Adefuye benefitted from Abacha’s regime — Opadokun

Chief Ayo Opadokun

The General-Secretary, National Democratic Coalition, Chief Ayo Opadokun, in this interview with LEKE BAIYEWU, denies series of allegations against the group by Senator Anthony Adefuye, a close associate of the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola

Senator Adefuye, in an exclusive interview with Sunday Punch last week, accused leaders of the National Democratic Coalition of taking bribes to betray Abiola. How true is the allegation?

I’m not just a leader; I’m the founding General-Secretary of that organisation. Tony Adefuye is just engaging himself in revisionism; he is trying to rewrite history. I think this is a very dubious attempt to whitewash his ugly past. I don’t know what really got over him that he would lie so profusely on the pages of a newspaper. It was a great surprise.

When he talked about the dubious statement by al-Mustapha (former Chief of Staff to late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha), who was facing a criminal murder trial, and said when NADECO members went to Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, they frowned when they were going in and patted themselves on the back when they were going out – that they had taken something. Fortunately for me, it was just two days after I returned from America and had to interact with the media to tell them that he was a frustrated, very unreasonable pretender.

I was in my second detention at Ikoyi Prison when Abacha died. I was released after about eight days and Abubakar had taken over. And it was the fourth or fifth day after my release that we got an invitation from Abubakar. The five of us who went were Senator Abraham Adesanya, as the leader of NADECO at home (Nigeria); (former Attorney-General of the Federation) Chief Bola Ige; Senator Francis Okpozo from Delta; Dr. Arthur Nwankwo, Deputy Chairman of NADECO and Chancellor of the Eastern Mandate Union; and myself as the general-secretary. We went in the day time and never accepted any offer or even for transportation. From the presidency (in Abuja), we went straight to the airport and returned to this place (Lagos).

But were you offered anything?

Never. Nobody could have done a thing like that to people like us. It was too late in the day. That is why it’s a little bit awkward and callous for these irredeemable gluttons, whose lifestyle is about power and money, to accuse people like us of collecting anything. I know Adefuye very well and he knows me. The fact that he could make an assault on our collective platform so disparagingly, attempting to disparage us, beats my imagination. When Al-Mustapha made that ridiculous statement and I addressed the media, during his second appearance at the High Court here (Lagos), he denounced it. He said he didn’t say that we collected money.

Another character of that same infamy, Dr. Frederick Fasehun (Founder, Oodu’a Peoples Congress) said openly that he thought these were very trusted Yoruba leaders and that he didn’t know they had been doing things like that. But I challenged him. He had even gone ahead to destroy himself the more by leading Al-Mustapha, who (allegedly) killed so many Yoruba people, back to his Kano base in a chartered aircraft. It couldn’t have been the salary that Al-Mustapha was paid that was so enough to give him a chartered trip back to Kano and Fasehun was the first to show up from the aircraft – so that if anybody wanted to do anything, he would be the one to receive the bucks. They are swimming in the same ocean.

I must let you know this: Adefuye has always been part of any of these governments – any government in power. His relationship with Gen. Oladipo Diya (Abacha’s second in command) assisted him to make money through contracts and other means, while we sacrificed our lives for the progress, development and the respectability of the Yoruba nation. And we were put into jails, we came back, we went back. The Adefuyes of this world were busy in Abuja until the events of arrest, detention and trial of Diya took place.

He accused NADECO leaders of not seeking Abiola’s release but another election. What were the matters for negotiation at the meeting?

We had two meetings with then new Head of State (Abubakar). The first, when we got there, it was about the release of MKO Abiola. Secondly, we were concerned that for the peace and unity of Nigeria, Abiola had to be given back his victory and he should head a government of national unity. Those were the two major pillars. And that the first job that government must do was to convoke a sovereign national conference, where national questions would be answered. They were that Nigerians should be given the freedom, for the first time, to tell whether or not they want to a part of this place called Nigeria. Then, we must determine the platform and on which basis; what would be the term of reference and modus operandi. These were our positions and we made a very strong case. Abubakar is still alive; we virtually succeeded in persuading him to take our position except for the negative intervention of his deputy, Admiral. Mike Akhigbe. He was the one who said Nigerians didn’t want any other ad hoc government and that the existing government was close to the grass roots. He played on words and we had to close up that day.

