By Femi Falana SAN
On June 12, 1994, Chief M. K.O. Abiola declared himself President on the basis of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which he won fair and square.
General Sani Abacha’s military junta arrested him and charged him with treasonable felony at the Federal High Court. While he was held incommunicado in a military custody for 4 years, Chief Abiola was subjected to horrendous psychological and mental torture. Even though Chief Abiola had severe health challenges, he was denied medical attention by the maximum dictator.
His parlous medical state was confirmed on April 27, 1998 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who had visited Nigeria at the instance of President Nelson Mandela and met with the imprisoned Chief Abiola. The revered priest reported that Abiola’s health and living conditions were severely deteriorating and called for his urgent release to enable him to take care of his failing health. The call was ignored by the military regime.
Following the controversial death of Abacha on June 8, 1998, he was succeeded by his Chief of Defence Staff, General Abdusalami Abubakar as Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria. The new military junta ordered the immediate release of all political prisoners including General Obasanjo (rtd) and other convicted coup plotters from prison custody. However, the detained Abiola was not released by Abubakar on the ground that he refused to renounce his claim to the presidency. Nigerians were shocked when the American delegation announced that Abiola had passed away during a brief meeting with him on July 7, 1998.
The Chukwudifu Oputa Panel instituted by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration to investigate the egregious human rights abuse which defined military rule in Nigeria probed the death of Chief Abiola. Abubakar turned down the request of the Oputa Panel to explain his role in the entire saga as he did not want to be subjected to cross examination by lawyers. About 28 years later, the former military ruler has, in his autobiography entitled “Call of Duty,” dismissed claims that Abiola was poisoned, insisting that an autopsy conducted by foreign pathologists had attributed his death to natural causes.
In dismissing the allegation that Chief Abiola was poisoned, Abubakar did not react to the evidence led before the Oputa Panel that there are poisons that cannot be detected by autopsy. In washing off his hands like Pontius Pilate, Abubakar stated that, “As far back as 1994 when he was arrested by the Abacha Administration for declaring himself President, it was public knowledge that Abiola was managing certain medical conditions which could seriously affect the quality of life of any human being.”
Abubakar also relied on the text of the press conference of Thomas Pickering and the account of Susan Rice contained in her memoir titled, “Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For.” While denying that Abiola was poisoned, she confirmed that he had suffered medical neglect. According to her, she noticed that “Abiola’s ankles were swollen and that about five minutes into their conversation, Abiola started to cough, at first mildly and intermittently, and then wrackingly with consistency.”
Abubakar further referred to a radiological report by Colonel (Dr) O. Awofeso, then Chief Consultant Radiologist at the Nigerian Army Defence Hospital, Sokoto, dated September 28, 1994, which had found that Abiola’s heart was enlarged with “right ventricular preponderance” consistent with hypertensive cardiac disease. Abubakar therefore argued that, “it was public knowledge that Abiola was managing certain medical conditions which could seriously affect the quality of life of any human being.”
Even though, General Abubakar knew that Chief Abiola’s health was endangered during his 4-year dehumanizing incarceration by the maximum ruler, Abacha, he deliberately refused to accede to the request to allow him to attend to his health. The request of Abiola’s personal physician, Dr. Ore Falomo to visit him was equally turned down. As if that was not enough, Abubakar subjected Abiola to undeserved mental torture to make him jettison his claim to the presidency.
After the fruitless meetings held between Abiola and the service Chiefs on the mandate, Abubakar decided to involve the so-called international community in resolving the political logjam. The then Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, were flown in to mount pressure on Abiola to renounce his mandate. In their separate meetings with Chief Abiola, they asked him to trade off the June 12 mandate for his release from custody.
Even though rejected the offer of conditional release, both diplomats gave the impression, in their press statements, that he had agreed to forgo the mandate. In a letter addressed to Chief Gani Fawehinmi SAN on July 6 1998, Abiola denied the claim of both diplomats. He said: “True, both Annan and Anyaoku (apparently working together, although I saw them separately), wanted me to sign a statement that I will not, once again, demand my mandate, once released… Both diplomats spoke of arranging my UNCONDITIONAL release. With the demand for that sort of statement that would render me ‘a deserter’ Any release obtained on that basis would be the worst form of ‘capitulation.’ “
Chief Abiola further disclosed that he reviewed “the history of June 12, I told them that quite at the beginning, Obasanjo in July 1994 came to me with 26 traditional rulers to seek a similar statement. He was told off in no uncertain terms in the presence of the retinue of traditional fathers, after I had explained that the issue is one of God vs. a few ‘powerful elements’. The voice of the people is the voice of God, ‘Vox Populi Vox Dei’ a popular maxim long before Jesus Christ arrived.”
