Former military president, General Ibrahim  Badamasi Babangida (rtd) has finally opened  up on his assessment of the eight-year administration of  former  President Olusegun Obasanjo.

His verdict is that the Obasanjo  government did not really meet the aspirations of most Nigerians in terms of infrastructural  development and provision of social services  to the people commensurate with the huge  resources at its disposal.

Speaking in a rare interview  with People Monthly, published in its December 2007 edition, IBB, as he is fondly called  also accused the immediate past administration of lacking  ingenuity in initiating its own policies  and programmes but merely  mimicked the Babangida reform programmes   implemented between August 1985 and August 1993.
On Obasanjo's score  sheet IBB  declared: "We  provided  the platform and he tried to build on  this  platform. They did not create anything  new, maybe apart from the slogan but every other thing you can trace it to our administration.

"What I would probably say is that I ran an administration for eight years and during  those eight  years what accrued  to the federal government, what accrued  to us as an administration was about N565 billion that is less than what was accruing to the Obasanjo government in a year. What they were getting in one year, we got less in eight years."
Babangida added that "I know what we  achieved with that little amount of money  in eight years; if I had  that kind of money may be we could have gone places. That, I am absolutely confident about and that is number one.

"Number two, the world is made to  believe that and  you in the media got that contraption, that my administration institutionalized corruption. Now we know better who instutionalized corruption. So I am  grateful to God  and may be history will eventually vindicate us."

For details, see http://www.nationalmirroronline.com/cove/article01