NDM PRESS RELEASE: ANOTHER ROUND OF COUP TRIALS BEGINS

[NDM - Nigerian Democratic Movement]

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THE NIGERIAN DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT
(NDM)

PRESS RELEASE

ON THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE DIYA-ADISA-OLANREWAJU ALLEGED COUP TRIALS:
ANOTHER ROUND BEGINS

February 14, 1998

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The secret trial of 26 alleged coup plotters - 16 soldiers and 10
civilians - began today in Jos, Northern Nigeria. In the dock are the
following individuals:

SOLDIERS
========
1. Lieutenant-General Oladipo Diya - former Vice-Chairman, Provisional
Ruling Council, Vice Chairman, Federal Executive Council, Chief
of General Staff
2. Major-General Abdulkarim Adisa - former minister of Works and Housing
3. Major-General Tajudeen Olanrewaju - former minister of Communications
4. Colonel Yakubu Bako - former director of logistics and planning,
National Electoral Commission
5. Colonel Edwin Jando - former artillery brigade-commander, Abeokuta
6. Lieutenant-Colonel Olu Akiode - former special assistant to Olanrewaju
7. Lieutenant-Colonel I.B. Yakasai
8. Major Oluseun Fadipe - former chief security officer to Diya
9. Major K.A. Yusuf Isiaku (former commanding officer, artillery depot,
Abuja
10. Major Biliaminu M. Mohammed - Administrative office, the Presidency
11. Lieutenant D.A. Soetan
12. Deputy Police Superintendent Bawa Maccido
13. Warrant Officer Coker Oladosun
14. Staff Sergeant Moses Ellai
15. Corporal I. Kontangora
16. Corporal Eddie Egbonu

CIVILIANS
=========
17. Professor Femi Odekunle - political adviser to Diya
18. Olutimehin Abimbola
19. Isaiah Adebowale
20. Ilyasu Mohammed
21. Mrs Shola Shode - former secretary to Olanrewaju
22. Miss Halima Bawa
23. Engineer Bola Adebayo
24. Niran Malaolu - Editor of Diet newspaper
25. Victor Maidebaru
26. Odeniyi Adegolu-Ademola

The Nigerian Democratic Movement wishes to go on record as firmly
condemning this latest charade of the military junta in Nigeria.

Even before Lieutenant General Oladipo Diya boldly affirmed in his opening
statement today that it was a "frame-up" engineered by Major Gen. Ishaya
Bamaiyi, the Chief of Army Staff, all indications from impartial watchers
of the video tapes, listeners of the audio tapes and readers of the
various transcripts have been that the coup plot allegation was
preposterous and could not pass the smell test in any fair legal court.
Not only were the video-showings prejudicial, but the accounts of the
events leading up to the arrest so far show a set of circumstances defying
logic and common sense, all of which require a suspension of belief in the
rationality of the likes of an intelligent Diya, and the Abacha-loyalists
duo Adisa and Olanrewaju. Bamaiyi has not been heard of in public since
the coup story broke, and his early opposition to Abacha's self-succession
plans was perhaps the most public of all senior military officials before
now.

It is no surprise that Brigadier-General Victor Malu, fresh from a
military stint with ECOMOG in Sierra Leone, was chosen to head the first
special investigation panel. Being away from Nigeria during this period,
he was one of only a handful of top Nigerian military officers left whose
absence from Nigerian soil ensured that he could not be drawn in, either
as entrapper or this entrapped, into all of this sordid saga. Major
General Chris Garba, recently revealed to be a secret member of Abacha's
murderous Special Bodyguards, now heads the actual coup tribunal,
certainly no impartial person himself. No other members of the tribunal
have been revealed.

One wonders what blackmail might have caused Bamaiyi to turn from chief
opposer to chief entrapper. One wonders how the bomb attempt on Diya's
life on days before his arrest fits into this picture. One wonders what
kind of military establishment our country has when top officials are
paraded every two years in handcuffs, in full video before civilians and
live before officers lower than them in rank, accused of coup-plotting.
One wonders what kind of paranoia permits a head of state to sit around
for five months gathering video and audio information about his No. 2 man,
several commissioners and other top military officials, when they all
should be busy running the affairs of state. One wonders why he did not
simply retire them at the first whiff of disloyalty, or post them on
military duty to Liberia and Sierra Leone and Lebanon and Bosnia. One
wonders.

