…HE'S NOT A LIAR -TSAV
Former Lagos State police commissioner, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, has condemned those faulting the evidence of the detained former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, Major Hamza al-Mustapha. He said those who are calling him a liar are not fair to him and to Nigerians.
Alhaji Tsav told Daily Sun yesterday that Al-Mustapha has never had an opportunity to speak out since he was arrested, saying he should be given the chance to speak.
'This man has been in custody for 12 years and when you are in custody, you don't talk to the Press. The only opportunity he has to speak out was during his defence and he took advantage of it to break the egg', Tsav stated.
According to the social commentator, it is only reasonable for the suspect to make full use of this golden opportunity to open up on some of these issues, adding that anybody in a similar fate will do the same.
He stressed that 'Major al-Mustapha is not a liar and is not mentally deranged as some have claimed. If he had said before what he is now saying, he would have long been in the grave. They would have killed him. Attempts were made to kill him. But God did not permit. A senior prison officer lost his job for this'.
Meanwhile, the Deputy President-General of the Yoruba in the North, Dr. Jimpat Ayelangbe, has urged Nigerians to ignore the testimonies of al-Mustapha, saying his recent tirades against some Yoruba leaders were nothing, but fictions.
Ayelangbe, who spoke to Daily Sun in Kano, urged Nigerians to take a second look at the revelations of the former Aso Rock medical doctor, Dr. Ibrahim Yakassai regarding Major al-Mustapha and make a comparison.
According to him, there are several holes in the evidence adduced by the detained Army Major before a Lagos High Court, explaining that those who visited the former Head of State, General Abubakar Abdulsalami, did not go there as Yoruba leaders, rather they went there as NADECO chieftains.
He said that it is simply idiotic to want Nigerians to accept that the only reason a delegation could be hilarious at the end of a courtesy call was because they had been bribed by their host.
He said that several things in-between could have changed their mood from that of anger to relief, arguing that being a pro-democracy group, they definitely had confronted General Abdulsalami with a number of demands on the way forward and their mood were bound to be relaxed if at the end of the day, the erstwhile Head of State had agreed to their prayers.
He also faulted the claim that the late Chief Bola Ige was appointed Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice primarily to appease the Yoruba, adding that he was first appointed Minister of Steel and Power and not the Justice Minister.
He expressed bitterness that al-Mustapha could resort to rubbish the legacies of such a rare personality, like Bola Ige, a man he noted, had meant so well for the country, even as he tasked the family of the late Yoruba minister not to glorify Major al-Mustapha by taking him serious.