Then the coup took place and I couldn’t see myself saying I met money because I didn’t. So I said it quite frankly that I left the treasury empty because I met it empty
I don’t think so; he was not a de facto head of state. You have policy making and execution and it is the person executing the policy that attention is focused on. Tunde had to do what he was told to do. In a battalion, for example, you have the battalion commander, then you have those under him but he was the commander and all the actions carried out were done by the adjutant based on the policy decision that had already been taken. If Tunde didn’t do what he was doing he wouldn’t have been a good chief of staff. So he was doing his job.
How did you receive the 1984 coup?
I was in Gboko on my leave when I heard about the coup. I didn’t participate in that one so I simply went back to Lagos. I went to Tunde Idiagbon and asked him: ‘What are you people doing?’ I told him what I have never said to anybody. When I went to his office I said, ‘Tunde what are you people doing? If this coup had failed and I said I was not part of it people would not believe me because of my relationship with all of you.’ We were friends but I had no inkling about that coup at all. I told them, ‘Look you don’t do things like that,‘ because if the coup had failed and they arrested them, I would have been arrested too. Other than that, it came to me the way it did to any other person.
So why do you think you were not involved in that coup?
I was on leave. You were widely reported, on leaving with the intention of making some development initiatives, especially the industrial area that I carved out for development. If I had the money, I would have certainly made a lot of difference like I did in Anambra where the projects I completed are still there.
In Anambra, in one year I announced a budget of N85 million and the then Chief of Staff, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, sent for me to come to Lagos. He sat me down and said, ‘This is what you announce how are you going to get money for that?’ The policy was no deficit budgeting, but I sat and explained to him how I was going to get the money. When he was satisfied, he asked me to go. The Igbo man is very hard working; if you commit him to something
your take?
Personally, I think there is need for restructuring, but how it can be done remains the issue. When the British brought us together, we were not in a position to address our zonal problems or issues, linguistic, cultural and so on. Now we can. When Lord Lugard simply merged the protectorates together, he didn’t ask them; there was no referendum, nothing. It was just a colonial decision they took. Therefore, I think it is fair to sit back and look inwardly and see how we would like to interact among ourselves. One thing I think we should avoid is the disintegration of Nigeria. I am hundred per cent against that one. But we can sit at a roundtable and decide and all the groups
The long and short answer is that I didn’t. I have my pay slip here. I received my last pay slip in the Army in September 1985 and the take home pay was N1, 500. At that time it was adequate to take care of my needs, and when I retired, there was still strict control of military personnel on matters of handling money, you could hardly embezzle money. If you did, they would send you to prison and retire you. So in our own time, up to 1985 when I left, we had no money. When I was military governor of Anambra, my allowance was about N400 and I couldn’t touch the Government House money. In fact, you had a permanent secretary in Government House who handled everything concerning money; he accounted directly to the accountant-general of the state. If I had to go to Lagos, I had to tell the perm sec and he would prepare everything for me, including my hotel bills. He would then give the money to my ADC who spent it and made returns strictly to the permanent secretary. The same thing for Government House expenses.
So we had no such thing as government having money or diverting security funds. And as I earlier said, in our time, we didn’t have federation account where money would come in billions. So the question of amassing wealth didn’t arise at all. Remember that we introduced the War against Indiscipline (WAI). These billions of a thing started when we left. So my answer is no, I am only hearing that billions are being made by military persons.