By Richard Akinnola
The Femi Gbajabiamila and Adeniyi Matthew saga, seems to be a replay of the Mohammed Bashir and Admiral Augustus Aikhomu saga in 1989, during the Babangida junta.
The Mohammed Bashir saga crept into national focus like any other case. A man is detained and goes to court to challenge his detention and the government lawyer flashes the ubiquitous Decree 2 in court, saying the detainee was a security risk and that the Chief of General Staff had signed his detention warrant.
But suit No. M/162/89 before Justice Solomon Hunponu -Wusu turned out not to be an ordinary case.
On May 4, 1889, the detainee, Alhaji Mohammed Bashir, a businessman swore to an affidavit that he was not a security risk but was detained because of a business transaction that went awry between him and the then Chief of General Staff (later vice-president) Augustus Aikhomu, who had the duty in signing detention orders.
Bashir, In his affidavit averred that during the negotiation of the Pan Ocean Oil contract, he allegedly bribed Admiral Aikhomu with $500,000 to enable him (Bashir) acquire 40 percent shares in the Pan Ocean Oil Company and that the former Vice President collected the money without performing his own part of the deal.
Specifically, Bashir said he paid $250,000 into Aikhomu’s private account in Standard Chartered Bank, Zurich, Switzerland. He gave the account number as 190:788 152442. He also stated that he lodged another $250,000 into the Vice President’s Investment Account No.391: 193 152441 in the same bank.
But the government dubbed Bashir, who was then being detained at the Bama Prison, Borno State, as an International crook who wanted to blackmail the nation’s number two man.
Bashir’s allegations stirred public discourse because of the enormity of the allegation, particularly when he further alleged that the payment slip had been seized by security men who arrested him.
He further alleged that “on the 18th of February, 1989, I was at a meeting with Major-General Mohammed, the Coordinator of National Security who also told me that the President has ordered me to be released but up till now, I am still incarcerated “
The case became a ding-dong affair without making any headway until Bashir was released in 1990.
Aikhomu vehemently denied the allegations, describing it as blackmail.
Bashir was a shifty character who also used different names, a pointer that he could have been a criminal. As a matter of fact, the Special Services department wrote a report where Bashir was indicated as “a first-class crook”.
Bashir’s type of allegation had some precedents. In 1974, Late Aper Aku accused the then Governor of Benue- Plateau State, Police Commissioner Joseph Gomwalk of pilfering from the state’s till. Aku swore to an affidavit that Gomwalk was corrupt. But his anti-corruption crusade was scuttled by the then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Dr. Elias which generated a lot of heat particularly from lawyers. Dr Mudiaga Odje (SAN) the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) seriously kicked against the Chief Justice’s move. But Gomwalk neither sued for libel nor offered to defend himself in court, although General Gowon cleared him.
Coming on the heels of the Aku episode was the Daboh/Tarka saga during the Gowon regime.
Godwin Daboh accused Joseph Tarka, then Minister of Communications of corrupt practices, the accusation that saw Tarka out of office. But the matter did not end there.
Tarka sued Daily Sketch and Daboh for N 1 million for libel at the Lagos High Court.
On February 21, 1978, Justice Ademola Candide-Johnson of Lagos High Court in his judgment, dismissed Tarka’s suit.
Justice Candide-Johnson said that Sketch “had performed a moral and public duty which it owed to the public at large to expose and comment on facts personally and purposely supplied to them by the fourth witness for defence, Mr. Daboh..
Also, Dr. Obarogie Ohonbamu was a law lecturer at university of Lagos. He was also a publisher of a monthly magazine. At the earlier stage of General Murtala Mohammed’s regime in 1975, Dr Ohonbamu accused General Mohammed of corruption.
Mohammed would not want his name soiled. He took the path of honour. Instead of using the State’s machinery to arrest and hound Ohonbamu, he elected to enter the witness box to defend himself before court officials prevailed upon him not to do so.
He was about to make history to set a precedent. Ohonbamu later realized that his allegations were unfounded and he apologized to General Mohammed.
-© Richard Akinnola
