Cover Story
Bamaiyi: Behold a Dying General
Lieutenant-General Ishaya Rizi Bamaiyi, former Chief of Army Staff, caged in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison since the past seven years, now lies sick and dying with myriad killer ailments at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH)
By Tony Egbulefu

Ishaya Bamaiyi

Those who knew Lt. General Ishaya Rizi Bamaiyi, former Chief of Army Staff in the regimes of the late General Sani Abacha and that of General Abdulsalam Abubakar, would quickly attest now that the once ebullient and manly soldier, who exuded halo within and outside the commanding heights of the powerful and the revered of the Nigerian society, is on an inexorable health and physiological descent.
Presently stuck in Ward E5 of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), where he had been on admission since March this year in the hospital’s Endocrine and Metabolism Unit, headed by Dr. O.A. Fasanmade, Bamaiyi looks shriveled and spent, and labours to talk. He blacks out intermittently, and upon doctors instruction, often spends hours on end in tranquil seclusion. Apart from the different translations of the Holy Bible and a television set in his secluded hospital room, his other regular companions have been his driver, Mohammed who brings him food and his grieving wife, Martha.
In a medical report, issued to the Director Public Prosecutions, Lagos State Ministry of Justice, by Fasanmade, dated June 23, 2006, the physician disclosed that Bamaiyi is currently down with “complicated diabetes mellitus, neuropathy, with muscle wasting, syncopal attacks and poor vision.” Fasanmade alerted that “he also has an enlarged heart from hypertensive heart disease.” According to the doctor, Bamaiyi’s diabetes has up to the moment, defied attempts to be stabilised. “He is seeing our ophthalmologists for poor vision, Otor- hinoloarynologists, neurologists and radiologists, as he still suffers dizzy spells, blackouts, difficulty in walking and reduced exercise tolerance. We have been managing him though, but with some limitations,” the doctor wrote. To sustain Bamaiyi's life at the moment, the doctor said his condition“is presently being controlled by several medications and round-the-clock glycaemic monitoring.” The health conditions and complications, according to Fasanmade, “are largely attributable to poor diabetes and hypertensive control and possibly lack of specialist review over the years.” On this score, Fasanmade said that the ailing Army General “requires regular and unrestricted access to his various physicians.”
Bamaiyi, instructively, was a key member of the Abdulsalam Abubakar government that midwifed the present democracy. He was the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), but six months after hand over, (November 1999), the Obasanjo government seized him after Colonel Jubrin Bala Yakubu (rtd), former Zamfara State Administrator and Rabo Lawal, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), roped him in, in the failed assassination of Alex Ibru, The Guardian publisher on February 2, 1996, while testifying in a Special Investigation Panel (SIP), set up by the then Attroney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Kanu Agabi and headed by Udo Udo Mbam.
The panel was set up to investigate the high profile political assassinations and failed assassinations that hallmarked the Abacha junta. These included the killing of Alfred Rewane, a frontline opposition figure, that of Kudirat Abiola, wife of the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, and the failed attempts on Ibru and Abraham Adesanya, leader of the pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, and a chieftain of the National Democratic coalition (NADECO).
Following the confessional statements of Yakubu and Lawal, in which they alleged a Bamaiyi complicity in the failed attempt on Ibru’s life, the panel established a prima facie case against Bamaiyi, James Danbaba, former Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, Colonel Yakubu and CSP Lawal, and charged them to a Lagos Chief Magistrate court on Tuesday, November 23, 1999 on a two- count charge of conspiracy and attempted murder. With time the Lagos State government, whose Justice Commissioner, Professor Yemi Osibajo, has been the chief prosecutor of the suspects, increased the charges to four, then to six.
Though Colonel Yakubu and CSP Lawal recanted in 2001 and 2002 respectively, telling the court that they were motivated by promises of reprieve, official patronage and on some occasions brute official intimidation to implicate Bamaiyi at the SIP, the courts have since 1999 kept the former COAS in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison’s awaiting trial list, refusing to grant him bail. But in the course of the legal gymnastics, a Lagos High court on the contrary, ruled that the implication of Bamaiyi in the crime, by the duo could not be established to have been induced by intimidation. And so continued his ordeal.
