Akilu
had just returned from a military training in India at the time and
Babangida recommended him for appointment as the head of the Secret
Service. Idiagbon by-passed Akilu and slighted Babangida by not
consulting with him to confirm the new head of the Secret Service from
the army.
Gloria Okon was arrested at the Murtala Mohammed
Airport trying to smuggle cocaine out of the country. Gloria claimed to
be a courier for the family of one of the two high ranking military
officers deeply involved in the Supreme Military Council’s palaver.
Gloria was quickly smuggled out of the country and a carcass burnt
beyond recognition of a human body, was left in her prison room to
deceive the authorities. As Gloria’s drama was playing out, Abiola
brought a large consignment of banned newsprint into the country,
forcing Idiagbon to insist on the arrest of Chief M.K.O Abiola.
All
sorts of calamitous events kept rolling out at the time, including the
arrest of one Ikuomola for trying to smuggle a large consignment of
cocaine out of the country. He indicted a son of one of the Dantatas and
they were both tried and sentenced to death. The Dantata family mounted
pressure on the Supreme Military Council to commute the sentence to
life. The issue heightened the division among the Supreme Military
Council members, with the Gloria Okon’s high ranking military
benefactor, siding with the Dantatas naturally.
Idiagbon insisted
that if poor people found with cocaine could be punished with death
sentence, why should the rich and affluent be spared? Idiagbon also
wanted the lawyer, (a Rivers state chap who had received some four
million naira as legal fees on the case at the time), to be shot along
with the drug barons for benefiting from the evil.
The schism
between Idiagbon and Babangida totally paralyzed the Supreme Military
Council and it could no longer function. Idiagbon forced compulsory
leave on Babangida, under close surveillance with tapped telephone lines
and all. Chief M.K.O Abiola saw the opportunity to save his neck from
the newsprint saga by teaming up with his friend, Babangida, and he
provided the seed money for a coup.
Through the facilities of
Abiola and the Dantatas, Yar Adua was brought into the picture to help
influence the Saudi Arabian monarch to extend a special invitation to
Idiagbon as a guest of the monarch, to perform the 1985 Lesser Hajj in
Mecca. Idiagbon felt greatly honoured by the invitation and took with
him to Mecca, most of his supporters on the splintered Supreme Military
Council, including Mamman Vasta.
With Idiagbon (who was the head
of the Buhari’s regime in every sense of the word, and was very popular
because of his transparent honesty, patriotism, and discipline), out of
the way, Buhari (who was ready to vacate office anyway), was picked up
like a helpless chicken at Doddan Barracks, and dumped in jail.
Idiagbon, against the coupists’ advice, returned home a people’s hero,
although locked up for several months too by Babangida.
Luckily,
it did not take too long for Babangida to begin to reveal his secret
agenda. He had removed Idiagbon/Buhari from power to douse the heated
allegation at the time about illegal drug links and to help the
IMF/World Bank ruin the naira and open up the Nigerian market as dumping
ground for American and European junk and decadence. The
marginalization of the naira suited Babangida’s Machiavellian streak to
blunt prospects of mass protests with abject poverty, hunger, and basic
survival pre-occupations. For example, the terroristic power of massive
foreign exchange loot in a private hand, is limitless as a tool for
forcing pauperized populace to acquiesce to the self-perpetuation antics
of a potential despot.
Babangida’s first pronouncement in power
was to shock the nation by adopting the civilian title of president. He
did this because of a secret personal ambition kept to himself, to
transit into life president in the mould of Presidents Nasir of Egypt
and Eyadema of Togo, and also because of his agreement to make Chief
Abiola his Vice President for collaborating over their 1985 coup. Abacha
kicked against Abiola becoming Vice President because he was eyeing
Babangida’s seat in a possible future coup of his own and wanted to
remain the defacto next in command, in military terms, for eventual easy
take over excuse.
Babangida promised Yar Adua a short-lived
military transition after which he would hand over power to Yar Adua.
That was why Yar Adua kept boasting during the early stages of
Babangida’s regime, that no force on earth could stop him becoming the
next president of Nigeria. This prompted Obasanjo’s statement at the
time that Yar Adua must have forgotten something at the state house.
Babangida
was so single minded, self-centered, and power-drunk, he
single-handedly forced OIC membership on Nigeria without respect for our
supposed religious secularity. He used every means imaginable to assert
his power. Spiritual, criminal, everything was fair in his ruthless
power game. The gods of the Marabouts became privileged guests at Aso
Rock, lacing it with severe witchcraft, which was later vigorously
sustained by Abacha.
