By BASHIR ADEFAKA

Col. Gabriel Ajayi, former second-in-command to the General Officer Commanding, GOC, Lagos Garrison Command, General Ishaiya Bamaiyi, is a journalist and core infantry officer of the Nigerian Army.  He was released from prison and retired from the Army on March 4, 1999.

But the story of the former Commanding Officer, 65 Battalion of the Nigerian Army, Sokoto, does not end with that.  What is awful is the military politicking that characterized the tail end of his career in the Army, a reason for his continuous sadness, which he chronicled into a book entitled, “End of the Road: The Travails of an Infantry Officer”

“I started writing this book on the 10th Anniversary of my release from unjust incarceration in Minna prisons.  This was consequent upon the death sentence passed on me on July 14, 1995 by the Brigadier General Patrick Aziza’s Special Military Tribunal (SMT) which was subsequently commuted to 25 years jail term.  I was among many distinguished Nigerians originally sentenced to death by firing squad.

The sentences were later commuted to various jail terms ranging from two years to life imprisonment having been hideously found guilty of allegations of involvement in a coup plot to oust the regime of Late General Sani Abacha, which was rightly described as Phantom by many discerning Nigerians,” Ajayi said in the opening of his introduction to the book.

The author who, in a recent interview published by Sunday Vanguard, said he was mischievously and wrongly accused of wanting to overthrow the General Sani Abacha government with intent to hand it over to the adjudged winner of June 12, 1993 election, Alhaji M. .K. O. Abiola, however stressed out in this book the extent of injustice perpetrated by the Abacha regime against the man, who was at the last Centenary Award Night recognized as reason for the thriving democracy that Nigeria currently enjoys and was honoured thus by the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan-led civilian Federal Government.

“General Sani Abacha tricked the winner of the June 12 Presidential election, Chief M. K. O. Abiola and immorally usurped the mandate given to the chief by the Nigerian electorate.  It was common knowledge that there was neither a coup nor an attempted one in 1995, but an attempt to silence perceived opposition voices in and outside the Nigerian military,” said Col. Ajayi, who stated in the book that he had been under pressure by many respected and eminent Nigerians not to publish his experience in this regard.

“They fear that my writings may rough feathers and create more problems than it will solve.  My mother already weakened by the burden of many years exacted so much pressure on me, she did not want her son back in prison again.  After all, I was a victim of military government plot, what stops the government from plotting another tragedy even of more fatality this time around?

“If a state sets a trap for you, then your chances of escape are slim indeed.  If a state decides that you must be found guilty of treason, even when you have done nothing wrong, then one’s chance of escape depends on extraordinary divine intervention.”  This factor, Col. Ajayi, who was considered being a very brilliant officer of the Army during his time, linked to the travails of General Olusegun Obasanjo and co where he belonged and Generals Oladipo Diya, Tajudeen Olanrewaju, AbdulKarim Adisa and co.

“After all, the state, especially the military regimes, has the power, the means and the resources to manufacture the necessary evidence, exhibits and witnesses.  Even the state has the uncanny ability to make otherwise respectable citizens believe you had indeed committed treason in a uniquely Nigerian way,” regretted Ajayi, who today is a security consultant to organisations.

According to him, just like Obasanjo, Diya, Olanrewaju, Adisa, Gwadabe, Olu Craig and all those implicated in the two phantom coups of 1995 and 1997, “I fell into a state constructed trap and evil plans.  I was arrested with maximum force, charged with maximum offence and locked up in what one could term maximum security prison.  The Inter-Centre, a State Security Service (SSS) detention facility tucked in between the graves of Ikoyi Cemetery.”

“End of The Road: The Travails of an Infantry Officer” is made up of eight chapters.

The book touches on many issues that one would describe as “unputdownable” ranging from “What a Career, What a Profession”; “The 1995 Phantom Coup Plot Saga”; “My Sojourn in Minna prison and Eventual Freedom” and “Torture and the Process of the Torture in the Security Services” to the Appendixes, which, put together, bequeath the readers with useful information especially the Appendixes which chronicle all the coups publicly executed since 1976 and now.

In the Appendixes are various speeches of the leaders of the military regime of each of the successful coups and how the unlucky were either killed or jailed.  For any student of history wanting to know the livers and lungs of history of Nigeria, the Army and leadership of Nigeria, especially since independence, “End of The Road: The Travails of an Infantry Officer” is where to go.