Professor Femi Odekunle,
Professor Femi Odekunle, a former adviser to former Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Oladipo Diya, is a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption set up by President Muhammadu Buhari. In this interview on Rock City FM 101.9, the Professor of Criminology bares his mind on the ongoing anti-corruption crusade and how it can be effectively prosecuted. He also speaks on what led to his arrest for coup plotting by late General Sani Abacha, and how Abacha and Diya parted ways. Excerpts
You are a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, the anti-corruption war appears to be fully on and some people have said that the president appears to be selective in the manner in which he’s picking up people and appears not ready to follow the rule of law. As a member of that advisory committee, will you say that was part of the advice given by your committee?
How do I want to put it now? I am not just a member of the advisory committee, I am a vital member of the committee but I will not want to say I am speaking for the committee, I would rather speak for myself, from there, it is left to you and your listeners to guess whether or not the advice of the committee is partly, minimally or maximally, responsible for the actions against corruption or the actions that are going on.
How do I want to put it now? I am not just a member of the advisory committee, I am a vital member of the committee but I will not want to say I am speaking for the committee, I would rather speak for myself, from there, it is left to you and your listeners to guess whether or not the advice of the committee is partly, minimally or maximally, responsible for the actions against corruption or the actions that are going on.
I want to say for the umpteenth time, I had my PhD in criminology in 1974, and as a young man, I was studying burglary, armed robbery and the like but by 1980 or so, I realised that, the way it was going, I was going to end up been an handmaiden of the elites. They were the people who were interested in burglary, armed robbery and stuffs like that; but I discovered that corruption was more dangerous in all ramifications, than all the crimes combined. If an armed robber stole from a bank, maybe one million or ten million, what he has done is wrong, but when a man is supposed to construct a road and he does not do it or does it shabbily and people have accidents on that road, that amounts to capital wrong.
When a man imports fake drugs and it kills thousands of people, that is corruption. When a man smuggles goods that are not supposed to come into the country, it damages the economy. When a man is supposed to give water and there at the Water Corporation, he’s the director general and so many directors, so many engineers and we have no water, which does damage to the lives of the citizens. What about NEPA? What about the railways? What about schools that are supposed to be built, primary schools, secondary schools and you have roofs falling on children.
People, because of corruption, set fire on government buildings to destroy documents. These are more serious crimes than all the burglary, all the armed robbery, all that thefts you can think about. So from that time, I started studying corruption and without being immodest, I organised the first national conference on corruption, under the aegis of the Nigerian society for sociology in 1980 in which we involved all kinds of organisations in the country and at that point in time, they just started the Code of Conduct Bureau and they came and even financed the publication of that book, so you could say I wrote or collated the first volume of corruption in this country and in fact the second collation, and that time there was no law against corruption. Over the years, there has been argument back and forth about the need to have a law, then the ICPC law came out, however crooked or distorted it might look, it came out and at the first conference organised to discuss that law and the possibility of its functioning, I was the consultant to the organisers.
The reason why I am giving this historical background is to say that my concern and my views and my positions are well thought out, they are based on experience, long before Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption. That was why I gave all that long story, that I have been academically, socially and morally committed against corruption before PACA. So therefore, it will be better if I give you my views on your questions and from there, you can extrapolate by yourself whether it is what is affecting the president or not. Overall, I believe the president is going in the right direction, why do I say so? One of the factors levitating against effective prevention and control of corruption in this country, is leadership, what did I say? Leadership. To me in this country as far as I’m concerned, there’s been only three leaders that I take seriously, first Nzeogu, Nzeogu is a revolutionary that meant well for this country (Cuts in)
Was he not a coupist?
Excuse me please! You could call him a coupist, I call him a revolutionary, who wanted to change Nigeria for the better, and if he had succeeded without being sabotaged by fifth columnists, without being sabotaged by ethnic jingoists, who made it look like an Igbo coup. If he had had his way, this country would not be where it is today, if you read his speech very well over and over again, you would see that the issues he raised are still with us. The second person I appreciate is Muritala Muhammed, he was a revolutionary who wanted a new disciplined society without corruption. The third one, was Buhari, Buhari is not a revolutionary in the sense of Nzeogu or in the sense of Muritala Muhammed, but he is a man who believes in discipline, who had zero tolerance for corruption and to that extent, he provided the required leadership.
