Nigeria's Former Dictator Distances Himself From Running For President In 2019

Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, a retired general and Nigeria's self-styled military president from 1985 to 1993, has dispersed any rumours that he would run for the office of president in the next general elections scheduled for 2019. He made this known while declining an appointment as the chairman of the national conference of the opposition People's Democratic Party, PDP, which had been in power since 1999 when Nigeria returned to democratic governance, before losing to the incumbent, and former opposition All Progressives Congress, APC.
This was a man who was involved in most of the coup plots in Nigeria's coup-filled history, who, till date has refused to account for the excess $12 billion crude oil windfall during the first gulf war, and who unilaterally annulled what was billed as Nigeria's freest and fairest election held on June 12 1993. He also smuggled Nigeria into the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, OIC, an organization billed as "the collective voice of the muslim world" despite Nigeria being constitutionally a secular state.
He murdered his best friend, and the best man at his wedding, Major General Mamman J Vatsa, on charges of plotting a coup against him. Vatsa was a writer, a poet and a highly intelligent man. I read his books as a child. Babangida probably killed him because he was jealous, and afraid, of his intellect. Nigeria's leaders have always valued mediocrity; intelligence is abhorred, despised and actively discouraged. This is why, over the years, Nigeria's education system has been deliberately underfunded, undermined, and sabotaged by successive regimes. It is also directly related to the rise of Boko Haram. 
Mr Babangida now calls on Allah at every opportunity, because it is one way guaranteed to ingratiate him to the hearts of Nigerians, who are notoriously amnesic. Babangida who should be hiding his purulent self behind the walls of his rumoured 50 bedroom hilltop mansion in Minna, Niger state, now goes about describing himself as "an elder statesman and consultant-in-chief to political office seekers and other like-minds who want my input in their aspirations." This can only happen in Nigeria, where the absurd is accepted as normal.
I am happy Mr Babangida noted that he had attained the "glorious age of 70" (in 2011when he 'officially' quit partisan politics) in a country where the life expectancy stands at a "ridiculous 47." While this buffoon was in power for 8 whole years, what did he do for the healthcare system? His wife was diagnosed of ovarian cancer in the USA, got all her treatment there, and, in 2009, eventually died there. There are thousands of Nigerian healthcare personnel in the USA, and I can bet good money that at least one Nigerian was involved in Mrs Babangida's care.
Mr Babangida should be spending the rest of his life in one of Nigeria's squalid jails for giving deep roots to corruption, the murder of some of Nigeria's finest military officers and the murder in 1986 of Dele Giwa, a journalist, whose murder everyone knows Babangida ordered. But this is Nigeria, where, no matter your crimes, once you cloak yourself with the name of God, you are almost automatically absolved of any responsibility for your wrongdoing.