General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB as he was fondly called, survived one major attempt to overthrow his government, when his Defence Minister, Sani Abacha helped quell the already successful coup led by Major Gideon Orkar.
Orkar and his co-conspirators were eventually caught, and were executed after facing a special military tribunal which found them guilty.
Before the Orkar coup, there was the alleged coup led by then Major Gen. Mamman Vatsa, December 1985, just four months after Babangida took over power from Muhammadu Buhari.
The man Vatsa
Born December 3, 1940, Vatsa joined the army when he enrolled at the Nigerian Military Training College, NMTC, December 10, 1962. He eventually trained the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, after which he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant.
He rose through the ranks, and was eventually appointed Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, by General Babangida who was then the military head of state in 1985. He was then a major general.
Before then, he had been involved in the 1966 counter coup which was masterminded by northern military officers to revenge the January 15, 1966 which had a number of northern soldiers and politicians killed.
The then Colonel Vatsa, who was Commander of 13 Infantry Brigade in Calabar, was also the one who took to the airwaves to oppose Lt. Col Buka Suka Dimka’s February 13, 1976 coup. During the Dimka coup investigation, Vatsa served as Secretary of the Court-Martial Tribunal.
His friendship with Babangida
Vatsa was childhood friends with Babangida and both men were peers who attended the same educational institutions. Like Babangida, Vatsa attended the Provincial Secondary School, Bida from 1957 to 1962 and both started their careers with the Nigerian Army on the same day, December 10, 1962.
Both men remained friends ever since, and acted as best man at each other’s weddings. Their families were also close, as their wives closely related as sisters.
Vatsa’s arrest
Vatsa’s journey to the great beyond started on 17 December 1985 when the military authorities arrested over 100 officers from the Army, Navy and the Air Force. Vatsa was picked up seven days later. They were, for two weeks, investigated by the Brigadier-General Sani Sami-led Preliminary Special Investigation Panel. After this, 17 of them were dragged before a Special Military Tribunal, set up by Bali, at the Defence Minister, at the Brigade of Guards Headquarters, Lagos. The accused officers were Lt.-Cols. Musa Bitiyong, Christian A. Oche, Micheal A Iyorshe, M. Effiong; Majors D.I Bamidele, D.E. West, J.O Onyeke and Tobias G Akwashiki. Others were Captain G.I L Sese, Lt. K.G. Dakpa, Commodore A.A. Ogwiji, Wing Commanders B.E. Ekele, Adamu Sakaba; Squadron Leaders Martin Luther, C. Ode and A Ahura.
The tribunal, chaired by Major General Ndiomu, tried the officers under the Treason and Other Offences (Special Military Tribunal) Decree 1 of 1986. Other members of the tribunal were Brigadier Yerima Yohanna Kure, Commodore Murtala Nyako, Col. Rufus Kupolati, Col E. Opaleye, and Lt. Col. D. Muhammed. Alhaji Mamman Nassarawa, a commissioner of police and Major A Kejawa, the Judge Advocate, were also members. The IBB regime accused Vatsa of trying to overthrow it by hiding behind a farming loan to Lt-Col Bitiyong, a charge which the general denied. As Nowa Omogui, a military analyst explains in his essay, The Vatsa Conspiracy, Bitiyong was allegedly tortured to implicate Vatsa “by making reference to certain private political conversations they had, which Vatsa denied.”
There were further allegations that Luther, Oche, Ogwiji and Bitiyong held a meeting at the Lagos Sheraton Hotel and Towers in November 1985. Iyorchie, Bitiyong, Oche, Ekele, Sakaba and Bamidele also allegedly met in Makurdi. Allegations such as the diversion of the presidential jet to a pre-arranged location by pilots in the executive fleet (Luther and Ahura), as Omogui put it, were floated. Oche allegedly held a meeting with Major Akwashiki, Commander of the 6th Battalion, Bonny Camp, and Onyeke, after a game of squash in Lagos and spoke about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan. Akwashiki was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life imprisonment. He was however released 10 years later by the Abacha regime.
