He was your quintessential Mr Fix-It. And like all enforcers, he inspired fear more than love, a fact attested to by his inability, for example, to win the seat for northern Kaduna senatorial district in the old Kaduna State that included his native Zaria for which he contested in 1978 on the platform of National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the most conservative of the five political parties approved by the regime of Generals Murtala Mohammed/ Olusegun Obasanjo for its transition programme between 1975 and 1979.
Alhaji Umaru Dikko’s nemesis was a little known Alhaji Ibrahim Barau, a businessman, who contested on the platform of the radical Peoples Redemption Party led by Malam Aminu Kano. At the time of the Mohammed/Obasanjo transition programme, Dikko had become a household name having held several public offices, including commissionerships in then North-Central State comprising Zaria and Katsina Provinces, and as one of the most forceful and outspoken members of the 1977/78 Constituent Assembly (CA).
It was this well-known Dikko, who died last Tuesday July 1, that Barau, a Bazazzagi like himself, defeated for the seat of northern Kaduna senatorial district. Undeterred, he worked his way into becoming the campaign manager of Alhaji Shehu Shagari as the presidential candidate of the NPN.
As New Nigerian’s reporter who covered Shagari’s presidential campaign, I could not but marvel at the energy and passion with which Dikko threw himself into the job, often sleeping on the carpeted floor of the campaign office in Victoria Island, Lagos, just to make sure he was always on hand to get things done. He thus became probably the closest confidant of Shagari, bar his friend, Alhaji Isiyaku Ibrahim, the campaign’s principal financier, by the time Shagari emerged the winner.
It was not surprising therefore that Dikko became the most powerful minister in Shagari’s cabinet as transport minister, eclipsing even more prominent members of the party – at least nominally – like Malam Adamu Ciroma and Saraki who were presidential aspirants and even party chairman, Chief Adisa Akinloye and Vice-President Alex Ekwueme, in his apparent proximity to Shagari.
Power, as Dr. Henry Kissinger, America’s most famous Secretary of State in modern times, once reportedly said, is the ultimate aphrodisiac; it attracts as much envy from enemies as it does obsequiousness from admirers. Soon enough Dikko became the target of some of the most vicious attacks, especially in the press, by opposition elements, particularly from the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), whose presidential candidate, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, came a close second to Shagari and lost through a controversial Supreme Court interpretation of what 2/3rd of 19 states were from which a candidate had to score at least a quarter of votes cast before he could be declared winner.
Shagari had met the condition in 12 states whereas 2/3rd of 19 were 12.666 states, a statistical incongruity. UPN had insisted the ratio meant 13 states which, in turn, meant there should be a second ballot between its candidate and Shagari. Chief Akinjide, NPN’s legal adviser, thought otherwise and asked the courts to declare Shagari the winner. They did, and thus set the context for the bitter politics of the Second Republic throughout the odd four years it lasted.
As if Dikko was not powerful enough as transport minister and a Shagari confidant, the president appointed him to chair his committee on rice importation at a time of NPN’s suspicion, justified or otherwise, that the opposition had plans to frustrate its policy of food sufficiency through hoarding. It was as chair of the committee that he made a statement that was to prove a propaganda nightmare for him for the rest of the Second Republic.
“As long as we are in government,” he had said in defence of the setting up of his committee, “we will leave no stone unturned to ensure that there is sufficient food in Nigeria and nobody will eat from dustbin.” For some not-so-inexplicable reason the opposition press turned the statement on its head and reported the man as saying there was no hunger in the land because no one as yet was eating from dustbins.
Predictably, this attracted much public opprobrium to the minister and nothing he said thereafter ever convinced the public that he was not an arrogant and insensitive politician.
It was NPN’ attempt to counter such bad press for itself and for its administration which eventually led to the rise of Chief M.K.O. Abiola as a chieftain of the party whose foundation member he was. As Dikko himself told it in one of his most definitive interviews in the defunct Citizen (January 31, 1993) as an exile in the UK, “In the NPN, we realised that our greatest obstacle was that we were surrounded by a hostile press, because they did not belong to us at all. Nor were they ready to be objective…As a result of this predicament people began to say the NPN must have its own paper.”
It was then, he said in the interview, that Abiola offered to start a newspaper to counter the opposition press. All Abiola said he needed, Dikko said, was “necessary assistance to minimise bureaucracy,” which he got. Besides, Dikko said, even the name of the newspaper, National Concord, was Shagari’s suggestion. “This,” he said, “was something I know and Abiola knows that I know.”
However, he said in effect, speculations that NPN funded the establishment of the newspaper were not true. “Everything was made easy for him. Where he got his money to start it, I don’t know. Only he knows.”
