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Former President Obasanjo has disclosed reasons why
he allowed former head of state, Sani Abacha to arrest
him in March 1995 for allegedly conspiring abroad
against the Abacha regime, despite many opportunities to
escape and accept an offer of political asylum by the
US.
Leadership reports
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.”
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