By Tunde Olusunle
Except for the release and launch of his controversial book, Vindication of a General in 2017, which accorded him some media visibility, Ishaya Rizi Bamaiyi, has maintained a very low profile over the years. For those who do not know, or who have forgotten him, Bamaiyi, a lieutenant general, was the last Chief of Army Staff, (COAS), under the rulership of Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s one time Head of State.
Abacha was in office between
November 1993 and June 1998. Bamaiyi spent eight years, in the aftermath of the
enthronement of civil rule in 1999, in prison. He was supposedly implicated in
the attempted murder of Alex Ibru, founder and publisher of The
Guardian newspapers who also served as Minister of Internal Affairs,
under Abacha.
Ibru who allowed professional independence for his newspaper stable under Abacha’s unpopular fistic rule, was shot on Falomo Bridge in Lagos early February 1996, by suspected agents of state. Principal suspect in the attempted Ibru murder case, Barnabas Jabila, known by the alias “Sergeant Rogers” a notorious hitman for the Abacha killer squad, had framed Bamaiyi for ordering the annihilation of the newspaper magnate.
