Sani Abacha

Nigerian military dictator (1993-1998)

• Born: September 20, 1943
• Birthplace: Kano, Nigeria
• Died: June 8, 1998
• Place of death: Abuja, Nigeria

Cause of notoriety: During his repressive regime, Abacha hanged environmental and oil minority rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni compatriots, killed or jailed political opponents, and siphoned billions of dollars of state funds into foreign banks.

Active: November, 1993-June, 1998

Locale: Nigeria, West Africa

Early Life

Born of Kanuri parentage in Kano, Northern Nigeria, Sani Abacha (SAWN-ee AH-bah-chah) attended elementary school before commencing a career in the army. Though limited in intellect, he had natural cunning. For two decades, between the early 1960’s and the early 1980’s, Abacha polished his military knowledge by attending a series of military academies and courses in Nigeria, England, and the United States: the Nigerian Military Training College in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria; the Mons Defence Cadet College in Aldershot, England; the School of Infantry in Warminster, England; the Command and Staff College in Jaji, Nigeria; the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru, Nigeria; and an international defense course in the United States.

Military Career

Abacha served as a lieutenant at the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). He then became a colonel in 1975 and a brigadier in 1982. On December 31, 1983, Abacha was involved in the successful military coup against the civilian regime of Alhaji Shehu Shagari; Major-General Muhammadu Buhari took control of the country. Abacha was a member of the Supreme Military Council and served as the general officer commanding the second infantry division of the Nigerian Army.

After a palace coup that overthrew General Buhari in August, 1985, Abacha became the chief of army staff and de facto deputy to General Ibrahim Babangida, the self-styled military president. Under Babangida, Abacha, already a major-general, was promoted to the ranks of lieutenant-general and general and was appointed defense minister in 1990.

Following the annulment of the June, 1993, presidential election, which was won by the Yoruba businessman Moshood K. O. Abiola, protesters rioted, and President Babangida was forced to step aside and give power to an interim national government, headed by Abiola’s kinsman Ernest Shonekan. Shonekan was supposed to rule until new elections could be held in February, 1994. However, Abacha, who was retained as defense minister and the de facto second-in-command in the Shonekan government, overthrew the interim government on November 17, 1993.

Reign of Terror

Abacha immediately abolished the democratic structures at the state and local government levels and reestablished full-blown military rule. He then proceeded to decimate all forms of opposition to his rule. Abiola, the winner of the June, 1993, presidential election, was put into prison, where he remained for five years and then died a month after Abacha’s death in 1998. Abacha also eliminated well-known opposition figures who formed the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO): Anthony Enahoro, a leading figure in the anticolonial movement of the 1940’s and 1950’s, fled into exile together with scores of other NADECO activists. Alfred Rewane, another septuagenarian nationalist, and Abiola’s wife, Kudirat, were assassinated by persons who were later unmasked as members of Abacha’s killer squad. Abacha’s paramilitary organization also caused panic by exploding bombs in cities and then ascribing such acts to the opposition.

Abacha also contrived coup plots in which he implicated opponents of his regime and journalists. Former military head of state Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, were detained and tried under inhumane conditions and jailed for treason in 1995. Yar’Adua died in prison, allegedly by poisoning from an agent of the Abacha regime.

While Abacha was suppressing internal opposition, he rarely ventured out of the country. At home, he relied on a security apparatus coordinated by his chief security officer. He also amassed incredible wealth for his family and friends by siphoning billions of dollars of state funds into foreign banks.

Abacha perhaps gained greatest criticism by ruthlessly crushing the nonviolent resistance movement of the Ogoni people in the oil-rich region of the Niger Delta. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was led by Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmental activist who called attention to the ways in which international oil companies, especially Shell Oil, were extracting large oil profits from Ogoni lands. MOSOP demanded a portion of the proceeds of oil extraction and remediation of environmental damage to Ogoni lands. In May, 1994, Saro-Wiwa was arrested and accused of incitement to murder following the deaths of four Ogoni elders believed to be sympathetic to the military. Saro-Wiwa denied the charges but was imprisoned for more than a year before being found guilty. In a move that attracted intense international criticism, Saro-Wiwa was sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal. The hasty execution of the Ogoni activists in November, 1995, despite appeals from world leaders such as the Roman Catholic pope and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, sealed Abacha’s reputation as a bloodthirsty tyrant.

Impact

Sani Abacha died suddenly in 1998. News of his death was received with relief and spontaneous jubilation across Nigeria. He was buried in Kano without the military honors typical of his position.

Four billion dollars stolen by him and his fronts were traced to Middle Eastern and Western banks, only a small fraction of which was then repatriated to the country. His children and business associates profited from the importation of fuel into Nigeria.

Abacha is remembered for his intransigence, despotism, and corruption. His disdain for world opinion and his repressive tactics toward political opponents, nonviolent resistance movements, and the press made Nigeria a pariah worldwide. However, Abacha’s informal division of Nigeria’s thirty-six states into six geopolitical zones outlived him, and the Obasanjo administration militarized the oil-rich territory of Izon in the Niger Delta, much like what occurred in the Ogani region under Abacha.

Bibliography

Kukah, Matthew Hassan. Democracy and Civil Society in Nigeria. London: Spectrum, 1999. An authoritative study of the role of civil society in the tumultuous history of democratic struggles in Nigeria.

Maier, Karl. This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis. London: Penguin, 2000. A foreign journalist gives a graphic account of Nigeria’s political crisis, especially following the 1990’s.

Osaghae, Eghosa. Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence. London: Hurst, 1998. A scholarly analysis of Nigeria’s postindependence political developments.