Gen. Sani Abacha, Nigeria's military strongman who died Monday, led a
closed and secretive life at home, rarely venturing outside of Africa's
most populous country. Ever fearful of a coup d'etat, Abacha, who seized
power in 1993, never sat for interviews and in recent months only
occasionally appeared in public.
While he led a strangely cloistered life in Nigeria's capital, Abuja,
Abacha gained notoriety abroad for his regime's human rights
abuses and its repeated attempts to throttle dissent and silence the
country's once-vigorous independent press.
Such was Abacha's infamy that the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists recently ranked him the world's foremost enemy of the
press. CPJ has counted 21 journalists
who have been imprisoned in Nigeria -- more than any country in Africa.
Abacha's regime drew worldwide condemnation in November 1995 after the
executions of nine opposition activists, among them playwright and
environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The general also sent to jail the presumed
winner of Nigeria's presidential elections in 1993, Chief Moshood Abiola,
and saw his country suspended from the British Commonwealth.
"Nigeria is happier for what happened [Monday]," said Bayo Onanuga, the
exiled editor in chief and managing director of The News and Tempo, two of
Nigeria's most outspoken publications. "He created terror in Nigeria the
last five years," Onanuga said of Abacha. "He brought Nigeria down to his
level."
Onanuga fled Nigeria in December after a squad of soldiers was sent for
him in the middle of the night. He said the regime sought to arrest him
for his searching reports about Abacha's health problems, the general's
vulnerability to a coup, and the corruption that flourished during his
five-year rule.
The Associated Press reported that Abacha died early Monday of a heart
attack. Reports about his suspected health problems had circulated
periodically since late last year.
Onanuga, who spoke with free! from Washington, said that Abacha's death
ideally would lead to restoration of civilian rule in oil-rich Nigeria,
which has 115 million people. Exiled Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka,
winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature, said in Jerusalem that
Abacha's death represented an "incredible opportunity" for Nigeria to
return to democracy, AP reported.
More likely, Onanuga said, was the prospect of a power struggle among
Nigeria's military leaders. Such a struggle probably had begun before
Abacha's death, Onanuga added, noting that Abacha's former deputy, Lt. Gen.
Oladipo Diya, had been sentenced to death for coup plotting and had not
been replaced.
Among the many journalists Abacha imprisoned is Onanuga's colleague,
Babafemi Ojudu, managing editor of The News and Tempo. Ojudu was arrested
last Nov. 17 as he sought to return to Nigeria after appearing at a Freedom
Forum-sponsored Africa Media Forum in Nairobi,
Kenya.
In a letter smuggled from jail in December, Ojudu wrote: "I am in
solitary confinement and food is passed to me like to a caged lion. I
cannot fathom what they are up to. But they are desperately looking for
something to hang me with. I wish them good luck. ... My spirit remains
unbound and my head unbowed."
Another prominent journalist imprisoned in Nigeria is Christiana Anyanwu,
winner of the 1998 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom
Prize.
Anwanyu, publisher and editor in chief of the Sunday Magazine of Lagos, was
jailed three years ago following publication of a report about a 1995 coup
plot against Abacha. She reportedly is serving her 15-year sentence in
northeast of Nigeria, and is suffering a variety of ailments including
typhoid, malaria, and serious eye problems.
Abacha's crackdowns -- which have also included beatings and harassment of
journalists and the ransacking and closing of their offices -- have brought
the darkest days for Nigeria's traditionally outspoken and freewheeling
press. Even so, Nigerian reporters and editors have managed in many cases
to operate underground as so-called "guerrilla journalists," making use of laptop computers and moving often to avoid arrest.
Abacha has been a force in Nigeria since the end of 1983, when he went on
state television to announce that the military had toppled the country's
elected -- but corrupt -- civilian government. The coup in 1983 brought an
end to the country's second ill-fated experiment in democratic rule since
gaining political independence from Britain in 1960.
In 1985, Abacha again announced a takeover, this time a palace coup in
which Gen. Ibrahim Babangida replaced Gen. Mohammadu Buhari as head of
state. Abacha took power himself in 1993, several months after the
annulment of presidential elections presumably won by Abiola, a wealthy
businessman and media owner.
Other arrests followed, including that of former military ruler Gen.
Olusegun Obasanjo and 50 others accused of plotting a coup. They were
sentenced after a secret tribunal to terms ranging from 15 years to life.
Soyinka fled Nigeria in November 1994, saying the country was "retreating
into the Dark Ages." Abacha charged him in absentia with treason, a crime
punishable by death.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