If the physical failed, the metaphysical was
handy in the human blood bath for power. Blood was the language in the
cultish game for total control. Fear gripped the land. Who was going to
be the next victim? Life was scary and worthless. I bet, corridor of
power social acolytes of the time like the Arisekolas, Adedibus and the
Akinyeles, could write blood-cuddling masterpieces on the mysteries of
the season. Assassinations were rampant, sophisticated and
comprehensive, incorporating bombings and dare-devil forages. Media
houses were burnt or closed down, and critics of government were
murdered, incarcerated or hounded into exile. Plane loads of promising
young army officers lost their lives in questionable circumstances.
Others appeared to have been sacrificed in distant land civil wars.
The
Ejigbo military Hercules crash that killed an elite corp. of army
captains and majors returning to their Jaji training base, is a typical
example of the terrible human carnage visited upon us at the time by a
desperate tyrant bent on holding on to power indefinitely at all costs.
The plane was doctored and it crashed a few seconds after take-off from
the Murtala Mohammed airport. No rescue attempt was ordered or made
until 24 hours after the crash and even then, the inadequate facilities
of a private company, (Julius Berger), were relied upon. Forty-eight
hours after the crash, a warm body was still found suggesting that some
lives could have been saved if rescue operations had commenced minutes
after the crash.
Apart from the needless assassinations of
possible opponents and rivals for power, there were totally senseless
ones too, such as the death of Murtala Mohammed’s first son immediately
after visiting the seat of power. It was generously reported in the
press at the time. The allegation was that during the friendly, private
visit, the young man was asked if he would be prepared to do a job. The
young chap said he could not say until he was told what the job was.
When told that he was to help facilitate the elimination of Chief
Abiola, the young man said he couldn’t because Abiola was like a father
to him. The host then quickly dismissed the suggestion as if it had been
a joke and asked how the young man travelled to the state house. “By
private car,” the young man said. “You are going about without
security?” the host asked, pretending to look alarmed, and detailed some
security officers to escort the young man to his Minna destination. The
body of the young man was later that day found in his car on the route
between the seat of power and Minna.
One of the documents we
received was on Gloria Okon. We could not use the information in Nigeria
at the time because no newspaper would dare publish it, so I arranged
for Ejike Nwankwo, my bosom friend, to take the documents to his senior
brother, Chief Arthur Nwankwo, who was in political exile in London at
the time. The idea was for Arthur Nwankwo to have the Gloria Okon’s
story published in the Manchester Guardian, but Arthur decided to delay
publication until he could use the immunity of the Nigerian Senate,
which he was aspiring to join in Babangida’s best time as a member, to
make the story public.
Senior members of the Ministry of Information,
and of the Daily Times at the time, and a director of Newswatch, were
not totally ignorant about what was going on in Babangida’s government.
In fact, Abacha at a point, asked the boss of the Ministry of
Information to frame up Dele Giwa. The boss being a principled and
die-hard journalist, argued that it was difficult to frame up
journalists.
Babangida’s boys went ahead to frame up Giwa anyway.
Three days before they killed Dele Giwa, Col. A. K. Togun, the deputy
Director of Babangida’s State Security Service (the SSS), invited Giwa
to his office and accused him of involvement in the importation of arms
while linking Giwa with other persons alleged to be trying to stage a
socialist revolution in Nigeria. At the meeting, agreement was reached,
and Babangida, through his emissaries, promised to meet Giwa’s terms.
Two days before Giwa’s murder, Akilu allegedly phoned Giwa’s home to ask
for direction because Babangida’s ADC “has something for him, an
invitation or something.”
Dele Giwa allegedly invited the
overseas editor of Newswatch at the time to be around. Obviously, Giwa
took the president’s promise more seriously than his colleagues at the
Newswatch. This was why, when Giwa received the parcel and confirmed
that it was from the President, his guest’s first reaction was to dash
off to take cover in the toilet adjacent to the room where Giwa opened
the parcel bomb. The guest escaped death by the whiskers and blasted
eardrums. Tagum, when asked by Airport Correspondents on October 27,
1986, about Giwa’s bombing inadvertently confirmed the blackmail reason
for Giwa’s death when he said: “We came to a real agreement and one
person cannot just come out and blackmail us. I am an expert on
blackmail. If a motorcycle man suddenly dashed in front of a car and the
driver kills the motorcycle man, another motorcycle man who was there
would not say the motorcycle man who dashed in front of the car was
wrong.
