Oladipo Diya: A brief biography

The news of the death of General Oladipo Diya, who was the second in command and Chief of General Staff to the late Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha, came in as a shock to Nigerians when his family announced the sad news on Sunday morning.

In this article, NRTC will shed some light on the life of one of Abacha’s closest allies turned enemy.

Background

Born Oladipo Donaldson Diya in Odogbolu, Ogun State on April 3, 1944. He joined the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna at a youthful age, and was part of the active soldiers who fought during the Nigerian Civil War between July 6, 1967, and January 15, 1970.

Oladipo Diya had his primary education at Yaba Methodist Primary School, Lagos and Odogbolu Grammar School and studied Law at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria where he obtained an LLB degree.

Gen. Diya also studied at the Nigerian Law School, and was called to bar as a Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

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Career

Before his appointment as Abacha’s second in command, Diya served as the Chief of Defence Staff, and Military Governor of Ogun State from January 1984 to August 1985.

He was also appointed as the Chief of General Staff in 1993 and later as the Vice Chairman of the Provisional Ruling Council in 1994.

Coup D’etat

On December 21, 1997, Abacha’s regime arrested top army officials including General Diya, Major General Tunji Olanrewaju, Major General Abdulkarim Adisa, and eight others for allegedly plotting to  “violently” overthrow his government.

Oladipo Diya, in collaboration with Ishaya Bamaiyi, and other notable officers were alleged to have demanded four things from Abacha which were:

1. That the original draft of the 1995 constitution should be promulgated without the mutilation to which Abacha was subjecting the document.
2. That the June 12 crisis be resolved and along with it, the release of political prisoners which included the winner of the 12 June 1993 presidential elections, Bashorun MKO Abiola.
3. That Abacha should make an unambiguous public pronouncement that he had no intention of succeeding himself.
4. That an attempt to eliminate Yoruba military officers should be terminated.

Trial

The trials began on the weekend of 14 February 1998 in the central city of Jos; and  they were conducted by “a seven-member panel headed by Major-General Victor Malu, ex-commander of a West African peacekeeping force in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Diya and his co conspirators were tried in a military tribunal and were given the death penalty. Fortunately, upon the sudden death of Abacha in 1998, Diya was pardoned by the late Head of State’s successor, Abdulsalami Abubakar.

The trial drew condemnation from various human rights groups, and Nigeria’s renowned human rights activist and lawyer, Femi Falana, who claimed that the fairness of  the trial had already been prejudiced by the showing of the video clips.

Both Femi Falana and the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) called for an open-court trial for the accused suspects. Throughout  the trial, Gen. Oladipo Diya maintained that he had been framed.

It is also worth noting that one week before his arrest, Diya had allegedly narrowly missed becoming the victim of a bomb explosion at the Abuja airport when he was on his way to represent Abacha at the funeral of the mother of Major-General Lawrence Onoja in Benue State.