How I was stranded in Yola during Orkar coup

Coup days normally could be very traumatic events whenever and wherever they occur. Coups leave many victims behind, mostly soldiers, but many civilians become collateral damages too. As a civilian living in Maiduguri, I nearly became damaged on 22nd April, 1990 when Major Gideon Orkar and his co-conspirators decided to dethrone Nigeria’s President Ibrahim Babangida in a rather violent manner. The theatre of this violent event was in far-away Lagos concentrated mainly around the Dodan Barracks (then the home and office of the President) and the nearby Radio Nigeria, from where the coup plotters, later in the day,  began making their intermittent broadcasts to the nation, announcing their coup. The rest of the country was blissfully unaware.
I was certainly unaware that a coup was already ongoing on that fine and warm Sunday morning when I set out from my home in the GRA in Maiduguri to take a flight to Lagos, hoping to return the same day. As part of my morning routines, I had listened to BBC Hausa service and Radio Kaduna and I could not recall any untoward reports that would have stopped me from going to Lagos. It was a trip to attend to some personal matters that I thought I could take on that Sunday and return by the evening flight. I hoped that my absence would not be noticed in the Government House Maiduguri where I was posted as a civil servant and administrative head. The Government House in that period was mostly deserted because the Military Governor, the late Lt. Col. Mohammed Lawan Maina, was away to Saudi Arabia with members of his family and a contingent of officials to perform the Umra.
The Maiduguri Airport was a beehive of activities that morning with many flights leaving for Lagos. Besides the daily Nigerian Airways flight, there were the usual three to four other airlines on the ground to choose from. I was booked on the Nigerian Airways flight to Lagos through Yola and we left on time about 7am. In due course, we had cleared the runway and the Boeing 737 heaved itself up into the clear blue skies, banked to the right and raced towards Yola. It was a brisk run and I couldn’t even notice the passing time because I kept chatting with Wing Commander Samson Mshelia, the Maiduguri Airforce Base Commander, who was sitting close to me. I have known Mshelia since 1967 when I went to Government College Keffi as a Form One student. Mshelia was already in the third form – and on completion of the college went straight into the military. We reconnected when he came to Maiduguri in 1986 as head of the team to prepare the grounds for the new air force base. A go-getter and a can-do kind of person, Mshelia had already established a reputation in the Nigerian Air Force as an ace pilot who kept us enthralled with air acrobatics in Maiduguri during celebrations of national events in the late 1980s. He was to play a crucial role in the ECOMOG aerial bombardments that were decisive in turning the tide of war against the Liberian rebels in the mid-1990s. Sadly, he lost his life in a civilian air mishap in Yola airport in 1997.
Our stop in Yola was meant to be brief. A few passengers had disembarked but no other came up, even though the plane’s door remained open. There was an eerie silence in the plane with the stewards moving aimlessly up and down the gangway. When the wait became uncomfortably long, with no information coming from the crew, Mshelia left to make some inquiries in the cockpit. He returned looking grim and spoke to me in low tones, ‘Gambo, there is an ongoing coup in Lagos. This plane won’t fly. We are stuck here’. As if reading my thoughts, he added, the pilot cannot fly this plane forward to Lagos or backwards to Maiduguri, because when there is a coup the national airspace is closed. The pilot cannot risk his plane and passengers without clear instructions. We may be here for days.’ My heart did a somersault and landed at the bottom of my stomach. My thoughts were chaotic as we sat for a few minutes each turning in his mind the implications of his absence from his base. Mshelia became restless and he rose to get into the airport for more information and probably find out how to get back to Maiduguri. On his way out of the plane, I saw him stopping to pay the normal compliments to a seated Abubakar Waziri, a retired Major General and former Military Governor of Borno State, who was also on the plane with us.
As soon as Mshelia went down the plane, I realized that information about the plane’s predicament had seemed to have filtered and was circulating among the passengers. Everyone was bemoaning the journey and there seemed to be agitated discussions going on around me. Someone even whispered into my ears that the coup makers have excised my state, Borno (then together with Yobe) along with other far-northern states of Kano (then with Jigawa), Sokoto (then with Zamfara and Kebbi), Bauchi (then with Gombe) and Katsina. But that was not my immediate problem. I had to focus on how to get back to Maiduguri by the quickest means available. For how could I explain my absence from my base, when all these events were unfolding all over the country? Though I had taken permission from my boss, the Secretary to the Government, Mahdi Bukar, I would have a lot to explain to the Governor for my absence on this day.
 To make matters worse, my deputy, Baba Malam Wali, had also accompanied the Governor to Mecca. The Brigade Commander, Lt. Col. Abu Ali, who was standing in for the Military Governor was reputed to be a no-nonsense soldier. He would obviously require assistance from Government House that might not be immediately forthcoming. My stomach churned again. That was one moment when holding a public office became a nightmare. I agreed with one of my colleagues who likened holding public office to the game of musical chairs we enjoyed playing at school. In the game, we danced around a couple of chairs and when the music stopped, there was always a rush to sit on the deliberately limited number of chairs. The game ended for the hapless ones caught out without chairs to sit on. In effect, to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was inexcusable.
In a short while, Mshelia returned to the plane with the heart-warming news that he had arranged a vehicle to take us to Maiduguri. We packed and rushed out of the plane. Mshelia stopped to ask General Waziri to join us. I found that true to his words a reasonable looking vehicle was parked near the plane. He invited the General and me into the back seat of the car while he sat with the driver, adding with his characteristic humour that pilots never sat at the back of a moving vehicle.
It was a few minutes after nine which should have been our estimated time of arrival in Lagos. However due to these turn of events we have found ourselves being driven out of Yola going back to Maiduguri through Numan, Biu, Damboa. All the way we hardly saw any sign of military or police heavy presence to signify that a coup was ongoing. Life seemed to be normal in both towns and the villages we passed through. It was the end of the dry season and farmers were busy in their farms getting ready for the rains. Both the General and Mshelia kept pondering on the kind of coup that allowed telephones to function and planes to fly. They kept an animated discussion on the subject for almost the five hours we were on the road.
The vehicle rumbled on and we were soon descending from the Biu plains into Damboa and an hour later we got in to Maiduguri. Our first port of call was the General’s house in the GRA near the Eagle roundabout where we were relieved to hear that the coup had unravelled. In fact, our Brigade Commander, Lt. Col. Abu Ali was already on television denouncing the coup and pledging the loyalty of his troops to the Federal Government.              

Dori,   email: [email protected]