Friends of former President Olusegun Obasanjo once toyed with the idea of storming the Yola Prisons with commandoes for the purpose of liberating him from incarceration during the Sani Abacha years, it was revealed yesterday.
They were however talked out of the plot by Obasanjo himself.
“I said no, if you do that, I will not leave the prison,” he said at an event in Abuja to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s deputy when he was military head of state from 1976 to 1979.
The duo were arrested in 1995 in connection with a phantom coup by the Abacha Administration.
They were subsequently sentenced to death before the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
Yar’Adua died in the Abakaliki Prison in 1997, Abacha a year later, and following the emergence of General Abdulsalami Abubakar as Head of State,Obasanjo was released from prison.
He went on to become civilian president in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003.
I rejected offer from friends to get me out of prison in commando style—Obasanjo