Was he not a coupist?
Excuse me please! You could call him a coupist, I call him a revolutionary, who wanted to change Nigeria for the better, and if he had succeeded without being sabotaged by fifth columnists, without being sabotaged by ethnic jingoists, who made it look like an Igbo coup. If he had had his way, this country would not be where it is today, if you read his speech very well over and over again, you would see that the issues he raised are still with us. The second person I appreciate is Muritala Muhammed, he was a revolutionary who wanted a new disciplined society without corruption. The third one, was Buhari, Buhari is not a revolutionary in the sense of Nzeogu or in the sense of Muritala Muhammed, but he is a man who believes in discipline, who had zero tolerance for corruption and to that extent, he provided the required leadership.
The point is that if you compare developed to developing countries, in developed countries it is the tail most of the time that wags the head, if a lot of Americans are against anything now, Obama cannot do it, if a lot of Britons are against anything, Cameron cannot do it because, by their level of development, by their historical antecedents, it is the tail that wags the head, it is the people that can control the leadership as to what they want and what they don’t want. But in developing countries like Nigeria, it is the head that wags the tail. If you don’t believe me, recall after the civil war, and we started having problems of enormous oil resources, at the end, there was procurement dimensions of the civil war which allowed money to flow left, right and centre and Gowon and his government started wavering and dilly-dallying.
Then Muritala Mohammed came in to put a stop to it, and six month he was there, the people straightened up, Obasanjo came in of course and maybe he was afraid to die like Muritala Muhammed died, he slowed down, then Shagari came in and started ‘’Jolly jolly’’ the NPN party, even doing champagne party and labelling champagne in their name, then Buhari came in and said indiscipline would not be tolerated, corruption will not be tolerated and he was wise that time, because he did not use the legal structures that were on ground, knowing that the legal structures were compromised, so he used a semi adjusted or moderated legal system and he was able to get convictions, seize money, seize property, taught people a lesson and the whole Nigerians did what? They followed him! The head wags the tail in that system. Now what followed? IBB came in, supported by the West, and they damaged our country, with corruption, under the lies of economic restructuring and protection of human rights, and the need to return this country to political democracy. Under that guise, they virtually ruined this country. The rest is history, until Obasanjo came in and there was an argument that there will be no sacred cows and for what you know now, there have been many sacred cows that were not slaughtered but actually they were getting fatter and fatter. And now, Buhari has come back, and in the few months he is around, you have seen a difference.
The point I’m trying to make is the role of leadership, this leaders have been the kind of people that have turned things over their heads; democracy is supposed to be government of the people, for the people and by the people, but they have turned it to a government of the greedy, by the greedy and for the greedy. So I’m giving you all this long background to show the importance of leadership, so by the character and integrity and leadership qualities of Buhari, he has started the first ingredient of fighting corruption in our country, that’s number one. Secondly, as part of that leadership, he has tried to put people in position whether as minister or as DG’S that have not been patently alleged to be corrupt and he has said if I have information that surfaces about any of them, I am going to get rid of him or her and they would face the music.
Now he has tried to pluck the loopholes like TSA where NIMASA and many other agencies make the money using government resources and spend it outside of normal budgeting. So he has now consolidated, we know how much we have and what is going to A,B,C,D. Three, he has gone to the West to let them know that this leadership is not going to tolerate corruption, so if anybody is operating or doing contract with you and says he’s representing me, he’s not doing so because some people have been arguing on the television recently that Buhari is spoiling our image by going out to complain about corruption in the country, that America does not come here to complain about all the things wrong with their country, Britain doesn’t do that, but Buhari has been going out to say the country is corrupt every time and my position is that it is very good he’s doing that because, most of our money that are stolen are in those countries. We must think of power relations in the world; what America and Britain can do and get away with it, a developing country like Nigeria cannot get away with it. Afterall, the dollar is not tied to the naira, it is the naira that is tied to the dollar. So they have the power and we rely on them to try to get some assets back and we go out and say yes, our country is corrupt and we are working on it. It would encourage them to help us.
