Eminent personalities yesterday failed to turn up as expected at a book launch on ex-military President Ibrahim Babangida.

Governors, ministers, traditional rulers, top businessmen and many others personalities across the country shunned the event expected to boost IBB’s political campaign and public rating.

However, Chief Tony Eze the chief launcher, a big time businessman during the military era donated N10 million in support of the book entitled: "Impression and Facts: Nigeria under General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, 1985-1993."

Notable personalities present other that IBB himself included former Inspector General of Police, Alhaji M. D. Yusuf and former Information Minister, Chief Alex Akinyele.

The Emir of Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris and his counterpart in Katsina sent representatives to the ceremony that was attended by scores of not-too-privileged Nigerians. The book launch was held at the International Conference Centre in the federal capital city.

Academia and members of some civil society groups contributed to the nine-chapter, 342-page book edited by Mr. Abubakar Siddique Mohammed, the Director, Centre for Democratic Development, Research and Training, Zaria.

According to the editor, the book is an effort to analyze facts and re-assess events of the IBB era that many critics have deliberately misconstrued while others fail to appreciate or understand them.

"With such warped impressions, a rational review and assessment to establish exactly where we are coming from, and why, and where we are going, and why, is just impossible. With the political leadership of the past reduced to either demons, or angels, saints or sinners, the good and the evil, a balanced, rational and realistic assessment of this past is made very difficult".

"Society just flounders around and sinks into recriminations and denunciations, which serve no useful purpose in grasping what actually happened in the past, in mastering the present and developing the capacity for determining the future", he added.

He added that the myths created around Babangida and other military leaders could only divert attention from their genuine achievements.