Any observer of Nigeria’s political scene during the Second Republic would agree that the opposition press more than met their match in the Concord. Staffed with some of the smartest and well motivated brains in Nigerian journalism, Abiola’s newspapers took the battle to enemy territory, giving Nigerians exposes like the Maroko land scandal which implicated Chief Awolowo in damaging allegations of land grab from the poor.
Apparently Concord’s success led Abiola to the conclusion that he deserved a seat in NPN’s inner sanctum. First, he sought to be its chairman, a job Akinloye was holding much, it seemed, to the satisfaction of the party establishment. Key members of this establishment, Dikko in particular, were apparently not amused by Abiola’s attempt to replace Akinloye. They did everything to frustrate Abiola’s bid and succeeded.
Undeterred, Abiola next sought to vie for the party’s presidential ticket against the 1983 elections. Once again the party establishment blocked him. Worse, Dikko went on to deride the chief by making his now famous statement that the NPN’s presidential ticket was “not for sale to the highest bidder,” or some words to that effect.
An angry Abiola left the party and not only took his newspaper with him. He joined it with the opposition press it their war which sought to portray NPN as bad for Nigeria and Dikko, specifically, as the chief villain of the Second Republic.
It seems his image as the Bad Boy of the Second Republic left its mark even among his fellow party men. For, when he sought to replace Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa as the highly respected Secretary of the Government of the Federation, probably as payback for engineering Shagari’s “landslide” victory in the 1983 presidential election, his principal demurred. Instead the president appointed him a minister for special duties, which looked more or less like being shunted sideways from his previous powerful position.
It was as minister for special duties that he fled into self-exile in the UK when the soldiers overthrew the Second Republic on December 31, 1983, barely three months into Shagari’s second term. In exile, he quickly became the most outspoken critic of the new military regime under General Muhammadu Buhari.
The regime soon returned Dikko’s compliment; short of exactly saying so, it declared him the most wanted politician among the exiles. It wanted him so badly it quickly bought a proposal by Lt-General T. Y. Danjuma, to date the most powerful army chief, to kidnap and return him to Nigeria for trial as allegedly one of the country’s most corrupt ministers, if not the most corrupt. This was according to Buhari’s Aide de Camp, Major Mustapha Jokolo, in a paid eight-page advert in Citizen (November 9, 1992) which none of the principal actors Jokolo mentioned ever contested.
In the advert which he entitled “A soldier’s soldier or a soldier of fortune?”, Jokolo said Danjuma’s motivation was to settle scores with Dikko for shutting down all private jetties in the country, including Danjuma’s, because of information he had as transport minister that many of them were being used for smuggling.
One day, Jokolo said, the former army chief rang him to book for an appointment to see Buhari. “He made his proposals which sounded attractive. He said he could bring Umaru Dikko back using his Israeli connections.”
Jokolo’s claim has since been corroborated by former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, in his definitive 2012 biography, IBRAHIM BABANGIDA: The Military, Politics and Power in Nigeria, by veteran journalist Dan Agbese. Babangida was Buhari’s army chief before he overthrew his boss in a bloodless palace coup in August 1985.
According to Agbese, Babangida said the initiative actually came from the Israelis who sold it to a retired general who Dan did not name but who, obviously, was Danjuma. Danjuma, in turn sold it to Babangida who in turn sold it to Buhari but eventually took no part in its execution. The Israelis demanded $10 million for the job.
It is not clear if the amount was paid but, as we all now know, their attempt to execute the job in broad daylight in front of Dikko’s house on the streets of London on July 4, 1984, failed and the Dikko Affair, as it was dubbed by the media, led to a break in diplomatic ties between Nigeria and Britain.
Perhaps it was the trauma of being crated alive in the bungled kidnap attempt, but Dikko vowed never to return to Nigeria as long as the military remained in power. He kept his vow even after some of his partners in self-exile like Chief Joseph Wayas, the Senate president, Alhaji Uba Ahmed, NPN’s general secretary, and Dr Chuba Okadigbo, one of Shagari’s top aide, returned at various times to participate in Babangida’s long transition politics between 1985 and 1993.
When he returned in the end and joined the political fray by eventually forming his own party he made little impact. The long exile, it seemed, had taken the fire which made him perhaps the most powerful minister during the Second Republic out of his belly.
For someone whose enemies liked to paint as one of Nigeria’s most corrupt politicians, Dikko died in relative poverty. The fact, however, was that even though he was a power freak, he never used it to amass wealth for himself, a fact which seemed apparent from his modest residence in Kaduna even during the height of his power.
May Allah forgive his transgressions and reward his good deeds with aljanna firdaus.