Take for example, could Jonathan have gotten any assistance at all to recover loots? No! Because, those western countries know that he and his government are looters. I believe so. Secondly, why is it that the West despite the fact that they are against insurgency and terrorism, how come they were not willing to help the Nigerian military? Because they knew the corruption that was going on and that if they give them weapons anyway, they may end up in the hands of ‘’Bokoharamist.’’ So I do think that the man is going in the right direction, of course. I do not want to talk about our committee, which is another achievement, that he got together about seven people who he thought are fairly clean, when I say fairly clean, at least none of us is carrying any bagage and we are not operatives, we are advisory and our work is omnibus, any and every dimension of the corruption problem, we are to advise the president and we have met many times and we have advised him. It’s now left for him to accept or not accept.
As I have said, an adviser is an adviser; we are not even an official adviser like a special adviser, we are an advisory committee in which there are lawyers, social scientists, criminologists, activists. We are not earning any salary, we don’t have official cars, we don’t have security detail and we do our work thoroughly and the meaning of that is that whether it is a law, whether it is adjudication, whether it is prosecution, whether it is the preventive aspect, whether it is cooperation with the media and civil society, whether it is training of personnel, whether it’s the attitude of judges, we are to advise presidency. I didn’t say the president, the presidency on the fight against corruption and we have been doing that to the best of our abilities.
Should the desire or the need to fight corruptions trample on the rule of law?
What is rule of law? Rule of which law? Who made the law? For what purpose? In whose interest? You see, people don’t think about that one, people don’t think like lawyers, lawyers are learned. They are not educated and not enlightened, yes, I asked a question, so let’s say somebody makes a law now that we should walk on our hands and I am walking on my two feet, then you say I am not respecting the law, so it means there’s some other basis of judging the matter of rule of law.
Should the desire or the need to fight corruptions trample on the rule of law?
What is rule of law? Rule of which law? Who made the law? For what purpose? In whose interest? You see, people don’t think about that one, people don’t think like lawyers, lawyers are learned. They are not educated and not enlightened, yes, I asked a question, so let’s say somebody makes a law now that we should walk on our hands and I am walking on my two feet, then you say I am not respecting the law, so it means there’s some other basis of judging the matter of rule of law.
Or we are in this room, in this house and we are twenty and we are working equally but about three or four people who are making the laws now say well, out of the 100 naira gain, two people would take 90 naira and the remaining eight of us would take ten naira and when I argue about it, you say I am breaking rule of law, so you have to question first, what is rule of law? Where is the rule of law? It’s like saying a community is there and we are hundred in the community, ten have property, 90 have no property and you make a law, do not steal, in whose interest? It’s only in the interest of ten people that have property not in the interest of the 90. Or you say those curtains in houses, the only beneficiaries are those who have houses. I am being hyperbolical, I am exaggerating these examples or analogies to show you people, you pressmen should start questioning. What do you mean when you say rule of law? Then you say which law? Ok, first God never came down to make the laws and we say it’s spiritual.
Secondly, you never called a meeting of all Nigerians to say, do we agree with these laws or not, the elites did it. It’s not an argument to favour my position, it’s a deep argument. For example, if you say you are a governor, they pass a law, which says that, for the rest of your life, you will be getting your salary, two, you have a severance pay of how many millions at a time, your wife, 4 children, you are due for medical treatment abroad once in a year, you are entitled to cars. No, that is the law, is that not legalized corruption? But because the lawmakers have passed it and then you say that is the law. You must question the so called rule of law.
I am not against this rule of law, but you must question first, which law? Is it law that protect the collective interest, or is it law that protect the interest of the elites? When you have an economy, a situation whereby about 5 percent of the population consume 95 perrcent of the resources, to the extent that they are vomiting on the rest of the population, you cannot have peace, you cannot have security, you cannot have order, you cannot have discipline, that is the issue about this rule of law.