Oche, it was also alleged, mentioned the plot to his nephew, Peter Odoba, a young lieutenant of the Brigade of Guards who, as Omogui wrote, informed then Lt. Hamza al-Mustapha, an intelligence officer to the Chief of Army Staff. Obada was charged with “concealment, recommended for dismissal and a long jail term.” On 6 March 1986, however, Vatsa, Iyorshe, Bamidele, Ogwiji, Ekele, Sakaba, Luther, Akura were executed.Vatsa had taken his trial and sentence with cheerful equanimity like the writer that he was. His vintage smiles revealed more than his words. “I leave you with smiles as smiles surprise people. But I will tell members of the Nigerian Army that the day you start insulting yourselves, others begin to join you,” he said.
To buttress his position that there was rivalry between IBB and Vatsa, Nowa Omogui referred to an interview that Eniola Bello of THISDAY had with IBB in 2001 when he turned 60. ‘“Babangida said it was after Vatsa’s coup was foiled that he realized his childhood friend and classmate planned the coup in line with a deep-seated personal rivalry, going back to their days as young officers. He said that unconsciously, he and Vatsa had been great competitors; that as a young officer, whatever he did Vatsa equally did and whatever Vatsa achieved, he also went after.
He said it was Lt. Gen. T.Y. Danjuma who pointed this out to him from their military records.” Babangida gave this rationalization to justify his refusal to pardon Vatsa. He said when he first heard his childhood friend was planning a coup, he decided to do nothing but monitor him. He added, however, that Vatsa came to him to complain thus: You heard I was planning a coup and couldn’t even ask me. What kind of friend are you? To this, Babangida said he replied: I didn’t believe it, or are you planning a coup? He said Vatsa replied in the negative and the matter was forgotten until there was evidence of the plot. Babangida said he instructed that Vatsa be arrested and detained to prevent him from impeding investigation into the matter.
Babangida argued: “However, Vatsa tried to escape through the air conditioner hole. I couldn’t understand why he was trying to escape if he was not involved in a coup plot. But while watching the video of his execution, I turned my eyes away when I saw him remove his watch and ask a soldier to give his wife. I couldn’t continue watching.” Babangida added that he couldn’t retire or imprison Vatsa because he believed the guy could still have planned a coup either in retirement or in prison. “Rawlings did it in Ghana and you know Vatsa was very stubborn,” IBB said.
Omogui, however, lamented the tragedy that befell Vatsa: “Vatsa maintained to the very end that the money was for farming. Others alleged, however, that after being tortured for two days, Bitiyong implicated Vatsa by making reference to certain private political conversations they had, which Vatsa denied. But Vatsa was accused of harbouring “bad blood” against his friend and classmate Babangida, dating back to the Buhari regime and possibly earlier. He was also obliquely accused of reporting Babangida’s coup plot to Buhari before he left the country for pilgrimage along with Major General Tunde Idiagbon in August, 1985. Actions he later took as a Minister to accelerate many military applications for certificates of occupancy for land in Abuja, came to be viewed as efforts to buy the support of one or two of the plotters.
Rumors that a civilian had introduced him at a party as Nigeria’s next President were even aired. All of this was, of course, circumstantial. But they took him to the stake, which was quite an anti-climax to the career of a brilliant man who never took part in any coup in Nigeria. Indeed, Mamman Vatsa was the first to go on air in Calabar to denounce the Dimka coup, and was later the Secretary of the Obada panel that tried Dimka and others in 1976. This little detail may have earned him some latent enmity in certain circles of the Army which later contributed to his death.”
There is also a very strong belief that Vatsa may have been a victim of political intrigues because of his intellectual sagacity, being a writer and soldier-poet, and his significant indifference to the military politics at that time. In fact, his ordeal had attracted three leading Nigerian literary icons, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and John Pepper Clark Bekederemo, who had gone to plead with Babangida for clemency, only to be shocked by news of his execution few minutes after departing Dodan Barracks, venue of the meeting.