FORMER Chief of General Staff (CGS),
Lt.-General Oladipo Diya, on Friday in Lagos insisted that the coup plot over
which he was tried and sentenced to death was stage-managed, and called on
President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration to publish and implement
the Oputa Panel report on the saga.
Diya, who was full of appreciation to the
president for granting him and others involved in the 1997 military coup and
Nigerians generally for their support, argued that he was never involved in any
coup, but that the “diabolical and unjust treatment” was “meted to me on
account of my principled opposition to forces of tyranny in Nigeria.”
The former CGS said the whole plot was a
conspiracy targeted at him. According to him, the Oputa Panel, which he said
was set up by the Federal Government with state funds, came up with a lot of
findings and recommendations on several matters, including the coups of 1995
and 1997, noting with regret that the panel findings and recommendations were
yet to be published and implemented.
He pointed out that, on the contrary, a
similar panel tagged Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the South
African government had had its own outcome published and implemented, which he noted
had “contributed tremendously in stabilising and putting the country through
the path of growth.”
His words: “I want to thank the president once
again for his kind gesture and appeal to him to publish and implement the Oputa
Panel report. This was a panel set up by the Federal Government of Nigeria with
state funds and a report was submitted on it.”
Diya said that Jonathan had demonstrated with
the gesture (pardon) extended to him and others implicated in the 1997 coup
saga that he was a leader with a high sense of fairness, equity and justice,
just as he pleaded with him to extend same gesture to other officers and
civilians convicted alongside with him, including his then Special Adviser,
Prof Femi Odekunle.
“I want to assume that it is extended to all
other people involved in the saga. It is no gainsaying that both officers and
civilians sentenced on the incident must benefit from this Federal Government’s
benevolence; otherwise, it will put to question the fate of others not so
pardoned and were involved in the same saga.”
Diya, who promised to continue to devote the
rest of his life to seeking the unity and progress of the country as well as
the good of mankind while remaining non-partisan, also expressed his
appreciation to the Council of State, former Head of State, General Abdulsalami
Abubakar, and his military council who earlier gave him and others clemency.
Meanwhile, General Oladipo Diya, as the Chief
of General Staff, played prominent roles in a failed attempt in 1997 to topple
the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, Diya’s Chief Security Officer,
Major Seun Fadipe, has declared.
In an exclusive interview with the Saturday
Tribune, Fadipe, who was pardoned alongside Diya and others by President
Goodluck Jonathan after carrying the ex-convict toga for 14 years, insisted
that Diya was, indeed, involved, and that it was he (Diya) who dragged him into
the coup.
General Diya had always maintained that Abacha
contrived the coup, which became known as phantom coup of 1997, to achieve an
ethnic cleansing agenda allegedly directed at senior Yoruba officers in his
government.
But putting a lie to the impression and the
insistence of his former boss that there was no coup, Fadipe said: “When
General Diya and the other Generals decided to remove Abacha, was I there? No,
I wasn’t there. When they started their plans, I was not there, but he has been
maintaining there was no coup. I have been maintaining there was a coup, but
let the government of Nigeria bring out the statements we all wrote during the
tribunal and let General Diya see whether he actually wrote those things or not.
“There was a time he said he was actually not
a part of this thing (coup), but that General Adisa and I were (the ones)
planning it; (and that) we were only briefing him. That day, I shed tears
because (I wondered) how a General could lie against his own subordinate - a
subordinate that laid down his life for him. I would have betrayed him. I had
every opportunity not to be involved in this coup. When he actually told me on
the 9th of December 1996 about this plot, I knew I was in trouble.”
Fadipe also stated that one of the eight boys
that he sent to arrest the then powerful CSO to Abacha, Major Hamza
al-Mustapha, on the order of Diya on the day the coup was to be carried out,
was forced to drink acid, which killed him immediately.
Source: Tribune
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