General Oladipo Diya (rtd), a former army chief has died, aged 78.
Oyesinmilola Diya, in a statement signed on behalf of the family, said the late general died in the early hours of Sunday 26th March 2023.
Diya served as the Chief of General staff to former head of state Sani Abacha between 1994 and 1997. He was arrested and sentenced to death for alleged treason in 1997 but regained freedom after Abacha died in 1998.
In 1997 Diya and dissident soldiers in the military allegedly planned to overthrow the regime of Sani Abacha. The alleged coup was uncovered by forces loyal to Abacha, and Diya and his cohorts were jailed. Diya was tried in a military tribunal and was given the death penalty. Upon the untimely death of Abacha in 1998, Diya was pardoned by the late Head of State’ssuccessor, Abdusalami Abubakar.[8]
Most people believed that the much-hyped coup was, in fact, a ploy by Abacha to do away with Diya, who was increasingly becoming popular among the elite and opposition parties, for his moderate views on the situation in Nigeria. Earlier on, Abacha’s loyalists had twice attempted to assassinate Diya, once at the airport and then in the streets, using bombs. But most analysts said that whether motivated by a real coup plot or not, the arrest of General Diya signalled deep divisions within the Nigerian military and reflected rising tensions over General Abacha’s apparent intention to remain in office by engineering his own election as President.[9]
Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, a leading Nigerian human rights campaigner, said: Almost everybody mentioned in the alleged coup had been an Abachaboy, an Abacha henchman, so the situation is very funny. The facts are not clear to us. We want the whole truth. Late Chief Fawehinmi was quoted in The Post Express, a Lagos daily.[10]
The fact that General Diya and almost all of the others arrested were ethnic Yorubafrom the already deeply disaffected southwest was seen by some as a virtual provocation at a time when a country of powerful regional rivalries was entering into a period of renewed civilian politicking. General Abacha, like his inner core of senior officers and much of the army’s rank and file, was a Hausa-speaking northerner of Kanuri origin.[11]
