NIGERIA?S human rights panel has begun two weeks of hearings in the northern home city of the late military dictator Sani Abacha, with a call to investigate the 1996 death of journalist Kaltho Bagauda.
Bagauda, a journalist with the independent Nigerian news magazine The News, was killed in 1996. His family say he was killed while in detention for articles critical of the then military dictator.
The military government said he died planting a bomb which blew up the Durbar Hotel in the northern city of Kaduna.
Bagauda’s brother Menon told the panel set up in 1999 that his brother’s death should be properly investigated.
“The panel should probe his case so that the truth will come out at last,” he said. “I do not accept the version of the government. My brother was killed. He was not a bomber,” he said.
Bagauda’s widow, Martha, urged the panel to take note of the police report which initially said that the person killed in the bomb blast in 1996 was unknown and “burned beyond recognition”.
The police only identified the bomber as Bagauda in 1998 and then gave no forensic evidence. They also refused permission for the family to see the body.
The hearing was the first in Kano where the Abacha family is still powerful.
The walls and windows of the rooms where the hearings are taking place were covered by posters urging the release of Abacha’s eldest son, Mohammed, currently on trial for murder and embezzlement.
Abacha came from northern Nigeria, and many in the north believe that the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner jailed by Abacha from 1995 to 1998, has been targetting northerners in ongoing prosecutions and investigations.
Modelled on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the human rights panel was set up by Obasanjo in 1999 to gather evidence on human rights violations dating back to the country’s first military coup in 1966. – AFP