard of education could be restored?

IBB: The problem of education in this country today could be traced back to the 1973 introduction and implementation of Universal Primary Education, which only provided for the education of about 13 million kids, and over time, all successive governments thereafter, failed to make long term plans for the sector, hence the failure today.

We are faced with a population explosion, yet no facilities commensurate with that. But it is not too late, the situation could be salvaged through proper, well-articulated and highly focused planning, long term of course. People with unfaulted vision, who have passion for reviving the educational glory of this country, must be put in charge, and above all, there must be proper and judicious use of resources allocated to the sector. As I was growing up, I had known a name associated like no other, with education, and when I became the Head of State, I sought him out to help us man the education sector, that was …. Fafunwa; and up till today, his policies on education cannot be faulted. He had vision, focus, passion and love for education. These are the kind of people we need to bring about serious, well-articulated and meaningful changes to education in this country.

UNITY WATCH: Sir, it can be said that you are the father of modern Nigeria, by virtue of the policies and programs you put in place to tackle the socio-economic problems prevalent at that time. Some of these programs still run today in some form or another, others have been stopped or transformed. From 1998 till date, why do you think there has been a downward trend in policy implementation?

IBB: When I was in Office, I knew I couldn’t do it alone, I knew I had to have people who share the same vision and same goals with me about this country. It was this set of people I appointed as Ministers, Heads of Intelligence Agencies (like the gentleman sitting over there and other government departments). These people shared the same beliefs with me about this country, not only that they were people who were well respected within the society either because of their achievements as professionals, but also for their participation in the development of this country.

I always use the example of the educational sector which was to a large extent transformed by Professor Babatunde Fafunwa. A person; I had heard of since I was in Primary School and it was clear he had a passion for the development of education in this country, so it was not difficult to convince him to be part of our government. All his life was dedicated to the development of education, so you need people who share your dreams and aspirations to work with you and I as the head should support everything they do. I shouldn’t contradict or criticize them but give them the resources they need to perform their duties and leave them to use their initiative to do their jobs.

Because we are moving in the same direction, another person I called to the government was Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a well-respected member of the Nigerian Medical Association, which was a very strong Union that gave many previous governments hell, so I gave them one of their own, who was also working with the World Health Organisation, so if the government needed foreign assistance, he was instrumental in many ways. These were people who understood their jobs and delivered at any task they undertook.

There was Professor Ezekwe from Anambra State, during the war, he was the one who modeled all the crude bombs that kept the war machinery running. He was obviously a very intelligent Engineer, so I went to search for him and he was shocked he could be so sought after. When I asked what he wanted for Nigeria, he talked about rural infrastructure and engineering, which he developed into sustainable government programs. You need to have people who believe in you as a leader and share your vision. These people will be effective because they would not want history to remember them as failures, so they have reputations to protect, so there wouldn’t be a problem bringing them on board.

UNITY WATCH: Sir, you had the opportunity to rule this country between August 1985 and August 1993. When you look at the state of infrastructure in the country now and what we are aspiring to become as a nation, what advice do you have for the crop of leaders we have now?

IBB: A lot is required of our leaders today, foremost of them is planning and the efficient use of resources, currently we are not using our resources efficiently. We have had different administrations in this country, the situations that brought each to power is different. The nation is blessed with a lot of resources. In our time, we operated with $12/barrel of crude oil. Today, $120$130/barrel is the benchmark and it has not gone below $90/barrel on the average for the past 10 years. This is why I emphasised planning. A lot of waste has occurred, due to the lack of proper planning.

UNITY WATCH: Unemployment is a global trend but when we look at the peculiar nature of it in the case of Nigeria, where we have thousands of graduates every year from our Institutions of higher learning and the NYSC has about 3 batches in one calendar year, just to cope with the large number of graduates, with less than 20% of this number getting gainful employment, what do you think this portends for us as a nation?

