Former Military President, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, said that Buhari’s government was overthrown in 1985 because there was frustration in the society under his regime. Babangida stated this in an interview he granted to a team from Zero Tolerance (ZT), a quarterly magazine published by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

Excerpt: The circumstances surrounding your emergence as military president in 1985, some people believe that it was more of self-preservation than national interest.

Can you tell us what happened?

IBB: First of all, we planned a coup towards the end of 1983 that truncated the democratically elected government and the military government came in January 1984. Then that government also suffered the same fate as the democratic government when the military staged one of the finest coup in this country, because there was no blood, nothing was lost, smooth and everybody was treated with the most civility and our administration came. When we came in August of 1985 there was a plan to kick us out in December 1985, it didn’t work, they went into operation again in 1990. I think the country was going through a phase at that time, it’s a developing country and we always had one reason or the other for doing what we did at that time.