IRIN Focus on summons on former rulers by rights panel

A body set up to investigate human rights abuses spanning more than three decades in Nigeria winds up its public
hearings in September, but one key question remains unanswered: Will three former military leaders invited to appear before it heed its summons?

General Muhammadu Buhari seized power after sacking an elected government
in 1983. Twenty months later, in 1985, he was ousted by his army chief,
General Ibrahim Babangida, who went on to rule for eight years. General
Abdulsalami Abubakar succeeded the late General Sani Abacha after his death in 1998, and initiated political reforms that resulted in the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999.
The Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, set up by Obasanjo in the first weeks after he took office, is headed by a respected retired supreme court justice, Chukwudifu Oputa. The commission insists that the three generals have serious cases of humans rights violations to answer, but none has so far kept his appointment with it.

As the controversy over whether they should appear before the commission
rages, Obasanjo has weighed in in favour of the generals’ appearance. “I
don’t think anybody is above the law. The Oputa panel is not a court of law,
it is a truth and fact-finding commission. Anybody who has been invited should appear before it,” he said on state television late in July.

Obasanjo has appeared once already before the commission. He has declared himself prepared to go before it again in response to a petition filed by the
family of late music star Fela Anikulapo-Kuti for the destruction of his residence. Kuti’s home was burnt by soldiers, allegedly on Obasanjo’s orders, while he was a military ruler in the 1970s.

Buhari

Buhari is implicated in the failed abduction in 1984 of Umaru Dikko, who was a minister in the government he toppled and a strident critic of his regime. Dikko, who fled Nigeria after the coup, was seized from his London home by Nigerian agents working with an Israeli doctor. He was drugged and bundled into a diplomatic crate ready for a Lagos-bound flight before the British police intervened. The agents were subsequently jailed in London but Dikko, who returned from exile in 1995, has also taken the case before the HRVIC.

Buhari, whose regime was renowned for its draconian style, also has to contend with a petition from the family of a convicted drug pusher executed by his government in April 1985. Batholomew Owoh had been arrested for drug offences before Buhari came to power. Buhari had him executed, along with two other convicts, under a drug offences decree which prescribed death by firing squad for offenders and which he made retroactive.

Babangida

Babangida, for his part, continues to be dogged by suspicion of involvement in the 1986 parcel bomb killing of prominent journalist Dele Giwa. State security and military intelligence agents who interrogated the journalist over allegations of subversion and later called his wife to ask for directions to his home a day before his death are suspected of killing him. A colleague of the deceased who was having breakfast with him when the parcel arrived and survived the blast recalled Giwa’s last words as being: “This must be from the President.”

Lawyer Gani Fawehinmi who represents the interests of Giwa and his ‘Newswatch’ magazine has tried in vain to have the suspected security agents brought to trial. He filed a petition to the commission seeking Babangida’s appearance to answer questions about the murder.

Abubakar

Abubakar has been invited to appear before the commission in connection with damning evidence provided by key security and intelligence officials of the former Abacha regime accusing him of looting the treasury and insinuating that his government masterminded the murder of politician Moshood Abiola.

Abiola was widely believed to have won the 1993 presidential elections annulled by Babangida. Abacha had seized power in the turmoil following the annulment and jailed Abiola when he laid claim to the presidency on the grounds that he had won the election. He remained in detention until his death, apparently from heart failure, in July 1998, one month after Abacha died of the same ailment.

Their reasons not appearing before the commission

While Buhari and Babangida have tried to give reasons for their non-appearance, Abubakar has remained mum over the allegations against him.
Buhari told an interviewer recently that because the offence of which Dikko accuses him was committed outside Nigeria, it was beyond the scope of the commission unless the law that established the body was amended. Some of his critics have countered that the drug offences for which he ordered the execution of three people were, like the attempted abduction, committed outside Nigeria.

Babangida had initially alleged threats to his personal security in Lagos, where the hearing for his case was first scheduled, expressing a preference for Abuja. He later secured a court injunction restraining the commission from compelling him to appear before it.

Justice Oputa has said that in deference to their former positions as Nigerian rulers he would not order their arrest but would use gentle persuasion to make them appear.
Lawyer threatens international action
However, Fawehinmi has threatened to take the matter to international courts if Babangida fails to honour the summons when the commission, currently on recess, resumes hearings early in September. “I plan to utilise all international avenues to bring to justice these ex-heads of state, particularly Babangida,” he told IRIN.
Options he intends to employ do not exclude petitioning international criminal tribunals and filing charges against them in Belgian courts which have assumed jurisdiction for human rights offences committed anywhere in the world.

“Anything that I can hold onto to bring them to justice anywhere in the globe, I will use. I’ve started my investigations and as soon as I’m ready Nigerians will hear from me,” Fawehinmi said.