Documents emerged yesterday showing that the
late General Shehu Yar’Adua, General Oladipo Diya and the late General
Abdulkareem Adisa were pardoned in 1998/99 by the regime of General Abdulsalami
Abubakar, raising questions on why President Jonathan is now pardoning them
again.
The Council of State on Tuesday approved the
state pardon to the three former generals, along with former Bayelsa State
Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who was convicted for fraud in 2007.
But Daily Trust got a copy of a gazette signed
by Abdulsalami on September 30, 1998 in which he pardoned Yar’Adua together
with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who was serving a life jail sentence for plotting
a coup against the regime of General Sani Abacha. The gazette took retroactive
effect from July 14, 1998.
Also, copies of other gazettes for the pardon
of Diya and Adisa were published on the Internet yesterday.
In his reaction to the recent pardon, younger
brother to General Yar’Adua, Alhaji Abdulazeez, confirmed that the late general
was pardoned together with Obasanjo in 1998.
“The two retired generals were granted pardon
on the 30th September, 1998.... The record is contained in the Federal
Government’s gazette No 54, decree 51 of October 2, 1998,” he said.
“We wonder why the name of late General
Yar’Adua was listed again. What is he pardoned for? We wonder how the
Presidency allowed itself to be misguided by the officials handling the pardon
issues. The Presidency should have checked the records before the information
went to the public,” he said.
There was no immediate reaction from the
Presidency on this.
Critics have said the listing of the three
generals in the pardon list was a desperate attempt to clear Alamieyeseigha,
who was President Jonathan’s boss in 1999-2005 when they held sway in Bayelsa.
Source: Daily Trust
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