Now let us apply it to the matter on ground, why did they handcuff Olisa Metuh? He should be handcuffed, it is one of the internationally accepted methodologist for dealing with corruption. I have argued for over 15 years that when they want to try a corrupt man, they should come to his home town, try him there, let the community witness it, and tell them that house, those cars, that mansion, those Jaguars are actually the money for your roads, the money for your children’s education, the money for your health clinics.
“Naming and Shaming”, handcuffing somebody is part of shaming. Ordinary people, fellow Nigerians, you say we are equal before the law, you parade them on television, remove their cloth, put leg chains on them, you say they are armed robbers, they are just alleged to be armed robbers, but how many of our press have complained about that? One noise-maker who does not wish the country well was put in handcuff and the whole country is shouting that why should they do so? Was Tafa Balogun not put in handcuffs? Was he not an IG? So my question now is what is your noise about Olisa Metuh being handcuffed, in fact most of them should be handcuffed.
It is a general opinion sir, that President Buhari wouldn’t have won the 2015 election without the support from some political big-wigs who are also regarded as money-bags in the Nigerian context. Therefore, it would be difficult for President Buhari to actually stand up to those people. How far do you think President Buhari can go in the fight against corruption with this perceived politicians around him?
Should he just go to APC or labour and say I want to have a representative of corrupt people? It is those who have held offices and is not because they have held offices, it is when they checked such offices. For now, there are thousands of MDAs (Ministries Department and Agencies). The man has done that of office of the National Security Adviser, he has done that of NNPC, there is the NIMASA, and do you know hundreds and hundreds that are remaining? Office of head of service and pension, police, ministry of defence, army, navy, air force, immigration, customs.
It is a general opinion sir, that President Buhari wouldn’t have won the 2015 election without the support from some political big-wigs who are also regarded as money-bags in the Nigerian context. Therefore, it would be difficult for President Buhari to actually stand up to those people. How far do you think President Buhari can go in the fight against corruption with this perceived politicians around him?
Should he just go to APC or labour and say I want to have a representative of corrupt people? It is those who have held offices and is not because they have held offices, it is when they checked such offices. For now, there are thousands of MDAs (Ministries Department and Agencies). The man has done that of office of the National Security Adviser, he has done that of NNPC, there is the NIMASA, and do you know hundreds and hundreds that are remaining? Office of head of service and pension, police, ministry of defence, army, navy, air force, immigration, customs.
I am saying that the man has not even scratched the surface. I would tell you this story, when I was a teacher in ABU, Zaria as a young man, some people will come to me that they’ve changed marks, examination malpractice. Lecturers, then, they will come to me because I had voice to say they say they are after them because they are Yorubas. I said that it was absolute nonsense. Did you change mark or not? Whether you are Yoruba or Hausa that is your problem. If you say they don’t catch Hausa, good, so when you knew you are not Hausa, then why did you do it? The problem is that you did it. So in this case now, those who do not partake, I don’t think Buhari will go and pick them, so I don’t consider him to be partisan, it is those who have offended that he is picking....... (cuts in)
How far can he go with those people who helped him win the election, known politicians? How far can he go with them in the fight against corruption?
I will take him for his word, he said that if there is any information about anybody around him or in his party he will take it up. I will take him for his word. To me he has been a man of his word as far as I am concerned and to tell you the truth, so don’t get me wrong. I said Buhari is in the right direction, he is not going fast enough or deep enough in this matter. See, there are minimum of six types of corruption, I think he seems to be constrained by our unmoderated democracy and rule of law, if the lawyers around him, the retired civil servants around him, the whole politician, protecting their own interest and saying ‘’jeje sir, jeje sir’’ do it this way, do it this way sir, because they know if he does what he believes he should do, they will all be affected and yet it’s a democracy, so he has to listen to them to a certain extent.
How far can he go with those people who helped him win the election, known politicians? How far can he go with them in the fight against corruption?