He would say the driver killed him, not that he killed himself”
An
Arab terrorist, who was recruited to collaborate with a University of
Ibadan chemistry don especially for the task, produced the bomb. The
terrorist is alleged to have gone with Major Buba Marwa, Ogbeha and
Gwazo, in a Peugeot station wagon car with fake license plate numbers,
to deliver the bomb at Dele’s home. On arrival, they were told that Dele
was not in, so they laid ambush near-by to watch movements in and out
of Giwa’s premises.
As soon as Giwa was spotted entering his
house, the allegation continues, the Arab terrorist offered to go and
deliver the bomb, but his colleagues in crime stopped him on the grounds
that a white man would look too suspicious for the job. Marwa,
accompanied by Ogbeha, are alleged to have delivered the bomb to Dele’s
son at the door, after which the crime team drove off to Mafoluku where
they burned their delivery car. The same day, the Arab terrorist was
flown out of Lagos, first to Kano, and eventually out of the country.
Major
Buba Marwa was at the time rewarded with the rank of Lt. Col. and
posted to the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, USA, as the new Military
Attaché. His rise in the Army was extremely rapid and as Col. returned
home to be Governor of Lagos State. Armed robbers welcomed him to his
new office with the kind of daredevilry never before experienced in
Nigeria. Violence begets violence they say. The armed robbers raided
from Mile two to Ikeja, even as he was passing by. Marwa panicked, so
Babangida pumped unusual resources into Marwa’s coffers to ensure his
success, which is the genesis of his tramping around as an achiever
today. His private life does not suggest that he suffered in fool’s
paradise.
Marwa, Ogbeha, and Gwazo, have since denied their
alleged involvement in Dele Giwa’s murder. Marwa, who now owns an
airline and, therefore, knows that it takes less than eight hours to fly
across the Atlantic to Nigeria, argued that he was studying in the USA
at the time. The implication of this, of course, was that it was
impossible to take a few days off his studies.
Marwa, who rose to
fame through IBB’s benevolence, is considered in military circles as
one of the IBB boys, made up principally of the trusted cronies of the
retired dictator. Accused of laundering money for IBB, Marwa again
relied on the puerile argument that he was the Borno state governor in
1990, as if state governors are too busy governing diligently to travel
out of Nigeria for a day or two, or even a week, on private businesses.
In
December, 2005, when Marwa was detained for a couple of weeks by the
EFCC, for laundering money for Abacha, he allegedly admitted that he had
no choice in the matter as a military officer. He was only doing his
duty. Of course, doing illegal duties loyally often goes with silencing,
mouth-watering pecks, if nothing else.
In the area of managing
the national economy, Babangida bestowed his adroitness and moral
degeneracy. His economy was dominated by male-wives, particularly in the
banking and oil sectors. Women often brag about the efficacy of
‘bottom’ power. Feminine men sometimes flaunt it too as their passport
to economic liberation. Between them and the suddenly very lucrative 419
business of the time, industry was complete. IBB’s chiefs, allegedly
colluded with 419 criminals to create the over-night semi-illiterate
money-bags without class or shame, (including the 150 members of the
National Assembly, that in 2005 sent IBB a birthday card), and who
together now form the bulk of his supporters and campaigners, to return
him to power.
Babangida (sapped) or totally wiped the middle
class out of existence with the destruction of the naira, which he did
by fiat in 1985, when he down graded the naira exchange rate from about
N2 to N18 to the dollar. By the time he was forced out of office in
1993, the naira was exchanging at N60 to the dollar. Society was now
reduced to two social classes of either the very poor or the rich
rogues.
Babangida first concentrated on pulverizing his military
base by tinkering with the 1985 Decree 17, to give himself sole
authority to fire his military chiefs, including the chief of general
staff; chairman, joint chiefs of staff; service chiefs, and the
inspector general of police. General Domkat Bali said at the time:
“Babangida must have known what he was aiming at if you now take those
powers of the President as civilian, and you now put them on any army
officer who then sits with other army officers, in the name of Supreme
Military Council, SMC, who are useless to him, whom he can change
tomorrow, that means that name is not Supreme at all.”
