20 Things To Remember About Sani Abacha
General Sani Abacha, born on September 20, 1943, was Nigeria’s military
head of state from November 17, 1993 to June 8, 1998 when he died
suddenly. It is exactly 16 years since he died, but how much of his
history do you still remember?
1. A Kanuri originally from Borno State, General Sani Abacha was born and
brought up in Kano State which he made his home.
2. He married a Shuwa Arab, Maryam, also from Borno State, in 1965 and
they had six boys and three girls. The first child, Ibrahim, died in a
plane crash in 1996.
3. The last of their children was born in Aso Rock in 1994 when Abacha
was 50 and his wife 47. The boy was named Mustapha, supposedly after
Abacha’s chief security officer, Hamza al Mustapha.
4. Abacha was the first and only military head of state who never skipped
a rank to become a full-star general.
5. Abacha announced the coup that brought an end to the government of
President Shehu Shagari on December 31, 1983 and brought Major-Gen.
Muhammadu Buhari to power.
6. After Buhari was overthrown in a palace on August 27, 1985, it was
Abacha that announced the chief of army staff, Major-Gen. Ibrahim
Babangida, as the new military president and commander-in-chief of the
armed forces in an evening broadcast (the coup speech was read by
Brigadier Joshua Nimyel Dogonyaro).
7. On appointment as chief of army staff in 1985, he caused a stir when
he said the issue of “second in command” to Babangida had not been
resolved, even though Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, as chief of general staff,
was understood to be holding the position. It was later resolved in favour
of Ukiwe.
8. Abacha was commissioned 2nd lieutenant in 1963 after he had attended
the Mons Defence Officers Cadet Training College in Aldershot, England.
9. He was believed to have participated fully in the July 1966
countercoup which led to the death of the head of state, Major-Gen.
Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, and subsequently resulted in the civil war.
10. Officially, he did not overthrow the interim national government in
1993. The head of government, Chief Ernest Shonekan, resigned and Abacha,
being the secretary of defence and the most senior member of government,
took over. Unofficially, it was a bloodless coup.
11. He was known as a man of “few words and deadly actions” and he
demonstrated this as head of state with one of the most brutal regimes
Nigeria has ever had. There was massive crackdown on the media, civil
rights groups and pro-democracy campaigns.
12. Two of the most important recommendations of the 1995 constitutional
conference he set up are: 13% derivation for oil-producing areas and six
geo-political zones.
13. He never held a non-military appointment in his career until he
became minister of defence in 1990 (later re-designated secretary of
defence in 1993). He was a Lt. Gen then.
14. His supporters describe him as a good economic manager and that he
stabilised exchange rate at N22/$1 but the unofficial rate was N80/$1.
This created colossal rent-seeking, with many “chosen” associates buying
at the official rate and reselling at four times the rate in the black
market.
15. It was under Abacha that Nigeria became a perpetual importer of
petroleum products as all the refineries packed up. However, 16 years
after his death, Nigeria is still heavily dependent on fuel imports.
16. An unforgettable phenomenon under Abacha was the importation of “foul
fuel” which had an offensive odour and damaged car engines.
17. He was instrumental to the restoration of peace and democracy in
Sierra Leone and Liberia after years of civil wars.
18. He increased fuel price just once in his four-and-a-half years in
office and set up the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund which was widely
acknowledged to have performed well in infrastructural development and
intervention programmes in education, health and water.
19. His wife set up what is now known as the National Hospital, Abuja. It
was originally named National Hospital for Women and Children before it
was upgraded into what is intended to be Nigeria’s no. 1 public hospital.
20. His death is shrouded in mystery: the most popular version is that he
died in the midst of Indian prostitutes flown in from Dubai but the
official version is that he died of heart attack. A more likely story is
that he was “eliminated” to end the political crisis in Nigeria.
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