Reminiscences with Colonel Peter Kolawole Obasa

Colonel Peter Kolawole Obasa (retired) served as the director-general of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) from 1979 to 1984. He was tried and jailed over the allegation of taking kickbacks in the award of contracts in the organisation. After 35 years, in this interview he spoke on his experiences and the truth about the […]

Colonel Peter Kolawole Obasa (retired) served as the director-general of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) from 1979 to 1984. He was tried and jailed over the allegation of taking kickbacks in the award of contracts in the organisation. After 35 years, in this interview he spoke on his experiences and the truth about the contract saga.

 

How would you describe your journey of life so far?

I was born in Kabbah, Kogi State, on January 1938. I attended Saint Mary Primary School in Kabbah. It still baffles me how my dad took only me, out of all his children to school. And he didn’t regret sending me to school because I think I paid back bountifully.

After primary school I was admitted into St Columbus Secondary School, Agbor, now in Delta State. I spent a year there. The school actually prepared students for a teaching career before going to a more senior training college. After the one year, I went back to Kabbah and taught at St Mary Primary School for one year as a pupil teacher. But my aspiration was beyond that, so I worked towards getting admission into St Malaky’s Teachers’ Training College, Minna. I succeeded. I was there for two years to obtain a Grade 3 teachers’ certificate.

I got my certificate in two years and taught in a school for two years. Before the end of the second year, I gained entry into the same Malaky’s for the teachers’ Grade 2 certificate. I was back in school in the same Minna after one year. Our school was moved from Minna to Kaduna and from Kaduna to Zaria. We were running a kind of nomadic education then. I completed my course at St Embers Teachers’ Training College, Zaria in 1960 and was posted to Sabo Nseriki in Kaduna. I actually prepared myself for more than Grade 2 or 3 teachers’ training certificate because while I was working, I registered for the General Certificate in Education (GCE), ordinary level and passed my subjects at a sitting. Between the time I left the Grade 2 teachers’ training college in Zaria, I registered for the advanced level in three subjects and succeeded. I was actually combining the two at the time. One year after I left Zaria, I had my advanced level in Literature in English, History and Geography. It was on the basis of that that I gained entry into the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1963. I spent three years in ABU with combined honours degree in Geography and History. After graduating from the ABU I taught in the mission school because I had an affinity with them, but I didn’t stay too long before I joined the Army.

I joined the Army in 1967. My first introduction to the Army was in the military school, Zaria, as an instructor. I taught Geography and History. It was very competitive because we saw ourselves as role models to boys in the Nigerian Military School (NMS). Most instructors were dedicated and it became competitive because we were proud to see 100per cent pass in our various subjects in the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). And we attained that.

I was sent to the Military Training College, Jaji, but after a year, I was sent back to young officers’ courses that were related to the profession of officers in Nigeria. What I did there related to soldiering, in the sense that I was meant to be a marks man who is very good at handling weapons, firing at a target and getting your target most of the time. That same year, I was on the Nigerian Army team that went to Cairo for an international shooting exercise. When I left the military Training College, Jaji for the 3rd Infantry Division as a divisional education officer, the entire education edifice in 3rd Division at that time was under my command. I didn’t spend much time there before the Army nominated me to the University of Ife for a postgraduate diploma in International Relations. I was in Ife for one year, but at that time, the Institute of Administration was still in Ibadan, so my course was there. I came out with a distinction and two prizes, one for the best in diploma course on international affairs and the second for the overall best student in all the diploma courses in the institution that year.

I left Ife and was posted to the Lagos Garrison as an education officer. I was there for barely 11 months before I was posted to the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) as a senior education officer. The academy proved to be a very fertile ground for me and an interesting institution where one could really excel. I came into the mainstream of management of the NDA. One thing that is most important, which I think I did at the institution, was the upgrading of the NDA into a degree-awarding institution. The idea came from me; I have the details.

How did you come up with the idea?

We were sent on a world tour to see military schools in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom and India. I was the only education officer on that team; our team leader was Brigadier-General Evaristus Arman.

I covered the educational aspect of all the institutions. We went to the US Military Academy, West Point and I discovered that all their students were prepared for a first degree before commissioning. They were already awarded a first degree certificate, with bias for engineering courses, which I found very interesting. From there, we went to the Royal Canadian Military Academy, Kingston, a small town in the Contario. I looked at it and found that they also prepared their cadets for first degree. We proceeded to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhost, United Kingdom, which was the main military academy at that time, where they prepared their cadets for advanced level only, but any student who was capable after graduation could go for first degree. From there, we went to the National Defence Academy, Purna, India. There, I found that the emphasis was on first degree before commissioning.

By the time we got back to Nigeria, my report was ready. I presented it to our team leader and he handed it over to the commandant-general, Yalo. When he read through the report he was impressed. He called his deputy and said the report must go to the NDA Board, asking it to upgrade the institution to a degree-awarding status. When the NDA Board came for a meeting I was invited to defend the report, but there was nothing to defend because everybody who read it agreed with it. The chairman of the Board was General Theophilus Danjuma, who was the Chief of Army Staff. Air Vice Marshal Issa Dokko, Rear Admiral Micheal Adelanwa and the commandant of the NDA were members, as well as the permanent secretary, Ministry of Defence, whose name I can’t remember now.

They discussed the report and agreed that the best thing was to send it to the head of state, who was the only one that could put stamp of approval on the whole thing. I recommended several things for the institution, but I can’t mention all of them here.

 

Can you mention some of your recommendations?

