₦airaland Forum

naptu2:
joseph1832 You are right. You got the identity of the person on the left. So now I'll tell you about the mad man on the right.


Major General Musa Bamaiyi was the elder brother of Lieutenant General Ishaya Bamaiyi and he was a crazy person. I didn't believe the stories that the soldiers told me until they were made public after Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999.


They told me that General Bamaiyi often drove himself around in mufti and without any bodyguards and that on one occasion policemen stopped him at a checkpoint and tried to extort money from him. When they couldn’t find anything wrong with his car or any reason to detain him further, they asked him for the receipt of an old transistor radio that he had with him. He told them that they were stupid if they expected him to have the receipt of a small radio that he bought decades ago and he dared them to arrest him.

General Bamaiya was once going in his official car, with only his driver and ADC with him, when they came upon the convoy of a state governor (a colonel) with sirens blaring. General Bamaiyi ordered his driver to drive on and not wait for the governor’s convoy. Luckily the governor saw what was happening and ordered his convoy to stop and he came down and saluted as General Bamaiyi drove past.

Due to General Bamaiyi’s inherent madness, General Sani Abacha thought that he was the best person to lead the fight against drug trafficking and so he made him the chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). It was during General Bamaiyi’s tenure as chairman that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was arrested for the last time.

The arrest of Fela was a huge shock to many people. He had not been arrested or even bothered in a long time despite the fact that he openly smoked Indian hemp. Some felt that Fela was arrested because an equally crazy person was now in charge of the NDLEA. Then General Bamaiyi appeared on TV and I was surprised by what he said. You would have thought that he would condemn Fela, but he did the opposite. He praised Fela and said that he was one of the icons of Nigeria. However, he said that people that were appealing to him to release Fela should also speak to Fela. He said that the fact that Fela was an icon meant that a lot of young people were looking up to him and might want to emulate him and that Fela’s practice of smoking Indian hemp openly could negatively affect the younger generation. He said that they were not interested in punishing Fela, but rather they wanted to counsel him to consider the effect that he has on the younger generation.

Some people believe that Fela’s experience in detention (c1996) had a negative impact on his health (he was already suffering the effects of HIV/AIDS) and contributed to his death in 1997.

However, the most remarkable demonstration of General Musa Bamaiyi’s craziness occurred because of his feud with his younger brother, Lieutenant General Ishaya Bamaiyi. Now I’ll write a little about Lieutenant General Ishaya Bamaiyi.

Brigadier Ishaya Bamaiyi was the commander of 9th Brigade, Ikeja Cantonment in 1990 when the Orkar Coup occurred. The main battle tanks in Lagos were kept at the Armour Transit Shed at the Ikeja Cantonment at that time. The coupists did not have any armoured vehicles and their plan was to capture the main battle tanks at the Ikeja Cantonment. Therefore, the battle at the Ikeja Cantonment was one of the fiercest on that day. It was so fierce that the officer that had the keys to the Armour Transit Shed changed into mufti, scaled the fence and escaped (he was later court-martialled).

Bamaiyi’s troops were able to break into the Armour Transit Shed and secure the tanks and this was one of the most decisive moments of that day. Bamaiyi’s troops used the main battle tanks to fight off the invaders and then those tanks were deployed at major flash points across Lagos in order to defeat the coupists. The next major battle was at Ikoyi.

Brigadier Bamaiyi led an armoured column from Ikeja to Bonny Camp on Victoria Island. However, the commander at Bonny Camp (I’ve forgotten his name) was very smart. He had heard the explosions at Ikoyi during the night and he ordered his men to celebrate with the coupists and welcome them. When the coupists were securely inside Bonny Camp the soldiers turned on them and disarmed and arrested them. Therefore Bonny Camp was already in government hands when Brigadier Bamaiyi got there.

More troops from Bonny Camp joined Brigadier Bamaiyi’s armoured column and they went down Ozumba Mbadiwe Street, over Falomo Bridge, down Awolowo Road and through Okotie Eboh Street to attack State House at Ribadu Road. The coupists had captured the armoured vehicles (recce vehicles) at State House and Broadcasting House, but those armoured vehicles were no match for Brogadier Bamaiyi’s tanks. Bamaiyi was able to recapture State House and Broadcasting House so that General Abacha could make his broadcast to the nation at 4pm on that day.

