Former President
Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed the reasons why he allowed himself to be
arrested by the Abacha regime despite many opportunities to escape and accept
an offer of political asylum by the United States.
Obasanjo was
among the opposition lights that were against the regime of the late Head of
State, General Sani Abacha, who ordered their arrest, trials and sentences but
spared their lives due to international pressure.
Abacha was the
most senior military officer in the illegal contraption called Interim National
Government led by Chief Ernest Shonekan after the military president, General
Ibrahim Babangida, was forced to resign over the historic annulment of the June
12 June, 1993 election won by Moshood Abiola, who later died in the military
gulag.
In his newest
controversial memoir, ‘My Watch’, he narrated his opposition to the Abacha
regime which led him to the formation of National Unity Organisation which he
intended to use to force Abacha to quit power.
According to his
narrative, Obasanjo had been meeting with some leading politicians and
non-politicians in every part of the country on the need to free the country
from the jackboot of Abacha whom he said, “was so much below average as an
officer that no serious attention was paid to him until he was made to announce
the coup.
“I was not in
doubt that Abacha would attempt to silence me. This was clear from his apparent
ambition for life presidency of Nigeria in insatiable appetite for corruption;
his looting directly from the Central Bank; his need to silence everyone that
could oppose him in any form; his actions towards my close friends and
associates and his close surveillance of me by his security both within and
outside Nigeria.”
Obasanjo recalled
how during his visit to Kenya for the funeral of the father of the opposition leader,
Raila Odinga, where the Nigerian Embassy officials wrote a report indicting
him, stating that “since Odinga was in opposition to the government of Kenya
when he died, I had gone to Kenya to create problems for the Kenyan government
by supporting the opposition, and the Nigerian government should restrain me
from causing great problems between Nigeria and Kenya.”
Narrating
further, Obasanjo said, “Rumours about Abacha taking action against me started
to spread and ring louder and louder. I had no fear because I had done nothing
to cause me fear or anxiety. I was about my life and my business unperturbed.”
-Leadership
