I am also doing a research for my primary school thesis i want to know why GMB was angry with concord newspaper and why this man shouldnot be trusted by yorubas if he can do this to one of them that paid his way to the top.......abi no be so dem contribute to help am by APC form ni

MOSHOOD ABIOLA AND THE BUHARI-IDIAGBON REGIME (1984-1985)

On December 31, 1983, Nigerians woke up to the sound of martial music on their radio and television sets. They knew a coup had taken place. Then at 5.00 in the morning, the throaty voice of one Brigadier Sani Abacha came on air informing Nigerians of the shenanigans that characterized the Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari civilian government. With the deftness of a would-be suitor, the Army Office, claiming to be speaking on behalf of his other colleagues in the Armed Forces, itemized the reasons why he and his colleagues had decided to shove the corrupt politicians aside. All the reasons he gave for the coup were known to Nigerians but lamentably, he failed to disclose how he and his colleagues would solve the Problems.

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Major-Gen Vasta

*Brigadier Sani Abacha announced the coup that toppled Alhaji Shehu Shagari regime in Dec, 1983.
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Majority of Nigerians were not taken aback by the sacking of the politicians by the military. Their fall was good riddance. Its demise was not a question of how and why but when. As the late American Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther-King Jr. once said: “There comes a time when the people are fed up and want it no more.” Nigerians got to that stage in 1983 under the “lootocaratic” regime of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, to use the words of Chinweizu, Vanguard newspaper Columnist. Albeit, corruption has become endemic in Nigeria but the political rascals under Alhaji Shagari legitimized this national cankerworm. It became a “de rigueur.”No Nigerian would have raised eyebrows or shed tears if the military boys that came to power had seized those political vermin of the so-called Second Republic, tied them to stakes and execute them. It was that bad. They had stolen too much for the owners of the house to notice and they flaunted their stolen wealth with obscenity and abandon. But as events started to unfold, the military brass hats soon discovered the gargantuan problems especially the battered economy they inherited from the thieving politicians. They soon found out it was easier to topple a government than to govern a nation. Their subsequent policies such as War Against Indiscipline called WAI, queue culture, mandatory monthly Environmental Sanitation to clean households and cities including other peripheral programs could easily be decreed by wearing military epaulette but you can’t command a prostrate economy neither can you decree jobs for able-bodied striplings roaming Nigerian streets………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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Gen. Muhammad Buhari

* Major Gen. Tunde Idiagbon in 1984

There were a potpourri rainbow coalition of forces both within the disenchanted civil populace and the opportunistic Nigerian military which all combined to ensure the demise of the corrupt Shehu Shagari regime and the success of the 1983 putsch. Situated within the dynamics of coup planning in Nigeria, the planer of the 1983 coup d’état did not emerge as the Head of State. With the exception of late Major-General Tunde Idiagbon, General Muhammadu Buhari who emerged as Head of State was not one of the planers of the coup. The brain behind that coup was late Brigadier Bako who was killed by Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s Presidential Guard in Abuja. If he had survived, Brigadier Bako would probably have emerged Head of State. Others who joined in the coup were the late General Mamman Jiya Vasta, late Brigadier Sani Abacha, General Muhammed Magoro in that order. General Buhari became Head of State because he was the most senior military officer at that time. He came in as a compromised candidate to replace Brigadier Bako, the mastermind and architect of the coup. Even then, there was so much rancor and bitterness at the meeting called to deliberate on Brigadier Bako’s replacement. When Gen. Sani Abacha, then a Brigadier and General Officer Commanding (G.O.C) Mechanized Brigade, Ibadan read his coup text at 5:00am on December 31, 1983; an unidentified voice came on air at 12noon or thereabout that day to announce to Nigerians that the new Head of State would address the nation at nine o’clock that evening,. The voice was that of Major-General (then Brigadier) Tunde Idiagbon. During this period, no person had been chosen as Head of State. The putschists were undecided on who should step into late Bako’s shoes. While a faction favored Gen. Buhari, the other faction opposed him and the whole place became so charged that at a mild drama took place. A Colonel pulled out his pistol and threatened the coup plotters that if Gen. Buhari was not made the new Head of State, none of them gathered at the meeting would come out alive. He was even more livid when a Brigadier mentioned the name of Major-General Ibrahim Babangida as the new Head of State. That Colonel was Col. Mustapha Jokolo, who later became Buhari’s aide-de-camp and now the Emir of Gwandu after the death of his father, later Alhaji Rasheed Jokolo. A plane was then dispatched to Jos, Plateau State to fetch Gen. Buhari and he was made Head of State. He could not address the nation at nine a previously announced so a statement was hurriedly put together for him to address his fellow country men and women at 10:00pm that day. Thus began the Muhammad Buhari-Tunde Idiagbon military regime.

