The Long Walk to the Hangman’s Noose

Written by This Day Tuesday, 31 January 2012

If there was any example needed to prove the saying that the wheel of justice grinds slowly, the trial and eventual conviction of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha is a perfect example.

The former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to late Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha, had had a long walk to what he thought would be freedom. But he ended up on the judicial post of justice. An unfavourable justice. After 13 years, the judicial rigmarole ended yesterday with the death sentence (by hanging) handed down to him and his co-accused, Lateef Sofolahan, for killing Alhaja Kudirat Abiola in June 1996.

The sudden death of Gen. Abacha in 1997 ended Al-Mustapha’s imperial reign in the country, but marked the beginning of another “war”: to free himself from the trailer load of accusations heaped on his head. There were loads of allegations of the atrocities he had committed while Abacha, with Mustapha as his Man Friday, terrorised Nigerians in the name of military governance. It was not for nothing that Al-Mustapha and his killer squad was credited with every and anything dubious and horrendous. He breathed fear. Though not bulky or even huge, his near-lithe frame conjured fright and inexplicable awesomeness, even among the Generals.
The story was told of how he was so dreaded, such that whenever he stepped into wherever, in the Villa,

everybody had to stand up. And once, a cocky colonel, who was waiting to see Gen. Abacha in the latter’s waiting room failed to stand up when Al-Mustapha sauntered in. Peeved, Al-Mustapha was said to have pointedly asked the “impudent” colonel his name and why he did not do as others did, when he stepped in. As the colonel made to answer, trying to point to his rank, al-Mustapha with a short swagger stick, he then held, voicelessly signalled his men to deal with the colonel. Not only did the colonel not see Abacha again, he was marched out and subjected to rounds of frog-jump sessions before he was dispatched from the Villa with classified ignominy.

With a brilliant blend of phony security reports and fetish mystique, Mustapha literally held Abacha hostage long before the latter died. And that cleared the space for Al-Mustapha to operate unchallenged. His word was more than law, that had to be peremptorily obeyed. The nation was under the siege of an enfant terrible.

And so when Alhaja Abiola was shot dead that mid morning of June 4, 1996, not many suffered to guess from whence the bullets came. The exactitude of the shots could only have come from trained hands. Death, raw death was literally floating in the air at the time. A certain killer squad was on the prowl, to force those calling for the revalidation of the annulled June 12, 1993 election, to shut up or be silenced forever.

  Long before it came to the turn of Kudirat, Pa Abraham Adesanya had been shot, but missed. Alex Ibru had been shot and missed. They have now both died their natural deaths. Also, Dr. Sola Omatsola, former airport security chief, was blown to pieces with concentrated bomb on the allegation that he was a NADECO member. Long before Boko Haram made bomb blast a staple malaise, Al-Mustapha and his terror gang had introduced bombing as a dreaded arsenal that can be unleashed on “bloody civilians”. Then Brig. Buba Marwa, former Lagos State Administrator, on two or more occasions, narrowly escaped bomb blasts.

With the advent of Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar as Head of State, Al-Mustapha’s grip on power ace began to weaken. He was transferred to Enugu, as a way of keeping him far from the power vortex. But even from there, the “security emissions” were yet signalling danger from Mustapha’s direction. This led to his arrest in October 1998.

But his incarceration did not stop him from “meddling “in state affairs. He was yet accused of pulling strings even from the prison, so much that sometime in 2001, he was accused of trying to use snipers to shoot down (then) President Olusegun Obasanjo’s plane. He became like the fabled tortoise whose name always featured in everything mischievous. And so he soon got his accusations lengthened with the charge of treason.

While he fought several legal battles to free himself of the many charges of malfeasance, the charge of killing Kudirat remained a tough one for him. His case was worsened by the repentant graphic testimonies of Sergeant Barnabas Jabila, alias Sgt Rogers. The latter gave telling details of the activities of the Strike Force, which he headed, under the command of Al-Mustapha. But Al-Mustapha had denied all of them, alleging that Sgt Rogers was under some unknown influence.

And that began the prolonged judicial battle. Al-Mustapha, by his conducts in the court did not appear in a hurry to be done with the case. Too many times, he threw sundry spanners on the wheel of the cases. With accusations and counter accusations, he stuck several judges with dubious badges of fraud and compromise. He accused them of having collected bribe from XYZ. Many of them had to either step down from trying him or got themselves disqualified.

He tried to even break the rank of the Yorubas, when in early August , he claimed that he had a video recording that showed how late Bola Ige, late Adesanya and some other Yoruba elders came to the Villa, and negotiated away the June 12 election after receiving a bribe – blood money – of N37 billion. But the video was simply inane and sensational, as it did not reveal anything significant or new.  He never looked remorseful. He had and wore electrifying candour, as he back-slapped, joked and generally looked unperturbed with the weight of allegations on his head.

Al-Mustapha threw up all kinds of legal complications that needlessly caused the case to drag almost eternally, hoping probably to one day, get a state reprieve from a “benevolent government”. But yesterday, it came to an end. Justice Mojisola Ayoka Dada, who delivered the judgment, read her verdict for five hours,
chronicling the back-and-fro expedition of the Al-Mustapha’s case.

She pronounced Al-Mustapha and Shofolahan guilty of murder and conspiracy to murder. The latter was the Personal Assistant to the murdered Kudirat Abiola. He is believed to have conspired with Al-Mustapha and co to organise the murder by revealing Kudirat’s itinerary to the assailants. Shofolahan who often operated like the Shakespearan Casca (in Julius Ceaser) gave all the details of her boss to the killer gang and stayed back to see her fall.  For 13 years, they tried to escape justice. But they eventually got nabbed in the web of justice yesterday.
Kudirat and her roving spirit can probably now rest in peace.

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