November 17th has had its fair share of palace coups in history. It was the day in 1954 that General Gamal Abdel Nasser assumed full powers as Egyptian head of state following the overthrow of President Mohamed Naguib in a Palace coup. On the same day, four years later in 1958, General El-Ferik Ibrahim Abboud, then Sudanese Army Commander-in-Chief, staged the first coup in the history of Sudan when he deposed the civilian government of Abd Allah Khalil. On the same day, in 1971, Prime Minister Thanom engineered a coup against his own government in Thailand. He suspended the 1968 constitution, dissolved parliament, and created a new Troika composed of himself, the deputy prime minister, Field Marshal Praphat Charusathian; and Colonel Narong Kittikachorn. Narong was Thanom's son and Praphat's son-in- law.
On November 17, 1993, as judges from 11 nations were being sworn in at the inaugural session of the United Nations Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal and Zaire was celebrating its Armed Forces Day, Nigeria was once again the throes of a political succession crisis. General Sani Abacha, Secretary for Defence and Vice Chairman, ousted Chief Ernest Shonekan, then Chairman of the 82-day-old Interim National Government (ING), in order "to save Nigeria from imminent disintegration.”
It happened quickly and in broad daylight. All relevant military units and conspirators in Lagos, Abuja and Kaduna were quietly placed on alert. Under protective cover provided by a detachment of the National Guard led by Colonel Lawan Gwadabe, three very senior officers, motivated by different instincts and with no consensus on what would happen thereafter, flew to Abuja from Lagos. They calmly walked into Shonekan’s office at the Presidential Villa and asked that he resign. These officers were General Sani Abacha (Defence Secretary), Lt. General Oladipo Diya (Chief of Defence Staff), and Lt. Gen. Aliyu Mohammed Gusau (Chief of Army Staff). Shonekan, the former United African Company (UAC) Executive, never had operational control of the Armed Forces during his controversial tenure. He wisely chose not to resist.
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Hi Nowa,
I have never heard about you before now but I am astounded at the profundity of your historical narratives. It's so much different to what now obtains in the horrible and lazy atmosphere of Nigerian journalism. There is something about your writings that oozes honesty and accuracy even though none other than the actual people involved might be privy to such stories. I promise to keep myself updated with the past with your Prodigious stories. By the way, I intend to pass your site around my sphere so they too will benefit from your wealth of chronological experience.
Diran komolafe
Beaverton, OR
02/17/2007
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Great blog
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