In his autobiography “A Journey to Service,” IBB opened up Pandora’s box on the known Vatsa’s coup and the reason for the execution of the late General Mamman Vatsa, his childhood friend, former minister of FCT, and ally in the Nigerian army, despite several pleas from writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and JP Clark.
IBB claimed that the late Vatsa had plotted a coup against him, which Vatsa denied after confrontations. Further investigations revealed that Vatsa had paid several officers money to facilitate the coup operation. One of them was Lt-Col. Musa Bitiyong, who was given โฆ50,000.
However, Jonathan Vatsa, a family member of Mamman Vatsa, stated that his brother was unjustly killed. In a statement released on Friday, shortly after Babangida stated that he had to execute Vatsa, who happens to be his childhood friend, because of national security, Jonathan said Mamman Vatsa did not deserve to die.
He said, โMy stance has always been that he was killed unjustly. He never deserved to die. There was no valid reason for his execution, even though the military tribunal sentenced him to death. He had the right to appeal. Before he could even file an appeal, they announced he had been killed an hour earlier. Why the rush to execute an innocent man?
โItโs like winning a case in court and, according to the Nigerian constitution, you have the right to go to a higher court, but before you can do so, they claim your time has run out. They werenโt fair to him. It wasnโt about sacrifice; they saw him as a threat. If he had been alive, they wouldnโt have been able to accomplish the things they did.
He (Babangida) owes Nigerians an apology on so many issues. And itโs not only an apology he owes Nigerians. He should thank God he is still alive and has the opportunity to say, โIโm sorry.โ So, he should equally summon the courage, not only to apologize, but he should also make restitution. Everything that he has taken from Nigerians that was not in the right way, he should make restitution.โ
Consequently, Vatsa and his nine other co-conspirators were executed in March 1986. IBB maintained that “everyone who had signed on to a military career understood clearly what it meant to plan a coup and fail. The penalty was clear and unmistakable.”
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