MY JUNE 12 STORY
-Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar(rtd)
By Richard Akinnola
(On October 24, 2000, IBB, in a Voice of Nigeria (VON) Hausa service interview, said “Only Gani Fawehinmi and Colonel Dangiwa Umar are the only true, principled fighters of June 12. Others are sycophants who fed fat on June 12”. In his lengthy treatise, published in the SUN newspaper editions of March 28 and 29, 2004, Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, a principled nationalist and true hero of June 12, who resigned his commission due to the June 12 annulment, told his June 12 story. If you are a student of history and interested in gaining some insights, you need to be patient to read through. I put it in six installments.)
(Part 1)
My relationship with General Babangida
“I had on several occasions in the past explained why I enjoy a very close relationship with IBB. IBB was my instructor at the Nigerian Defence Academy. Since then, I found him to be a very brilliant and inspiring officer. In fact, he had great influence on my career choice of the armoured corps, being an amour officer himself. Of course, we had disagreements, some of them quite straining, but they have not succeeded m changing my perception of him. This is true with most officers who worked closely with the man. With all this, I had never allowed such a close personal relationship to becloud my vision and judgment of his performance as a superior officer, particularly during his eight-year rule as President and C-in-C. Mr. Edwin Madunagu, a man I have high regards for as an accomplished intellectual and a socially concerned person, confirmed what I have always suspected that most outsiders believe I am too fanatically loyal to IBB to the extent that I failed to attribute any fault to him even in the June 12 saga. This definitely ignores my decision, to demonstrate open dissent to the annulment by writing a letter to the President resigning my hard-earned Commission, a letter that was mischievously leaked to the press.
The truth however is that such strident opposition to IBB's faltering steps was a remarkable and consistent feature of that fanatical loyalty. I must confess that were it not for IBB's magnanimity and unusual patience with dissenters, or opposition parties as we were jokingly called, I would have been kicked out of service a few months after he took over. Some senior officers, including the late Gen. Sani Abacha and Gen. Dongoyaro, queried my continued retention in service even though to them, I constituted a grave threat to the regime by what they regarded as my anti-regime activities.
Not many Nigerians are aware that I escaped execution or jail by the whiskers during the Mamman Vasta coup trials. The evidence used to cause my interrogation came from some senior officers who later confessed that they found me too confrontational and rude to be left in service. I was set free when no evidence of my involvement could be established. Later events changed the minds of some of these officers but the point here is that IBB appreciated officers who possessed high moral courage and could deploy reason to influence his decisions.
The IBB boys that many want to denigrate were some of the best and brightest in the service. IBB encouraged the culture of dissent and dialogue and this is why some of us became emboldened to speak out when we disagreed with him.
Sometimes we won and many other times, he taught us that junior officers could have their say, but Generals decided on the course of action. Readers will also be surprised to learn that IBB had no respect for sycophants.
The June 12 crisis and events leading to it are evidence enough to buttress the above points. My loyalty to IBB which people allude to, did not prevent me from vehemently disagreeing with and opposing him when he was being misguided by sinister forces to take decisions that were injurious to good governance and inimical to the existence and unity of this country. I had in the past resisted all temptations to recount these sad events. In fact, I rejected a very lucrative book contract simply to avoid any attempt at what may appear as self-glorification and causing injury to some of my colleagues. It must be made clear that I didn't contribute more to the democratic struggle than most of them, the factthatIbecomemore prominentcouldbearesultofmyvery good relationship with the Nigerian press which I certainly identified as a most veritable weapon for such struggle and used so effectively. It must also be remembered that I was the first military casualty of that struggle and that I persevered to the end.
The fact that I belong, by birth to a group which was perceived by that press to be the major beneficiary of the continued military rule which the pro-democracy groups were fighting, added poignancy to my participation in that struggle.
THE DESCENT INTO THE ABYSS
For the records, my pro-democracy activism started well before the June 12 crisis. When towards the end of 1992, I came to the painfulrealizationthatGen.Babangida wasbeingill-advisedto once again postpone the transition to civil rule, I decided, in consultation with some of my colleagues, to advise him to save Nigeria from an unnecessary political crisis. The letter part- reproduced below was part of the efforts at getting him to fulfill his promise of handing other power to an elected government. In that letter which was written October 1992, I had said inter alia: "Mr. President, it truly pains me any time 1 read in the newspapers and magazines speculations on your sincerity in handing over in January 1993 as the Transition Programme provides. I am pained because of the implied questioning of your integrity..... I beg you to resist any temptation from any quarters whatsoever to become another Mobutu or Eyadema. You have bidden official farewell to both the OAU and ECOWAS and I can tell you that I was personally proud of that action... I stand to share, no matter how infinitesimally in any encomiums that history may pour on you. I equally stand condemned if history judges you otherwise... About all my suggestions, in the name of Allah, I beg you, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, to leave this stage while the ovation is loudest."
I spoke to most of IBB's close associates to help dissuade him from any further delays. Gen. Sani Abacha was one such people. The general assured me that he would do everything possible to
prevail on IBB to complete the transition by the end of 1992. He told me how worried he was that the military was fast losing credibility on account of the glaring insincerity in the implementation of the Transition Programme. He appealed to me to try and assist in sensitizing officers, particularly of the armoured corps, to realize that not all of us were in support of the delays in the programme. He confessed that he was already in touch with other officers who were equally concerned.
With hindsight, I may be accused of naivety but one needed the gift of clairvoyance to correctly appreciate Gen. Abacha's dubious designs. The general's leadership limitations were all too glaring and who would have thought that he could harbour the desire to take over political control of the country at its most turbulent period? The nation was united in its opposition to any further delay in the military's handover to a democratically elected government and the international community had taken a firm stand against military regimes. How then could a general of Abacha's calibre hope to command the loyalty of Nigerians and gain the support of the international community, especially since he was such a key player in the IBB regime?
I convinced myself that we could use Abacha to achieve our aim. I brought in more officers, including those that would only grudgingly pay compliments to the general as their military duty. Col. Sambo Dasuki was one of such officers who kept asking me whether I was sure that Abacha was truly the nationalist I wanted to convince him he was. I pleaded with him to come along. The group enlarged so fast. We decided to meet weekly to review the situation. Gen. Abacha served as a kind of Trojan horse in government. He reported back on his many dialogues with IBB and some officers who he claimed were against a transfer of power under the prevailing political crisis and our low economic state. He kept painting a hopeless situation in which IBB had become impervious and incorrigible, a hostage of a clique.
It was not difficult for most members of the group to believe him because the Transition Programme, which had originally been meant to terminate in 1990, continued to suffer further setbacks. The primaries of the political parties were cancelled on the pretext that they were plagued by malpractices. Reforms that saw the adoption of the Option A4 formula were carried out. All these added to their skepticism.
I decided to meet IBB directly to find out the true situation. I came out with a different picture. He assured me that for real, he would keep faith with the handover. Any changes to the transition programme were only necessary measures that would guarantee the survivability of democracy.
I gave him further indications of his constituency's growing distrust and restiveness, such that no one could guarantee the support of the entire military in the event of civil uprising, which was imminent.