IBB: This is a problem which I am glad you noted that we tried to address in my time, we have a lot of graduates coming out of schools with no place to go. 30 years back, if you told me a chap with a Master's Degree from Kano could be unemployed, I would say impossible. I think we must pay attention to farming. We had introduced the ‘back to land’ policy in our time and that employed a lot of young people. I believe there are lots of employment generation initiatives in farming, industry, technology, telecommunications and manufacturing, where those with technical skills can be absorbed and get gainful employment. So it is a problem and we must address it from all directions urgently.

UNITY WATCH: On national security, the issue is quite frightening and alarming with the spate of bombings, political assassinations, and so on, what has happened to covert operations, intelligence gathering and proper security policies and measures put in place in your time? What can the present government do to safeguard the lives and property of Nigerians?

IBB: What we must all agree with is the point we raised before, that unemployment is a social problem that can result in restiveness among our people. An example is what just took place in Tunisia, where the Arab uprising began. The man was a highly educated man looking for a job but could not get one. He created a kiosk and the government’s environmental agency demolished it because it was ‘defacing’ the beauty of the city. Here was a man, who went to school, could not get a job, and decided to use his own brain and very little resources to initiate a means of livelihood and the government comes and says, to hell with you, you are spoiling the beauty of our city with your kiosk. He then sets the ball rolling for the Arab uprising. I pray we don’t have such a situation in our country, but the issue of unemployment is a security issue already.

UNITY WATCH: During your time as Head of State, you fashioned out a clear democratic system for this country, where we had two political parties based on ideology, but today, we find ourselves in a system where there are many political parties with some resembling mere associations. Politics has been so monetised that anyone vying for any office, no matter how little, has to spend so much money, which for those who win makes recouping their money a priority on the assumption of office. How do we bring sanity to the political system?

IBB: We did ours on ideological basis and experience. Democratically, Nigeria is not better or worse than the United States, India, Germany or even France. They all started with two basic political parties and it has been working in these countries, even in our own nation, people tend to forget that we had the Progressive Grand Alliance and National Alliance, everybody found his way into one of them. The first republic had two, in 1978, there were five and everyone fused in. The Senate President was NRC, the deputy was SDP and they worked together. We are the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which means that we have a republican constitution, why should anyone decide to change it to parliamentary? We settled on this in 1963, so let us develop it and keep working on it. We could have two parties and leave some room for the development of a third party, politicians can choose between these parties and if they have issues they can settle them within the two parties. If there are irreconcilable differences, one can leave one party for the other. A journalist like you recently asked me how the transition program during my administration wasted N40 billion and ended up inconclusive? I told him, with that money, we conducted Local Government Elections, Gubernatorial Elections and the House of Assembly Elections which were all fruitful and conclusive. So, I asked him, how much it costs now to run Voters’ registration. We spent N40 billion on an entire election then but now, N87billion is spent just to get down the names of Voters. You haven’t bought equipment, logistics and security for the main elections yet. This is simple arithmetics and so where is the waste? He looked at me and smiled.

UNITY WATCH: We, the youth in Nigeria remember you championed generational change in politics (new breed). Do you think the new breed of politicians have done well? And have they been better for the country?

IBB: I think during our time, they did very well. Most of the Governors, Senators and Members of the House of Representatives came with patriotic zeal, believing that they could do it and they wanted to demonstrate to Nigerians that they were capable. I think it was a successful experiment but as time went by, old habits began to come back, most of what you read today in newspapers about theft, fraud and scam, it is mostly young people who perpetrate these acts. The problem can be solved by attitudinal change and the reintroduction of grassroot politics. If you want to be a Local Government Chairman, take yourself to the people, let the people know you. Allow them to ask you questions like ‘who are you? How long have you lived here? How have you developed this locality?’

Let me tell you a short story. In Mushin Local Government election, a man wanted to be the Local Government Chairman, the people insisted on seeing him and taking him to all the streets, somebody recognised him as an ex-convict. Though the man said he was the right person, the people rejected him based on his past record and it was the end of his political career. So everybody who wants to lead must go to the people at all levels, local, state and federal.

By:Gen Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (Rtd)