Sani Abacha

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Sani Abacha (born September 20, 1943 in Kano , † June 8, 1998 in Abuja ) was a general and military dictator of Nigeria (1993-1998).

education

Originally from the Hausa people, Sani Abacha switched to a military college after attending school in his hometown in 1962. He left this in 1963 to complete military training in the United Kingdom until 1971 . He fought in the Biafra War in 1967 and was promoted to captain in 1975. Abacha continued his military training in the following years and took part in an international defense course in Monterey ( California ) in 1982 .

Buhari government

In December 1983 Abacha was involved in the overthrow of the elected President Shehu Shagari and in the takeover of Shagari's successor, military dictator Muhammadu Buhari . Abacha announced the change of government by radio; thus began his political career.

In 1984 Abacha was promoted to major general. In 1985 he helped General Ibrahim Babangida to replace Buhari with a military coup . He was appointed Chief of Staff of the Army , making him the second most powerful man in Nigeria. In August 1990 he became Minister of Defense under Babangida. How much influence Abacha had on Babangida during this period is unclear. Some claim that he had real political power in the government.

In February 1993, Abacha announced that the government wanted an early transition to civilian leadership and an end to military leadership. General Babangida scheduled the election for June 1993 . But when it became apparent that Moshood Abiola ( Social Democratic Party ) would win, Babangida canceled the election results. As a result, Abacha pushed through the removal of Babangida from all offices on August 26, 1993 and set up a civil transitional government under Ernest Shonekan . However, as chief of staff and defense minister, he practically retained power. After only three months in office, Shonekan resigned on November 18 under pressure from demonstrations. Sani Abacha took power in the state.

Military dictatorship

Although Abacha promised a return to democracy , he dissolved the democratic institutions and replaced civil servants with military officers. Political parties that were not officially recognized (e.g. the SDP) were severely suppressed or dissolved. The new 1989 constitution, which had not yet come into force, was abandoned.

Abacha's regime was marked by the arrests, incarceration and execution of political opponents, censorship of the press and the development of a police state. Famous victims of his government were Abiola, who died in prison in July 1998, and former head of state Olusegun Obasanjo . One of his most brutal acts was the persecution and execution in 1995 of environmentalist and journalist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists who protested against the destruction of the environment by multinational oil companies. In 1997, Abacha had Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka accused of high treason along with other opposition members living in exile. Other victims of his regime were numerous military officers whom he had killed, presumably to reaffirm and maintain his power over the military.

In terms of foreign policy, he supported the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS) and its military arm, the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), by sending troops to Liberia and Sierra Leone to restore democratic conditions there.

In terms of human rights reform, Abacha always resisted the demands of his international and national opponents; international measures against his government had little effect: during his tenure there were numerous international sanctions, de facto diplomatic isolation, condemnation from the UN and banishment from the Commonwealth . Abacha rarely traveled or spoke in public, and he was never seen without his sunglasses and a cadre of 2,000-3,000 bodyguards . During the last year of his reign (1998), Abacha received Pope John Paul II and Yasser Arafat .

In 1995, Abacha announced that the government would be returned to civilians before October 1998. The election campaign was to take place in August 1998. However, on June 8, 1998, Abacha died of a sudden heart attack in his mansion from an overdose of Viagra while he was amusing three Indian prostitutes flown in from Dubai. During his tenure, Abacha made more than $ 1 billion - other estimates go up to $ 5 billion - from Nigeria's oil revenues outside the country.

His successor Abdulsalami Abubakar launched a rapid democratization program and oversaw the return to an elected civilian government in 1999.

One of the most common initiations of Internet fraud in 2005, the so-called " Nigeria Connection ", happened under the pretense that the widow or one of Abacha's sons had knowledge of a million dollar fortune in third-party accounts, which the person asked to cooperate by e-mail could claim and collect should help (so-called Chapter 419 fraud, according to the paragraph of the Nigerian criminal law, which makes this fraud initiation a criminal offense).

In 2016, United States law enforcement agencies attempted to secure approximately $ 630 million in assets attributed to Abacha.

In December 2017, the Swiss Foreign Ministry announced that it would repay around $ 320 million of seized funds from the Abachas family to Nigeria.

On May 31, 2019, US $ 268 million was secured in a bank account in Jersey , one of the British Channel Islands . The money was raised through corruption during the rule of Sani Abacha. The account had been blocked since 2014 at the request of a federal court in Washington, DC .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sani Abacha . In: Encyclopædia Britannica .
  2. ↑ Murray, Craig ; The Catholic Orangemen of Togo: And Other Conflicts I Have Known; London 2009, p. 59
  3. ↑ Leslie Wayne: "Wanted by US: The Stolen Millions of Despots and Crooked Elites" The New York Times, February 16, 2016
  4. ↑ STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft mbH: Switzerland repays Nigeria 321 million dollars from ex-dictator Abaja . In: derStandard.at . ( derstandard.at [accessed on December 5, 2017]).
  5. ↑ $ 267 million paid into Jersey's Civil Asset Recovery Fund. Information and public services for the Island of Jersey, accessed June 4, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Abacha, sani
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Nigerian general and military dictator
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Kano
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1998
Place of death Abuja