In its edition of December 4, 2000, The Comet, now rested, published an editorial which seemed to have endorsed the rather theatrical testimony by Major Hamza al-Mustapha, the Chief Security Officer of the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, before the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission President Olusegun Obasanjo had set up in1999 chaired by retired Supreme Court justice, Okwudifu Oputa, to investigate human rights abuse under the military regimes that had ruled the country up until then.

That editorial must have resonated well with public opinion in the South-West, not only on account of the newspaper’s ownership and control, but also because its position tallied with widespread suspicion in the region and elsewhere that there was some truth in al-Mustapha’s claims before the Oputa panel that Chief MKO Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election who died on July 7, 1999 after about four years in detention, was murdered, presumably to kill and bury demands for the restoration of his mandate. “June 12” had been annulled by military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, General Abacha’s military predecessor. Abacha who had died mysteriously inside the Aso Villa, al-Mustapha also claimed, had been murdered.

Chief Abiola died shortly after a visit by two senior American officials, its former ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Thomas Pickering, and an under-secretary of state, Ms. Susan Rice, in company of Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, among other things, Chief Abiola’s running mate in the 1993 presidential election, and Alhaji Gidado Idris, then Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Abiola was served tea by the Americans after they had requested Kingibe and Gidado to allow them private audience with Abiola, a request that the two obliged. Abiola suddenly took ill after drinking his tea and was rushed from Aguda House, the presidential guest house where he had been moved to for the meeting, to the presidential Aso Clinic. He died shortly thereafter.

The reader will recall that in al-Mustapha’s rather theatrical testimony before Oputa, he talked about how teacups with false bottoms must have been used to poison Abiola. The reader will also recall how he placed the blame on the man’s death squarely on the shoulders of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, the head of state under whose watch Abiola died.

The public, especially in the South-West, Abiola’s region, seemed to have been regaled by al-Mustapha’s theatricals. This much was obvious from the editorial of The Comet in question. “Al-Mustapha: Let the ‘canary’ sing publicly,” was the title of the editorial.

“Now that somebody who should know has confirmed our worst fears,” The Comet said in the opening paragraph of the editorial, “Nigerians deserve to hear everything from Mustapha since he has himself, under oath promised to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. He should be allowed to tell his version of the events and if he incriminates anybody or groups of persons, they too should have their days at the Oputa Commission.”

The newspaper concluded its roughly 21 inch editorial by insisting the State should reject al-Mustapha’s request, for his own safety and security, to tell the rest of his story to the commission in camera. “The State,” it said, “must allow al-Mustapha to say all that he wants to say, both lies and truth. This ‘canary’ must be allowed to sing. This is the only way to heal the land.” As such, the newspaper said, al-Mustapha deserved “maximum protection” to tell his story in public.

For the second time since his Oputa testimony about a dozen years ago, al-Mustapha has been singing his song about who killed Abacha and Abiola all over again. His encore begun early this month when he opened his defence in his prosecution for the murder of Alhaja Kudirat, Abiola’s then most senior wife. This time, however, the ‘canary’ did not stop at accusing General Abubakar of the murder of Abacha and Abiola. He went on to accuse the general of bribing the leadership of the Pan-Yoruba cultural group, Afenifere – more specifically the late Senator Abraham Adesanya and the late Chief Bola Ige – with unspecified but huge sums of money not only to sell out on “June 12”, but also to keep quiet on the sudden and mysterious death of Abiola.

Predictably all hell has been let loose since. With the notable, but not so inexplicable, exception of Gani Adams, the commander-in-chief of Odua Peoples’ Congress, the Yoruba ethnic militia, virtually all those who had hailed al-Mustapha for his testimony before Oputa twelve years ago now want him crucified for the unpardonable sin of lying against Yoruba leadership, especially the dead. (Gani Adams has been consistent in his charge that the Yoruba leadership had long sold out on “June 12” for material consideration and, perhaps for this reason, there had been no love lost between him and the late Adesanya.)

Al-Mustapha - and Adams - would not be the only one to have accused the Yoruba leadership of selling out on “June 12”. Long before him the Senate president, David Mark, had done so in his famous interview with Newswatch which the newsmagazine ran as the cover story of its April 11, 1994 edition and for which it suffered a ban.

Abacha’s coup against the short-lived Interim National Government of Chief Ernest Shonekan, Mark said in the interview, was, in reality “not a coup against the ING but as it turned out it was a coup against democracy, supported and nourished by politicians who behave like chameleons. Surprisingly, it was Abiola’s close associates who were urging Abacha to take over. They dined with Abiola in the afternoon but in the night urged Abacha to seize power and forget June 12. I never believed human beings could be so treacherous, unprincipled and shameless.”

The obvious difference between al-Mustapha and the others is that he has now named names and specified the price.