Brigadier Bamaiyi’s performance on that day gave a great boost to his career. He subsequently became the commander of the Brigade of Guards from 1990-1992 (he was succeeded by the current minister of defence, General Magashi) , commander Lagos Garrison Command (1993-1996) and then chief of army staff from 1996 onward. It was when General Ishaya Bamaiyi was the chief of army staff and his elder brother was the chairman of the NDLEA that the feud between both brothers reached a crazy level.

Major General Musa Bamaiyi had a serious dispute with his wife. I can’t remember the cause of the dispute, on separate occasions a soldier and an SSS operative told me the cause of the dispute and it was something crazy, but I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, General Bamaiyi abandoned his wife and she was in dire straights. She had no money and no means to take care of herself and she was just abandoned in Lagos. She reached out to General Musa Bamaiyi’s younger brother, the chief of army staff Lieutenant General Ishaya Bamaiyi and he periodically gave her enough money to take care of herself. This infuriated General Musa Bamaiyi. He accused his younger brother of sleeping with his wife!

The feud led to a very dangerous incident during either the Christmas or Easter holidays. General Musa Bamaiyi, who was travelling with his bodyguards, came upon General Ishaya Bamaiyi (who did not have his bodyguards with him) at their village during the holidays. General Musa Bamaiyi ordered his bodyguards to shoot at General Ishaya Bamaiyi, however, remember that General Ishaya Bamaiyi was the chief of army staff and all soldiers owed their loyalty to him, therefore the bodyguards refused to shoot General Ishaya Bamaiyi and instead shot into the air. General Ishaya Bamaiyi escaped and headed to the nearest barracks to raise troops. It took the intervention of senior military officers to defuse the tension.

I didn’t believe this story despite the fact that many security agents told me the exact same story. It was only after 1999, when the feud blew out into the open, that I believed it. General Musa Bamaiyi brought a petition against his younger brother to the Oputa Panel, while General Ishaya Bamaiyi wrote about the feud in his book which was published many years later after his brother had died in 2007.

General Ishaya Bamaiyi said that the most painful thing that ever happened to him in life was when his elder brother accused him of sleeping with his wife. He said that he always knew that his brother hated him but that he didn’t know how bad it was until his brother accused him of sleeping with his wife. His said that his uncle later reminded him that his brother had hated him since they were kids. He said that there was a day that all the uncles were sitting outside with Musa and Ishaya’s father and they saw Ishaya walking past in the distance and their father said that, “This is the son that will take care of me in my old age”. The uncle said that they rebuked their father and told him not to say so, but the father insisted that Ishaya was the son that would take care of him in his old age. He said that if he was about to go out and he told Musa and Ishaya to wait at a place until he got back, only Ishaya would be at that place by the time he got back. The uncle said that Musa was very troublesome when they were kids, while Ishaya was the opposite and this made their parents to prefer Ishaya. The uncle said that the fact that the parents preferred Ishaya really annoyed Musa and that was probably the source of the feud.

General Ishaya Bamaiyi also said that his brother actually campaigned that he should remain in detention when he was arrested and accused of helping the people that assassinated Kudirat Abiola and attempted to assassinate Alex Ibru. Meanwhile, I watched an interview that General Musa Bamaiyi gave when Ishaya Bamaiyi was in prison. The interviewer asked what he was doing to ensure that his brother was released from prison. He replied that he had advised them that it was not possible to fight the government and win. He said that he advised them to get people to go and plead with the government because that was the only way of getting Ishaya out of jail. He said that they didn’t take his advise and that they had a young relative that was a lawyer and that relative was insisting that they battle the charges in the courts and that was the cause of the problems that Ishaya was facing.

(On the left) Lieutenant General Ishaya Bamaiyi, chief of army staff from 1996-1999 and (on the right) Major General Musa Bamaiyi, NDLEA chairman from 1995-1998.
www.nairaland.com/attachments/11824058_10396913211395768764231557655017414677762688n_jpeg26c91cae03bbc17036c53c4f8fafcef3

opribo:
Throwing ranks around like idi Amin. Heard Babangida promoted himself a field marshall.

joseph1832:
prove it.