Date Published: 06/15/09
WHAT THE NATION & THISDAY NEWSPAPERS WROTE ABOUT ME
By: Moshood Ademola Fayemiwo (ABD)
I was planning something different for this week when another June 12 Celebration closed in on us and Nigerian dailies suddenly realized the genuine heroes and heroes of that landmark event in Nigerian history should be rightly acknowledged. The Nation and This-Day Newspapers wrote two articles about yours sincerely last week. Here are excerpts and my comments.
Once a state of blood
Published 7/06/2009
Tomorrow, it will be eleven years since one of Africa's most notorious despot, General Sani Abacha, died in yet to be fully unravelled circumstances. In this report, Deputy Editor, Adewale Adeoye, singles out the dictator's henchmen, wondering where they are, and when or if they will over face justice
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Strike Force victims and villains
Perhaps, history may appear unkind to several victims of the former ruler, whose notable henchmen today, remain elusive. Well, a leaving witness who occasionally visits Nigeria, Mr. Moshood Fayemiwo, then publisher of a rebel tabloid, Razor in a chat with our correspondent not too long ago recalls his dehumanising trauma in the hands of Col Frank Omenka, one of such most reliable aide of the late tyranny. A slim, tall and easy to provoke former top shot at the Directorate of Military Intelligence, DMI located in Apapa, Omenka was thought to have ran the DMI the way late Herr Adoft Hitler ran the defunct German Gestapo. Omenka was believed to have acted on Abacha’s strict instructions. Fayemiwo recalls how at the DMI, Omenka ordered he be tied to the stake, head down; a lit stove burning underneath, so as to slowly roast his air. Fayemiwo, still in the US and probably too scared to relocate permanently to Nigeria for a living, said he was kept in the DMI underground cell for several days without food or water. ‘I was left without food. Each morning, I was flogged with horse whip. A stove was left to slowly burn my head. I was left to die slowly’, Fayemiwo had told this correspondent in an encounter with him in the city of California, United States. He hails from Owo, in Ondo state and was a remarkable anti-military icon during the hey days of the struggle against military rule. He was the former President of the University of Lagos Students Union, ULSU.
His offences were twofold: he published Razor, considered a pain in the ass of the then dictator. Two: he was instrumental to the escape of one radical, Prof Segun Banjo who was accused of importing assorted arms and ammunition into Nigeria, via Togo and Benin Republic. Banjo, a professor of medical science is next in genealogical lineage to the late Col. Banjo who was ordered to be shot at the stake by leader of the defunct Biafra Republic, Col. Odemegwu Ojokwu, on allegations of mutiny. The professor told The Nation he had brought over 3000 rifles, 100,000 ammunitions, cut and fix machines that could produce hundreds of bullets, surface to air missiles and lots more. He left the US in the spring of 1997. Aim: to topple Gen Sanni Abacha. Banjo told our correspondent that his plan was two fold: he would invade Nigeria through the Lagos Ports from Apapa and then march on the nearby barracks. He would then use the South West as a base to launch vitriolic military attacks on the then patriarch state of Nigeria led in the nose by the whims of only one man. Banjo, a former lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU said he had used his life savings as a surgeon abroad, which was in the range of 4million dollars to import the arms which he neatly packed in several containers and marked ‘Diplomatic Goods for Nigerian Head of State.’ He was accompanied by his Igbo wife, a nurse who shared the same revolutionary flavour with him. At the sea port of Cutonoue, one suspicious, eagle-eyed security aide spotted the containers and without any reason, ordered that the contents be unveiled. Inside the containers, were several rifles, General Purpose Machine Guns, GPMG and many other sophisticated weapons said to have amazed even the government and military leadership of Benin Republic. Banjo and his wife were promptly arrested and kept in detention. The Beninoise government called up Abacha who was said to have panicked on learning of Banjo’s plots. ‘He was alarmed. He felt threatened. No one had seen him in such a mood, his eyes red and murderous,’ a top security official who was in Aso Rock then but later fell out with Abacha told The Nation last Wednesday. Col Omenka was said to have been summoned to Aso Rock with the strict instruction that he must produce Banjo ‘dead or alive.’ Unfortunately, a frenzy of diplomatic offensive had been mounted by some notable pro-democracy groups across the world, on the Beninoise government, urging the government not to release Banjo to the blood-stained hands of the then Nigerian dictator. Diplomatic sources claimed that the Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, was instrumental to Cotonou’s decision not to release Banjo, the later having encountered and became Museveni’s friend at Makerere University in Kampala of the 1970s. Following Banjo’s arrest, a diplomatic row ensured between Abuja and Cotonoue. Abacha wanted him repatriated, but his lawyers and the civil society movement across the world insisted otherwise, saying that the offence was not committed in Nigeria and therefore, not within the jurisdiction of the ‘big brother.’ A reliable source said Omenka and other members of the SF, on the orders of Abacha visited Cotonoue with hundreds of thousands of dollars, ostensibly to bribe the Beninoise authorities which refused to bulge. For one year, Banjo, who hails from Ijebu-Ode and his wife, faced excruciating trial. In one instance, he was locked up in a pit toilet for five days. He said on the fifth day, he was taken for death, but he was alive. After one year of trial, he was released by the Beninoise authorities. "We were released and acquitted by the Beninoise judge, a woman who is of Yoruba extraction and appeared to have been moved by the share atrocities Abacha was committing against his people. More so, that a woman, Banjo’s wife could be so daring as to confront the then evil empire. He said after the couple’s release, the SF made attempts kidnap them from Cotonoue. ‘We ran into a foreign embassy and later ran into a refugee camp owned by the United Nations, UN. That was where Mr Fayemiwo was already hibernating.’ Agents of the strike force were said to have buzzed around the UN refugee camp but could not enter the territory to capture Banjo. However, Mr. Fayemiwo, under the cover of night provided the necessary logistics which enabled Banjo and his wife sneak to Ghana. That was Fayemiwo’s offence. On his return to Benin, the enraged SF agents were waiting. He was kidnapped, bundled into the booth of a car and brought to DMI headquarters in Apapa. That was not the SF’s only criminal feat. Sources said the SF masterminded the death of several people including Rear Admiral Akinsehinwa and Elegbede. Both were murdered in Lagos.
Comments: First, I have not visited Nigeria since 1999. Nigeria is my country of birth and can’t be my bête noire so when I visit, it would not be surreptitious. I am not scared of coming or visiting Nigeria but all I was fighting for before I left are worse now so returning to Nigeria to do what? Join the current charade? Come back to play politics of “Kash ‘n’ Karry”? I am okay in the United States here. Mr. Adewale Adeoye has been a colleague since we worked together in The Guardian in 1990 and my disclosure of what happened to me at the DMI, albeit dehumanizing but over-exaggerated. We met in the summer of 2004 in the City of Oakland, California State in the company of Dr. Frederick Fasheun, a respected Nigerian and founder of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), our late Akandes: Chief Debo Akande (SAN) and his wife Professor Jadesola Akande, pioneer Vice- Chancellor of Lagos State University-LASU-both of blessed memories. Now about Peoples Liberation of Nigeria (PLAN) established by patriotic Nigerians in America led by the venerable Prof. Adesegun Banjo-my hero-in the1990s to rescue Nigeria from internal colonialism, I am not commenting yet. A lot of underground activities are still going on right now and until the battle is won, it’s not time to reveal strategic information. In addition, my memoir is coming soon.
NOW THISDAY EDITORIAL
June 12: Where are the Heroes?
06.12.2009
Today, Nigeria’s pro-democracy community would as usual organise series of activities to mark the 16th anniversary of the June 12, 1993 presidential election believed to have been won by late businessman and politician, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. However, as the activists relive memories of Abiola and the election believed to be the fairest and freest in Nigeria, Ademola Adeyemo looks for the personalities behind the struggle for actualization of democracy in Nigeria
Exactly sixteen years ago, 12th June, 1993, Nigeria in its long march to democratic system held a presidential election which was generally adjudged to be the freest and fairest election ever held in the history of the country after several years of failed attempts. As the results of the election were trickling in as announced by the Humphrey Nwosu led defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC),it was clear that Chief Moshood Abiola the presidential candidate of the defunct Social Democratic Party(SDP) had won the election. However, the military junta led by General Ibrahim Babangida was not comfortable with the Abiola Presidency and decided against the popular yearnings of Nigerians and the international community to annul the result.
