The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has eulogised the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, saying history will be kind to him for prioritising the interests of the Russians over his political ambition.
“Although Gorbachev’s political career was consumed by those reforms, history and posterity will be kind to him for placing the interests of the Soviet people above his own ambition,” a statement signed by the President’s spokesman, Garba Shehu read on Wednesday.
Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday that he died in Moscow at the age of 91 years.
“Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev died this evening after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said, quoted by the Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies.
Gorbachev, 91, served from 1985 to 1991, helping to transition the US-Soviet relations out of the Cold War.
Paying tribute to the former Soviet leader, Buhari described Gorbachev, as “a courageous reformer who will be remembered for years to come because of his immeasurable contributions to world peace and openness in his own once rigidly closed society.”
He said “the late Gorbachev was a remarkable gentleman whose reformist agenda had fundamentally changed the Soviet society through his policy of Perestroika and Glasnost, both of which set the stage for economic and political transformation of his own country and that of others in the defunct Soviet Union.
“Although Gorbachev’s political career was consumed by those reforms, history and posterity will be kind to him for placing the interests of the Soviet people above his own ambition.”
“The impact of Gorbachev’s legacy was not limited to the former Soviet Union, but it also affected the wider world, such as his voluntary dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance in pursuit of permanent peace in the world.”
The President added that “we cannot forget in a hurry how Gorbachev advocated for the destruction of nuclear weapons by both the former Soviet Union and the United States during his meeting with Ronald Reagan.
“Although Gorbachev died without achieving his dream of a nuclear-free world, his genuine commitment to durable international peace and security would never be forgotten.”
