Al-Mustapha Should Shut Up

By Ola Balogun

In general, most citizens of Nigeria are peace-loving and law-abiding.

Although we actually know better, for the sake of peace, most of us have accepted that we are  genuinely being protected by the laws of the land. For better or for worse, we have accepted that we are not supposed to take the laws into our own hands, and that where crimes have been committed that affect our lives and interests, the right thing to do is to wait for the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary to step in, investigate, apprehend the law breakers and punish them appropriately…That we have such lofty and possibly misplaced expectations does not however mean that we are fools, and that we should be taken for a ride by those who are supposed to protect the citizens of Nigeria and ensure that justice is meted out in appropriate cases.

Without doubt, it is an open secret today that a series of sinister events have cumulatively piled up to shake whatever faith most of us have about  living in a supposedly orderly society in which the administration of justice is to be left in the hands of the government, the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary. Matters have now reached a point where there is no alternative but to conclude that somebody, somewhere, is making fun of us. Manifestly, the Nigerian version of justice is not simply the proverbial blindfolded lady depicted in front of court buildings all over the world, but a wicked, blind, dumb and willfully deaf evil step mother!

The recent rigmarole that has culminated in the discharge and acquital of Major Hamza al-Mustapha of the charge of having masterminded the brutal killing of Mrs. Kudirat Abiola can probably best be described as a deliberate affront to all notions of common sense and reasoned analysis.

The most astonishing aspect of this revolting episode in our national history is that the central figure in the whole affair has suddenly been transformed before our very eyes from a supposed villain to an innocent victim and folk hero who has allegedly been unjustly and illegally detained for 14 years as a result of the machinations of the Yoruba ethnic group as a whole…

If the media are to be believed, Major al-Mustapha has reportedly received a hero’s welcome in Kano and Yobe states, with some high ranking local authorities (who should certainly know better) playing to the gallery by presiding over tumultuous public receptions during which al-Mustapha has indulged in extensive speech-making, depicting himself as the victim of odious persecution by unnamed foes. Most astonishingly, our villain turned hero has, in the process, acquired an 80-year-old spokesman/bodyguard/overnight arrangee foster father of Yoruba extraction who claims to be protecting some ill-defined Yoruba interests by taking the side of the alleged murderer of a Yoruba lady, going so far as to actually rejoice with him at the current turn of events!

However, no matter what the voluntarily blind and deaf (but apparently not dumb!) justices of the Appeal Court may have decided in their infinite wisdom, many questions remain unanswered :

First of all, what are the facts that lie behind the protracted legal skirmishes that culminated in the incarceration of al-Mustapha and the main other accused suspect for all of 14 years? Could anyone have forgotten so soon that this peculiar situation arose because the highly paid legal counsel retained by al-Mustapha and his fellow accused successfully employed all manner of legal challenges and procedural ruses to ensure that the case kept being postponed and started all over again, year after year for 14 whole years? How and why should this monumental abuse of the judicial process have been allowed? And why should al-Mustapha and his new-found advocate/bodyguard/arrangee foster father now turn round to mock all right-thinking Nigerian citizens by claiming that the long delay in delivering judgment was the result of  a deliberate decision by the Lagos State Government to keep al-Mustapha and his co-accused unjustly in detention?

Here is another question for all to ponder: Is Hamza al-Mustapha the only soldier to have served under the orders of General Sani Abacha, the reclusive dictator who presided over one of the most oppressive governments in the history of our nation? Isn’t it curious that al-Mustapha’s name (and al-Mustapha’s name only!) keeps popping up like a recurrent decimal in several different cases of murder or attempted murder that took place during the infamous reign of General Abacha?

For those with a short memory, let us recall a few of the most spectacular of these murder cases. Among those crimes with which al-Mustapha’s name has allegedly been persistently mentioned, there was the murder of Chief Alfred Rewane, for which the subsequent police investigation was transformed into a Charlie Chaplinesque comedy that amused no one. However, it was widely whispered in informed circles that a certain former state Governor who is currently serving a term of imprisonment abroad was not unconnected with the murder, and that the said former Governor was allegedly believed to have been one of al-Mustapha’s henchmen at the time.

Not surprisingly, our supposed law enforcement agencies steadfastly chose to ignore such persistent and concordant rumours or follow up on the multiple leads that led in the direction of those who were strongly rumoured to have been the authors of the gruesome murder of the respected elderly associate of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who had reputedly become a thorn in the flesh of the Abacha Administration.Then there was the attempted assassination of late Pa Adesanya, who miraculously escaped death when his car was riddled with bullets close to Sandgrouse market in central Lagos. There was also the attempted murder of the late Chief Alex Ibru, the publisher of The Guardian newspaper, who was badly wounded when his car was ambushed in broad daylight on Falomo bridge, between the Ikoyi and Victoria Island districts of Lagos. Ibru, who sustained a number of serious bullet wounds, was badly wounded in the encounter and only owed his life to the actions of a quick thinking driver who managed to get him out of the danger zone before the assassins could complete their assignment. Even more crucially, there has been the cold blooded and heartless murder of Mrs. Kudirat Abiola, a defenceless woman, who was ruthlessly gunned down on a main road in Ikeja by trained marksmen who ambushed her car in broad daylight. For the benefit of those who have become the victims of selective amnesia, these three crimes shared one common thread: The same cast of trained army marksmen in which Sergeant Rogers was a prominent member, later confessed to having been the hit men.