Chief MKO Abiola supported the Buhari-Idiagbon coup.. He knew the coup was on its way just as the rest perceptive Nigerians but more than that he contributed to the coming of the military. After storming out of the NPN convention against the backdrop of the shabby treatment meted out to him at the National Convention in Gboko, Benue State, his hatred for his former party was buoyed by such arrogant announcements from the likes of Umaru Dikko who contemptuously derided MKO Abiola that Nigeria’s presidency was not for sale. MKO could not have joined the UPN after leaving the NPN although the venerable Chief Awolowo still extended his hand of fellowship to the billionaire. On the other hand, he didn’t contemplate forming his own political party because, to be candid, at this time, Chief Abiola was a political nobody. His late and first wife, Alhaja Simbiat Atinuke Abiola (nee Shoaga) had failed woefully in her bid to become a Senator on the platform of the NPN representing Gbagura Senatorial District of Abeokuta in 1979. To the majority of Yoruba people, MKO Abiola was just a rich man whose popularity could not yield him political dividends as far as the Southwest geopolitical nature was concerned. And in Nigeria, as everywhere else, if you don’t have a political base, you are spent force politically. In a region where the legendary Awo held sway, to the level of being deified it would be politically suicidal to go against the indisputable leader of the Yorubas. And for good measure, the Yorubas not just blindly following the indomitable Awo. Chief Awolowo, more than any leader had improved the lot of his people, a fact acknowledged even by his critics. For Abiola to be politically relevant, he must appeal to his own people in the Southwest. But the Chief had so offended many of his tribesmen and women in the Second Republic through his Concord newspapers that Abiola, to most Yorubas was seen as one of the factotums of the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy who employed the politics of “divide and rule” tactics to polarize other ethnic group to its own political advantage.

Having being humiliated and short-changed by the NPN zoning formula which was jettisoned toward the tail end of Shehu Shagari’s first term, Abiola withdrew completely from partisan politics. But he knew there was one dominant “political party” of every season in Nigeria: the Nigerian military, the alternative institution to democratic governance so he threw his weight behind the military top guns inching for an opportunity to flush out Alhaji Shehu Shagari and his band of kleptomaniacs…

In early 1984 as the Buhari-Idiagbon regime settled down to the business of governing, the Head of State, Gen. Muhammad Buhari invited MKO Abiola to Doddan Barracks, the then seat of national government in Obalende, Ikoyi, Lagos. The new military regime had decided to make the late Dele Giwa, then Editor of Sunday Concord Newspaper owned by MKO as Minister of Information and Culture, would he, Chief Abiola be willing to release him? Without even telling the Head of State that he needed time to think it over or ask Mr. Giwa himself if he was interested in the ministerial offer, Abiola replied in the negative. Gen. Buhari was annoyed…………………………………………………………...............................................................................................................................................................................……In mid-1983 prior to the coup, the Concord Newspapers owned by MKO Abiola had secured import license approval from the civilian government to import large quantity of newsprints and other printing materials for the use of Concord Press. It proceeded to import the products into the country. But by the time the products arrived, a coup had taken place and the Buhari-Idiagbon regime had take over the reins of government from the civilian government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari. To the chagrin of Chief MKO Abiola and management of Concord Press , the Buhari-Idiagbon regime issued an order to the customs officials to impound the printing materials alleging that Concord Press Limited did not obtain the necessary import licensing papers to import the materials. All protests by the management of CPN that it complied with all relevant laws fell on deaf ears. Then the newspaper took its case to the court of public opinion by publishing the approved import license it obtained from the Shehu Shagari government to import the materials before the coming of the military to power……………………………………..........

MKO Abiola got the message……………………………………………………………....………………………………………