We believed that if Abiola was released, it was going to solve all the major problems. We requested for an official visit to him (in detention); we were promised that on the second invitation, government would allow us to see Abiola. That was what happened at the first meeting.

When we got to the second meeting, Gen. Abubakar was talking about the composition of his executive. We told him, as a body, that none of us was interested in any office. No NADECO man would be available. Our concern was the restructuring of the skewed, lopsided national structure that had made Nigeria unworkable; that has been our lot. Our concern for the convocation of an SNG started in 1990. We were led by late Chief Alao Aka-Bashorun, the then President of the Nigeria Bar Association between 1988 and 1990. We scheduled the first meeting at the National Theatre. A large number of us were already close to the venue, including late Chief Anthony Enahoro, only for us to be confronted by (former military dictator, Gen. Ibrahim) Babangida’s security forces – very well armed force elements who said there could be no meeting at the venue. This is to show you where we were coming from. We had a very strong resolve that Nigeria will not be able to right the wrongs against it until we do the first thing first.

Adefuye also accused NADECO leaders of not being loyal to Abiola because he once opposed late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was their political godfather. Is this true?

It was a foolish statement, very inaccurate. In Ige’s house in February, 1993, when Babangida prohibited all the aspirants from the National Republican Congress and the Social Democratic Party from contesting further into the presidential primaries, he said he opened the door for new elements. Abiola went to inform Pa Adekunle Ajasin that he would like to contest. Ajasin asked him to talk to me and he did. We organised a meeting at Ige’s home and we volunteered all  information that we had; that Babangida, through some of his agents, was raising another large group of Yoruba to express their interest in contesting for the presidency. We reviewed it and concluded that there was an attempt to divide the solid vote of Yorubaland so that it would not speak in one voice. We decided that among those who were willing to run – and there were quite a number of them as of that time, including Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi – we must pick the best with other determinants.

For example, we knew that Abiola was a close friend and confidant of Babangida. If he said he had gone to Babangida and his friend had given his word that he was willing to leave office, we had no reason to doubt him. Secondly, Abiola had built a large crowd of connections all over Nigeria through his philanthropy, religion, culture and education. Perhaps, he would be able to cash in on the goodwill he had built over the years. We agreed that all our people in other states should work for his emergence. We resolved that no highly-valued aspirant should be allowed to emerge from any other Yoruba state. We were satisfied that he had both human and material resources to run the race. We said if we, the Afenifere (Yoruba’s umbrella socio-political group), utilised our platform to support him and were able to convince our allies all over the country, the likelihood of his winning was higher. And that was what we did.

What about the allegation that the leaders persuaded Abiola not to take a bail offer presented to him?

I am telling you that it was false for Adefuye to say that we did not allow Abiola to accept the bail offer. The allegation was false, very unreasonable. We, who sacrificed everything that we had to promote Abiola to win an election, ought to on behalf of the large crowd of supporters and citizens be happy that Abiola would be given back his liberty so that the programme titled ‘Farewell to poverty’ contained in the ‘Hope ‘93’ manifesto upon which he campaigned should be a thing of joy to us. It was false in all circumstances for anybody to imagine that we persuaded him not to take the bail offer.

Adefuye claimed that Al-Mustapha had a video recording of your visit to the presidency, showing how NADECO leaders received the bribe.

I’m challenging Al-Mustapha – now, he’s a free man – to come up with any video or photograph of any kind. You’ll find out that he’ll not be able to do so. We are convinced that we are not wrongly-headed elements. We’re not in the business of promoting the best for the society with the interest of enriching ourselves. He is only engaging himself in revisionism.