Another major issue is one of legal representation for the accused. They
have all been denied legal representation of their own choice; they had
asked for civilian representation. We will recall that at the
Obasanjo-YarAdua-Gwadabe trials of 1995, Commodore L.M.O. Fabiyi,
military-appointed lawyer of one of the accused, Col. Bello-Fadile, was
himself later to be implicated in the coup as an "accessory after the
fact" when he chose to do a simple favor for his condemned client - haul
Bello-Fadile's used trial matters to his home for him! One then wonders
whether any military lawyer with a career in mind would go out on a limb
to defend without fear or favor a client against a charge of treason,
without that military lawyer fearing that he might betray some "sympathy"
to a treasonable cause and hence again become accused to be an accessory
after the fact.

Whatever the outcome of these trials, NDM will never accept their
legality. It is a kangaroo court, unjust in all of its ramifications. We
call on all Nigerians and friends of Nigeria to condemn it roundly. We
urge the alleged coup plotters to refuse to cooperate with the court
unless and until civilian lawyers can be appointed for them, and until
their trial is held in full public view, possibly even before the same
select traditional rulers and other sundry persons who viewed the video
tapes and listened to the audio tapes. That would only be fair. The
antecedents of the 1995 trial recommend no other reasonable cause of
action.

These machinations are nothing more than Abacha cleaning his stable in
preparation for his self succession. Despite all his fakes and dodges,
the truth will eventually out, the world will eventually know him for what
he is - a brutal dictator fully out to bring the nation down on himself.

We must not let him to do so. The nation belongs not to him but to all
Nigerians, not to his lapdogs and apologists, but to the millions of other
Nigerians born and unborn. While riding on the tiger created of his own
machinations, it is advisable that Abacha himself dismount soon before he
is made to do so and be swallowed by the tiger. Those who egg him on -
some hapless traditional rulers and other selfish elements, both human and
corporate - will eventually have only themselves to blame.

Released by the Executive Council of the NDM

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NEWS ON COUP TRIAL DAY ONE
February 14, 1998

AP NEWS
========

By GILBERT DA COSTA
.c The Associated Press

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Bound in chains and looking frail, Nigeria's deputy
leader denied charges in a military court Saturday that he plotted to
overthrow Gen. Sani Abacha in a coup.
Lt. Gen. Oladipo Diya said the charges had been trumped up by
Nigeria's ruling military chiefs.
``This whole thing is a set-up,'' he said, his voice cracking with
emotion.
Diya is among 26 people appearing for the first time before a
seven-member military tribunal on charges of plotting to oust Abacha in
December.
Also among the suspects are several former military generals who
served at one time in Abacha's Cabinet. If the accused are found guilty
they could face the death penalty.
The trial opened in unlikely surroundings - military barracks in
the northern Nigeria town of Jos, about 300 miles northwest of the
capital, Abuja.
Journalists, who will be barred from the proceedings, were allowed
to witness Saturday's official opening and have been promised access to
the final verdict.
Testimony begins Monday and is expected to last up to a month.
Diya accused the country's top military officer, Maj. Gen. Ishaya
Bamaiyi, of fabricating the charges.
``The setup was by the army chief of staff and it is unfortunate
that he is not here now,'' Diya said.
Maj. Gen. Abdulkareem Adisa, a former close confidante of Abacha,
asked to be represented by a civilian lawyer, a request quickly denied.
Military lawyers have been appointed to represent the accused.
Another accused, Maj. Gen. Tajudeen, said he was only informed of
the charges Friday - more than a month after his arrest. Tajudeen asked
for time to study his case.
One of two women standing trial became emotional and told the
court she was a Muslim who had converted to Christianity during her
imprisonment.
The military government arrested more than 60 people after
announcing in December that it had thwarted the alleged coup attempt.
Charges have been dropped against a number of other suspects.
Critics say the alleged plot was fabricated as an excuse for the
regime to crack down on possible challengers to Abacha. The government has
dismissed those accusations, relying on video and audio tapes made during
surveillance of the alleged plotters to back its claim.
Abacha, who seized power in a 1993 coup, has been widely denounced
by foreign governments after the execution of a prominent Nigerian human
rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, in 1995.
Human rights organizations say Abacha's regime routinely jails
opponents without trial, tortures them and trumps up charges against them.
While Abacha has promised to permit democratic presidential
elections as a transition to civilian to rule by October, the military
leadership has repeated delayed the polls, which are now scheduled to go
forward Aug. 8.

