NIGERIA-POLITICS: For The Doubting Thomases.

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Remi Oyo

LAGOS, Oct 2 1995 (IPS) - Aimed at the sceptics at home and abroad, Nigerian government-owned television has aired unprecedented footage of the military trial of a group of alleged coup plotters sentenced earlier this year.

The nearly one hour programme shown Sunday night highlighting the plot by 43 soldiers and civilians convicted in July, featured edited questions and answers from the tribunal and key defendants, who had no visible signs of torture.

It followed an independence day broadcast earlier in the day in which head of state Gen. Sani Abacha commuted the sentences on the putschist. Treason normally carries the death sentence in Nigeria.

After six successful coups and four acknowledged aborted attempts in the country’s 35-year history, this was the first time Nigerians have seen the workings of a military trial.

The programme featured narration by an unseen commentator stringing together the steps towards the coup attempt the Government claims was to have taken place on March 1, interspersed with video-taped footage of the trial chaired by Brig. Patrick Aziza.

According to the commentator, the plot was uncovered in February, after which a special investigation recommended the trial of 52 persons including Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, one time military head of state and his deputy, Maj-Gen. Musa Yar’Adua.

Five other officers, including retired Col. Sambo Dasuki, the son of the powerful Sultan of Sokoto and Abacha critic, have been declared wanted.

According to the commentator, the accused were divided into four categories: conspiracy and treason; concealment of treason; assessories to treason and those charged for other offences.

Aggressively questioned by unseen members of the panel, retired Major Akinloye Akinyemi told his interrogators that he met Tony Nyiam, a Colonel wanted for his alleged role in a failed 1990 coup bid, to discuss a plan to topple Abacha’s two-year-old military government.

“We met in (neighbouring) Benin republic and we discussed and it was on (that) basis that I said I was going to do something about it,” Akinyemi wearing a white sleeve shirt said.

“Ogboru (a civilian convicted in absentia for the 1990 coup plot against former president Gen. Ibrahim Babangida) and Nyiam promised they’ll assist with finances but that it was necessary for me to work out my finances,” the Major, jailed for a previously unpublicised coup bid in 1987 for five years, said.

Viewers were shown copies of a plan which the commentator said was Akinyemi’s division of the country into seven zones for the purposes of the putsch.

Akinyemi also said he had visited another retired army officer, Lt-Col Ajayi during which “I expressed my bitterness about June 12 and the injustices within the system.”

June 12 is the watershed in current Nigerian politics. It is the date in 1993 when presidential elections were held, won by millionaire businessman Moshood Abiola, and then annulled by Babingida’s military government. Abiola was detained in July last year for declaring himself head of state.

Akinyemi, a vocal Abiola supporter, is the younger brother of former foreign minister Bolaji Akinyemi exiled in Britain. On the tape he was seen to profusely apologise to a silent Ajayi for involving him. “Sir, I am sorry, believe me I have suffered a lot of pain but it had come to a point when no one believed me … I could not hide the truth any longer”.

It was not clear from the programme if Akinyeme was being questioned over his involvement in an earlier coup attempt or the plot which the government had earlier claimed was led by Col. Lawan Gwadabe, one of the few serving combat officers among the 43 people convicted in July.

Gwadabe, previously the second in command of the Gambian armed forces under a bi-lateral defence agreement until a coup there in 1994, was angry at reports of his imminent retirement by Abacha, the commentator said, and threatened to “roll out the tanks”.

Gwadabe had supposedly asked his co-conspirators to look for “crack colonels” to effect a change. Asked in a video clip, date- marked May 18, what kind of change he envisaged, Gwadabe said: “There is only one kind of change in this context … military change.”

Following a flurry of other questions from unseen interrogators, Gwadabe answered “it has to be a coup … it could be violent and not be violent”.

But the commentator said the plot involved the assassination of Abacha and senior members of the government during the Moslem holiday of March 1, the elimination of officers from Brigadier- General level upwards, and the use of retired and credible Generals to sell the new regime to the world.

Col. Bello Fadile, until his arrest the army’s director of legal services, allegedly travelled around the country to recruit members for the plan.

Fadile admitted meeting Gen. Yar’Adua, the number two in Gen. Obasango’s 1976-79 military government which handed over to an elected civilian government.

“I told him I am coordinating … that I am sure we will be able to persuade the C-in-C (commander-in-chief) to form an interim national government.” The reference to C-in-C could have meant Gen. Obasanjo

While viewers only heard Yar’Adua confirm that Fadile visited him in the federal capital Abuja, Obasanjo said nothing when Fadile alleged he had discussed the same issue with him.

Silent and unshaven, Obasanjo, in a two-piece traditional suit, stared at Fadile as he alleged that the former head of state had asked him to come back on his return from a trip.

Clips of the interrogation of two of the civilians charged was also shown in the programme.

Chris Anyanwu, publisher of TSM magazine, was said by the commentator to be a “friend and business associate” of Gwadabe.

She read out excerpts of her letter to the Colonel confirming receipt of part payment for shares in her magazine which has been accused of publishing false rumours against Abacha’s government.

Pro-democracy campaigner, Beko Ransome-Kuti, admitted as accused of distributing faxes of the trial’s proceedings.

The programme narrator said 14 persons including Yar’Adua were convicted of conspiracy and treason: four including Obasanjo for concealment, 14 including Anyanwu, Ransome-Kuti and four other journalists were convicted as assessories to treason and 11 others for related offences.

In his broadcast Sunday, Abacha said: “The investigation was determined to discover fully all those involved and to draw lessons on ways of bringing the cycle of coups and counter-coups to an end.”

Under intense domestic and international pressure, he commuted the sentences “to be reviewed at the appropriate time.”

In a restrained statement Sunday, the British foreign office “welcomed the Nigerian head of state’s exercise of clemency and that all deaths sentences have been commuted.”