Millions of Nigerians have always credited the April 22, 1990 abortive coup against Gen. Mohammed Babangida to Major Gideon Orkar. However, Col. Tony Nyiam, (retd), one of the few surviving ring leaders of the coup has made a shocking revelation.

“It was one Mohammed Abubakar that killed Col. U.K Bello, General Babangida’s ADC and not me. I have said that over and over and the chap who made that remark was just being used by some people. The issue is very clear.”

“I would not have been the President of Nigeria if the coup had succeeded. I was the most senior but the coup idea was not mine. The coup idea was that of Major Saliba Mukoro. I was a Colonel and he was a junior Major. Many people who were up there were much more senior to Saliba Mukoro. But it was his idea, and of course, a group of Niger Delta officers who were aggrieved about the way their environments were being destroyed and they felt that they had to continue where Mukoro stopped.”

“It was then they started and they had oil in their areas. So they started and in the action, majority of them were Ijaw officers. These men approached me and told me what I already knew. I had the conscience not to speak with them even though that was why I joined them in February, two months to the action that they had been planning for months before.”

“People call it Gideon Orkar coup and not Saliba Mukoro coup because Gideon Orkar was the one who gave the speech and if you look closely they retained him because he was the noblest among all of us. In terms of integrity and in terms of readiness that all he wanted is for Nigeria to be a better place. He was much more noble in the sense that he also made the ultimate sacrifice.”

“Mukoro and I escaped the same day. We escaped together. Mukoro during the action, at times, we blame him, left his post, which was to lead to the capture of the Ikeja Cantonment which was very strategic. He left that post to come to where I was in charge of the command of Dodan Barracks and FRCN (Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria). He came there and one of the reasons he came there, I think he was afraid that Gideon Orkar and I would take over the government. Because, if he had played his role, there would have not been a reinforcement, because the plan was that the officers who were to reinforce them in the second phase which was to be led by Mukoro, would come from there. That is where the reinforcement came from.”

“Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar who was in the inquiry heard what they said and being the kind of man he is, went back to the structure that we have agitated. That is why it was our own action that brought about the creation of Delta State, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ekiti and I hope you remember and unfortunately, my own part of the country Ogoja, which is part of the core Calabar. Ogoja is till today still left as part of the state. All the other provinces in the whole of the country are now in one or two states. So you can see now why I am also saying that my people were short-changed.”

– Culled from The Sun