The mastermind of the April 21, 1990, failed coup, Col Tony Nyiam, retd, has said that the recent outburst by TY Danjuma was a direct indictment of President Muhammadu Buhari rather than the country’s Armed Forces.
According to Nyiam, the former Minister’s allegations did not indict the corporate establishment of the armed forces, but exposed President Buhari.
Nyiam spoke with Sun in Abuja on Tuesday, during the public presentation of ‘M.T. Mbu: Dignity in Service,’ an autobiography of Dr. Matthew Mbu, a former minister of Foreign Affairs, published posthumously by the Executive Chairman of Safari Books Limited, Chief Joop Berkhout.
He noted that, “What he was rather saying was that he was indicting the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.”
Asked why he said so, Nyiam added, “Because, as it appeared, the armed forces is being used to promote and defend the interest of President Muhammadu Buhari’s kinsfolks’ interest.”
Danjuma, a former Minister of Defence, had last month, at the maiden convocation/10th anniversary of Taraba State University, Jalingo, said there was an attempt at ethnic cleansing in the state and, of course, some rural states in Nigeria.
Danjuma further called on Nigerians to defend themselves.
Buhari had told a group of Northern bishops, who visited him last week, that he is not a bigot that they thought he (Buhari) was.
But Nyiam insisted that, “The evidence seems contrary. It is not the talk, but the walk is different. What is my evidence?
“The whole 80 percent of the appointees to do with national security, that is, in terms of the Service Chiefs and Directors-General of security agencies; 80 percent are his tribe men. That is bigotry in action. It is not enough to say you are not a bigot. This is the issue.”
Nyiam further said what Danjuma said was not new and recalled a revelation by the Director-General of the Department of State Security (DSS), Lawal Daura, during a Senate summit on security that “some of the military arms that they found with the herdsmen, the sophisticated ones, are from the military and police armouries.”
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