THE GODFATHER - The Drama, Greed, Assassination, Deceit, Bribery, Looting and...
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.
NOTE :- I AM NOT THE ORIGINATOR BUT I BELIEVE EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS AND BE WISE. THANKS
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