HOW OBASANJO ESCAPED DIMKA'S BULLET
It was on a Friday, the 13th February 1976, about 8.30 in the morning; the Head of State, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed; his ADC Lt. Akintunde Akinsehinwa; Orderly and driver were ambushed by a hit team as they drove in a black Mercedes Benz car without escorts. The car had slowed down at the junction in front of the Federal Secretariat in Ikoyi, Lagos, when the hit team struck, killing all the four occupants of the car.
As the news of the death of the Head of State reached the arrowhead of the coup, Lt. Col. Buka Suka Dimka, of the Army Physical Training Corps, he, escorted by about six other soldiers proceeded to Ikoyi where they seized the radio station and started to play the martial music. Other hit teams spread across strategic locations moved for their targets which included the number 2 man to the slain head of state; the Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters, Lt. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo and the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma. Obasanjo’s benevolent luck came to his rescue. He was late to leave home on that day because Brigadier Olu Bajowa had visited him to get a name for his (Bajowa's) new baby. That time lag made him to become aware of the insurrection over the radio even before leaving home and therefore made a tactical escape to Chief S.B. Bakare’s Ikoyi home where he was tucked in the Chief’s bedroom, leaving his own designated assassins to wait for him in vain. Well, not really in vain, as another ill-fated soldier, Colonel Dumuje of the Army Ordinance was killed in a fatal error of mistaken identity along Awolowo road in Ikoyi, Lagos. The hit men, like Dimka were reportedly drunk and appeared unable to realise that the car of a Lt. General would have had three stars crested on its number plate and went ahead to brutally shell the car in which Dumuje was driving to his office.
While Dimka and his men were making frantic, chaotic and largely inept efforts to make the coup a success, Danjuma had rallied forces and directed them to counter the insurgency from a temporary base at Bonny camp. From that base, he mandated then Major Babangida to go to the Ikeja Cantonment, fetch armoured vehicles and proceed to Radio Nigeria to dislodge the rebels. Dimka and Babangida were friends but if you had Babangida as your friend, you needed no enemy.
“Buka, here I am, your friend, kill me and take a life time responsibility for looking after Maryam and our children.” Babangida was reported to have said as he entered the radio station, with both of his hands over his head. That statement calmed an already explosive situation and served as a useful red herring to Dimka.
“Are you here for the Chukwuma and Nwawo kind of talk?” Dimka replied, making a reference to the negotiations between Colonel Nwawo, representing General Ironsi and Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu in Kaduna in January 1966 during the latter’s coup.
As the two friends were exchanging words, unknown to Dimka, Babangida’s armoured vehicles were being positioned and re-positioned around the radio station, coordinated by Major Chris Ugokwe with whom Babangida has left instructions to start shelling once he received signal. After a brief discussion, Babangida signaled to Chris and a fierce bombardment followed which led to the dislodgement of Dimka and his boys and the liberation of the radio station.
For Babangida, a serial coupist, that was the very starting point of a long involvement in coups by someone whose fingerprints were unmistakably imprinted on all coups either as a planner or a target.
CULLED FROMTERRORISTS IN THE COCKPIT BY DOTUN OYENIYI - PAGES 42 & 43
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