Ibrahim Babangida Quotes
I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.
The work of Nigeria is not complete for as long as there is any one Nigerian who goes to bed on empty stomach.
A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.
But no nation can base its survival and development on luck and prayers alone while its leadership fritters away every available opportunity for success and concrete achievement.
Each one of us, and, indeed, all those who aspire to national leadership must bring their own visions, views and styles to the business of reforming Nigeria, and the search for solutions.
Democracy opens new vistas and opportunities. We should use the opportunities it offers to correct past mistakes not to blunder anew.
Most importantly, nothing has happened to change my conviction that freedom and the love of liberty remain the essential defining attributes of our national character as a people.
Even now, we make no apologies for the choice we made. The sacrifices we made were selfless. The options we offered were patriotic while the paths we chose were well thought out.
If you ask me to summarise our mission, I would put it this way: We were a military regime that sought to lay the foundations for freedom and liberty in a complex society.
It is of course the nature of historical contraction that the shortest distance to a historical destination is never a straight line.
It is only through books that we partake of the great harvest that is human civilization across the ages.
Informed by our sad experience of history, we require nothing short of a foundation for lasting democracy.
The return of democracy in our land has indeed thrown the problems of development into bolder relief.
We have established a new basis in our country in which economic liberalization would continue to flourish alongside democratic forces and deregulated power structure.
I am not sure that you, the younger generations, will like to go to war that we went through. So, we learn as the mistakes are being committed.
Left to me, the whole purpose of government is for the security of the citizens, like the security of lives and property.