The annulment was however resisted by pro democracy and human rights activists all over the world, but the resistance only forced Babangida to step aside and eventually paving way for the emergence of the late dictator General Sani Abacha to seize power from a rag tag interim government chaired by Chief Ernest Shonekan.
Abiola’s insistence to actualize his mandate irked Abacha’s government and the presumed winner of the presidential election was arrested and put away in detention. Abacha later died and General Abdusalami Abubakar took over failed to effect the immediate release of Abiola from detention contrary to popular expectation that he will be the first on the list of those to be released from detention. Instead of Abiola it was Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that was released. However, Abiola later died under a questionable circumstance on Tuesday July 7, 1998 after falling ill during a meeting with a visiting U.S delegation.
However, sixteen years after the historic presidential election in Nigeria, the pro-democracy community has not abandoned the cause. As usual, today the civil society groups will march in commemoration of the 16th anniversary of the fairest and freest poll.
But Ironically, politicians and almost all the people who benefitted in one way or the other from the sacrifice and bravery of Abiola in his struggle for the enthronement of democracy in Nigeria had totally forgotten the struggle and sacrifices made by Abiola and others who struggled to bring the present dispensation into reality. The reminiscence over Abiola’s struggle and death has been completely overshadowed and since ignored.
Apart from Abiola other heroes and heroines of the June 12 struggle are:………………………………………………
Moshood Fayemiwo
Moshood Fayemiwo, then Publisher/Editor of the dreaded weekly tabloid: Razor used his medium to fight the military government of Late Gen Sani Abacha . He published stories no other newspaper or magazine dared published. His paper Razor became hot came and readers delight during the struggle to actualize the annulled June 12, presidential election won by Chief Moshood Abiola. His caustic paper became the rallying vanguard for pro-democracy organizations to mount sustain efforts to get rid of the dictatorial government of Gen. Sani Abacha. He gave hell to politicians working in harmony with the military rulers . Some of the papers caustic stories are the story of Abacha’s loot in Switzerland . The monster of corruption under Ibrahim Babangida, why the General ordered the murder of late Dele Giwa, founding Editor of Newswatch magazine, Gloria Okon’s drug episode which led to Babangida’s coup of August 27, 1985, the roles played by late MKO Abiola and Gen. Obasanjo in the coup that toppled Gen. Buhari and many more were stories no newspaper/magazine could publish in Nigeria but only Razor.
His brand of journalism was different, which earned him a lot of enemies; he stepped on too many toes. He took on the powerful, the rich, the privileged and the influential. According to him “ The purpose of journalism is to reshape society. Those in positions of power and authority must be made accountable to the people.”
When he was eventually arrested by the Abacha regime, he was kept at the underground tunnel of the dreaded Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) run by Abacha’s Gestapo His pathetic condition attracted the attention of human right organizations around the world including late Pope John Paul II who had to travel to Nigeria in summer 1998 to plead with Abacha to release him and other political prisoners held by the regime . He regained his freedom in September 1998 following the death of Gen. Sani Abacha. He later relocated from Nigeria to the United States with his family.
Comments: Thank God few newspapers in Nigeria seemed to be getting it.
MORE FROM MY MAIL BAG
There are tons of letters and reactions that have been pouring in on wide-ranging issues this column has raised in the past and I promise to publish more next week.
NOTES
I have been receiving unsolicited letters from some individuals about one form of business assistance or the other in the United States. Folks, please do not send any business proposals that do not disclose your physical postal address-not P.O. Box-your contact address, not email; please include a black and white pix so I can distinguish genuine business letters from fake 419 letters. Again, when sending business ideas and such related issues do not use my school email contact, use this contact email instead: christianglobe@gmail.com
- Here is calling on Owelle Reginald Anokwuro in Athens, Greece to get in touch with me unfailingly.
