THE sister of a victim killed in a 1996 Nigerian plane crash that claimed 143 lives has told a human rights panel that the former military ruler Sani Abacha ordered the bombing of the aircraft.
An official investigation into the November 7, 1996 crash of the Aviation Development Company (ADC) plane ruled out sabotage at the time, saying it was “an act of God.”
Among those who died on the flight from Port Harcourt to Lagos was Nigerian social critic and university professor Claude Ake.
This week his sister Lilian Okah told a rights panel looking into human rights abuses in Nigeria dating back to the first coup in 1966, that the crash was due to a bomb planted on the plane by Abacha’s agents.
She said her brother was the prime target of the bombing because he was sypathetic to the cause of the Ogoni people, whose leader was executed a year before.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and leader of the main opposition Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), and eight supporters were hanged on November 10, 1995 on the orders of Abacha.
“Ake was very close to Saro-Wiwa. We recall his fearless involvement in the issue and his press releases at the time concerning Ogoni issue,” Okah said.
She said her brother had complained of “being trailed by security agents” a few days before the crash.
She also said that many prominent people who were scheduled on the flight did not board it after they had been told not to do so.
Okah urged the panel, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, Chukwufidu Oputa, to order another inquiry into the crash “so that the truth can come out.”
The panel then directed the aviation authorities to re-investigate the crash.
The human rights panel set up last year by President Olusegun Obasanjo, held two weeks of hearings in Abuja in October and five weeks of hearings in Lagos in November and December.
It began three weeks of hearings in Port Harcourt on January 15 to hear complaints of human rights abuses around the troubled oil-producing region. – AFP