Since November 1999, when the matter was first heard in court, the Bamaiyi case has lingered, passing through four high court judges, yet the substantive suit has not been put in motion ever since the legal tussle began. The failure to commence the trial seven years on, rests squarely on the procedural manipulations of the courts by both the defence and prosecuting counsels to gain advantage. Shocking also, is the fact that Bamaiyi in the last seven years have continuously applied for bail, even from the time the matter was before a Lagos Chief Magistrate Court in 1999, to no avail. As it were, Bamaiyi has battled for a bail all the way from the Chief Magistrate Court, to the highest court in the land, the Supreme court, without success.
As Bamaiyi’s health devastations became very pronounced– at least to the public– during his last arraignment on May 30, before Justice Olubunmi Oyewole, not a few of his sympathisers had looked forward a granting of his appeal for a separate trial by the trial judge. But this was not to be.
Members of the public, who canvass bail for Bamaiyi now hugely hinge the clamour on his dire health condition, particularly against the fear of a repeat of the Maurice Ibekwe episode. Ibekwe, a member of the House of Representatives faced trial for Advance Fee Fraud (419) as a healthy man, but died in detention as a result of the insistence of judges in trying him even as a sick man.
Wahab Shittu, counsel to Bamaiyi, who spoke to The Source, said that nothing was wrong with judges granting bail to the accused on account of ill-health. He cited instances. Such, he said, was necessary because “only somebody who is alive can face trial. If you are dead, you cannot face any prosecution.” Because one needs to be alive to face a court room trial, Shittu explained that “if there is any evidence that somebody is dying, it behoves on the court to grant such a person bail, so that he can properly attend to his health to enable him come subsequently to attend to his case file.” Curiously, this has not applied on the Bamaiyi matter.
Three weeks ago, Dr. Frederick Fasheun, who was on the borders of death, while standing trial for treasonable felony, a crime against the state that attracts as much as a death penalty, visited Bamaiyi in his hospital bed to commiserate with him. Fasheun was granted bail, a few months ago on health grounds by an Abuja High Court. Before this sympathy visit, Fasheun counted among notable Nigerians who have grieved publicly over the seven-year incarceration of Bamaiyi, for attempted murder; especially when all that linked him to the crime were confessional statements of Colonel Yakubu and CSP Lawal, which though became controversial, when both men disowned the Bamaiyi angle to the crime, alleging inducement and intimidation by the powers-that-be.
Owing to the curious twists and turns in the case and his long drawn incarceration and repeated refusal of bail, Bamaiyi today no longer believes that what is at work is judicial trial but political. He links his seven-year ordeal to his strong position while in government, that the Abdulsalam Abubakar regime should not hand over to a successor with military background. This, according to him, was in order for Nigerians and the outside world to see the country as having truly broken away from the vestiges of the jackboot. This Bamaiyi position incidentally came on the heels of arrangements by the departing military regime to ferret Obasanjo out from prison and crown him a civilian president, through designs that would enable him win the People's Democratic Party (PDP) primaries and the presidential election.
It later became common knowledge within the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC) and the Nigerian Military that Bamaiyi disapproved of an Obasanjo presidency on the basis of Obasanjo military complexion. Bamaiyi was also allegedly reported to the president that he opposed his retirement and those of other service chiefs on May 29, 1999. The two developments, Bamaiyi's sympathisers say, were viciously potrayed to Obasanjo, such that the president had to reckon Bamaiyi as a huge threat to the stability and life of his government. And his adversary.
Bamaiyi alluded this much while testifying before the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa-led Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission in 2001. According to Bamaiyi then, “I had told General Abubakar that the only thing that would make his government look sincere is to hand over to a democratically elected government, headed by a person, who is devoid of military background. It seems to me that this piece of honest and patriotic suggestion of mine, later became my greatest undoing, as some people deliberately and mischievously misrepresented this to General Obasanjo”.
Bamaiyi revealed that President Obasanjo, “was apparently made to believe that I do not like him and if allowed to be a free man, his government would not survive as I would instigate the military to stage a coup”.
Since March, 2006 when Bamaiyi first visited LUTH, on account of illness, his health condition has graduated from bad to worse.
In his first report on March 14, Dr. Fasanmade had noted that Bamaiyi, 59, first visited his unit as an out-patient, two weeks earlier, with a history of “episodic confusion, sweating and altered sensorium of about two occasions, few weeks apart”. He also noted that the retired General has been “previously diagnosed, diabetic and hypertensive”, and also had “poor control of both his blood pressure and blood sugar from his domicilary charts.” Fasanmade also pointed to “evidence of dyshpidaemia”.
