Chuks Iloegbunam
For observers of Nigeria, the death in prison of the former military vice president, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, at the age of 54 was not a shock. It could have been Chief M K L Abiola, the expected winner of the aborted 1993 presidential elections or Yar’Adua’s ex-chief, General Olusegun Obasanjo. It is a cold and iron age in a country of military corruption and misrule whose prisons brim with political prisoners.
Some have already pointed out that when Kudirat, the wife of Abiola, was shot dead in broad daylight in Lagos in 1996, the heavens did not fall. Others have recalled the 1995 execution, amid international entreaties, of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others to buttress their conviction that Yar’Adua’s demise will, at worst, only embarrass the government of military ruler General Sani Abacha.
But they miss the point. Yar’Adua belongs to a different class. Abiola’s strength is in the south-west, but Yar’Adua was born in Yar’Adua village near Katsina in the northernmost part of Nigeria. By virtue of his Fulani origins, he belonged to a relatively small but politically astute ethnic group affiliated to the Hausa who have, either directly or indirectly, always controlled the levers of power in Nigeria.
His father was a minister in the First Republic government of Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, terminated in the country’s first coup d’tat in January 1966.
Yar’Adua attended Katsina Government Secondary School. He was one of the many school leavers from the core north, encouraged by Northern People’s Congress leader Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, the most powerful politician of the time, to join the army. Yar’Adua attended the Military Training College, Zaria, and Sandhurst.
At the time of the January 1966 coup he was an army lieutenant in Eastern Nigeria, a posting which meant that he was not, physically, a part of the bloody July 1966 counter-coup.
During the civil war, he fought the Biafran secessionists, rising by 1970 to brigade commander.
In 1975, Lieutenant-Colonel Yar’Adua, backed by Brigadier Murtala Muhammed, teamed with other middle-ranking officers to topple General Yakubu Gowon’s regime. Yar’Adua became transport minister under Murtala Muhammed – who was killed six months later in a failed coup attempt.
Olusegun Obasanjo replaced Murtala as head of state, and Yar’Adua leapfrogged at least 15 senior officers to become Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters and number two to Obasanjo. The preference given to Yar’Adua was political, since he was a far north Muslim like the murdered Murtala, and it was felt important to assuage the almighty region’s feelings.
In 1979, the Obasanjo regime relinquished power to President Shehu Shagari’s elected government and Major General Yar’Adua, still only 36, retired from the army. He had time and money, and a political future beckoned. The opportunity came during the transition-to-civil-rule programme of General Ibrahim Babangida.
Yar’Adua gave a good account of himself in the presidential primaries, but he never had a crack at the presidency because the process was cancelled while Yar’Adua and many others were banned from politics. This was the development that enabled Abiola and other unbanned politicians to stand for the presidency.
When General Sani Abacha seized power in November 1993, he set up a constituent assembly, to which Yar’Adua won election and from where he orchestrated the body’s overwhelming motion that Abacha should relinquish power immediately. Soon after, Yar’Adua and Obasanjo, as well as many officers and some civilians and journalists were arrested and tried by a military tribunal, which sat in secret. Most of the defendants were convicted. Yar’Adua’s death sentence was later commuted to 25 years in prison after an international outcry.
From behind bars Yar’Adua still wielded enormous influence, through his political association. Reports of such exploits necessitated his movement from prison to prison to curb what his gaolers considered his “excesses”.
Those who witnessed Yar’Adua’s funeral in Katsina said the mourners were in tens of thousands. And there were no signs of tension. Indeed Abacha, the current dictator, himself was born in Kano, and claims that ancient city of the north as his home, but his stock is undoubtedly Kanuri. Historians are aware of the political differences between the Hausa, Fulani and the Kanuri.
After the death of the north’s Ahmadu Bello in the coup of January 1966, mourners were also in their tens of thousands yet there was no immediate tension in the streets. But Nigeria is still quaking from the backlash that followed only months later.
Of course, Yar’Adua and Ahmadu Bello were not of comparable status. but with Yar’Adua’s passing another part of the regional jigsaw of opposition to Abacha has fallen into place.
He leaves a wife and five children.
— Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, soldier, born March 5 1943; died December 8 1997
ENDS