It ought to be pointed out that the Americans were invited by Abubakar after the failed efforts of Annan and Anyaoku to persuade Chief Abiola to renounce his mandate. Having regard to the facts and circumstances of the suspicious death of Abiola, Abubakar could not justify while he allowed the American delegation to breach the prison regulations of both Nigeria and the United States during the visit.
Specifically, under the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and state equivalents in the United States, visitors are totally prohibited from bringing food or beverages including tea into prisons. The purport of the rule is to prevent the smuggling of contraband, narcotics and poisons to prisons. Accordingly, all meals and beverages inside correctional facilities are supplied exclusively by the institution or purchased through the secure prison commissary.
In Nigeria, visitors are permitted to bring outside food or water to inmates or detainees in police stations, correctional centres and other detention facilities. But the visitors are absolutely required to taste the food or water in front of the officers on duty before serving it to the prisoners or detainees. The food or water must be tasted by the visitors to ensure that it is not poisoned or adulterated to harm prison inmates or detainees in the custody of the government.
Whereas visitors are strictly prohibited from bringing, serving, or passing any outside food or beverages—including tea—to prisoners in the United States, the American visitors led that visited Abiola on July 7, 1998 were allowed by the Abubakar military junta to bring a tea flask to the detention facility. And in utter breach of the rules of correctional centres in Nigeria, a member of the delegation, Susan Rice, who served the tea did not taste it before passing it to the detainee.
ACP Zadok who had who guarded Chief Abiola from 1996-1998, testified before the Chukwudifu Oputa Panel. In his testimony, the police officer said that, in strict compliance with prison regulations, he tasted the food, water or tea prepared for Abiola before passing same to the detainee. However, on the fateful day, Zadok said that he was removed from his duty post by Major A. S. Aliyu, the Chief Security Officer to the head of the military junta.
Aliyu had abandoned his own primary duty of protecting the head of state in order to attend to the American delegation. In his oral testimony at the Oputa Panel, Major Aliyu confirmed that Susan Rice did not taste the tea before serving it to Abiola. He agreed with Zadok that this was the first and the only time that a foreign visitor was allowed to serve tea to a detainee in the custody of the government.
Although Major Aliyu turned round to say that the tea in question was prepared by a villa staff, he could not name the staff during his highly misleading testimony. At the end of the proceedings, it was crystal clear that Aliyu had set out to cover up the actual cause of Abiola’s death. Hence, he could not explain why Zadok was removed from the Akinola Aguda house and why he took charge of Chief Abiola’s security when the American delegation visited him.
In his memoir titled, “Interventions (A Life in War and Peace)”, the late Kofi Annan revealed that he had warned Abubakar that “Abiola needed to be released if he was to obtain international goodwill—and mine. On this Abubakar wavered slightly. He pledged his willingness to release Abiola immediately, but under the condition that he made no attempt to reclaim the presidency.”
Mr. Kofi Annan equally stated that even though the foreign pathologists had established that “it was the result of heart condition, and there was no foul play—other than the fact, I thought that Abiola had been denied adequate medical care throughout his incarceration. Either way, he was yet another casualty of the systematic violations of a whole range of human rights that are inevitable under personalised and oppressive regimes.”
Before then, the Oputa Panel had, after a critical review of the evidence presented before it, stated thus, “In the case of Chief Moshood Abiola, we are of the view that the government of the day knows much more than it has admitted. We believe that the denial of Chief Moshood Abiola’s mandate was a violation of the rights of Nigerians to freely choose their leaders. We regard this as a serious infringement.”
Thus, the Oputa Panel came to the conclusion that, “Chief Moshood Abiola’s death was the result of his incarceration and the denial of access to adequate medical attention. The testimony of the Chief Security Officer to the then Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, was full of contradictions. From the evidence before us, Chief Abiola died in suspicious circumstances. The Commission therefore recommends a thorough investigation to throw light to and inform the Nigerian people on what killed Chief Moshood Abiola.”
In view of the denial of Abubakar and the members of the American delegation of any involvement in the suspicious death of Abiola, the Federal Government should, without any further delay, reopen investigation into the case. The fresh investigation will, as opined by the Oputa Panel, “throw light to and inform the Nigerian people on what killed Chief Moshood Abiola” in the custody of the Abubakar military junta.
(Falana SAN represented the M.K.O. Abiola family at the Oputa Panel on Human Rights Abuse)
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