After this initial report, the hospital began to investigate Bamaiyi’s health to determine any organ damage and to what extent as a result of the diagnosed pathological conditions, which were described as requiring strict control “to prevent further deterioration in health”.
As Bamaiyi could not get the required freedom to confront the conditions, his health, as the doctor feared, began to deteriorate, resulting to his winding up on hospital bed in the last four months. Yet from what the doctors say, there is no light in the tunnel yet. Bamaiyi’s heart, right now, is said to be bloated, making him a prime subject of heart attack anytime.
A medical report issued on his health on June 1, 2006 indicated that after two and half months of being bed-ridden, Bamaiyi still feels dizzy “after walking short distance, with near collapse on few occasions”. On this score, next on the line was for him to have dates with the hospital’s “ear, nose and throat specialist for further evaluation of his dizziness”.
In his Kirikiri dungeon, Bamaiyi has severally been reported to have had episodes of loss of consciousness. On June 26, 2006 Dr. Fasanmade, had cause to intimate a restive Lagos DPP– who is rearing to continue with Bamaiyi’s prosecution– on the grave health condition of the accused. Fasanmade: “… in respect of the above mentioned patient of ours, I restate that there are some limitations in the management of our patient, some of which are peculiar to his case and others, which are general”. Fasanmade disclosed that owing to the severe nature of some of the conditions, some of the diagnosis could not be carried out in LUTH.
The doctor cautioned the Lagos DPP, to apply the brakes because according to him, Bamaiyi’s “reduced exercise tolerance and sedentary status, over the years, has impacted negatively on his diabetes and hypertension control. He requires graded exercises, which are not currently possible. Therefore, his cardiac and endocrine well-being cannot be guaranteed. These are limitations that are not within our purview to alter”, the doctor stated.
Having lost his bid for a separate trial, which would have expedited the determination of the Bamaiyi angle on the attempt on Ibru’s life, Shittu, aware of the grave realities of his client’s health, opted to write directly to Osibajo, three weeks ago, asking him to immediately file separate charges against Bamaiyi. Shittu noted that even though the trial judge refused Bamaiyi’s application for a separate trial, the state on its own can file separate charges against Bamaiyi, whom he intimated Osibajo, that his present health condition “can no longer accommodate the imperatives of a joint trial process, where he will be unable to influence his co-accused, as to the direction and strategies to be adopted in the course of proceedings.”
Shittu: “We request your distinguished office to immediately set the machinery in motion, with a view to fast-tracking General Ishaya Bamaiyi’s separate trial, which is to be concluded within a maximum period of one month to enable him know his fate and attend to his deteriorating health. The truth concerning the health condition of our client is that he cannot wait till the next adjourned date of September 22, 2006, considering his fast deteriorating health and his eagerness to disabuse minds that he is not interested in standing his trial”.
Appeals have over the years continued to mount, urging President Obasanjo to grant presidential amnesty to Bamaiyi, especially given the general's role in the military, governance and nation building. In 2002, for instance, Governor Adamu Aliero of Kebbi State led a delegation of 35 prominent indigenes of the state, which is Bamaiyi’s home state, to plead with Obasanjo at the Presidential Villa to grant the former COAS presidential pardon in the spirit of true national reconciliation. Aliero pledged to the president, the willingness of the government of Kebbi State to sign any undertaking and to provide surety on Bamaiyi’s behalf, so that the general could regain his freedom. Obasanjo remarkably, turned the request down, saying that the executive arm of the government would not intervene in any case in a court of law in the country. He argued that doing so was equal to a violation of the principle of separation of power as enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution. And while stating also that the case was a Lagos State matter, President Obasanjo argued that lawyers on both sides should seek an agreement on how to secure bail or release of the suspects, without intervention from any government. Obasanjo: “Government must never create the impression that it will intervene on behalf of anybody, who may have or is alleged to have committed an offence”. President Obasanjo further argued that the granting of Aliero’s request would also mean setting a bad precedent.
