Abacha Wouldn’t Have Taken Over If I Was Allowed To Resume As Sonekan’s ADC – Bello-Fadile
If retired colonel Babatunde Bello-Fadile was allowed to resign as the interim president’s aide-de-camp (ADC), he claimed the late General Sani Abacha wouldn’t have wracked power from the late businessman Ernest Sonekan.
“I was posted ADC to Sonekan. I don’t know why I was not allowed to resume. Still, if I had been ADC, it (the takeover) probably wouldn’t have happened,” Bello-Fadile said on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
“Why didn’t I resume? The Chief of Army Staff advised me to wait until Sonekan returned from Malta, where he attended the Commonwealth Head of State meeting that year. So, I was hanging around. By the time he returned, everything had already happened.”
The return of democracy in Nigeria followed a series of events, some bloody and undesirable. General Ibrahim Babangida, who oversaw the coup that led to General Muhammadu Buhari’s ouster in 1993, resigned and established an interim government with businessman Sonekan as president and Abacha as chief of defence staff and minister of defense, following a contentious annulment of an election whose winner was later determined to be the late MKO Abiola.
On November 18, 1993, three months into his administration, Abacha overthrew Sonekan in a palace coup.
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Over 30 years later, Bello-Fadile believes that the circumstances behind Sonekan’s resignation were abnormal.
Confronting Abacha
The lawyer and former head of the Nigerian Army’s Legal Unit narrated how he confronted Abacha after Sonekan oversaw the transition.
He continued, “The military made the decision to leave after June 12 and a temporary government was established, and it was agreed that we would elect an elected government.”
Despite the fact that the elected officials were permitted to stay, my friend (Abacha) made the decision to refuse.
The second in command of Sonekan (Abacha) convened a resignation and disregarded the consensus that the military should provide for democratic government.
“Like minded persons in the military said that can’t happen. Then, according to Abacha, these are the IBB men who are pushing for a return to democracy. And all of a sudden, he announced their retirement.
“I was still in the military at the time and he retired all my friends, 17 of them. I don’t know how I survived that.
“Then he (Abacha) set up panels to review everything. Kayode Esho panel (of which I was a member) to review the judiciary. All other members of the military were judges and attorneys, with me serving there for the first time. Then, in an effort to pass a quick deadline, they initiated a police reform and demanded a White Paper.
He inquired about what the audience was hearing when we submitted the White Paper Committee Report, and I informed him that the people wanted the military to go back to their homes.
You will take over the interim president’s role under Decree 63, which Babangida established, but you must do so in order to do so; it implies that you are the head of state and continue to serve in the cabinet, but you have taken control and turned it around. The international community is unsatisfied with you because of this.
“I didn’t want to overthrow the government. A temporary government was what we wanted. I was the one who ran around the most. General (Olusegun) Obasanjo was doing his own with his National Unity Organisation of Nigeria. Additionally, he demanded that the military return to the barracks.