Bali was
provoked to leave the government when he was demoted from the position
of Minister of Defence to that of Internal Affairs. Ukiwe, a senior
naval officer, who was IBB’s deputy, was forced to retire even before
Bali did, for demonstrating patriotic zeal in defense of team spirit,
over our IOC membership saga.
Gideon Orkar’s failed coup of April
22, 1990, provided Babangida with the opportunity to further purge the
military. With total control over the military, IBB was ready to pursue
his President-for- life agenda, (starting) by dismissing his S. J.
Cookie’s Political Bureau programme for the return to civil rule by
1990.
For over eight years, Babangida kept shifting his handing
over date and juggling his transition programme by arbitrarily banning
and unbanning politicians, particularly the known opponents of military
rule. He spent N40 billion on his endless transition programme, and
bribed all and sundry, including the NLC with N50 million, NUJ with N20
million, PMAN with N30 million, and so on, to try to silence them. He
attempted to compromise some vocal critics by settling them, and those
he could not recruit, he sacked where possible, or detained, or killed,
or hounded into exile.
Less than two years into his rule in 1987,
IBB announced that he was planning to bequeath a lasting legacy of
civil rule, through a gradual learning political process. Four years
into his regime in 1989, he lifted for the first time his ban on
partisan politics, and set up two political parastatals. One was called
the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and the other was the National
Republican Convention (NRC).
The handing over date to civilian
government was postponed once again from late 1990 to the 1st of October
1992. He allowed elections to be held into the local governments in
1990, and in 1991, Babangida instigated intra party squabbles to find
excuse to ban 12 of the candidates participating in the governorship
elections. Candidates replacing the disqualified ones had barely one
week to campaign.
Elections into the State Assemblies
miraculously held without too much acrimony, followed shortly afterwards
by elections into the National Assembly. In all the elections, known
individuals strongly against Babangida or the military in power were
sidelined, banned, or hounded into exile, prominent among whom were
Ibrahim Tahir of the NPN, Sam Mbakwe, Chris Okolie, Wahab Dosumu,
Ebenezer Babatope, etc.
Allegation of massive rigging was invoked
on 17 November, 1992, to ban Adamu Ciroma and Shehu Musa Yar Adua, who
had emerged from party primaries as presidential candidates for the NRC
and the SDP respectively, and 21 other presidential aspirants,
(including Chief Arthur Nzeribe, Chief Olu Falae, Alhaji Lateef Jakande
and Alhaji Umar Shinkafi), from participating in the scheduled August
1992 presidential election, and all other future elections. The trick
was that Babangida was gradually narrowing the field of potential
presidential materials to himself. Remember that Babangida had promised
Yar Adua the Presidency when Yar Adua helped to actualize the 1985 coup
that brought Babangida to power. The ban did not go down well with the
political elite in general, and particularly with Yar Adua who had
assumed he would take over leadership from Babangida.
With the
ban, Babangida once again postponed his handing over date from October
1st 1992, to Dec 5, 1992. Soon after, Babangida mandated the National
Electoral Commission (NEC), to conduct the presidential primaries of the
political parties, and he again fixed a new date of January 3, 1993,
for the handing over of the reigns of power to a civilian government.
Bribery, thuggery, rigging, ethnic cleavages, etc., ruined the NEC
supervised political parties’ presidential primaries, resulting in the
dissolution of party executives, who were replaced by Sole
Administrators, and National Coordinators. Handing over date was once
again postponed to August 27, 1993.
Baba Gana Kingibe, who was the
SDP chairman before the dissolution of the party executives, and was
then supposed to be managing the affairs of Yar Adua, was alleged to
have received Babangida’s backing and financial support to aspire as
presidential candidate obviously to cause confusion in Yar Adua’s
political camp. Kingibe pasted his campaign posters all over the place,
causing bad blood between himself and Yar Adua, which spilled into the
Jos SDP convention of 1993.
In the meantime, Babangida was busy
creating anarchy in the ranks of the politicians by introducing his
modified open ballot system, and insisting that presidential aspirants
go through tedious ward, local government, and state congresses. This
eventually produced two presidential aspirants for each of the states,
plus two for the FCT, and the unwieldy 62 presidential aspirants had to
go through further elimination processes, at various national
congresses, before the Jos (SDP), and Port-Harcourt (NRC), conventions
of 1993.
Several irregularities were observed at the party conventions and a lot of money changed hands.
