PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

End the Persecution of al-Mustapha & Co.

ndajika@yahoo.com

It is nearly three years this month when I joined the chorus of those who had pleaded with the Federal Government for an end to the trial of five top officials of late General Sani Abacha’s regime who had been variously charged with (1), conspiracy to murder Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections, and (2), attempted murder of Chief Alex Ibru, publisher of The Guardian newspapers, and one, Isaac Seiyo Porbeni.

The five were General Ishaya Bamaiyi, Abacha’s army chief, Police Commissioner James Danbaba, Lt-Colonel Bala Yakubu, Major Hamza al-Mustapha, Abacha’s powerful chief security officer, and Police Superintendent Rabo Lawal.

Among leading figures in the chorus that had called for an end to their trial was the Human Rights Investigations Commission ( a.k.a. Oputa panel) headed by Chukwudifu Oputa - a judge of the Supreme Court - which President Olusegun Obasanjo established very early in his first term to investigate human rights abuses in the country since the first military coup in 1966. Others who pleaded included Adamu Aliero, then governor of Kebbi State, Bamaiyi’s home state, and Dr. Frederick Faseun, co-founder with Gani Adams, of Odu’a Peoples’ Congress (OPC), the hawkish Yoruba ethnic militia.

Writing on these pages on August 15, 2007, I argued that the trial should end because, first, it had dragged on for too long fuelling suspicions that it was, to begin with, prompted more by politics than by concern for justice. Second, these suspicions, I said, were also fuelled by the fact that no one was ever prosecuted for the strings of murderous attacks OPC unleashed over a number of years on police men and on Hausas, Ijaws and Igbos in Lagos and elsewhere in Yorubaland, and on anyone else it regarded as acting against the interests of the Yoruba.

True, I said, Faseun was arrested and charged before the courts after he reported himself to the police following OPC’s October 15, 2000 mayhem in which it took over Lagos for four good days in an orgy of violence that shocked even its staunchest defenders. True, I also said, the federal authorities had subsequently declared the militia illegal and declared Adams, its war commander, who had gone into hiding, wanted.

Before long, however, I pointed out, Faseun was set free because Lagos State said it didn’t have sufficient evidence to prosecute him. Even more telling was the fact that Adams, the war commander, was – no prize for guessing right - eventually invited from his hiding by President Obasanjo to Aso Villa to join other ethnic war lords to discuss how to end militia wars in the country.

Since my article, General Bamaiyi has been freed by the courts; he has been a free man for over a year now. The remaining four, however, have remained in jail with no sign that their cases would be determined one way or the other.

After Obasanjo left office three years ago there was hope that the five would be freed. There was, after all, widespread belief that they were paying the price for his imprisonment and humiliation by the Abacha regime over seemingly trumped up charges of attempting to over throw the regime.

These suspicions have apparently now been confirmed by an interview last month on the Hausa service of Radio France International (RFI) and Voice of America (VOA) by the former emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Mustapha Jokolo. In that interview, Jokolo said on one occasion when some leading emirs pleaded with Obasanjo to intervene, he said he was prepared to do so against the alleged advice of his National Security Adviser, General Aliyu Moihammed, provided the emirs were prepared to make their demand in public. The emirs declined.

I can also confirm that on another occasion when the late Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Umaru Sanda Ndayako, harshly attacked the president in an informal meeting with several leading traditional rulers across the country which lasted hours, for being tribalistic by rejecting all appeals to release Bamaiyi and Co. over allegations that the emir believed were less damning than OPC’s wanton killings of even police men, Obasanjo accepted to intervene provided Bamaiyi and Co. would admit their offences after which he would then pardon them. Again the emirs said no, thanks.

Clearly vengeance was more at work here than any concern for justice in the cases of Kudirat and Ibru.

After Obasanjo left office three years ago there was hope that President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, whose elder brother and Obasanjo’s second in command as military ruler between 1976 and 1979, General Shehu Musa Yar’adua, died in prison in 1997 under suspicious circumstances, would be more forgiving. The hope proved forlorn; there were no signs that Yar’adua ever contemplated intervening in the trials before he died recently.

Needless to say it is unjust for the case of the four who have remained in prison to drag on forever. Attempted murder, and even more so, murder, is serious offence. Still it should never take nearly a dozen years to determine. Certainly not when the evidence against the remaining four of complicity in those offences are no weightier than that against Bamaiyi who has regained his freedom after eight years of trial.   

A catalogue of errors

Last Wednesday’s column on the intention of former military president, General Ibrahim Babagida to contest next year's election, provoked a barrage of responses interesting enough that I wanted to devote today’s column to a selection of them as I have done occasionally. Time and space, however, conspired against me. I hope to do so next week.

Today I wish to acknowledge some of the errors I committed in the last several articles beginning with the very last. Dele Giwa, one reader reminded me, was killed in October 1986, not 1985. In the piece on el-Rufa’i, I said Nuhu Ribadu was back in the country. He was not. As we all now know he returned after my article.

 In my obituary of President Yar’adua, I mistakenly gave his middle name as Shehu, instead of Musa. I also said his father, Alhaji Musa Yar’adua, was the first minister of Lagos as the then federal capital. He was not. As a friend, Shehu Kaikai, said, the first was Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu.

Last, but by no means the least, I said in my obituary of Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, the Kano State governor in the Second Republic, that he queried the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, for travelling to Israel. He didn’t. That query was issued by the regime of General Muhammadu Buhari.

I regret all these and other errors.