Maryam Ibrahim Babangida
By Augustus Aikhomu

REMEMBERING and paying tributes to our late friend of excellence and wife of my professional and political boss, Her Excellency, Hajia Dr. Mrs. Maryam Ibrahim Babangida cannot be too many or too much. Many weeks, many months and many years ahead, she will continue to be remembered and be praised for what she was and still is to humanity, to friends, acquaintances, the womenfolk and children, and indeed to most if not all Nigerians. It is highly likely that when some of us who have been close to the Babangida phenomenon begin to think through and put into print our memoirs, Maryam Babangida would certainly feature in many and varied respects of our thoughts and reflections.

For me and my family, it has not been easy to grapple with the reality that this phenomenal lady has left us in body but obviously not in spirit and memory. She was and continues to be an epitome of goodness, fellowship, and integrity. I became close to her initially as wife of a professional colleague in the days when she became the chairperson of the Nigerian Army Officers Wives Association just as my own wife Rebecca Aikhomu became the chairperson of the Nigerian Navy Officers Wives Association. From then forward, the roads and linkages of our relationship began to take shape and deepen. Both ladies worked devotedly and closely to uplift the two institutions which comprise the wives of military officers; and they left important legacies for the associations to continue to flourish. That was the early time that I personally spotted the inner strength of character and integrity in Maryam Babangida.

And then the opportunities emerged by the good twists of history when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida assumed the unique responsibilities of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; and not too long I also assumed the role of IBB's primary assistant, initially as Chief of General Staff in the hierarchy of authority for close to four years, and later as Vice President. It is in this unique role performance that the quality of the human person with which Maryam Babangida was made began to surge and be nourished and to flourish.

Not many people would know the way Maryam Babangida set out to transform an otherwise only ceremonial role of the First Lady of Nigeria into a store house of knowledge and intelligence-gathering for development of complementary public policy and programmes in the work of the Presidency. Always and ever focused, always and ever mindful of the sensitivity and sensibility of her husband as President, and, accordingly, always conscious about what she did so as to impact society and culture positively, Mrs. Babangida assembled a core of highly public spirited ladies to begin to build the institution of the First Lady of the country. In the meantime, as personalities of credibility, benevolence and integrity came to grip with the essence of Mrs. Babangida's focus and grasp of her role in the theatre of the public sphere, it became easy, contrary to what certain critics then of the Babangida Presidency imagined, to attract and generate resources, to prosecute and sustain the programme of the Better Life for Rural Women (BLP).

I personally got to know more about the BLP programme in addition to my own position as Vice President by the fact that Mrs. Babangida, in a sense very much like her husband, performed and prosecuted the BLP with a team of dedicated women (The M. Team), and my own wife was duly acknowledged as the deputy chairperson. I am not in a position to provide the register or roll call of the highly spirited Nigerian women, and even including a few good men who helped to fashion the BLP programme with all the successes it achieved. With the BLP, Mrs. Babangida engineered and provided tremendous support base and architecture for the mobilisation of women for political office.

Above all, her BLP programme became a forum for critical political consciousness. It also became an institutional complement to many other government projects and programmes such as MAMSER, the Peoples Bank which was really targeted at the eradication of poverty among rural women folk. The same is true of the programme of DFRRI which targeted rural infrastructure particularly roads leading from semi-urban settlements to the remotest farmlands in this country. Nigerians may forget some of these things too soon but the creation of wealth or at least the addition to wealth by Mrs. Babangida's projects and programmes was a limitless experience. In all these spheres, the BLP was an institutional precursor of even the socio-cultural dimensions of the so-called NEEDS and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

One other thing which I cannot forget easily because I was involved is the deep concern which Mrs. Babangida had for what became the title of her book The Home Front. She was a builder and a very humane and kind-hearted mother who believed very strongly, even if I can say so, with Christian values although a devoted Muslim she was, of the family as the major plank upon which father, mother, children and siblings revolve. She was a powerful influence on the Nigerian society, relying upon the role of the family in the upbringing of the young ones. Many people will remember that not only because she was blessed with four children, very proportionately two handsome young men and two beautiful ladies, Mrs. Babangida tried to influence the public policy of population growth in Nigeria.

She was the force behind the scene in the policy of attempting to make the Nigerian family, willingly and naturally, to limit the number of children to four. This was intended to create a relationship between population growth and economic growth rate of the country's development process. The policy caught on for a while, and I am convinced that the young men and young women of the 1987 to 1993 period saw themselves as positive instruments of the one family four children profile.

Mrs. Babangida was always engaged and as she was equally an engaging personality, friendly and mild, yet forceful internally and a tremendous influence not only on her husband but virtually on everyone who had had the opportunity to work with or be part of the larger IBB network.

What can one say with the loss and departure of a lady whose footprints would ever remain in the sands of time? Even those of us who are neither her husband, mother, daughter, sister, nor brother, the loss is deep and the pain is even deeper. But in the ways of God, who can predict the design and framework of life? It is God alone and a measure of time that can heal. The loss remains with us, but memories will ever be green. As for my friend and boss, and as for the children and grandchildren, may God continue to console them and strengthen them while we will continue to provide the little human support which we have been known to do. May her good soul Rest in Perfect Peace, and in the bossom of the Lord. Amen.

Admiral Aikhomu is former Vice President of Nigeria.

If IBB stuck to one wife all his life then I believe that is a departure from what we used to see especially with rich men that are muslims where the religion allows them to marry up to 4 wives. This is really interesting.

Nigerians use "God" any how.

^^^