Abacha's CSO is messing with our heads

There was a time in this country when the name Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (rtd) could make you pee and poo in your boxers all at once.

Ask General Oladipo Diya (rtd) who was number two man to the late General Sani Abacha back in the ‘90s.

Ask Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who was served the Abacha dose of brutality back in the ‘90s.

Ask the Abiolas, the Ibrus or just about anyone who lived the Abacha hell as a Nigerian.

Ask Sergeant Barnabas Rogers; the other member of the Abacha strike force.

Al-Mustapha was Chief Security Officer (CSO) during the Abacha era—an unsmiling army Major who obeyed Abacha’s draconian orders to a fault.

Al-Mustapha led Abacha’s notorious strike force. Unapologetically so.

The mere look of the man could make your blood curdle.

These days, Al-Mustapha delivers lectures as audiences applaud.

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These days, Al-Mustapha is feted by his folks back home; blood of the innocent still dripping from his hands and mouth.

"On October 21, 1998, I was arrested because of a video cassette, not because of the late Kudirat Abiola. But something happened, which a particular camera in the villa captured”, Al Mustapha said without flinching, while addressing newsmen in Ibadan, Oyo state, after the third Southwest annual lecture titled, 'Developing leadership abilities in youth', recently.

He continued: “So, they wanted to take the videotape and burn it so that Nigerians would not know what happened. That was the beginning of my travails.

"For 15 years, I didn’t have the chance to defend myself in newspaper, radio and television. So, the belief was Mustapha had committed an offence, even before my arrest. But the actual thing that happened to the late MKO Abiola is in that cassette that they want to see, that is why Mustapha was subjected to punishment and I was called names. They have wanted to know the whereabouts of that tape in the last 17 years.

"I appeared before 14 judges in Lagos. As soon as the matter was about to finish, they would stop it and take us to another court. For 15 years, I was in that state. Out of the 15 years, five years and two months, I served in detention with torture. The remaining was between Ikoyi Prisons, Kirikiri Prisons and Kuje Prisons.

"Many people, particularly lawyers, took money from those who were looking for the cassette. They would go to radio and television stations to rain abuses on me, rather than coming to court. But they did not know what was going on in the court of law."

Ironically, Al-Mustapha was rewriting history in the Southwest city of Ibadan—a geographical region where his murderous gang committed the worst atrocities; ferreting perceived enemies of the junta into their graves by night and hounding them by day.

He was reducing years of military brutality into the search for a videotape.

In 2013, an appeal court sitting in Lagos found Al-Mustapha not guilty of murder and he was unleashed back on mankind.

He’s calmer now because a decade and some behind bars, has that effect on you.

But he hasn’t lost any of his razor sharp tongue as you’ve just read above.

That this man could be handed a lectern to lecture youth on leadership in this country, in 2017, revolts to no end.

It could have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

It is little wonder that with lecturers like Al-Mustapha, we are producing young leaders who are just as morally bankrupt as their forebears.

Next we know, Al-Mustapha is a Senator or Governor someday at this rate because we are so alien to learning the lessons from history in this country—even recent history.

Al-Mustapha may have succeeded in fooling a few young people in Ibadan last week because he’s wired to keep getting away with murder.

Kudirat Abiola must have been turning in her grave.