Ibrahim Babangida still loves and thinks of his late wife, Maryam

After 40 years of marriage Former Head of State, Ibrahim Babangida who lost his wife and mother of his four children, Maryam Babangida, to ovarian cancer on 27th December 2009 in an LA hospital has explained why he is yet to remarry.

“I will tell you an interesting story. There was a woman I was joking with and I said, ‘Okay, why don’t you marry me?’ and she said, ‘No I won’t’. And I asked her why? She said, ‘I am not sure I can spoil you the way your wife used to spoil you; so don’t put any idea into my head’. He says.

Recounting how life has been without her, Babangida in a new interview with Vanguard Newspaper said “She was a real companion who got to understand and accept me for what I am and tried to make the best of me and that is what I am missing.

She was the one who would look at me and say ‘you’re wrong’ and I had to accept and bury my pride and I will say ‘sorry, you’re right’. That is the sort of counseling I am missing now.”

The late Mrs Babangida was 61 when she passed on, they were married for 40 years.

She was credited with creating the position of First Lady of Nigeria and making it her own.
As first lady, she launched many programmes to improve the life of women. The “Maryam Phenomenon” became a celebrity and a “an icon of beauty, fashion and style”, a position she retained after her husband’s fall from power.