REUTERS NEWS
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By Matthew Tostevin

JOS, Nigeria, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Twenty-six Nigerians accused of plotting
a coup went before a tribunal on Saturday, with military ruler General
Sani Abacha's former deputy saying in the dock that he had been framed.
The 16 army officers and 10 civilians accused of plotting to
topple the government, including Nigeria's former number two,
Lieutenant-General Oladipo Diya, face death by firing squad if found
guilty of treason.
No specific charges were read out at Saturday's open session which
was adjourned until Monday, from when proceedings will take place behind
closed doors.
The alleged coup plot, which the military government says was
planned for December 21, has generated a storm of controversy in Nigeria,
with some opposition groups questioning the validity of the accusations.
Western countries, which imposed limited sanctions over the
execution for murder of author Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other minority
activists in 1995, have demanded a fair and transparent trial.
The head of the seven-man tribunal which is supposed to deliver a
verdict by the end of March, Major-General Victor Malu, pledged to give
the 26 a fair hearing.
``This will be no ambush trial,'' he said.
Malu was head of the Nigerian-led ECOMOG peacekeeping force in
Liberia, overseeing disarmament and 1997 elections that ended seven years
of civil war.
The trial comes at a critical time in Nigeria, Africa's most
populous nation of more than 104 million people. It faces elections this
year which Abacha is widely expected to contest.
Observers say it also has an ethnic undertone, since the highest
ranking officers and many of their alleged co- conspirators are, like
Diya, ethnic Yorubas from southwestern Nigeria. Abacha is from the north.
Opposition groups and pro-democracy campaigners have questioned
the credibility of the accusations against the 26 and suggested that Diya
and the others were framed.
``This is the first time a case of setting up is becoming a coup
case,'' said Diya when asked if he had any objection to being tried by the
court.
``The set-up... was organised right from the top. I am surprised
that the chief of army staff is not here....''
Other defendants complained they had not yet heard the charges
against them, been given necessary documents or even allowed reading
glasses and adequate lighting to be able to prepare their defence cases.
They sat in a forlorn line on wooden benches, a mixture of the
bewildered and the clearly terrified.
The 26 will be represented by serving military lawyers of their
choice, who will be vetted by the authorities.
International pressure in 1995 persuaded Abacha to commute death
sentences imposed over the last coup plot, but later the same year
Saro-Wiwa and the others were hanged, sparking an international uproar
which turned Nigeria into a pariah state.
Political uncertainty has hung over the oil-producing country
since the annulment of 1993 elections which now-detained Yoruba tycoon
Moshood Abiola was poised to win.
Abacha stepped into the turmoil at a time when pundits said the
ethnically divided country could break up. Diya played an important role
in bringing prominent Yoruba leaders on board to back the new regime.

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AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL 23 January, 1998 Vol 39, No. 2; Pages 1-2

NIGERIA: Plots, lies and videotapes

Amid general discontent and military nervousness, the Abacha's latest
claim of a coup plot is unlikely to be its last

General Sani Abacha is pulling out all the stops to gain maximum political
advantage from the latest alleged coup plot. Videotaped scenes from
interrogations of the accused, including Abacha's former Chief of General
Staff, Lieutenant Gen. Oladipo Diya, have been shown to carefully selected
retired military officers, traditional rulers, journalists and other
prominent figures. So have audiotapes of alleged meetings between the
suspects and other senior officers, in which the plan to assassinate
Abacha and hand over power to Diya were apparently discussed. The regime
has also orchestrated mobs of demonstrators to march singing Abacha's
praises and heap abuse on the 'coup plotters'. All this seems to be
intended to portray Abacha as a national saviour who must stand (probably
alone) in August's scheduled presidential election. But the evidence of a
plot disclosed so far remains highly ambiguous.

As deputy head of state, Diya would have taken over if a civilianised
Abacha had resigend to contest the poll. Like nine of the thirteen
alleged coup-plotters detained in the third week of December, Diya is a
Yoruba from the west, home of the gaoled winner of the aborted 1993
presidential poll, Chief Moshood Abiola. The arrests have moved Diya
conveniently out of the picture and diverted public attention from the
early December death in custody of retired Gen. Shehu Musa Yar'Adua (AC
Vol. 38, No. 25) who was convicted of a coup plot in 1995.

'Halting coups once and for all'
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Abacha has formed a Special Investigative Board under the War College
Commandant, Major Gen. Chris Abutu Garuba, once military head of United
Nations' peacekeeping in Angola. Abacha says its findings will be the
basis for establishing a system for 'halting coups once and for all.' Few
Nigerians take this seriously.

So far, over 75 soldiers are believed to have been arrested over the
alleged plot. Critics of the regime believe some officers detained
earlier for various reasons will now be linkied to the affair.
Nervousness has spread in the armed forces, particularly as awareness has
grown that the Special Bodyguards, which both investigated and arrested
the 'coup plotters', is a private army loyal to Abacha personally and
under orders from the presidential security officre, Maj. Hamza
al-Mustapha, rather than the chiefs of staff. The SB consists of 3,000
carefully selected men trained in Libya and North Korea and has earned a
reputation for quiet efficiency and brutality.