I will take him for his word, he said that if there is any information about anybody around him or in his party he will take it up. I will take him for his word. To me he has been a man of his word as far as I am concerned and to tell you the truth, so don’t get me wrong. I said Buhari is in the right direction, he is not going fast enough or deep enough in this matter. See, there are minimum of six types of corruption, I think he seems to be constrained by our unmoderated democracy and rule of law, if the lawyers around him, the retired civil servants around him, the whole politician, protecting their own interest and saying ‘’jeje sir, jeje sir’’ do it this way, do it this way sir, because they know if he does what he believes he should do, they will all be affected and yet it’s a democracy, so he has to listen to them to a certain extent.
But as for me, Femi Odekunle, a professor of criminology, who knows about this problem very well, I’m saying that he is not doing as much as he should be doing and one paper I gave to the social science academy fellowship annual lecture about two, three months ago, is that if we are not careful, history will repeat itself. Murtala did, we went back, Buhari himself did, we went back and that if he is not careful, if he continues to listen to all these technocrats, advisers, lawyers around him, by the time he goes whether four - eight years, we will revert back to corruption square one. When you promote someone lower over or above those who are senior to him, that is professional corruption.
When pressmen take bribe to put a story up or down, that is professional corruption. When academics take money or sex from student, when lawyers hide information from the court, because they are supposed to be officers of the law. A lawyer in England now, on Ibori’s case, a British lawyer, is in jail for hiding information whereas in Nigeria this so-called Senior Advocate of Nigeria, most of them are seniors, they are collaborators with corruption. Our committee had a meeting with senior lawyers in Abuja and Itse Sagey was telling them that you people are looters and anybody who defend looters the way you people are defending them now, you and yourself are looters.
Corrupt judges are also part of legal profession and the society corruption has affected them, they wear this wig up and down which is something of integrity among their colonial masters, the British judges, but here we don’t seem to have manifested that kind of integrity. It is not all of them, but there are examples of them. And that is why I say the president to me, people are critiscing him, they actually don’t know what they are doing because he is not going deep enough or fast enough. I have told you there are different types of corruption. you are just dealing with financial and you are dealing with less than 1 percent of the MDAs that have been sabotaged all these years. He should go in such a way that he should be able to take two people as example.
I was trying to tell you that the man is not deep enough and I was giving example that, if people who have been corrupt say for the past 15 or 16 years are able to get away with it, it will give the impression that you can always get away with it, that the man Buhari is just doing “initial gra gra”, that he will cool down, but if he is able to go and take maybe two from the time of IBB as an example, two from the time of Abacha as an example, two from the time of Abdulsalam as an example, and about eight from Obasanjo and about 20 from ex-president Jonathan, if he is able to do that, people will know. I am not saying that he should catch millions of them, I have always argued that if Sharia Law were applied to corruption in Nigeria, every public officer, past and present will now be one-handed or no-hand at all.
So, I know they are plenty but I am saying you need a sample to convince those who are there now that “Oo le muje, ee le mu gbe”, “asepamo lo wa, kosi asegbe”. If he doesn’t do that, this is what is going to happen, go and write it down, and I am telling you, I am a good social scientist, I am making prediction, if he doesn’t do that, history will repeat itself. So I will expect him to set up a task force that will identify these people, with certain conditions, then ensure handing them over to a rejuvenated, new blood EFCC and ICPC to deal with them, to train prosecutors and make sure the judges actually are weaned like they did in Ghana, 22 judges in one fell swoop. We need to do that in Nigeria, we need to take Senior Advocates of Nigeria, one or two that have compromised the judicial system to make them example. If that one is not done, we would revert to… So, all those who are criticising the man, my own criticism is on the other side, that he is not doing enough as far as I am concerned.
Incidentally, you gave three names you regarded as Nigeria’s good heads of State, all of them being military men. 1997 or 1998 there about, you had an encounter with another military ruler, with this experience, are you still saying that the military are best placed to rule this country?
Incidentally, you gave three names you regarded as Nigeria’s good heads of State, all of them being military men. 1997 or 1998 there about, you had an encounter with another military ruler, with this experience, are you still saying that the military are best placed to rule this country?
