The former chief security officer (CSO) to the late head of state General Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, has given a graphic and shocking narrative of his prison sojourn between 1998 and 2013.
Al-Mustapha, who was initially arrested for coup plotting, was later charged to court for both coup plotting and the murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola.
Al-Mustapha, in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP Friday, said he is thankful to God for saving his life and to Nigerians for their show of love and prayers.
The ex-CSO said he was subjected to unimaginable trauma for actions he took and which were also in the interest of the nation at the time. He added that he was initially kept in solitary confinement for five years and two months without trial, where separate and strange prison laws were made for him from Abuja as against the privileges enjoyed by even convicted criminals in the prison.
He denied insinuations that he ever abused his power as a CSO to the head of state by subjecting fellow soldiers and civilians alike to untold hardship by way of torture.
On what will be his next moves, he said he is committed to a united Nigeria, hence his visits to different people from different political affiliations. His recent tour of some parts of the country, he said, was part of his plans for youth empowerment across the country in order to solve the menace of unemployment.
The full interview below
The former chief security officer (CSO) to the late head of state General Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, betrayed the toga of a mean and dreaded officer when this reporter was ushered into his office. Like a gentleman officer, he stood up from his chair to exchange pleasantries, after which he opened up on some of the myths that surround him, in this exclusive interview with BODE GBADEBO. Excerpts:
There are lots of myths around you. If I may ask, who really is Major Hamza Al-Mustapha?
Very simple human being and a Nigerian who is bound by his faith and culture. My growing up was challenging and we faced all aspects of life thus far with faith, zeal and hope, with trust and confidence in God Almighty fundamentally.
There were negative reports about your role under the late General Sani Abacha. What was your duty supposed to be as a chief security officer to the head of state?
I have said this time without number. I have one of the best opportunities I have had to speak having been denied the opportunity. That was when the God Almighty directed the government to constitute the Oputa Panel. There, I stated it clearly: the duty of the CSO was that of the security of the commander-in-chief, members of his family and then the seat of government.
After your arrest and while you were in detention, you were also tried for a coup attempt from inside the prison by former President Obasanjo’s government. So, what actually happened then?
That was not the first time I was accused of staging a coup. In October 1998, I was arrested in Enugu on one of the allegations that I was staging a coup from Enugu. Here was somebody who just left Abuja, who left the seat of government and who supported the transition to be conducted successfully. Details of what happened during that transition are an issue that will come up in due course, when I will be putting some of my data together for the general public.
At Enugu, after about a month and two weeks, I was framed and arrested for coup. That was the first time and Nigerians were told all sorts of things just to spoil my name and integrity. Also in the process of my solitary detention underground, I was then accused yet again of staging another coup alone; and then the third one was on March 29, 2004, in Kirikiri. I was accused of staging another coup. So, I was accused three times while still in prison with the highest restrictions, with laws that are different from prison laws, all put upon me in terms of monitoring my visitors, in terms of having pictures of my visitors. Nobody submitted pictures to see anybody in any of our prisons; it was only me out of 50,000 inmates across the country.
So, the prison laws were different; they created new laws from here in Abuja during General Obasanjo’s government and put them upon me and my family. I was restricted to only five visitors a day as against the worst armed robber, who is convicted, who has the latitude to see as many as time permits but a serving officer, framed, kept in detention, and yet I was restricted to only five visitors and even the five it was whenever they feel like and you must come with two passport photographs. Initially it was four passport-size photographs and I complained and my lawyers also complained that it was strange.
And when they realised that my lawyers were fighting over it, they now reduced the copies to two. Let me give you an example: if now you come to visit me at the visiting time, like 11 o’clock, you have to make photocopies of my legal documents and if you are coming back to see me, you have to re-apply and bring new passport-size photographs again for the new application -- your address, your telephone number, your contact number. You will still be re-interrogated for you to have access to me and, even when you do, it is a restricted
Discussion; you can’t talk anything confidential. The same thing to my family, the same thing to my lawyers. So, it was a very painful time under tight restriction, strange to what is even obtainable in the prison. Yet I was accused of trying to remove the government. And then the allegation said that from the football field of the prison, that was where I was to fire missiles at Obasanjo’s helicopter; and, as soon as I fired it, I would now come and take over the government. Even if this was a cartoon made for children, I don’t think it can sell to the children. The idea was very shallow and narrow and the court threw it away. The judge’s ruling said, this is a case before a court of law that is very strange.
First of all, no witnesses and the ones they brought were hand-picked round. The witnesses like the first and the last witnesses they brought to the court, when they were subjected to cross-examinations, at the end of the day they didn’t even know what they were saying. One of them said, “I didn’t know about it. I was only called yesterday and told to adopt the statement I wrote the previous day and defend them in court.” They said okay, who asked him to do so? He said he couldn’t mention the name of the person but he was asked to do so. We have the record of the proceedings of the court, we have it.
