By Gabriel Enogholase
BENIN – A Group supporting the presidential aspiration of former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) in 2011, the Campaign Network for Ibrahim Babangida, CNI, weekend in Benin, Edo State, defended the former Head of State in most of the actions he took during his eight years regime.

Rising from a meeting at the residence of Admiral Augustus Aikhomu (rtd), the group specifically absolved Babangida of the murder of the founding Editor of the News Watch magazine, Mr. Dele Giwa, enthroning corruption in the country, the annulment of June 12 and the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP.

Spokesman of the group, Mr. Clem Iriata, in a statement, recalled that the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who was a close friend to the murdered Editor- in-Chief of the News Watch magazine, took Babangida’s government and some of the principal officers of the administration to court to unearth the killers of Dele Giwa.

Saying that the former Head of State did not in any way stand in the way of Chief Fawehinmi in his attempt to establish the killers of Dele Giwa, he added that the court did not find Babangida or his regime guilty of the assassination.

He said that it will be absolute fiction to begin to accuse Babangida of that murder, adding that doing so remains entirely in the realm of speculation and fiction when views against the several unresolved assassinations of other regimes after Babangida.

On the accusation that the introduction of SAP by Babangida was the harbinger of the present economic problem in the country, the group said that the crack in the Nigerian economy did not happen during the Babangida years, recalling that the late Chief Obafemei Awolowo, warned the Shagari regime of a possible crack in the economy but was called a Prophet of doom.

The group said that following the failure of the Buhari regime that took over from Shagari to address the problem, the need therefore to restructure the economy and stay afloat under the daunting challenges led to the introduction of SAP.

“Nigerian internal structural adjustment can be said to be the bedrock upon which the future economic stability of the country, which we are now enjoying. Without SAP, the alternative would have been total economic penury for Nigeria, recall also that Nigeria was not alone in structural adjustments,” it said.