Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, a former Nigeria’s military president, has prescribed that the next president of the country should be a person versed in Economics, within the age of 60 and good politician.
Babangida also said that the individual must be a person that has good linkages across the country.
The former military president, who spoke in an interview aired on Arise Television, Friday, also revealed that his regime annulled June 12, 1993, presidential election presumably won by the late Moshood Kashimawo Abiola (MKO) because “confirming him as winner would have led to coup d’etat and more instability in the country.”
On the next round of general election billed for 2023, Babangida said: “I have started visualising a good Nigerian leader. That is, a person, who travels across the country and has a friend virtually everywhere he travels to and he knows at least one person that he can communicate with.”
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According to him, “That is a person, who is very versed in economics and is also a good politician, who should be able to talk to Nigerians and so on. I have seen one, or two or three of such persons already in their sixties.”
He stressed that there were few individuals who had the capacity to lead the country and effectively run its affairs economically and politically.
He added that Nigeria was in dire need of a leader who can connect with the people and tries to talk with them.
On the annulment of the election he said: “If it had materialised, there would have been a coup d’etat which could have been violent. That’s all I can confirm.
“It didn’t happen, thank God for the Maradonic way we handled you guys in the society. Both the military, they can do it because they have the weapons to do it. The other is social agitation”.
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