Ex-Army
chief’s deputy describes his boss’ book as a fictional thriller
Recently, former Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ishaya Bamaiyi (Retd)
stirred the hornet’s
nest when he unveiled his book: “Vindication of a General”
to the public. His account of the government of late Head of State, Gen Sani
Abacha in the book has continued to generate controversy. In this interview
with WILLY EYA, one of the victims of that inglorious era, Col. Gabriel Ajayi
(Retd) whose brilliant and promising military career was cut short in 1995 on
allegations of his involvement in a phantom coup against the regime bares it
all. His conclusion is that Bamaiyi is nothing but a liar. The interview is a
must read.
As a
background to this interaction, what are your reflections on the state of
affairs in the country?
That is
a very tall question to ask at the beginning of this interview. I think Nigeria
is surviving and everybody is trying to cope with the situation we deliberately
foisted upon ourselves. What we have today is not the originally assigned
destiny of this country. The destiny of Nigeria is to be the leader of the
black race. After the American civilization would have dwindled, Nigeria is
supposed to pick it up and become the leader of the world. It is not by
coincidence that God concentrated the largest number of blacks in the universe
in the place called Nigeria. It is a deliberate divine plan and all the blacks
that are supposed to look forward to Nigeria are looking forward to America
today. That is supposed to be the destiny of Nigeria. But unfortunately, as a
result of lack of foresight, we fell victim of foreign manipulations. There is
the colonialists’ plot to tie us down so that everything we use in Nigeria has
to be imported from overseas. Even the type of government we run was copied
from the American system. It is not original. I wish Nigeria could live her
original life designed for it by God. Whatever a human being needs to survive,
God has put it here. What we require here in Nigeria, God has put it in our
soil. What God has put under the soil of Nigeria since 1960, He has not taken
anything away from it. The same content of a tin of milk in the past is the
same content of a tin of milk today. The only variable that has changed is the
monetary variable and since we have decided to fall victim to foreign
manipulation of our currency, we are in trouble, in hell. Nigeria is living a
fabricated destiny but each component part of the country has her own destiny.
So, if the destiny of the whole is not working, the destinies of the component
parts can work. The Yoruba have their destiny. The Igbo have, the Hausa, the
Tiv and so on. People do not understand the God factor in the destiny of
Nigeria. What we are dealing with is the human factor, thinking and
manipulation. This is according to law; our own law does not justify the end of
morality. If there is law that does not justify the end of morality, there is
not justice there. You may be saying how can a military man be saying this but
there is no difference. We are all human beings. Some of us who served in the
military know the value of God more than others because we face danger and only
God could save one from such danger. You would be under the artillery shell
from morning till evening and you would think that many people would have been
wiped out but at the end, only few would sustain injuries. So, people who have
experienced that kind of situation know the value of God. So in summary, I
would say that Nigeria is not fulfilling her destiny. Nigeria is a huge
supermarket. No industry, no production and manufacturing. Nigeria is blessed
with petrochemicals but we are not having petrochemical-based industries. What
are our leaders doing? Our leaders must come to terms with our past, reshape
the present and plan for the future. If you do not plan to succeed, you plan to
fail.
In your
preamble, you made insinuations that that the different component parts of
Nigeria have their various destinies. Do you think that one day the component
parts would break away to pursue their destinies?
It
depends on the people. If the people want to be together, there is nobody that
can separate them and if the people do not want to stay together, there is no
force of arms under the universe that can bond them together. What I am saying
is that there is nothing that happens that do not have the hand of God in it
but we can make the whole nation to work if we want to. It is not about Nigeria
disintegrating; no, people should not think that anything is sacrosanct and
that at all cost, it must be like this. That is man proposes, God disposes. But
if we want the destiny of Nigeria to work, we have to make it to work and if
you do not make the destiny to work, that does not stop the destinies of other
people. Nigeria must be made attractive to every part of the country. People
should be struggling to be part of it and not being forced to be part of it.
When you see what you can gain from something, nobody would tell you to be part
of that project. You cannot force people to be part of a failed business.
People must see something to hold unto. You cannot compel unity. If Nigeria is
attractive, nobody would be talking about MASSOB, IPOB and nobody would be
talking about self- determination groups and so on.
