By Comrade Salihu Dantata Mahmud
All my bonafide members in many of the teams I led for the propagation of your worthy achievements can never forget you. Cannot easily forget how one of your classmates, the late chairman of the National Council of Youths and Associations of Nigeria (NACYAN), the late Alhaji Iliya Ibrahim, discovered me and gave me the opportunity to become his personal assistant. Room 104 at the guest house of the National Centre for Women Development was our initial office before we got grants to rent secretarial in Area 8.
Five and a half years of your largest housing policy, like FHA Lugbe and Gwarinpa, can never be forgotten. The Armed Forces and the Police, through the Armed Forces and Police Barracks Rehabilitation Programme, which rehabilitated many military cantonments and police barracks across the country, is also there in archives, as Architect Sani Gidado, who headed it with an office in Area 7, is still alive to testify to what I am saying.
What about the good people of Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Gombe, Ebonyi, and Ekiti, whose states were created under your administration, and many more? There is no doubt that you commenced the anti-corruption fight with the setting up of the failed bank tribunal, fought drug barons and trafficking through the office of Special Adviser on Drugs and Financial Crimes, as well as the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency.
The best hospital in the country today was built by you, even though the Mariam Abacha Hospital for Women and Children was later renamed as the National Hospital by Obasanjo for reasons best known to him, but it remains one of Abacha’s legacies. You redirected our foreign policy and trade relations to Asia, which opened doors for China, Korea, and other Asian countries to invest in our economy.
You created the Vision 2010 committee, set up the National Economic Intelligence Committee headed by the late Prof. Sam Aluko and late Prof. Ibrahim Ayagi. You appointed Col. Muhammadu Buba Marwa as the first northerner to administer Lagos State. Late Col. Dominic Oneya, a Christian, succeeded late Abdullahi Wase as Kano State military administrator.
General Sir, the good people of Sierra Leone cannot forget how you sent ECOMOG after the John Koroma military junta and reinstated the democratically elected government of late Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. Who says you are an enemy of democracy? That singular step demonstrated your dedication to safety and protection of democracy in Africa.
General Sir, throughout your five and a half years, your center of foreign policy was Africa. NITEL worked perfectly for effective communication, and you carved MTEL out of it. Transportation was not also left out, as the Federal Urban Mass Transit Programme was effective with the 1414 buses nationwide.
Thank you, General Sani Abacha, for discovering us through late Ambassador Muhammadu Chadi Abubakar, former Nigerian High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, and Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo, AIG (rtd), former NSA, late Alhaji Iliya Ibrahim, your classmate, and Major Hamza AlMustapha.
May Allah grant you Aljanna Firdausi. Baban Ibrahim (late), Mohammed, Abba, Zainab, Gumsu, Sadiq, Mahmud, Rakiya, Mustapha, and others.
Comrade Salihu Dantata Mahmud wrote from Abuja and was the author of the unpublished book titled Critics of Nigeria and Abacha.
