General Ibrahim Babangida, ex-military president, has revealed more disturbing details about the coup orchestrated by his childhood friend, General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, to oust him. In his new book, Babangida said Vatsa paid N50,000 to Lt-Col. Musa Bitiyong, as motivation to help facilitate the coup. He said both Bitiyong and Vatsa admitted to it during investigation.
According to Babangida, Vatsa had initially claimed that the payment was to help Bitiyong
establish a farm project.
Babangida wrote: WHAT HAS COME to be known as the Vatsa Coup occurred within
the first few months of the administration. It began life first as a series
of rumours. I heard through multiple sources that my childhood
friend and long-time colleague, General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, was
planning to topple our young administration in a coup. At first, I
dismissed it as the handiwork of people who were envious of the
cordial relationship between Vatsa and me over the years.
I knew, for instance, that many intermediate and senior officers
were unhappy that I appointed Gen. Vatsa as Minister of the Federal
Capital Territory even though he was not part of the change of
government that ousted General Buhari. Yet I remained true to
our friendship and bent backwards to accommodate his excesses
and boisterousness. Among some of our colleagues and the public,
Vatsa became known as the Emperor of Abuja because of his robust
boisterousness and love of drama. I admired his passion for poetry
and fraternity with the Association of Nigerian Authors.
Rumours about the impending coup reached me through military
intelligence and some officers close to Vatsa. Many were cautionary
advice: ‘Sir, be careful with your friend,’ as many informants did not
want to be quoted or to come between us as friends.
I dismissed them at first as mere rumours. Ours is a society
in which the power of rumour can overwhelm the reality of facts.
Because rumours about happenings in high places tend to be
attractive to a mass audience, they tend to gain ground quickly and
acquire a life of their own. Unless confronted with the power of
facts based on thorough investigation, these rumours repeated and
passed around the country tend to become alternative facts. They
could have a destructive effect on public sensitivity and perceptions.
With our experience in the few months in government and the
benefit of hindsight based on previous rumours, I determined that
the best way to tackle the rumours about a possible Vatsa coup was
by confronting the principal suspects.
Therefore, when the decibel of the stories rose too high, I
confronted Vatsa himself after reporting the rumours to more senior
colleagues like Generals Nasko, Garba Duba and Wushishi. Nasko
intervened and tried to find out the truth from Vatsa. Vatsa flatly
denied it all, but the covert investigations by the military and other
intelligence services continued.
Once substantial incontrovertible evidence was established,
the arrests began. It turned out that Vatsa had paid several officers
money to facilitate the coup operation. One of them was Lt-Col.
Musa Bitiyong, who was given ₦50,000. He admitted it, and Vatsa
also admitted the payment but said he wanted to help Bitiyong
establish a farm project — the case of Lt-Col. Musa was not helped
because he had previously been involved in other controversial coup
stories.
When the coup was first uncovered, I did not quite believe the
extent of Vatsa’s involvement. Even worse were the details of the
dastardly plans, including plans to bomb the Eko Bridge in Lagos
and possibly hijack the presidential jet to eliminate the President.
As the details kept coming in, it became harder not to believe the
integrity of the disclosures. I felt a deep personal sense of betrayal.
There were details of conversations, funding, travel itinerary and
recruitment of troops to support the operation. Each time I had to
be briefed on aspects of the coup plot, I insisted on having a senior
officer with integrity present as a witness. I invited Garba Duba to
listen in on one occasion as the investigating team briefed me. When
I shrugged in disbelief, the briefing officer then revealed that Vatsa
had even tried to escape through the wall air conditioner hole in his
detention room but was stopped by vigilant guards.
I had reasons to be shocked at Vatsa’s role, but I was not
surprised. We were very close friends. We had grown up together
in Minna and had been classmates in Bida. We did several things
together as peers. My wife recalled that we used to share a room
as bachelors. We would reach out for whatever shirt was available,
irrespective of whose it was, and just wear it and head out! We were
that close.
With the benefit of hindsight now, I recall that a constant part
of our relationship as teenagers and young men was a continuous
and recurrent peer jealousy on his part towards me. He was always
envious of my achievements, especially when he thought I was
progressing better than him, either in school or our military career
path. For instance, when I became Head Boy at Bida Secondary
School, Vatsa often made it a duty to put obstacles in my way as
a leader. He frequently disregarded my instructions, insisting that
there was nothing so special about being the Head Boy. That trend
continued through our military career but tended to diminish as
we both progressed in our respective military careers. Still, he was
envious of my career path and postings up to when I was chosen as
a member of the Supreme Military Council under General Murtala
Muhammed.
The investigations revealed the sordid details of the coup
plan. There was a plan, for instance, to bomb strategic bridges in
Lagos to cut off the Mainland from the Island and obstruct troop
reinforcement from the Ikeja Cantonment to Bonny Camp on the
Island. There were also plans to sabotage the air assets of the Air
Force using the Makurdi air base. Other aspects included a plan to
hijack or shoot down the president’s aircraft using air force combat
aircraft. The multi-dimensional nature of the plan accounts for the
heavy involvement of officers from the Air Force in the plans.
Once the investigations were concluded and the panel reached
its verdict, it was clear that the coup planners had to be executed. An
allowance was made for appeals to the tribunal. Accordingly, those
with only tangential involvement had their sentences commuted to
life or other jail terms. There was no room to commute the sentences
for Vatsa and the other core planners. Being intermediate and
senior military officers, they were fully aware of the consequences
of planning a coup and failing. That is one of the most elementary
lessons every military officer knows by heart.
Vatsa and his nine other co-conspirators were executed in
March 1986. They had planned a bloody coup which would have
plunged the country into darkness. I had to choose between saving
a friend’s life and the nation’s future. Above all, everyone who had
signed on to a military career understood clearly what it meant to
plan a coup and fail. The penalty was clear and unmistakable.
Of course, Vatsa’s death was a personal loss of a childhood friend.
As a human being, I was somewhat depressed to watch him die in
such circumstances. However, the nation’s stability and the cohesion
of the armed forces were too high on the scale of priorities to be
sacrificed for personal considerations. The law and the imperatives
of order and national security are overriding.
Given my closeness to General Vatsa and the political
interpretations that emerged about his coup plot after his trial and
execution, it is not surprising that agents of subsequent political
dispensations tried to weaponise the Vatsa coup as a political tool
against us in the post-1999 political ploys. Unfortunately, some
members of the Vatsa family lent their voices and presence to these
ploys, which fizzled out in due course.
