A special correspondent in Abuja
There were few tears and fewer obsequies for General Sani Abacha, the late and brutal president of Nigeria.
Wrapped in a sheet and carried to his home town of Kano in the cargo hold of a Nigerian air force jet, he arrived too late even to be buried before evening prayers according to Islamic convention, and was tipped into a hastily dug grave.
Abacha made his own departure as he had ordered that of so many others, secretly and without ceremony. The only question now is whether he was helped to relinquish his grip on life and power. Questions are being asked about both the contradictory accounts of his passing and the rush to bury him.
A suspicion is growing on the bush telegraph: was Abacha, who sent so many to their deaths, murdered himself?
According to the official version, Abacha succumbed to a heart attack on June 8 at around 6am at his discreet and well-guarded Aso Rock villa. The first indications to the world at large that something was amiss came as members of his staff at the villa arrived for work only to be turned away without any explanation.
Abacha’s personal staff were not the only ones who were being kept in the dark. Chief Ikeobasi Mokelu, the minister of information and culture, was also being kept out of the loop. Mokelu had been told by the general that he would personally open a conference on information management and nation building at the International Conference Centre in Nigeria’s administrative capital, Abuja, at 9am.
When the general failed to show up by 11.30am, the minister – still unaware of Abacha’s death – went to the conference centre to assure the delegates that the head of state would soon arrive.
When Chief Anthony Ani, the minister of finance, held a media briefing at his ministry at noon, which was attended by Chief Ayo Ogunlade, the minister of planning, they too were unaware of Abacha’s death. Even when Nigeria’s Provisional Ruling Council – its supreme governing body – assembled for a meeting at 1pm, many were under the impression that they had been summoned by General Abacha himself.
Only when they had all arrived did General Abdulsalam Abubakar, the chief of the defence staff, accompanied by navy chief Admiral Mike Akhigbe, and Lieutenant General Jerry Useni, the minister of federal capital development, emerge from an inner chamber. Abubakar announced the news.
It has not only been the manner of his burial and the delayed announcement of his death by Nigeria’s new ruler, Abubakar, that have fuelled rumours of a possible assassination. Contradictory accounts of how he spent the hours before he died have inevitably fanned the flames.
These include the – perhaps inevitable – speculation that Abacha died after entertaining two young women at Aso Rock. A more official account, however, is provided by those close to Abacha’s regime.
According to this version of events, Abacha had returned from the airport on Sunday evening, where he had been to see off Yasser Arafat, who stopped on his way to the OAU summit in neighbouring Burkina Faso.
Abacha returned to Aso Rock accompanied by Useni, his close associate and confidant, and they spent an hour or more chatting in one of his private apartments. Later he received a visit from Lieutenant General TY Danjuma, and then asked to see a family member who had come from Kano that afternoon.
When an aide came to check on him around midnight he was informed Abacha was tired and had already gone to sleep. At about 3am the general rang for his night valet and requested a drink of water with which to take some painkillers that he kept by his bedside.
The same aide stayed close to his bedroom for the rest of the night, and may have been the last person to see him alive. After performing his 5am prayers, Abacha told the aide that he was not to be woken up at 8am as usual, but at 9.30am. When the aide came to wake him, however, there was no reply.
When the room was opened they found Abacha dead. According to one version, he was found crouching in a corner of the room.
Most pressing of all the questions facing the new regime, however, is the lack of an autopsy on Abacha’s body to determine the cause of death. Officially it was his wife who ordered his burial without a post- mortem. Few, however, are happy to accept this version of events.
What is certain is that Abacha, robber baron of Nigeria, was hastily buried.
The plane carrying the body was supposed to arrive in Kano at 5.35pm, but it did not leave Abuja until 6.38pm. When it got to Kano, the military guard of honour had been dispersed and only a handful of commissioners and the state governor’s entourage were on hand to meet it.
Without ceremony – almost without mourners – Abacha was taken to his grave. It is unlikely, however, that he will be forgotten.