The death of the then Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Newswatch magazine was shocking and a personal loss to me, former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, has declared.
He made this revelation in his personal memoir A Journey in Service he presented to the public on Thursday in Abuja saying Giwa’s death was shocking to him.
A parcel bomb delivered to Giwa’s Ikeja residence by still-unidentified couriers exploded and killed him on October 19, 1986, during Babangida’s military regime.
Babangida and his government were accused of being responsible for the incident as the murder remains unsolved to this day and is considered one of the darkest moments in Nigeria’s media history.
He said “Mr Giwa was a good friend, like a few other senior journalists in the country. We spoke often on the phone and met a few times. I valued his deep insight on national issues and respected his views and reach as a media leader,” he wrote.
According to him, public outcry and the introduction of a new and gruesome method of assassination in Nigeria overtook his grief
Babangida recalled that Giwa was having his breakfast with Newswatch’s London Bureau Chief, Kayode Soyinka, when the parcel bomb exploded, fatally wounding him.
He said the killing came less than a year after he overthrew General Muhammadu Buhari and just weeks after the OIC controversy, which led to the retirement of his deputy, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe.
“I saw Giwa’s wicked and cruel murder as part of a series of booby traps and acts of destabilisation being hatched against the administration. Undoubtedly, our choice of the path of rigorous reform had earned us unintended adversaries,” he wrote.
He said those who masterminded the attack knew of his relationship with Giwa and targeted the journalist to hurt him emotionally.
“Secondly, Giwa was a very popular and colourful journalist, a person of great public interest for anyone wanting to inflict a mischievous political blow on the young military administration.
“Giwa was loved by his audience and the rest of the public. Targeting him would shock the public and paint the administration in a feeble light,” he added.
Babangida washed off his hand and absolved his government of murdering Giwa, describing such claims as “cheap and foolish.”
“The insinuation that the parcel may have come from the headquarters of the administration was cheap and foolish. Why would an officially planned high-level assassination carry an apparent forwarding address of the killer? Why would a government-planned and executed crime point directly at the suspect?
“All this did not make sense to me,” he wrote, adding that he viewed the accusations as part of the challenges of leading a military regime.
He said he depended on the police and intelligence services to investigate the murder, directing the Inspector-General of Police to assign a top investigative team to the case with daily reports.
Babangida accused the media and certain political figures for distorting the investigation, adding that the Newswatch management’s legal approach, led by their lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, turned the case into a media spectacle rather than a thorough criminal investigation.
“The involvement of high-profile lawyer Gani Fawehinmi and the populist slant given to the case by the media poisoned the investigation with political overtones,” he wrote.
Babangida suggested that by focusing solely on his administration as the prime suspect, the investigation failed to explore other possible leads.
“The legal drama and political grandstanding combined to muddle the work of the police and intelligence investigators towards getting a factual report on this cruel and criminal act.
“What the campaigners failed to realise was that even under a military regime, crimes will be committed by persons and agencies that may not be directly related to either the military establishment or the government.
“The best way to cover up for heinous crimes would be to craft them in a manner that includes the government among the suspects so that what should ordinarily be a criminal investigation is drowned by political actions and populist sentiments,” he added.
He criticised the adversarial stance of the Nigerian media, claiming it had a history of positioning itself against the government, making unbiased investigations difficult.
“It was an attitude of ‘we versus the government’ that has remained today. It is a situation in which the government is adjudged guilty even before the evidence in a case is adduced,” he wrote.
Babangida noted that even when President Olusegun Obasanjo reopened the case through the Oputa Panel on Human Rights, no new evidence emerged.
“The Giwa, like all mysterious murders, has remained unsolved after so many years. I keep hoping the truth will be uncovered in our lifetime or after us,” he wrote.