Abacha under whose regime I was accused of coup plotting was a different kettle of fish. Ironically, I was a victim of that regime simply because they said that my memos were radical and rebellious, like, I would write a memo, I do not see how you can extend the life of the administration, you said you will be short-lived, three years, you spent five years and you want to turn yourself into a life-ruler, I hear that money was being looted, now as it has come out later, Abacha loot, it means I was right at that point in time, those are the kind of memos that roped me in (………..cuts in)
On what premise were you writing those memos?
I was special adviser and chairman advisory committee to the chief of General Staff on socio-political and economic matters. On that basis, I saw Diya, virtually every morning and virtually every evening to run down the day, to ask his views or to bring probably his attention to an issue and then he will tell me “this is what has happened, what is your opinion?” So sometimes, I will write a memo. So, I believe when they first took me, they just took me because they considered me a loyalist to Diya, because there were overtures made to me by sources from Al-Mustapha, to say that I should kind of work for them, the implication would be that of a mole in Diya’s group. But I would not do that.
My position is that this is one government, if you need my advice I would give it, but nothing to........ and they considered me uncompromising. For instance, I wrote a memo, “you have 12 AIG’s in the country, 11 of them are Northerners,” This is not acceptable, or this one, “Awolowo is a leader in this country, you gave him a very alley, narrow road in Abuja while you give people of lesser quality, lesser contribution, you give them double carriage ways, I wrote a memo about that.
I wrote a memo about, how do you have about five security agencies and all of them are headed by northerners. I am a de-tribalised Nigerian, I want fairness, so those memos made me an inherent enemy to the powers that be. So when these things occurred, it’s like, that’s the coup-plotter, in fact when they were trying me, they pointed out that, yes, I may not have a gun but that Diya was a good officer, that I was the one who radicalised him, but Diya gave evidence in my support, to say, that was how he writes, the man’s deviant the way he writes, he told them during the trial. In fact, if you saw his memos when he first came, these memos you have brought as evidence against him would be mild. Abacha was a disciplinarian, yes, he was a disciplinarian. The stealing under him was not as much as under IBB, but he was stealing alone with his family and a few cronies but he didn’t let the stealing go wide. That’s why I say it’s complicated.
You get my point, he was stealing, he was allowing his children to steal and a few people around him, but he himself, if he knew… why did he get rid of Bode George? Bode George was a principal staff officer under Diya but he had something to do with cocoa and some businesses, that was how the man was retired. So Abacha was a disciplinarian but something got into him about this money that became Abacha loot and I will tell you this one, Abacha was not as dangerous as IBB, Abacha was somebody who will tell you what he was going to do to you.
He’s like a dog coming to you and you knew he was coming to attack you, whereas somebody like IBB is like insects and mosquitoes biting you poisonously all over your body, you will just collapse before you know it. That is my socio-scientific analysis of those two. Now, what was bad about Abacha was the fact that he didn’t arrange to release the mandate of Abiola Two, he wanted to perpetuate himself in power. Three, he allowed certain northern irredentists to cocoon him and break his togetherness with Diya. I do not know whether I’m making sense, these were the flaws.
Why do you think they tried to do that, why do you think they wanted to break him and Diya?
You know a country like this has power blocs and then, if the Igbos are in charge of the economy they ensure that the people who will be going around the economy will be mostly Igbos. Remember in the last government, we had the minister of the economy, the CBN, the Secretary (SGF) and so on and so forth, they were all Igbo’s. Yoruba’s are not as irredentist in that respect, “won lo ju ti di e”. When Abacha came in, he liked Diya to my knowledge and he was consulting him, even relinquishing certain powers to him, particularly political power, then it came out that certain northerners believed that this man was going to water down the northerners hold on power, we must do something to break it.
Why do you think they tried to do that, why do you think they wanted to break him and Diya?
You know a country like this has power blocs and then, if the Igbos are in charge of the economy they ensure that the people who will be going around the economy will be mostly Igbos. Remember in the last government, we had the minister of the economy, the CBN, the Secretary (SGF) and so on and so forth, they were all Igbo’s. Yoruba’s are not as irredentist in that respect, “won lo ju ti di e”. When Abacha came in, he liked Diya to my knowledge and he was consulting him, even relinquishing certain powers to him, particularly political power, then it came out that certain northerners believed that this man was going to water down the northerners hold on power, we must do something to break it.