Alhaji
Bashir Tofa for the NRC, and Bashorun M.K.O Abiola for the SDP, emerged
as the presidential flag bearers. Babangida who was unhappy that
progress was being made in the presidential election process was further
pissed-off when his nominee, Pascal Bafyau, the ex-NLC president, as
Abiola’s running mate, (to spy on and undermine Abiola), was rejected by
Abiola. Abiola also upset Yar Adua’s calculations, by not accepting
Abubakir Atiku as his running mate, and choosing Baba Gana Kingibe
instead.
Of course, the emergence at last of promising
presidential candidates for both parties was not a very palatable option
for Abacha too who was still nursing the dream to succeed Babangida
although pretending to be on the side of Babangida. Abacha misled
Babangida to think of him as a possible ally, so the scene was set for
Babangida to feel that if he annulled the election, he would have the
support of Abacha, Yar Adua and other perceived, powerful enemies of
Abiola, including a leading traditional ruler in the South-West.
Babangida,
in his determination to scuttle the presidential election at all cost,
promulgated Decree 13, forbidding the presidential flag bearers of the
two political parties from doing anything whatsoever that would
influence members of the public to vote for them at the election
scheduled for June 12 1993. Then Babangida empowered NEC to disqualify
any of the candidates at will, and as a (final) fall back strategy, to
scuttle our democratic dream, he set up his Association for Better
Nigeria (ABN) party, using Senator Arthur Nzeribe as proxy.
On
June 10, 1993, at the unholy hour of 9.30 pm, late Justice Ikpeme, who
was appointed a few days earlier and hurriedly transferred from Lagos to
Abuja, granted a court order to the ABN, restraining the NEC Chairman
Humphrey Nwosu, from conducting the Presidential election on June 12,
1993.
The Director of the United States Information Service
(USIS) in Nigeria at the time, Mr. O’Brien, warned that the US
government would not be happy if the June 12 election was cancelled.
Babangida panicked, and although he declared O’Brien persona non grata
and ordered him out of the country in his personal interest, Babangida
allowed Nwosu to go ahead with the election.
The election was
adjudged by the international and local observers monitoring it and by
the two political parties involved, as the fairest and freest in the
history of Nigeria. By the evening of June 14 1993, more than 50% of the
election results had been authenticated and released by NEC, showing
that SDP’s Moshood Abiola had swept the polls.
To everyone’s
surprise, Babangida suddenly ordered NEC not to release any more
results. On June 23, 1993, Babangida gave an unsigned statement to Nduka
Irabor, his press secretary, announcing the cancellation of the
presidential election on the radio. The unsigned statement was a
strategy to allow Babangida to deny its authenticity, should Nigeria
begin to boil over the announcement. Nigerians had become too hungry and
docile to react.
Babangida annulled the June12 election entirely
on his own, based on his selfish, personal agenda to rule indefinitely.
Before annulling the election, he rallied the connivance and support of
some critical Emirs and a leading Yoruba traditional ruler known to be
antagonistic to Abiola’s political ambition, and the signatures of a
bunch of political and military apologists (or jobbers), tagged the
G-34, on a document entitled ‘Peace Pact,’ in endorsement of his
annulment of the June 12, 1993, elections.
The G-34 comprised of
the following members of the military junta and leaders of the two
political parties, the SDP and the NRC: Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, Chief
Earnest Shonekan who eventually headed Babangida’s contraption called
the Interim National Government (ING), General Shehu Musa Yar’ardua,
Alhaji Sule Lamido, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, Amb. Dele Cole, Chief Tony
Anenih, Chief Jim Nwobodo, Brig-Gen David A. B Mark, Alhaji Abubakar
Rimi, Alhaji Olusola Saraki, Chief Dapo Sarumi, Chief Joseph Toba, Chief
Bola Afonja, Dr. Hammed Kusamotu, Dr. Okechukwu Odunze, Prof. Eyo Ita,
Y. Anka, Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, Chief Tom Ikimi, Barrister Joe Nwodo
(who signed with reservations) , Dr. Bawa Salka, Alhaji Abba Murtala
Mohammed, Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene, Lt. Gen Joshua Dongoyaro, Lt. Gen
Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, Brig-Gen John Shagaya, Brig-Gen Anthony Ukpo,
Halilu A. Maina, Alhaji Bawa Salka, Mr. Amos Idakula, Mr. Theo Nikire,
Alhaji A. Ramalan, Alhaji A.
