The announcement this week by the Maradona of Nigerian politics – General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (aka IBB) – that he will stand as presidential candidate next year for whichever of the 51 political parties that will have him takes us back to the future. It comes just as Acting President Gooduck Jonathan tries to push through critical electoral reforms. While some Nigerians are awed by IBB’s name and reputation for political cunning, others dismiss him as the architect of the anulling of the presidential election won by Moshood Abiola in 1993 and the ensuing damage to the political fabric. Such are IBB’s fabled powers that Nigeria’s plentiful conspiracy theorists claim to see his hand in the coming to power of his former rival Gen. Sani Abacha, Abacha’s demise in June 1998 and that of Abiola a week later. To make headway, IBB will have to explain plausibly how and why the 1993 election was annulled and the source of his equally fabled personal wealth. A coalition of activists in Lagos led by veteran lawyer Femi Falana wants to help: they have filed a petition calling on the new Attorney General to prosecute IBB for his failure to account for the presumed US$12.5 billion oil windfall earnings during the Gulf War in 1991. Falana says that a report by the late economist Pius Okigbo showed that the extra-budgetary payments system set up to manage the extra funds was under the direct control of the presidency amid evidence of a huge misappropriation of funds.