Index to Nigerian Newspapers

In his autobiography, A Journey of Service, former military president Ibrahim Babangida argued that Nigeria failed to maximize its oil boom years due to nationwide profligacy, conspicuous consumption, and poor economic planning that deepened the country's import dependency and ruined agriculture. Babangida defended his administration's controversial spending of the twelve point four billion dollars oil windfall from the Gulf War, maintaining that the funds were monetized and directed toward critical national infrastructure and legacy projects like Ajaokuta rather than stolen. Furthermore, he blamed previous regimes for fostering an environment of public corruption and economic imbalance through state-dominated enterprises, asserting that his government's homegrown Structural Adjustment Programme and painful reforms were necessary steps to correct an overvalued currency and rescue a perilous economy.