Dr. Oluranti Afowowe, a respected Nigerian historian, has unveiled a dramatic episode from General Sani Abacha’s military regime, exposing a web of mistrust and covert surveillance among Nigeria’s top military officers.
According to an exclusive interview with Edmund Obilo on August 23, 2025, Dr. Afowowe stated that General Oladipo Diya, the Chief of General Staff, was a key figure for senior officers due to his accessibility, unlike the elusive Abacha, who rarely engaged with others.
Dr. Afowowe revealed that during one significant meeting, four of Nigeria’s seven General Officer Commanders, accompanied by the Commander of the Brigade of Guards, visited Diya to express their dissatisfaction with Abacha’s leadership.
They reminded Diya of their prior objections to Abacha’s appointment as head of state, noting that he had failed to honor their agreed-upon plans.
The officers aired their grievances openly, unaware that some among them were secretly recording the conversation with hidden devices concealed under their uniforms.
The secret recordings reportedly played a pivotal role in the 1997 coup plot allegations, which led to Diya’s arrest and trial alongside other officers.
In his words, “Abacha was rarely available to anybody, so most of the officers were always in General Diya’s office, because they were close. These are people that had long relationships with him from the military, so they were always in his office to discuss and the rest. So there came a day when the Chief of staff came with four GOC’s out of the seven. They said, ‘we warned you when you said it should be General Abacha that should be head of state, now the things that we have agreed on, he has not done it.’ That was what they discussed and left, not knowing that some of the officers that came to him had a recording device under their uniform and got everything recorded.”
