On Saturday, 17 August,
friends and well-wishers will be sending goodwill messages to greet former
Nigerian military president (from 27 August 1985 to 26 August 1993), Ibrahim
Badamasi Babangida on his 78th birthday.
By Ademola Adegbamigbe
Sava Farm, a nondescript
piece of property situated at Malali area of Kaduna city, does not reveal the
importance of its occupant. It is owned by Hajia Sufiya, widow of General
Mamman Vatsa, executed over a controversial coup by the regime of General
Ibrahim Babangida in 1986. With its brown gate, half brick, half metal
perimeter fence that looks as if it would collapse any time with the heavy
rains, and the rusty signboard defaced by four posters of Isiah Balat who is
campaigning to be governor of Kaduna State, the farm stands as a relic, in
sharp contrast to the more prosperous-looking Federal Government College and
the Kaduna State Water Board nearby.
The bushy farm looks like
an abandoned American ranch after a typical Red Indian invasion. An aide who
doubles as the gate keeper opened the gate. As the reporters’ feet shuffled on
the cobblestones that had seen better days, a quick survey of the premises
showed a once-buoyant animal husbandry business. Another gate, on the left,
leads to where Sufiya lives. With a quick detour, the visitors were ushered
into the front of the main bungalow. The circular forecourt is habitat to
flowers crying for pruning. Peeping out of the circle was a white Mercedez Benz
190 that stood as if, driven by some invisible hands from outer space, it was
ready to engage the reverse gear, receding further into the dense flowers, away
from the intruders…A ricketty peugeot pick -up van and an abandoned white farm
truck complete the picture of neglect. Sufiya’s balcony is a testament to a
woman who, when she was happy, was in love with nature. Her suspended empty
bird cages, creeping flowers, pots of cacti and aloe vera stand as proof. A
long white hose meandered on the floor, a mark of half-hearted gardening.
Like her property, Hajia
Sufiya Vatsa is a lone historical figure, abandoned in her woes and penury by
successive governments after IBB executed her husband over a questionable coup.
During a visit to her Sava Farm by three journalists from TheNEWS, the woman
cut the picture of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, who,
after being disappointed by her suitor, refuses to see the sun, fails to change
her wedding gown and leaves her watch permanently “at twenty minutes to nine.”
Unlike Miss Havisham, however, Sufiya’s separation from her husband came from
the machination of a third party – IBB. Since then, life has been horrible for
her family.
Daily, Sufiya sits by two
high-definition photographs of her husband: one in mufti and the other in
military gear. When this magazine visited her, she wore a brown wrapper, deep
brown headgear with an ankara top embossed with brown irregular designs. She
sat behind a small centre table set with assorted drinks, beverages and local
herbal solutions. In front of her was a shelf with a rectangular mirror, on
which an old television set was placed.
Another symbol of her state
of mind and the neglect she suffers was an abandoned grey aquarium, tilting
against the wall under the portrait of a medieval soldier riding a chariot,
shooting an arrow. Under another congested table in front of her was a green
book, Makers of Modern Africa. A reading lamp, about four chandeliers and a
dining table required dusting just as her life requires rehabilitation. An
extension of her melancholy was that, contrary to expectation, she declined an
interview since it would bring back a deluge of old, painful memories.
Sufiya’s journey into the
abyss of poverty began on 23 December 1985. The family had just concluded plans
to travel to Calabar because, usually, they spent the yuletide in the Cross
River State capital (Sufiya is Efik), the Id-el-Fitri in Minna, Niger State and
the Id-el Kabir in Kaduna. After the necessary packing for the trip, the family
waited for the return of General Vatsa from the Armed Forces Ruling Council
(AFRC) meeting he had attended. He returned home late, so the trip was
postponed till the following day. At about 12 midnight, while Sufiya was
watching a movie in her bedroom, her husband, who was working in his study,
rushed in to tell her that IBB had sent for him. The wife protested that it was
too late in the night and that Vatsa should phone his boss to shift the meeting
to the following morning.
As this debate was going
on, Lt. Col. U.K. Bello led a team of soldiers to Vatsa’s home at Rumens
Street, Ikoyi, Lagos. The soldiers, who came with armored vehicles and military
vans, surrounded the house. Vatsa told his wife who was upstairs to peep
through the window. Unable to contain her fear, she rushed downstairs and
insisted that if the soldiers would take away her husband, then she had to
follow them. Sufiya insisted on driving Vatsa in her own Pengeot 404. At this
point, Vatsa directed that the children be woken up, and he kissed them one
after the other.