That was the coup, unprecedented, that somebody wrote a script and the entire world was misinformed and they looked at me from that point of view and because of this also, I was subjected to trauma. You will be shocked at what I went through -- hanging, deprivation of sleep as means of torture, deprivations of food, medication, access to family, access to lawyers, access to any human being at all, kept underground, no bath, no brushing, no shaving and nobody to talk to. I have only God Almighty with me and then insects, wall geckos and dirty environment. At any time when somebody came to see me, they were either one thing: giving me food -- a handful of garri, a cup of water in a day if they like. No sunlight, total darkness and even the provision for me as a Muslim to pray, I was chained hands and legs. There was a time when they even chained my hands to my legs.
So if as a Muslim I want to pray, you can understand the condition. And I used to perform dry ablution called Taymamah in Islam. I used to rub my hands on the wall and prayed. God saw my condition. I had no wristwatch, no calendar to know the time for me to pray, even after I begged for it as a Muslim and I was using that to observe fasting. Many things like that but I would not say much about what I went through until the matter is properly disposed of, because I don’t want to be prejudicial about the trial. But this is just a tiny picture of what I went through in prison.
What they used to do was, having deprived me of food for like two days and on the third day they realised that I was totally weak, they would come in with bread. On the floor of my cell was a smelly mud, so I used to hide in a corner which was the only point that was a bit dry because I used my legs to push the mud back. They used to carry dirty and smelly potopoto in buckets and pour it on the whole floor and, before they put me there, they would have to prepare the cell for me. The floor was rocky and became undulated. So, you can’t just lie down on it -- no mat, nothing, just a sleeveless top and a trouser for years.
Talking about the bread, you know at that time anything would look eatable to you because of the deprivation. What they do was to break the bread into pieces on the smelly mud, march it before giving me. They would bring water in tiny nylon and pierce it to drip for me to drink. I had fire burns all over my body and nobody to help except God Almighty.
The story about you is that of a mean officer -- wicked and fond of torturing people...
I have never, as an officer with all the privileges I have had, not even when I became the CSO to General Abacha. First, I have never served in a non-sensitive place throughout my career and I thank God Almighty for the opportunity. In each place, I had never charged any soldier or officer, I never did, with all the powers I have had. And I didn’t keep any person in the guardroom. I don’t believe in that. So, I have never tortured anybody. Remember, I said before Oputa Panel that I had to koboko Pastor Ogboru. Do you know why I did it? That was the only way to save his life. He was arrested from the border and brought in at the peak of the disaster of Orkar coup that time.
Soldiers who lost their families, their children now became angry and were looking for any person who was linked to the coup to devour him because what most of those who participated in that coup did was to have acted under the influence of drugs. Some of them took it for the first time in their lives. So, they were busy shooting guns all over and these were our colleagues. So, when Ogboru was now arrested at the border and brought to us, I was coordinating a security group at that time in Apapa. When they brought him, soldiers lost their control. The same person that gave drugs to the coupists was Turner Ogboru. He is a pastor now, he is my friend, he was even telling the whole world that I didn’t ask anybody to koboko him but it’s not true. I was the one that said they should koboko him and, having koboko him, I said it was okay and brought him to my side. That gave me the grace to ask the soldiers to go, that I would take care. So, that was how he was saved; he could have been lynched.
Even Gideon Orkar, do you know how long it took to save Orkar’s life? Soldiers brought their knives because of the casualties recorded in Bonny Camp, Ikeja Cantonment, Ojo and Apapa cantonments. Everybody had run away that time; we were the only few who stood there and took the risk with General Abacha and General Zidon, who was a lieutenant-colonel and commander at that time, to just bring back sanity. There was total chaos and the bloodbath could have escalated because nobody knew what to do, nobody knew how to contain what. No direction, nothing.
The rest is an issue for tomorrow. So, I don’t keep soldiers in guardrooms because, to me, keeping a soldier in a guardroom, you are only promoting two things: one, you are promoting the soldier to just go sit there and gossip; secondly, he will sit under mosquitoes and, before you know it, he is sick and you will have to take care of him. So, my personal doctrine is to subject a soldier back to training wing as a punishment. If he commits any offence, send him to training wing to enhance his professional competence. That’s how I punish a soldier, if you call it punishment.
If you charge any soldier or an officer, that soldier or officer has a family, you are ruining his career and, if you continue like that, he may be eased out; the soldier and his family may have nothing to fall back on. At the end of the day, if nobody cares and he sees any opportunity that is against the law, he might use it to just survive for himself and the family. So, the question here is: is it this officer, who has eased him out of service that is the social problem to the country and not the officer? So, we have to think far ahead while taking administrative decisions. I challenge you to check whether I have charged any officer or soldier before. I have never done so.
What about the case of General Diya and others?
Give me time, you will see all the tapes of that coup attempt. All the video tapes and all they said on their own. If that is what you want, you will see all the video sessions.
There were countries, which, as at that time, came consulting me as to how I was able to have captured a coup from conception through to the stages of its preparations up to execution point. European countries came to Abuja here to find out how I was able to do it. They were ready to learn from us and I also know so many security companies who came. I got an offer from France to relocate there after the death of General Abacha.
With that offer I was to carry seven people along with me and the government would take care of them under security. No, I couldn’t, I can’t stay there. The only condition given to me was that I was to learn French as a participant in most of the francophone internal security problem management. That was the offer made to me. I thanked them and I remained in Nigeria only to face what I faced.
