S2 EP6: The Execution

Illustration by Sarah Kanu with design by Dami Moji for THE REPUBLIC.

THE REPUBLIC PODCAST

Our central question is why did Abacha uphold the execution verdict despite the calls and pleas for him not to? Why was the execution also rather hastily carried out?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3jFRuUf6VWTkPTz5cIb4fa?si=o_BTItF4TxuCYINPtXAxzQ

SANI ABACHA

This regime will be found humane and decisive. We will not condone nor tolerate any act of indiscipline. Any attempt to test our will, will be decisively dealt with.

JOHN MAJOR

‘Prime Minister, could you give us your response to the events in Nigeria?’
‘I said yesterday that I thought this was a fraudulent trial, a bad verdict, an unjust sentence, and it is now being followed by judicial murder.’

WALE LAWAL

One could say that between late 1993 to 1994, Nigeria’s head of state, General Sani Abacha had been consolidating power and legitimizing his regime. By 1995, Abacha entered full dictator mode. In February 1995, he began his plans to install himself as Nigeria’s President for life.

PROF TOYIN FALOLA

It was rumored, when he sent a delegation to North Korea, that he went there to study the model of creating a permanent self-rule.

On 8 February 1995, Abacha dissolved his Federal Executive Council. The Federal Executive Council consisted of ministers who were in charge of key ministries of the government under Abacha’s military regime. Abacha set up a new 36-man Executive Council to prepare Nigeria for a transition into a democratic regime with a single political party system in which he would emerge as the only candidate. Later that month, after the Abacha regime arrested the Nigerian writer Mohammed Sule, the Constitutional Rights Project, a Nigerian Human Rights organization, published a report declaring 1994 as the worst year in Nigerian history for human rights. Little did they know that Abacha was just getting started. Professor Toyin Falola and the novelist Chimeka Garricks explained what this moment felt like at the time.