A retired colonel of the Nigerian Army, Babatunde Bello-Fadile, said the late General Sani Abacha won’t have wrested power from the interim government of late businessman Ernest Sonekan if he was allowed to resume as the aide-de-camp (ADC) of the interim president.
“I was posted ADC to Sonekan. I don’t know why I was not allowed to resume. Still, if I had been ADC, it (the takeover) probably wouldn’t have happened,” Bello-Fadile said on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
“Why didn’t I resume? The Chief of Army Staff said I should wait until he (Sonekan) comes back from Malta where he went for the Commonwealth Head of State meeting that year. So, I was hanging around. The whole thing happened by the time he came back.”
The return of democracy in Nigeria followed a series of events, some bloody and undesirable. In 1993, after a controversial annulment of an election whose winner was adjudged to be the late MKO Abiola, General Ibrahim Babangida who took over power in 1985 through a coup against General Muhammadu Buhari resigned and formed an interim government with businessman Sonekan as president and Abacha as Chief of Defence Staff and Minister of Defence.
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On November 18, 1993, three months into his administration, Abacha overthrew Sonekan in a palace coup.
Over 30 years later, Bello-Fadile believes that the circumstances behind Sonekan’s resignation were abnormal.
The lawyer and former head of the Legal Unit of the Nigerian Army also took a trip down memory lane and narrated how he confronted Abacha after he took over power from Sonekan.
He said, “The military decided to leave after June 12 and an interim government was set up and it was agreed that we would midwife and elected government.
“The civilians that were elected were allowed to stay but my friend (Abacha) decided to say no.
“The second in command to Sonekan (Abacha) organised a resignation and threw away the agreement that the military had had enough, and should set a path for democratic government.
“Likeminded persons in the military said that can’t happen. Then Abacha said these are IBB boys behind the insistence for a return to democracy. And all of a sudden, he announced their retirement.
“I was still in the military at the time and he retired all my friends, 17 of them. I don’t know how I survived that.
“Then he (Abacha) set up panels to review everything. Kayode Esho panel (of which I was a member) to review the judiciary. I was the only military person there, all the others were judges and lawyers. Then, they set up the police reform and called for a White Paper just to buy time.
“When we submitted the White Paper Committee Report, he asked me what we were hearing, and I told him that the people wanted the military to return to the barracks.
“The Decree 63 that Babangida set up and made you the deputy with a clause that if anything happens to the interim president, you will take over but taking over does not mean you should dispose of the decree; it means you take over as the head of state and continue with the cabinet but you took over and turned it upside down. That’s why the international community is not happy with you.
“I didn’t want to overthrow the government. We wanted an interim government back. I was the one doing all the running around. General (Olusegun) Obasanjo was doing his own with his National Unity Organisation of Nigeria. He was also calling for the military to go back to the barracks.
“General Shehu Yar’Adua was in the Constituent Assembly where they set a date for the military to leave.”