You
were second in Command to Gen Bamaiyi who recently came out with a
controversial book detailing what transpired under the government of late Gen
Sani Abacha. As somebody who was privy to the events of that period, what do
you make of the
I want to let people know that it is not in my character to challenge
the sanctity of my superiors. In the military, seniority is very sacred. You
respect senior ranks very well in the military but when a General descend into
the sewage tank, he cannot expect to smell of cologne. I expected General
Bamaiyi to come up with apologies for their inglorious era, the evil era
foisted on Nigeria by officers whose characters do not inspire anybody and
whose character you would not want to emulate. Two, I was a de-facto Second in
Command to Bamaiyi. I have not read the book but I read the excerpts put in the
papers. So, from what I have read, the book should be entitled the ‘Passport of
Mallam Bamaiyi’. The book is a fictional thriller, a novel. Even then, some
thrillers are based on truths though embellished but in his own case, all I
have read are all tissue of lies, falsehood and things that never happened,
half-truths and equivocation. It is so funny that 22 years after, Gen Bamaiyi,
could come up with this level of lies; my boss who I respect so much because
Jesus Christ said obey your master as you obey me. That was the principle upon
which I worked with him. I was tortured beyond human comprehension and dealt
with badly and instead of coming up with apology, he is still lying against me
that I, Gen Obasanjo and co wanted to overthrow Gen Sani Abacha. I think the
book is a bad omen for military leadership. I cannot understand what was
running in his mind to come up with that kind of book. I understand Gen
Olanrewaju has refuted his claim. He was insinuating that it was Gen Olanrewaju
who busted the 1995 phantom coup. I have known Gen Olanrewaju one on one and he
told me he knew nothing about it and Bamaiyi is still lying even against his
own colleague. He betrayed his own colleague. Loyalty has been the hallmark of
the military. My commander betrayed his colleagues and all of us his
subordinates. I worked with many senior officers who loved me but only Bamaiyi
could have done what he did to me. I was the darling of many senior officers. I
was a workaholic and they preferred an officer who liked to work. Bamaiyi has
no loyalty. In fact, he once told me that no matter how a farmer loves his
cockerel, it would still end up on his dinner table. I did not know he was
referring to me indirectly. So, do not listen to Bamaiyi. If not because of
pressure, I would not even have attempted to buy the book to read because I
know what Bamaiyi could write and I know the lies he could tell. I am close to
them. The Bamaiyi senior taught me in the Nigerian Military College. I was his
training company commander. I have known his senior brother since 1973 and I
extended the same camaraderie to Gen Bamaiyi. I worked for him like no man’s
business but I disagreed with some of his satanic way of life. I did not like
it because my life had been guided with the Holy Bible since I was Second
Lieutenant. In fact, when I was first commissioned in 1973, for the first three
months, what I did was to pick the bible, study it from Genesis to Revelation
with a notebook and jotting down what the Bible says about military work. I put
the key things into my mind. In the Old Testament, the Bible said we should
never shed the blood of war in peace. In the book of Samuel, Samuel told Saul that
rebellion and coup making is like the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as
idolatry. And Jesus Christ said, we should serve our master like we serve Him.
John the Baptist when some soldiers were scared by his teaching, they asked
him, what can we do to enter the kingdom of God, he told them, soldiers do
violence to no man, neither accuse any man falsely and above all, be content
with your wages. St Paul writing to Timothy said my son; there is no soldier on
duty that entangles himself with civilian affairs but obeying his commanding
officers. Throughout, I obeyed my commanding officer. My training officer in
Nigerian Defence Academy, a Indian Major told me that the day you cannot look
at your commander and tell him the truth, drop the uniform, that job is no
longer for you. That was 1972 and I kept the thing in my left hand. I am a
stickler to history; I am a very good student of history. By the time I was
arrested, I was one of those with the single largest library. My library dates
back to 1971. I had rare books which were looted but which you cannot find
again. People who were going to Nigerian Institute of Strategic Studies (NIPSS)
would come to me. Senior officers would come to me for books. I would advise
them to write on topics that people had not been written on before so that it
would be original to them. I worked with Bamaiyi but he was an unprofitable
master to serve but I was a profitable servant. He is very slippery and
dubious. He told us in a conference that there is no God and that the pastors
and imams, their job is to pray for the dead only. The second edition of my
book ‘End of the road’, I put all these things for people to see this man. It
is just that I have not gotten the money for the publisher, that is why his own
hit the ground before mine. My own is an anthology of the Nigerian military and
by extension the Nigerian state. The Nigerian military is a clone of Nigeria
and Nigeria is a clone of the military. I would tell you why the Army has been
able to survive. The Nigerian military remains the oldest institution founded
in Nigeria by the colonial masters. It was the only institution that was
inaugurated with a prayer. The God factor is what has made the Nigerian
military so thick despite the fact that Bamaiyi and co has turned it into a
forest of 1000 demons. The man was a Chief of Staff in an Army of a 1000
demons. What do you expect him to say? His talks are demonic. See how he messed
up Gen Diya, his boss, very unmilitary. Bamaiyi represents all that is bad in
the Nigerian Army.