I will tell you this for the first time in public arena. I had a student who was in the villa, he was my former student, he was in the villa as a deputy director. When I left my office upstairs going home in the evening, sometimes I stopped by to say hello, how are you? How are you doing? But when the coup occurred and then they said how come the coup had only Yorubas? Mustapha then took some northerners who he had problem with and joined them that they were also coup-plotters.
So that man was added. So during the course of trial, after the judgment had been given and he got jailed for 2 years and I got discharged and acquainted but before they released me, we had a little space given to us to be able to come out one hour a day from our hole to talk on the corridor, he now told me he wanted to ask for my forgiveness and I asked him: what did you do? He said he used to be angry with me for stopping by his office just to say hi, he said because he saw the villa as “There side and Our side”, I said what! He said well, he spent one million naira of his own money and joined others to go and get marabouts from Senegal and Mali to work spiritually to break Diya and Abacha and they succeeded.
I swear in God’s name what I’m telling you is the truth. This is the first time I’m saying it in the public arena, that shows you what was going on, to me even though it was under that regime I suffered, the man himself, I do not think was a bad man who will go and be saying, do this to this man and do this to that man. The man believe he was in power, everybody knew he was in power, how come it was when it was his turn and they are trying to sabotage him, Is it because he’s a northern minority of Kanuri-stock, others have done it? So, you see that response, that’s psychological - “kilode, nigba to wa kan turn mi, ni ee wa fe gba? Something like that, that is the way I read his psychology.
He was close to Diya, very close when they started until suddenly, little things were happening, people going to tell him stories that Diya said he was the brain of the government, that the man was dumb. I remember one which caused laughter. They took a picture, Abacha and Diya, they were stepping forward, maybe somebody was now saying something to Abacha so he slowed and Diya’s step was ahead of Abacha’s, they went to show the picture to him and said, you see, Oga, he doesn’t even regard you.
Little, little things like that, they get to coagulate to become problematic and you’ll be wondering, what is happening? Oga is not calling meetings anymore. I want to see Oga, Mustapha will say he’s busy, a whole day, he may not see him. He used to call meetings before but now he just issue orders. The summary is that in my own honest opinion, the man was not inherently a bad man, the circumstances made him fall into cocoon and felt the need that people don’t regard him, they don’t respect him, he was going to fight back. That’s my thinking. I maybe wrong but that’s my thinking.
From your knowledge and proximity to the system then, the villa, was there really a plan or plot for a coup?
I’m not able to answer that question but I will tell you this, I was not part of any coup, however, I was not averse to a coup against him. Get me clearly, I was not part of any coup plot but I was not averse if there was a coup against him. Secondly, I do not have material resources but God almighty has given me brain for strategies that if I was part of a coup, it was not likely to fail and if it failed, I was not likely to be caught hands down. I recalled the day they came for me, they came for me between 2 and 3am at night with my wife, with all my children who are in the universities in BUK, ABU, we were in the house to prepare for Christmas, so if I knew that a coup was on, will I have gotten my wife and all my children from their different schools to come and gather in my house? I was not a fool and I am not a fool.
From your knowledge and proximity to the system then, the villa, was there really a plan or plot for a coup?
I’m not able to answer that question but I will tell you this, I was not part of any coup, however, I was not averse to a coup against him. Get me clearly, I was not part of any coup plot but I was not averse if there was a coup against him. Secondly, I do not have material resources but God almighty has given me brain for strategies that if I was part of a coup, it was not likely to fail and if it failed, I was not likely to be caught hands down. I recalled the day they came for me, they came for me between 2 and 3am at night with my wife, with all my children who are in the universities in BUK, ABU, we were in the house to prepare for Christmas, so if I knew that a coup was on, will I have gotten my wife and all my children from their different schools to come and gather in my house? I was not a fool and I am not a fool.
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