Those who see and hear the 'evidence' against the plotters often emerge
disgusted and frightened. The most shocking videos shows Diya and the
others prostrating themselves before Abacha, crying and begging for
forgiveness. It is unclear when the videos were shot or what the real
state of the detainees was. One key video shows Al-Mustapha interrogating
the suspects. Diya and his (handcuffed) leading co-defendants, Maj. Gen.
Tunji Olanrewaju (ex-Communications Minister) and Maj. Gen. Abdulkarim
Adisa (ex-Health Minister), are brought before the presidential security
chief, clearly in distress. Al-Mustapha tells them that if they would
only reveal all, he could help them. He allows Olanrewaju's handcuffs to
be removed when the tries to wipe the sweat from his brow. Diyas says he
has been held in isolation for over twelved days and has spoken to no one:
'I don't know what is going on.'

Audiotapes tell of alleged meetings between Diya and officers, including
the Chief of Army Staff, Maj. Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi; the Lagos garrison
Commnder, Maj. Gen. Patrick Aziza, and the Director of Military
Intelligence, Brigadier Sabo Ibrahim. These key officers speak more
loudly than the supposed plotters, suggesting they wore hidden
microphones. These recordings are among the controversial revelations and
for them to be presented as evidence to Garuba's Tribunal, they should not
have been heard by third parties. The Nigerian Bar Association has asked
that the showings, even private ones, be halted, but few believe this will
happen. Indeed, Lt. Gen. Jeremiah Useni, Minister for Federal Capital
Territory, has announced the videos will eventually air on state
television.

The thrust of the regime's case is that Diya first broached the coup issue
last August. Insiders claim he first spoke to Aziza, who passed this on
to the Chief of Defence Staff, Maj. Abdulsalaam Abubakar, who then told
Abacha. Observers wonder, though, why Diya would talk thus to the man who
had chaired the 1995 Tribunal which gaoled over forty people, including a
former head of state, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar'Adua and human rights
activist Beko Ransome-Kuti. Unlike Diya, Aziza is not Yoruba but Urhobo;
he is known as an Abacha-loyalist.

The regime's explanation is that Diya needed someone who commanded troops
(as he did not.) Yet Aziza had no troops in Abuja, the seat of power, or
Enugu, where Abacha's assassination was supposedly to occur. Bamaiyi's
presence at some meetings was apparently to convince Diya the plan had
wide support among northern officers. Observers of Nigerian military
affairs, however, wonder why, if such meetings took place, Diya,
Olanrewaju and Adisa were not suspicious of Sabo Ibrahim's presence.

Few people believe that Adisa, in particular, could agree to such a plot
unless he were convinced most senior officers were on board. He says in
one interrogation video that the believed all three army division
commanders were involved. Ironically, he had placed a newspaper
advertisement praising Abacha and supporting his presidential aspirations
just before his arrest; it appeared the day after. Some speculate that,
prompted by fears follwing the mid-December Diya bomb blast (AC Vol. 39 No
1), this was belated attempt to cover his tracks when he realised the
meetings he had attended were part of a set-up.

Political fantasies
-------------------

Adisa and Olanrewaju have also been accused of providing several million
dollars from their personal accounts to finance the coup. Insiders were
amazed to hear Adisa had US$900 mn. in an overseas account. The regime
had granted major term-contracts for crude oil to front companies linked
to Adisa over two years ago. Yet the sum mentioned is incredible, lending
credence to those who say that at least some of the 'coup revelations' owe
much to political fantasy. Abacha tells privileged visitors to Aso Rock
that the feels especially betrayed by Olanrewaju and Adisa whom, he says,
he invited individually to dinner and asked if they had any complaints
about his leadership. Both, he says, expressed total support.

There has been total silence, though, over one of the most vital and murky
issues, the bomb blast that nearly killed Diya at Abuja airport days
before his arrest. Diya was flying to the funeral of the mother of Maj.
Gen. Lawrence Onoja, Principal Administrative Officer in State House when
a bomb exploded. The blast killed an SB man on the spot; another,
seriously injured, was flown to a secret location. A third died later in
mysterious circumstances after appearing to be recovering from his wounds;
he told medics about the parcel the team was carrying and said they had
been told to hand it over to the Makurdi airport commandant. But Diya
delayed his departure; the bomb exploded at the time when the aircraft
should have been fifteen minutes from touchdown in Makurdi.

The official version of events fails to mention that over the previous
month, Diya's personal bodyguard had been gradually reduced, with the
traditional Guards Brigade being replaced by SB men disguised as regular
soldiers or mobile policemen.

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