Strangely those who have now turned round to ridicule al-Mustapha’s old song as fairytales by the moonlight still seem to believe it has a ring of truth as far as it concerns General Abubakar. Apparently the irony of their double standards seems lost on them.

In his column last Tuesday, my good friend and ace columnist with The Nation, Dr. Olatunji Dare, for example, said it was up to me as the former head of state’s chief press secretary, to respond to al-Mustapha’s charges “that Abubakar withdrew large deposits from the national exchequer for private use on taking power” even though he had himself described al-Mustapha’s allegations in court as “fact-free effusions” in the same piece.

The fact was that al-Mustapha did not accuse my former boss of withdrawing huge sums from the treasury “for private use.” His allegation was that the general used the monies to bribe some Afenifere chieftains. If Dare believed, as he obviously did from the opprobrium he poured on al-Mustapha over his claims, that the former Abacha chief security officer was an inveterate liar why should anyone contemplate for one moment that he was telling the truth in the case of my former boss? Is it because, as Dare said, the late veteran journalist, Malam Abidina Coomassie, whom al-Mustapha also accused General Abubakar of killing, had made similar allegations and had dared the general to sue him and he had declined?

Surely Dare should know that if declining to sue for libel is sufficient proof that an allegation against someone is true then only God knows how many people in this country would have stood guilty in law as charged in the court of public opinion.

If Dare was inclined to be fair-minded about al-Mustapha’s allegations of treasury looting against General Abdulsalami, he would have noted that virtually all the monies in question that were withdrawn from the Central Bank of Nigeria in July 1998 were returned in September as was acknowledged by the CBN itself in its letter dated September 17, 1998.

In any case, the columnist did not have to drag me into the controversy. I was not General Abdulsalami’s chief press secretary when all this happened. My very senior colleague, Chief David Atta, was and he is still alive as far as I know. I took over from him in October, at least two months after the withdrawal in question.

However, I do not, of course, have to be General Abdulsalami’s spokesman to see that al-Mustapha is a desperate man clutching at a straw. The mystery and sequential deaths of Abacha and Abiola might make it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone not to believe the two were murdered. But nothing could be more unfair than to accuse Abubakar of responsibility for the deaths simply because they happened under his charge.

It was common knowledge that as Abacha’s Chief of Defence Staff, he was outside the power loop which al-Mustapha prided himself with presiding over. Indeed, he was to have been sacked on the very day he took over as head of state. And both himself, the Army chief, General Ishaya Bamaiyi, were kept in the dark, indeed in undeclared detention within the Villa by al-Mustapha’s cabal, for hours after the man died. Throughout their isolation no one suggested to them that they were suspected of complicity in the death of Abacha. In any case, it is not logical that Abubakar would have been chosen to succeed Abacha if there was the slightest suspicion that he had a hand in his predecessor’s death.

As for Abiola’s death it is, as I’ve said on these pages on May 16, 2001 and again on October 31, 2007, an irony that the man whose first act in coming to power in 1998 was to arrange for Abiola’s family and political associates, not to mention senior American officials, to see the prisoner of conscience in readiness for his release would be the one accused of killing him.

The fact is that the particulars of al-Mustapha’s allegations against both the Afenifere leadership and General Abubakar do not stand close examination, precisely because he imagines himself a victim of a grand conspiracy to keep him in jail all these 12 years since his trial begun over the murder of Alhaja Kudirat, Abiola’s wife.

But this is a subject matter of another day.

If you are one of those people who still weep for the Nigerian nation over the pervasive lethargy in high places and enduring inability to shake off the shackles of underdevelopment, then you had better look for something that is more ennobling to occupy your time. If you belong to the set of patriots that daily moan and worry because Nigeria continues to creep along on the crutches of deferred dreams and arrested development, then you had better watch it before you become a permanent inmate in one of the decaying psychiatric rehabilitation facilities scattered across the country. If you are a prayer warrior that foresees the faintest of hope at the end of this dark tunnel, then you need more of those fiery prayers to keep that fire of hope burning. What else can anyone cling to other than hope at this moment when the dirty secrets surrounding how our collective inheritance were farmed out to cronies and smart crooks had become a topic for public odium? Sometimes, one cannot help asking how a callously raped and serially abused nation still trudges forward on weakened stilts.

Personally, writing on Nigeria’s longest reigning president, Chief Mathew Aremu Olusegun Obasanjo, is a traumatizing experience. But the trauma is nothing close to what former military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida confessed to have felt afterkilling his ‘best’ friend, General Mamman Vatsa. Here was a man that has refused to live a quiet life after ignominiously stepping out of public office. Here was a man who spent the better part of his eight-year reign as a democratically elected President ‘fighting’ corruption. He was never afraid to ‘shame’ the thieves in his band of cronies. Yet, whenever graft was the topic, his name often stood out like a rotten apple. Obasanjo is a bundle of contradictions. You can only ignore him at your own peril. How can a man who claims to have pumped so much energy into wrestling bout with corruption still be mentioned in every petty thievery that was hatched under his nose? It beats me hollow!


