Seun Fadipe, a retired Major and former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Lt-Gen Oladipo Diya, has revealed how the late Military Head of State, General Sani Abacha, escaped being kidnapped in Enugu State in 1997.

Diya was the Chief of General Staff, the then de facto vice president of Nigeria under the military administration of Abacha, and Fadipe served as his CSO.

The duo, alongside over 200 individuals, were arrested in 1997 for plotting a coup against Abacha.

Fadipe appeared on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television on Friday, January 24, 2025.

He narrated how Diya and his co-conspirators planned to abduct Abacha and force him to resign in Enugu, but the then-head of state caught wind of the development and aborted the trip at the last hour.

"There was a coup, whether it was now a phantom one or it was a setup, it’s immaterial now because that’s the problem I had with my boss until he died. I was a major, if I wanted to be involved in a coup as a major, it would be a violent coup because there was no way I would do a palace coup because I had a lot of seniors ahead of me. I never planned any coup, I never intended to plan any coup but I got involved through my boss.

“As of that time, Abacha was doing well, but because he wanted to transmit to a civilian regime, things went haywire,” he recalled.

Fadipe narrates how Abacha escaped the coup

According to Fadipe, it would have been easy for Diya and his co-coup plotters to execute their plan in Abuja and exert control from the nation's capital but “maybe it was just providence or he (Abacha) got some information because all his advance parties had gone to the airport” yet he aborted the trip at the last minute.

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“On the 9th of December 1997, we got to the office, and after the pleasantries with my boss, the ADC left. Once the ADC leaves, I will give my boss the security briefing for the period and after, he said: ‘Are you sure all is well?’ That was before the bomb attempt on the 13th of December 1997. That was the first time he told me directly that something was in the offing.

“A day before then, the Chief of Army Training Conference just took off in Enugu, and Abacha, being the C-in-C was supposed to open the event. The man had left the Villa and then on his way to the airport, all of a sudden, the man came back.

“So, after some time, my boss called me and told me that the man aborted his trip and he was back in the villa. My boss was a bit worried. I don’t know what was going on at that time. So I asked my boss to be on standby maybe the guy would still go back but to my surprise, that never happened.

“In the evening, Ishaya Bamaiyi (then army chief) came to General Diya’s office. So, we were wondering, the chief of army staff, what’s he doing here? He was supposed to be in Enugu. So when he (Bamaiyi) left, my boss called me and asked me to call him General Adisa Adisa.

“By then, Adisa had been removed as the Minister of Works and Housing. I called General Adisa and he came in almost immediately, this time around he was almost in mufti. So, on his way out, the man was asking me some questions but he discovered I was not privy to it.

“The next morning, my boss told me and a few security people: ‘If Oga had travelled yesterday, he would have been arrested and there would have been a change of government’. I just knew I was in trouble. He said if he (Abacha) had gone to Enugu, he would have been abducted and forced to resign and there would have been a change of government.”

Fadipe said he didn’t betray his former boss, stressing that he never disclosed any of the coup plans to the authorities.

“There was no way I would have betrayed my boss. A lot of things happened when we came out of detention; he was trying to malign me and all of that but I just know he was a man that was struggling to survive,” he said.

Diya, Fadipe, and others arrested for treason were detained after the failed coup plot in 1997. A military tribunal handed Diya a death sentence, but he, alongside Fadipe and others, was pardoned by General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who succeeded Abacha after his sudden demise in 1998.

In a 2023 interview, one of Diya's sons, Dr Babatunde Diya, disclosed how Abacha's death saved his father from the jaws of death.

He described his father as a cat with nine lives, having escaped two near-death experiences.

"This was somebody that had nine lives like a cat because he got involved in two near-death experiences. The first one, I think he went to use the restroom, and there was a bomb blast.

"The second one was when Victor Malu passed the verdict of the death sentence, and the night before the Abacha regime was supposed to carry it out, Abacha passed away," Dr Diya said.

Diya died on Sunday, March 26, 2023 - a few days before his 79th birthday.