USENI, ABACHA'S MAN SAYS SARO-WIWA'S EXECUTION IN ORDER 

From former Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Lt.-Gen. Jerry Useni yesterday came a bombshell: ex-Head of State Sani Abacha was justified in executing renowned playwright, Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Useni told reporters in Jos, Plateau State, that the execution of Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen in 1995 was in the country's best interest.

Saro-Wiwa and others were executed in November 1995 for alleged murder of four Ogoni chiefs.

They were executed by hanging at the Port Harcourt Prison in Rivers State despite appeals to the Abacha regime to commute the sentence.

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Their execution led to the suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth.

Saro-Wiwa was an agitator for the emancipation of the Niger Delta.

He urged relentless campaign against the oil companies for despoiling the region's environment.

It was in the course of his campaign that fighting broke out in Ogoni, during which the four chiefs were killed.

Saro-Wiwa was said to have instigated the killing of the chiefs.

The Justice Ibrahim Auta-led Ogoni Disturbances Tribunal found Saro-Wiwa and others guilty of the offence and sentenced them to death by hanging.

Thirteen years after, Useni in defending the execution, said: "It is in the best interest of Nigeria that the execution took place considering that as that time, the Nigerian state was under Western threat."

According to Useni, "Saro-Wiwa was a surrogate of the West. Executing him at that time was to save the Niger Delta from his terror."

He said based on the film made available to the Abacha government, Saro-Wiwa used crude method to torture his kinsmen.

Useni said because the western world could not bend the Abacha government to its whim, it used Saro-Wiwa to cause instability in the country.

Useni, the National Chairman of the Democratic People's Party, DPP, said President Umaru Yar'Adua's decision to create a ministry for the Niger Delta would not solve the region's problem.

The ministry, he said, would only create more problems in the region.

"The creation of the ministry has the tendency to worsen the problem as it would throw up more contentious issues to the fore," Useni said.

He said if the government was not careful in its decision, "the teething problem it is likely to face with the creation of the ministry would be where to site the office, since according to him it would not be effective if sited in Abuja.

"If it is agreed that the ministry should be sited in the Niger Delta region, then the problem of where exactly it should be sited among the states that make up the region would also come up as each of the states would like to have it sited in their capital.

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"It is Ondo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Edo or Delta state that would be chosen for the ministry and who would head that ministry?. He queried.

"All these", he said, "have not been worked out; the nation has not been told how the government would go about this. So it is not a matter of coming up to make announcements and think that he problem would end there. No it is now that the problem would start. That is why we cannot sit down and be happy about it because we are still far from the finishing line."

Instead, Useni said "They {government} should look at the physical development. They should provide clean water, roads, other basic infrastructure and scholarship for their sons and daughters.

"According to him, "the government should involve people both from within and without to help in resolving the Niger Delta issue" praising the government for playing down on the earlier choice of Professor Ibrahim Gambari as mediator in the Niger Delta problem.

Sounding prophetic, the one time FCT minister said care must be exercised by government as an imperative if it wants to succeed but cautioned, "the recent measure taken by the government may go the way of other efforts before it where it is only the elites that benefit while the masses are left unattended to". Reacting to a question on the earlier choice of Professor Gambari by the government, Useni said "the rejection of Prof. Sulu Gambari as head of the reconciliation committee on the Niger Delta was good.

"Gambari had no experience on the Niger Delta and cannot be called from London to take up such a sensitive job when there are people who have had experiences serving in the area and which the Niger Delta people respect that could have been appointed".

According to Useni, government must see beyond what is before her now and faced the reality of the day by putting its house in order.