In the book, one of the claims of Bamaiyi is that
the controversial loot of late Head of State, Abacha is a media creation. He
gave Abacha a clean bill of health. As one of the actors of that period, do you
agree that Abacha indeed is free from all the fraudulent charges and
allegations against him?
It is true that many of them left with our money especially money for
operations outside the country. Such monies were never accounted for and
Nigerians never asked the money we spent in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and
Yugoslavia and all over the place. How much did we spend and how much did we
receive from the United Nations. Let me tell you something; Abacha was like the
Emir of Nigeria. He was Nigeria’s pocket and Nigeria’s pocket was Abacha’s
pocket. It was like a family affair and they were spending the money the way
they like and who could have asked questions anyway. What happened then is
common knowledge and everybody knows that my Oga, Bamaiyi is just lying. I
think God wants to catch him and that is why he came up with this book. What he
is saying is contrary to the belief of everybody both locally and
internationally. If somebody like him should be defending that period, it means
that he is full of lies. What it means is that his book is full of lies. If he
can say that Abacha did not take money and that he was keeping Nigeria’s money
in his family account, who would believe that? But like I said, Abacha was the
Emir of Nigeria. All Nigeria’s money belonged to his pocket anyway. Then,
Abacha could do whatever he liked and nobody could question him. He would order
the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to go and bring the money and they could not
say no. Abacha operated like Idi Amin of Uganda. Under Abacha, there was no
control system. He was the impregnable Commander in Chief and he liked that
title so much. Bamaiyi is lying because everybody knows that Abacha tinkered
with our money. Both nationally and internationally, there are proofs of that.
It is funny for somebody to come around to say that Abacha was keeping the
money in his family account so that it would be easier for us to spend. Those
are trash and nobody needs to consider that at all; you already know that they
are lies. But the point I, Col Ajayi wants to bring out is that Nigerians never
asked how much we spent in Liberia and so on and how much UN paid us. How many
soldiers died in Liberia, Sierra Leone and so on? Nobody is accountable to
anybody. It is not about whether Abacha stole money because that one is common
knowledge. Government is a continuum and we should have a record but I know
that late Abacha was an enemy of Nigeria. He was called the Khalifa, (meaning
the successor). Who can question the Emir in his emirate? Nobody. It was a mad
era and had better be forgotten. We should not pray to ever have that kind of
era again. It has come and gone but we should have reminiscences of it so that
people could learn. We should remember that once upon a time, there was a
Nigerian that was like this.
But what do you think Bamaiyi actually wants to
achieve by coming out with this controversial book at this point in time?
I wish I could read his mind. I cannot guess or hazard anything for him
other than that maybe God wants to expose him and may be there are other
punishments that he requires to serve which he has not served which this
controversy would now bring up. I cannot tell why he has to blackmail all his
colleagues. But I am one of those who have been shouting that top officers
should come out and write their experience. Silence may not be golden. There is
so much tyranny and conspiracy of silence. Many of our officers suffer so much.
Many of them who are men of honour and distinguished officers have been
disgraced out of office. Why have they not come up to write? Why should they
allow people like Bamaiyi to be writing? When I wanted to write my memoir, I
saw many officers who told me to forget and leave everything in the hands of
God but I needed people to understand that an injured soul does not vanish
easily. If we do not put out our experience, how would others learn? My own
book, I wrote it on the basis of never again would that kind of thing happen.
What is your take on Bamaiyi’s claim also that
those at the forefront of the agitation for June 12, 1993 mandate were just
paying lip service to the struggle?
It is because of the political exigencies of this time that I may say
may be, but I knew some of those who were chieftains of the National Democratic
Coalition (NADECO). They had already established their credibility in life long
time ago. So, it would be very wrong to now say that Pa Adesanya, Adebanjo,
Adefarati, Ajasin and so on were self-serving. They had stood for something as
far back as the pre-independence time.
Throughout the period of crises in the Western region, they stood for
something. Everybody knew and still knows what these great men stood for. And
they never deviated from what they stood for. It would be very wrong for
anybody to malign or blackmail these great men. The principles upon which they
stood long time ago are the same upon which they are standing today. They
remain the same. As a Yoruba man, I know what the old people stand for. It is
very difficult for the old generation of Yoruba to backbite and turn round to
break loyalty to a cause.
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