Without prejudice to whatever his defence might be when the members of the Senate Ad hoc Committee looking into the privatisation process muster enough courage to invite him to clarify allegations made against him, the reality on the ground is that this country has been taken for another rude ride again by those expected to protect its sanctity. From the revelations at the six-day investigative hearing into the activities of the Bureau of Public Enterprises since its inception in 1999, it should be clear to every right-thinking Nigerian that our leaders are hell bent on bequeathing a hollow shell to the rest of us. We now know that the same persons who daily drain the nation of its essence are also behind the cannibalization of its resources. In addition, to satisfy their limitless greed, these same persons feel no qualm in selling our commonwealth at give-away prices to their protégés. That is how the government’s privatisation programme has become another national calamity of sorts. Yet, here was a programme that was principally designed to save some of our badly managed public institutions from total collapse by selling them to private investors at reasonable prices and at favourable terms. The transparent process was meant to be a win-win bargain for all. Today, the story is transparently wobbly.


In just six days of public hearing, we have heard how negotiations done under the table ended with the gifting of most of these institutions to questionable characters. We now know that the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria, valued at $3.2bn, was packaged for just $130m to RUSAL Nigeria Limited. We now know that the process was so painstakingly transparent such that a simple call from the Presidency could sway the sale of any of these public institutions to the yamheads outside the bidding process. We now know that a big question hangs on the real status of Delta Steel Company as a privatised company. We have heard how the government has woefully failed to carry out a post-privatisation monitoring due to paucity of funds. We also know that, so far, 80 per cent of the so-called privatised firms are not faring any better, years after the sales. We have heard shocking revelations about how some smart fellows used fake Memorandum of Understanding to appropriate some of these institutions. We shook our heads in disbelief when Obasanjo’s most trusted cabinet member, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, told the committee that his boss singlehandedly killed the privatisation programme when he, in deference to informed advice, decided to appoint as DG, someone who was practically ‘fired’ from the BPE!


That was the beginning of the story. Obasanjo’s name became a recurring item as the proceedings went on. el-Rufai accused him of blocking the privatisation of Nigeria Airways because he would rather listen to the moonlight tales manufactured by the then Aviation Minister, Mrs. Kema Chikwe. He was also accused of piling pressure on the leadership of the BPE to sell some companies to select investors in total violation of the laws setting up the BPE. We also heard about how the Ajaokuta Steel Company was ‘illegally’ concessioned even as N4bn was being spent annually to pay salaries to workers who practically did and still do nothing! We have heard how the emperor ordered the former DG of the BPE, Mrs. Irene Chighue, to ignore the directives given by his estranged deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and instead take orders from a minister. And were we surprised when a former Director in the BPE relayed how he abdicated his responsibility and voluntarily transformed into an errand boy, a self-appointed bribe distributor, collecting bribes from would-be investors on behalf of his principal? Only God knows the other rotten details still being kept under wraps!


In the usual Nigerian style, it is quite easy to shrug off the latest revelations as just another sad tale in the history of a raped nation. After all, hardly can anyone remember the last time a Nigerian was punished after being indicted by a probe panel set up by the National Assembly. Many of such probe reports are gathering dust, rusting away in government closets. Often, those who bleed the nation dry and perpetuate this shameful malfeasance know nothing would come out of the ritual of probes. They know that it is just another exercise in futility. They know that that the exercise merely provides a platform for depressed Nigerians to ventilate their anger for a while. The privileged looters laugh at the folly of it all. That was what Obasanjo did when his name became a recurring decimal during the $16bn power probe scam in the last House of Representatives. Today, that report has been consigned into the dustbin of history while Nigeria remains the sole victim of that tragedy. I doubt if he would feel any sense of remorse just because some persons have chosen to blame him for superintending over a process that sold much for far less. He might just shrug it off, knowing that talk is cheap. Cheap talks do not bite anyway. Does it matter if, as his partner in crime, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, put it, this ex-president managed affluence to achieve failure? It does not matter what name the kettle chooses to call the pot.


Truth be told: There is hardly any Nigerian President, at least since the Babangida years, that could be credited with having managed our resources to create wealth for the masses! Nigerians are wise enough to know those who continue to rip their country apart. After feeding fat on our common wealth and, on the way, betrayed our trust, these pseudo elder statesmen have decided to embark on another naked dance in the market square: they are looking for who, among them, is a bigger fool in the prolonged battle to incapacitate this nation. We are unfazed by the battle of wits between the one who truncated the outcome of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and the one who became a major beneficiary by transforming from a prisoner to a President. Both left the presidential seat with a harvest of failures. After the despoliation, both went home to laugh and, occasionally, throw bitter jibes back at us from their exquisite Hilltop Mansions built with our sweat. In making a fool of us, they have ended up making a bigger fool of themselves!