A year earlier, prominent indigenes of Zuru, Bamaiyi’s home town and Kebbi South at large, in a letter for intervention to the president, titled: “An appeal for national reconciliation on the plight of the political detainee, Lt. General Ishaya Bamaiyi and others”, implored the president to grant Bamaiyi amnesty in the spirit of forgiveness and genuine reconciliation. In return, they pledged support for a second term bid of the President, who on his part, was battling for political survival in both the National Assembly and an aggrieved northern region over issues of marginalisation and breach of promises.
By April 2002, some members of the House of Representatives took up the fight for Bamaiyi’s freedom. Led by Abdullahi Musa, then chair of the House committee on commerce, the angry legislators gave President Obasanjo, a 21-day ultimatum, within which to effect Bamaiyi’s release and that of his co-accused. Musa had observed that Bamaiyi and company had suffered more than due punishment with their long incarceration and were therefore deserving of bail or amnesty in view of Obasanjo’s preachings on forgiveness and reconciliation. Musa, who represented Minna Federal Constituency of Niger State, argued that the ultimatum became necessary following a disturbing reality that some Nigerians, who had faced similar charges did not suffer such long- drawn humiliation, as has been the case with Bamaiyi and others.
Another spirited appeal was that of the Hausa Mai-Kanuribe of Lagos, Seriki Mohammed, who is also the Sarkin Hausawa of Ijoraland. Noting that Bamaiyi and company have suffered excess punishment, which has overflowed to members of their families and relations, the Sarkin Hausawa called on well-meaning Nigerians to join in the crusade for the release of the accused persons. Noting that forgiveness was an intergral part of reconciliation. Mohammed: “We should try to stop what they had gone through and currently facing.”
While assuring that the north shall show their gratitude for the release of the detainees, he reminded the government that “it may have been tough and rough in the past, but we should learn through it, forgive, so that we can move forward together as a nation.”
But Global Peace Movement, which has also put up some fight for the release of the detainees, anchors its own struggle on a perceived selective justice. The group is worried that while Bamaiyi and company are being annihilated, a horde of members of Abacha’s atrocious regime are circulating freely unquestioned, by the present authorities. Why pick on the five, the movement queried.
Instructively, many northerner leading political and religious leaders as well as institutions, have also at different points in these past seven years, made spirited calls on the government to grant reprieve to Bamaiyi.
As General Bamaiyi right now battles with dreadful health conditions on his hospital bed, many still remember him as a professional soldier, who throughout his career in the military, refused to take up political appointments – or any appointment for that matter outside his military constituency. He set a noble precedent, when he turned down an appointment as a Military Administrator by General Abacha, while he was the commandant of Lagos Garrison. He had said back then that he preferred to work and live in the barracks.
While the Abacha tyranny lasted, Bamaiyi with his utterances and admonitions on strict military career and professionalism, clearly set himself apart in the minds of perceptive Nigerians as a professional and pro-democracy soldier– uncommon traits then within the Nigerian military hierachy– which he further amplified with his utter rejection of passing the governance baton in 1999, from serving Army General to a retired Army General.
Made Chief of Army Staff in March 1996, from his post as the Commandant, Lagos Garrison, he was a member of the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC), beginning from 1993, when Abacha took over.
Bamaiyi enlisted in the Nigerian Army in 1967, and was already a corporal before he enrolled in the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA). His first command duty was with the 68 Infantry Battalion, where he was a Platoon Commander. He held this position till 1969, when he became second-in-command of the 9 Brigade Training Wing. Bamaiyi later moved to 64 Infantry Battalion as the Commanding Officer. He commanded 2 Guards Battalion in 1984 and six different infantry battalions of the Nigerian Army, including 4,5 and 9 Mechanised Brigades.
He first hit national prominence in 1990, when he commanded the Brigade of Guards, charged with the security of the President and seat of power – then Dodan Barracks. What earned him this high security and intelligence task was the despatch with which he foiled the Gideon Orkar coup of 1990, as the Commander of the 9 Mechanised Brigade, Ikeja.
Born October 3, 1946, in Senohi, Datai District of Zuru, Kebbi State, Bamaiyi attended the UMS Primary School, Zuru between 1955 and 1967. Thereafter, he attended Government Teachers College, Bida, from where he enlisted in the Army and afterwards, enrolled in the NDA.
Bamaiyi later attended the United States of America's (USA) Command and Staff College between 1981 and 1982. He also attended the Nigeria Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru Jos Plateau State.