Major Seun Fadipe (retd), an ex-Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Lt-Gen Oladipo Diya, has shared details of how the late General Sani Abacha, ex-military Head of State, narrowly escaped a planned abduction in Enugu State in 1997.
Fadipe was the CSO to Diya who was the Chief of General Staff, the then de facto vice president of Nigeria under the military administration of Abacha. Fadipe was a guest on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
Fadipe recalled how Diya and his co-travellers planned to abduct Abacha and force him to resign in Enugu but the then head of state caught wind of the development and aborted the trip at the last hour.
He said, “There was a coup, whether it was now a phantom one or it was a setup, it’s immaterial now because that’s the problem I had with my boss until he died.
“I was a major, if I wanted to be involved in a coup as a major, it would be a violent coup because there was no way I would do a palace coup because I had a lot of seniors ahead of me. I never planned any coup, I never intended to plan any coup but I got involved through my boss.”
“As of that time, Abacha was doing well but because he wanted to transmit to a civilian regime, things went haywire.”