Mohammed. Many of these traitors are still making decisions for Nigeria today.
Babangida’s
military constituency, by and large, was against the annulment. Abacha
saw his opportunity to act, and with the backing of the armed forces of
Nigeria, warned Babangida that he would be entirely on his own after the
August 27, 1993, handing over date. Babangida in fear, concocted and
swore in an illegal arrangement he called the Interim National
Government, ING, to take over office from August 27, 1993. After
swearing in his ING on August 26, 1993, Babangida who was supposed to be
pulled out of the army in the military tradition, played all sorts of
pranks to delay the event from
11.am
to 1.00pm and then to 3.00pm, when the Nigerian army removed
Babangida’s guards from the Eagle Square to warn him that his time was
up.
There is this strong allegation among the rank and file of
the armed forces, and members of the defense correspondence of our
newspapers attached to the seat of power, that Babangida arranged, in
the last couple of weeks before leaving office, for several armoured
vehicle loads of newly printed naira notes to be delivered daily to his
new Minna palatial abode obviously with the connivance of Abacha,
perhaps as his mentor’s retirement benefit.
Abacha and Babangida
had several serious financial problems with Abiola but one of them takes
the cake. It was over some foreign war booty amounting to US$215m. It
is alleged that Babangida had asked Abiola to help launder it when
Babangida was in office but Abiola was not interested.
Babangida
allegedly side-stepped Abiola and eventually prevailed upon a member of
Abiola’s family in the custom of family friendship, to rescue the
situation. Then the person suddenly died. It is further alleged that
Abiola was asked to return the money and he truthfully and honestly said
he knew noting about it and even if there was such a thing, he had no
authority over the matter. Then he was asked to pressurize the children
of the deceased to play ball.
Abiola refused, arguing that he had
no legal or moral right to do so. The kids of the deceased wanted
Abiola released but Abiola was too principled to succumb to blackmail so
the powers that be decided early after his arrest, that he would die in
detention for declaring himself president.
The Gulf war oil
windfall is Babangida’s often-referenced loot. Abacha set up a panel
headed by the highly respected economist, Pius Okigbo, in October, 1994,
to reorganize the CBN. Okigbo’s panel discovered that $12.2 billion of
the $12.4 billion accruable from the Gulf War excess crude oil sales was
frittered away or unaccounted for, through nebulous or phantom projects
that could not be traced. Only $206 million was left in the account.
According to Okigbo, “disbursements were clandestinely undertaken while
the country was openly reeling with crushing external debt overhead.
These represent, no matter the initial justification for creating the
account, a gross abuse of public trust. “
When Obasanjo in 2001,
decided to look quietly into the missing NNPC’s US$12.2 billion Gulf war
oil windfall linked to Babangida, it was found that the documents
pertaining to the fraud had disappeared from the volts of the Central
Bank. The brilliant, highly respected economist, Pius Okigbo who handled
the investigations into the scam had private copies. Before he could
deliver, he insisted on travelling to London against strong, wise,
private, counsel, and he was wasted. Other members of the Okigbo panel
had copies of the report anyway and were still alive.
Government
miraculously found the CBN documents when it suited it, and aspects of
the documents concerning IBB, were published during the threat by
members of the House of Representatives to impeach President Obasanjo in
July, 2005, because of speculations that IBB was one of the Northern
elites fanning the plot.
Babangida was ruthless in the way he
amassed his colossal wealth. First is the illegal self-allocation of
free oil, sold on the spot market. Then he initiated the corrupt culture
of maintaining a huge monthly security vote virtually as personal
pocket money. Rather than repair our refineries, let alone to work at
maximum capacity, IBB built private refineries in Cote d’Ivoire and the
Republic of Benin, where he took our crude to refine and sell back to us
as fuel.
John Fashanu, in a private investigation published in
African Confidential early in Obasanjo’s current regime, discovered an
alleged $6 billion debt buy-back scam by IBB between 1988 and 1993.
Another $14.4 billion disappeared into off shore accounts as currency
stabilization and debt buy-back scheme that actually cost $2.5 billion.
One of the front-companies used, Growth Management, based in London,
bought the debt for 10 cents per dollar and resold to the government at
45 cents to steal 35 cents per dollar. Fashanu was trying to recover
about $17 billion for the Nigerian government only for the CBN to say
they had no records of the deals. The records are out there abroad but
cleaned out at home to conceal the (theft) deals.
