Oladipo Diya - Death Sentence

Death Sentence

After his arrest. A military tribunal sitting in the Nigerian town of Jos sentenced six people including Lieutenant General Oladipo Diya to death by firing squad in April 1998. The accused were brought to the main military barracks in Jos for the trial. Security was tight, and the men on trial were chained hand and foot during the proceedings. In a dramatic statement at the outset of the trial, General Diya asserted that he had been entrapped by another officer close to General Abacha, Gen. Ishaya Bamayi, who approached him with the idea of mounting a coup. Given the explosive nature of the charge, the Government then closed the trial to the public The head of the Military tribunal, General Victor Malu, the former commander of the West African regional peacekeeping force ECOMOG, responding to Lieutenant General Diya's defence that people at the very top framed him said it was not necessary to know who had initiated the conspiracy. He noted that all Lieutenant General Diya had to do was prove that he had not been part of the plot at any stage. General Malu assured the defendants that they would given a fair trial and unlimited access to information they needed to defend themselves. This tribunal will not conduct or tolerate a trial by ambush, he said.

The South African Government questioned the secrecy surrounding the trial and warned of the probability that there could be an unfavorable reaction, both in Nigeria and internationally, to a carrying out of the sentences. The sentence was later commuted by the Head of State, Abdusalami Abubakar, who succeeded General Abacha.