In each case, their confessions were extensively corroborated by extensive evidence, including unchallenged sworn testimony by some of those who participated in the planning and execution of these odious crimes. These confessions were not only tendered before various law courts, presided over by different magistrates and judges, but also formed part of the testimony that the individuals in question gave before the Oputa panel, which many Nigerians watched live on television as the hearings unfolded. However, at the end of the day, the key witnesses at the Kudirat Abiola trial (including the infamous Sergeant Rogers) retracted their original sworn and freely given testimonies and resorted to peddling incredible tales about having been allegedly bribed to testify against the supposedly “innocent” Major al-Mustapha by shadowy individuals allegedly acting on behalf of the Lagos State Government!

Following these wild allegations, the point at which tragedy mutates into farce was reached when three learned Justices of the Appeal Court recently stood logic on its head by overturning the perfectly reasoned decision of a courageous and conscientious trial judge who pointedly rejected the belated fairy tales of the principal witnesses and quite rightly sentenced al-Mustapha and the main other accused suspect to death for their roles in masterminding the murder of Kudirat Abiola.

Curiously enough, however, at the end of the convoluted reasoning that was produced to justify the curious decision of the Appeal Court, the Nigerian public was asked to accept that this is how justice is supposed to function. However, it has still not been made clear whether the said justice that functions this way is functioning in Nigera or in the fabled wonderland inhabited by a story book character named Alice. In the mean time, the 80-year-old self-appointed part-time Yoruba crusader and full-time defender of al-Mustapha’s innocence has somehow been persuaded to allow several statements attributed to him to be published in which he faults the prosecution for utilising Sergeant Rogers as a crown witness. The same point has eagerly been seized upon by an astonishing variety of uninformed commentators, who have kept asking: Why should a self-confessed murderer who publicly admitted to having fired the gun that killed Kudirat Abiola been used as a witness instead of being tried for murder? Well, just as ostriches have been known to deliberately bury their heads in the sand when they choose not to see certain things, those who have been asking this ridiculous question have chosen (or pretended to have chosen?) to be unaware that it is standard practice all over the world to use self-confessed junior accomplices as state witnesses in order to secure the conviction of the real brains behind the crimes in which they are involved. Without the testimony of the minor criminals who actually pulled the triggers in murder cases or robbed banks on behalf of mafia chieftains, the criminal masterminds would never have been convicted in several spectacular trials that have taken place in recent decades in the U.S., Gt. Britain, France and Italy.

Are those who are denouncing the decision to employ Sergeant Rogers as a state witness saying that the prosecutors should have concentrated on securing the conviction of a lowly hitman and made no effort to go after the alleged masterminds of the gruesome murder, who allegedly gave the order to kill Kudirat, who supplied the weapons and who specifically organised the crime? Are all those who have been prancing about loudly questioning the decision to use Sergeant Roger’s evidence to nail down the actual masterminds of the crime actually in good faith? One is left to ponder the question.

At the end of the day, what has become evident is that the Nigerian law enforcement agencies and judiciary have decided (for reasons best known to themselves) to declare to the good people of Nigeria that NOBODY attempted to kill Pa Abraham Adesanya and Chief Alex Ibru, and that NOBODY killed Chief Bola Ige, Rewane, Mr. Marshal Harry, Mrs. Kudirat Abiola and a host of others. In declaring time and time again that no culprits are guilty of this long series of politically motivated crimes, are the Nigerian law enforcement and judicial bodies not sending a signal (wittingly or unwittingly) to the families of the victims of these heinous crimes that they would do better to arm themselves and seek justice on their own, rather than submit themselves to the kind of mockery that we have been witnessing? Fortunately, it is to the collective credit of the people of Nigeria that we have so far elected to remain mature and calm.

The forbearance and sense of responsibility that the people of Nigeria have chosen to manifest in the face of so much blatant injustice should however not lead anyone to take us for impotent fools. There is no reason why al-Mustapha and his various surrogates should be allowed to continue rubbing salt into our wounds by parading triumphantly all over the place, proclaiming his innocence, as if he were some anonymous bystander who had travelled to some exotice location to watch football matches while the many crimes with which his name has been allegedly associated were being carried out under Abacha’s infamous brutal rule. Enough is enough! Somebody should please tell Major Hamzat al-Mustapha to kindly shut up and leave the long-suffering people of Nigeria in peace.

– Dr. Ola Balogun is a film maker, author and musician who is currently resident in Lagos.