IBB, Abdulsalami to attend book launch on Nigeria’s military coups

Bello Fadile, a retired colonel in the Nigerian army, is set to launch a book examining Nigeria’s harrowing era of military coups.

The book, titled ‘Nine Lives: The Bello-Fadile Memoirs’, will be unveiled on Monday in Abuja.

Ibrahim Babangida, a former head of state, wrote the book’s foreword and will serve as the grand patron of the day at the launch.

Abdulsalami Abubakar will chair the occasion, while Adebayo, a former presidential candidate under the Social Democratic Party (SDP), will be the chief book presenter, with Agbo Jerry Madaki as the reviewer.

Fadile, a respected Nigerian army intelligence officer with a doctorate in law, was a key figure in the 1995 coup against the Sani Abacha regime.

Fadile was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death in the saga that implicated dozens of prominent Nigerians, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Shehu Yar’Adua, and Lawan Gwadabe.

The book provides a personal account of the ordeal and a chronology of coups in Nigeria.

“25 years ago, in the wee hours of March 4, 1999, I heard a tap, tap, tap on my cell window and a voice calling, ‘Colonel! Colonel!! Wake up.’ I got up and went closer. Then I saw the warder on duty, a retired Warrant Officer of the Nigerian Army now working for the Nigeria Prison Services,” an excerpt from the book reads.

“He said, ‘Oga, you are free; congratulations, sir, start packing your things; you are going home.’ I asked him, ‘What did you just say?’ He replied, ‘Yes sir, you are to be released today, sir.’ I believed him and rushed to the general open cell opposite mine to tell the two other inmates who were on a three-day dry fasting with me, seeking God’s intervention in my situation.

“It was the beginning of the third day. I told them the good news, and they shouted, ‘Hallelujah!’ We stood up and joined hands to sing: ‘God is able, abundantly able, to deliver and to save; The Lord is able, abundantly able, to deliver those who trust in Him. Hallelujah!’”