Haruna, the first son, who
was in Military Training School, Zaria, followed them downstairs, weeping.
While UK Bello drove in the fore of the convoy, Sufiya and Vatsa were
chauffeur-driven in their own car in what later turned out to be a merry-go-round
about Lagos till about 2 am when they stopped at 7 Cameron Road, Ikoyi. Vatsa
was ordered out of the car. As he made to enter the building, Sufiya ran after
him but she was rudely pulled back by the soldiers. The General turned and gave
his wife a bear hug, an embrace that was their last. He urged his wife to take
care of their children. Sufiya returned home dejected. To her shock, the military
authorities had withdrawn the official domestic staff. At 5a.m, she prepared
breakfast of fried yam and pawpaw, drove to her husband’s detention centre but
was told she could not bring in any food.
Another surprise awaited
Vatsa’s wife. A soldier came in and said: “Madam, Oga’s wife, Mrs Mariam
Babangida, said I should bring General Vatsa’s telephone handset to her.”
Fatima, Vatsa’s daughter, clung to the gadget. A struggle ensued between the
15-year-old girl and the soldier, whose muscles bulged like the biceps of a
Michaelangelo’s statue. Sufia asked her daughter to let go of the probably
bugged set.
Worse still, some gruff,
fierce-looking soldiers, led by Vatsa’s former Aide-de-Camp (ADC), Captain
Maku, an intelligence officer of Idoma extraction, had led other soldiers in
laying siege to the family’s house. “Madam, no visitors, no phone calls, no
going out,” Maku snapped as he reclined on a settee in the living room, an
improvised toothpick, peeping out of a corner of his mouth. When Sufiya
protested that the family needed to buy foodstuff, Maku, whose friendly
disposition when he was Vatsa’s batman had changed, commanded that the woman
and her children “must manage.”
After three days of
captivity, Sufiya could not endure it any longer. She told Maku: “Look, I am
going to the market. If you refuse me, it means between you and I, somebody
will die. I will show you I am a soldier’s wife.” She took her car, and without
bothering about the soldiers, who cocked their guns menacingly at her, rammed
it into the gate, which gave way as the soldiers scattered capriciously in
different directions. She got to Falomo, bought bread and eggs, and decided to
see one of her husband’s friends, General Gado Nasko. Before the visit to
Nasko, however, Sufiya had driven home and, since her daughter was,
coincidentally, at the gate, had dropped the food and driven to the Naskos.
Sufiya’s mission was to ask
Nasko to fix a meeting between her and IBB to find a way to settle the matter.
Although soldiers at Nasko’s house gave her the cold shoulder, her persistence
worked.
Nasko, who said he was
aware of the problem and would try to arrange the meeting, asked Sufiya to see
him in the evening. Her hope soared. The reason was the special relationship
between her family and IBB’s. “When we got married,” Sufiya was reported as
saying, “I thought IBB and my husband were of the same family. The two wore the
same size of dress and pair of shoes. IBB would drop his dirty wears in our
house and put on my husband’s. When IBB traveled out, for a further military
training my husband took care of Mariam and her children. General Vatsa, apart
from mounting the horse when IBB married Mariam, bought their first set of
furniture from Leventis on hire purchase.
IBB was also my husband’s
best man during our wedding. Whenever Maryam’s Mercedez car broke down, she
used to drive my Peugeot 404. We were close.” All these, to Babangida, did not
count in the field of realpolitik. Nasko told Sufiya later in the day that the
military President was not ready to see her.
Another disappointment
awaited Sufiya when she returned to her Rumen’s Street residence, Ikoyi. A
soldier from Bonny Camp was waiting for her with an order that the family
should vacate the house. Another military officer said the car should be taken
to Army Headquarters for security check after which they broke into the car’s
glove compartment and confiscated Vatsa’s manuscripts. In frustration, Sufiya
hired a trailer and moved the family’s belongings to Kaduna. She and Fatima,
however, returned and stayed in Nwakana Okoro, her brother-in-law’s house at
Queen’s Drive, Ikoyi. When the military authorities bugged Okoro’s telephone,
the lawyer, a Senior Advocate, of Nigeria, became jittery.
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