“My fellow Nigerians, let me begin by congratulating all of us for witnessing the celebration of another Democracy Day today, the 12th day of June 2024. This year also marks our nation’s 25 years of uninterrupted democratic governance. On this day, 31 years ago, we entered our rites of passage to becoming a true and enduring democratic society,” said President Bola Tinubu.
Going through that passage, the route to democracy, he said, was “hard and dangerous,” fighting and struggling for “our natural rights,” losing “great heroes and heroines along the way, including the winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola, his wife, Kudirat, Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Pa Alfred Rewane, Chief Anthony Enahoro, Chief Abraham Adesanya, Commodore Dan Suleiman, Chief Arthur Nwankwo, Chief Chukwuemeka Ezeife, and Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu.” Others are “Chief Frank Kokori, Chief Bola Ige, Chief Adekunle Ajasin, Chief Ganiyu Dawodu, Chief Ayo Fasanmi, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Chief Olabiyi Durojaiye, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, Chima Ubani, Gen Alani Akinrinade, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi. Tinubu also mentioned, “Professor Wole Soyinka, Chief Ralph Obioha, Chief Cornelius Adebayo, Olisa Agbakoba, Femi Falana, Abdul Oroh, Senator Shehu Sani, Governor Uba Sani, Chief Olu Falae, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Ayo Opadokun and others who “have transited to the higher realm.”
Tinubu acknowledged that they “bravely surrendered their futures so that our nation might have a better one,” noting that their sacrifices should never be forgotten.
The dust of the so-called phantom coups has yet to settle as several unsung victims, former military officers, succumb to physical, mental and emotional degeneration. Others have surrendered to the cold hands of death. The remains of the deceased have since settled in the soil, but the living officers gnash their teeth as their search for redemption wavers between dashed and renewed hope.
They are waiting for the president of the most populous black nation to heed their call for reparation and recognition. June 12 has come and gone: it had been so for decades, and one by one, the military officers accused of the so-called phantom coups languished in muted expectations as they yearned for the magnanimity of the incumbent president. They did not protest because of their enduring faith in justice and recompense as ‘victims’ of General Sani Abacha’s alleged 1995 and 1997 coups. Instead, they believed Tinubu will “speedily implement all recommendations made in our favour by the Oputa panel on human rights violations and abuses.”
They also hoped that Tinubu will consider their plight and grant them the long-awaited reprieve. They point in the direction of the clear-cut facts and resolutions contained in the Oputa panel. They are convinced that justice delayed, which has left some of them deceased and others disconsolate, should not be justice denied.
Feeling left in the lurch, some of the victims stated that the Council of State approved the compensation for the victims of the phantom coup allegations, first in 2009 and later in 2011. They described their experiences in the hands of the Abacha as “unjust, inhuman, satanic and callous” and stressed that the violations and oppression mete on them rights cannot be wished away at all because it is alive in the recorded annals of Nigeria and “in international libraries.”
In their enduring race for justice, the remaining so-called phantom coupists hinged their hope on Tinubu and Vice-President Kashim Shettima “to right the wrongs of the past, heal past wounds and wipe off sorrows and bewilderment from the life of the said victims of rights violations and abuses,” it is time the federal government should “deal with the horrible and psychological debilitating debrief our national callousness during Abacha’s years of darkness, callousness, treachery and oppression.”
For their labour not to be in vain, the victims of the Abacha dictatorship are seeking “prompt action” of the president to endorse the reliefs and compensation recommended by the Oputa panel in its white paper titled, “Council of State Memo June 23, 2009, Council of State Memo March 13, 2013, and Nigeria Official Gazzete NO 33, VOL. 86, dated May 26 1999, in favour of the military and civilian victims to alleviate their 22 years of trauma and psychological stress”.
Among other things, they seek promotion to their appropriate higher ranks in line with their coursemates in the Armed Forces. They stated that they were high-flyers before their lofty careers were truncated. Added to that by the panel’s recommendation is a letter of apology for wrongful detention, torture, deprivation, and ruthless rights violations. The panel advised comprehensive rehabilitation of all military and civilian victims caught in the web of the phantom coup. There are other recommendations by the Oputa panel. The ex-servicemen eagerly await the full implementation of the recommendations.
In recent conversations, the military officers expressed their angst and anticipation. They explained their full trust in Tinubu’s sense of justice and reparation as they hailed his devotion to magnanimity and national sacrifice. However, the military officers disclosed their fear of being annotated and imprinted as a footnote to history.
They regret that ex-Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari forgot them. They also did not find redemption during the reigns of former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Umar Yar’Adua. Obasanjo ruled for eight years, instituted the Oputa panel but “ignored the travails and injustice of those of us, so-called phantom coup plotters, to languish in anonymity in despair, hoping to get justice,” said a former military officer incarcerated during the terror-filled days of Abacha. His files and many others have gathered dust in the federal government’s archives for years. Many of the so-called phantom coup plotters felt their comrade, Obasanjo dealt them perhaps the hardest blow by overlooking the Oputa panel report. During Buhari’s eight years, the files that would bring reprieve moved too slowly, and it was said the then-president did not get to sign them, thereby giving life to all the Oputa recommendations.
But, with Tinubu in the saddle, they are convinced it is now or never. The military officers felt that he shared their pain since he also faced persecution while fighting for democracy in the trenches. They felt that he would be more sympathetic to their delusion, demoralisation and lengthened humiliation. The military men accused of coups they repeatedly claimed they knew nothing about and probably never existed other than in the mind of the late despot are gasping for breath. Forlorn, they feared for the worse. Faint of heart, they face decades of gripping mental and physical pains, and the painful reality that they have laboured in vain for their fatherland appear.
Some of the suspected phantom coupists left brutalised in the 1990s include Colonels Lawan Gwadabe, Olusegun Oloruntoba, Gabriel Ajayi, Emmanuel Ndubueze, Rowland Emokpae, Bello Fadile, Emma Ndubueze, Edwin Jando, Navy Capt (Barrister) Lawrence Fabiyi, Navy Capt Denis Omesa, Lt-Colonels Martin Igwe, Sam Oyewole, Happy Bulus, Major Akinloye Akinyemi, and Kayode Olowomoran.
In most cases, suspects were “soaked in muddy water dead in the night, blindfolded, handcuffed, shackled and left naked in the open air for hours.” This was followed by taking the suspects through various torture modules. At a particular torture chamber, suspects had their upper limbs chained to their lower limbs symmetrically. After that, suspects were suspended in a manner “characteristic of a fowl prepared for roasting.” Suspects were kept in this position for “close to one hour, and by the time they were let off the hooks, their wrists, armpits and ankles had been terribly battered.”
They have waited for almost three decades with hope raised, dashed and now renewed, and convinced of getting justice. They pointed to the Oputa panel that exonerated them and the recommended compensations that came with it. That reprieve remained a mirage for more than a decade. Their detailed travails are well-documented in several interviews published in Sunday Punch.
Tinubu should deliver justice to phantom coup victims.
•Bayo Akinloye is a freelance journalist based in Lagos