The Wolfsberg
Principles, an initiative of 11 banks and institutions across the world
to fight serious international financial crimes, traced another $3
billion of our stolen money to Babangida’s accounts abroad, and $4.3
billion to Abacha’s.
Although Babangida used mostly fictitious
names for his numerous accounts abroad, EFCC could zero in on some of
the accounts by following up on the dusts raised early in 2003 over the
financing of a leading Nigerian telecommunications project in which
Babangida is alleged to own 75% shares. Mohammed fronts for his father
on the authentic board of the company. Those claiming to have borrowed
from foreign banks in the heat of the EFCC’s revelations at the time
have not identified the collateral or sortie used. Documents on the loan
supposed to have been granted on 9 February, 2001, was dated 28 August,
2006. The original ‘loan’ letter has not been presented. Apparently,
Paribas Bank, based in Paris, was managing a slush fund from which
investments in excess of US$400 million was made to buy into Alcatel,
(the telecommunications’ partner technical partners), Bouygues Telecoms,
Peugeot and Total finaelf.
Alcatel and Parabel National of
France were worried at the time that their invoices for the telecom
project were being inflated to launder funds by the supposed private
owners of the sources of funds and that private cheques were being
issued to finance the staggering project without recourse to borrowing
from banks. They suspected illegal laundering of funds and threatened to
withdraw collaboration on the project while alerting Interpol to
investigate the sources of the private cheques being issued to finance
the project.
IBB could not participate in Obasanjo’s 2003,
inauguration ceremonies, because he was allegedly out of the country
sorting out the Interpol queries on the Alcatel’s slush account alert,
at the time. Even now, the telecoms’ financing details through Siemens
etc, could be investigated by the EFCC tracing ghost cheques to issuing
private sources of funds and their local and international banks to
unravel possible laundering of funds.
Luscious contracts for the
construction of Abuja were awarded to front-companies of his and his
cronies, including Julius Berger and Arab Contractors that between them
virtually single-handedly handled the construction of the new Federal
Capital. The security danger of foreign companies solely constructing a
country’s capital and having access to its structural secrets, including
possible Presidential underground escape routes and military arsenal
volts, is mind boggling to say the least, but that is an issue for
another day.
The largest, most prestigious housing estate in
Alexandra, Egypt’s leading holiday resort town, is alleged to belong to
Babangida. Even Egyptians cannot afford his rent, which is alleged to be
in dollars. All his tenants are rich foreigners and the staff of
multi-national companies operating in Alexandra. The estate is alleged
to have its own airport, which Babangida uses when he visits.
Babangida
is alleged to own several other housing estates around the world,
including houses on Bishop Avenue in London. He uses his London houses,
it is alleged, as guest houses or gifts for people on his compromise
list. He is considered generous with gifts of cars with their boots
stuffed with naira notes when he wants some jobs done.
Perhaps
you would want to join me to play the prude accountant, generous with
figures. Let’s pretend that Babangida was a General throughout his
service years in the Nigerian army. Again let’s assume he spent 30 years
in the army and was paid N100,000 monthly (actually, salaries of
Generals were less than N10,000 a month until recently) and he saved
every kobo of his salary. He would be worth about N35,000,000 plus
interest in the bank today. But Babangida’s 50 bedroom palatial abode in
Minna is alleged to be conservatively worth billions of naira and he
does not owe any bank on it.
In 2003, he threw a wedding party
for his first daughter, which numbed the nation. Some 28 governors were
in attendance, and in June 2004, he treated us to another dream-like
political carnival during his son’s wedding. No one dared to ask where
the money came from to set up such a palatial abode or scandalous and
intimidating wedding carnivals in our jungle of abject poverty and
hunger. Nigerians revelled in the lavish show of shame, hoodwinked by
the audacity, the sumptuous food, the ambience, the vulgarity….. At
least we saw our fellow Nigerians (albeit a handful of them), living it
up on the money that could have guaranteed millions of Nigerians,
active, regular employment indefinitely.
Almost all the principal
characters involved in leadership tussles with Babangida since 1985,
Abiola, Yar Adua, Idiagbon and even Abacha, have all died through
induced cardiac arrest, lethal injection, poisoned food, gassed
telephone handset, etc, etc, and my fear is whether Nigeria would
survive the Godfather himself?