First is that the NDA should be upgraded to a degree-awarding institution and it should be given a seven-year preparatory period, during which it would acquire the infrastructure of a potential university. Secondly, that the NDA should not be autonomous from the outset, it should be a college of either the University of Ibadan or ABU, Zaria. I mentioned Ibadan because we already had an affiliation with them on our Nigeria Defence Academy Certificate of Education (NDCE). It was Ibadan that moderated the exam for us. So I thought we could continue because we had a tie with them inform of an agreement, but for proximity, I recommended ABU.

The main reason for such recommendation was that the institution would not award its own degrees but those of an already established university so that the quality of the degrees that would be awarded would be very sound. I did that because I was a director of studies at NDA and I knew the condition under which their exams were written. In order to check the quality of our NDACE, I decided to register our cadets for GCE A-Level, which it was supposed to be at par with. With all that at the back of my mind, I said we should get ourselves affiliated to an existing university, where we wouldn’t have to set our own exams, mark them and award our degrees, but get it from the institutions I recommended. After all said and done, the report went to the president in-council and it was approved. But when they came back they established an NDA that awarded its own degrees and was autonomous, which was contrary to my recommendations.

 

Why was your recommendation against the autonomy of the institution?

When you award a degree, it should conform to the standard of other recognised degree-awarding institutions anywhere in the world. It should be respected and accepted anywhere. In this institution, the content and process of acquiring degrees had been flawed here and there. For example, the hours meant for lessons are not complete. When students are supposed to be reading in class, they are taken out on military exercise; and so many other distractions like that. When students are supposed to be on prep in the evening, they will call them out for parade, which disrupts academic activities hugely. At the end, they won’t get the kind of standard and quality expected. The instructor will be compelled to teach towards the examination.

 

As a teacher and military officer, can you still remember some of your students?

I have many of them, especially in the military school. Many of them rose to become generals. Two of them became chief of army staff before they left the profession. One of them is Ogbomo. I can’t remember their names again.

 

What about your schoolmates?

My stay in Agbor was tentative. I ran into one of them when I was at the NYSC. His name is Ambrose Slomoye, who moved to Canada for a degree. I can’t remember any of my mates in Minna, but in the Army, some of them are late now, if I am not mistaken. I think I am probably the only one who is still around among my mates in the Army, waiting for the final whistle.

 

Can you share your experience during your trip to Cairo for the international shooting exercise?

The exercise was huge because Army officers came from all over the world. On our team from Nigeria we had four officers. I can remember Captain Obi, who is late now. I was a major then and our team leader was Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammadu Buhari, our present president of Nigeria with four other officers of different ranks. The exercise was in 1972 and Buhari reluctantly accepted me as his second in command.

 

You said Muhammadu Buhari reluctantly accepted you as his second-in-command; was there any problem between both of you?

We never had any problem. He knew why he accepted me reluctantly. You know the Army is such a funny organisation. I got into the Army as an education officer while others got in as regular combatant commissioned officers, and the latter are supposed to be the creme de la crème of the profession because they are perfect in everything. Those of us who got in with our first degrees through a direct short service were seen as below the standard of other officers. Based on that principle, an officer like me could not command a group of eight people who were going for such an exercise. But we worked very well because I saw him as a very straight- forward officer. He was very methodical and stuck to the details and rules. I considered him as very inflexible. He was rather rigid. The point I want to make about his rigidity is that we were made to wear uniform for the shooting exercise. When you go on a firing exercise you are supposed to go in a kind of dress that will leave you quite free to use your hands as you would like because you want to be liberated. You don’t want to be hampered by anything that will make firing difficult for you, like the sleeve of the uniform jacket that usually pulls down one’s arm, which may destroy one’s aim. But that was the type of the uniform we were made to wear. On the first day, I discovered that all the armies didn’t wear that uniform at all, they instead used something that was light and comfortable, and I told our oga that others were not using it and that we should wear something light. He said no, explaining that the organisers said uniform should be used. And we continued with the uniform.

As director-general of the NYSC, you were implicated in an alleged contract kickback, what is the real story?

I went to the NYSC with a certain idea. Financial regulation was something I knew very well because I was the chairman of the Tenders Board of the NDA for three and half years. I was signatory to the NDA account, so I knew a lot about finances. I went there with the idea that voting procedure would be the same because government allocated money annually and you had to request for what you wanted to spend and justify what you wanted to spend in the presentation of your annual votes. And you would defend same, either before the Senate or House of Representatives. These votes were targeted at certain things and you must not exceed it.

When I got there, within my first three months, the chief of army staff called me and I said I should be getting my handover notes ready because the civilian administration was going to appoint a civilian director to head the place, and I said fine. So I found that I was neither there nor here. When you are in such state you become perturbed and you wouldn’t know how far you could go or couldn’t go. You won’t want to start a thing you couldn’t complete. Like my predecessor did, the Tenders Board of the NYSC was headed by the head of finance and account, but the director was empowered to award contracts of N5,000, short of 1kobo without reference to anybody. I didn’t even do that. I set up a finance committee to award such contracts because I didn’t want to get too tied up with contracts. The contracts were specifically for the uniform items of corps members and office stationeries, equipment, vehicles and repair. It was straightforward and I found out that there was no way of deviating from what had been set. I left things running like that. The first year went beautifully and perfect, I didn’t even know I would spend up to a year. When nobody was asking me to hand over, I started with my own reform of the scheme. I overhauled the orientation programme completely and remodeled it and it took a different form. From 1981, there was a unified orientation all over the country. I also made it more military-oriented and invited military personnel to conduct the training. I think it is still like that up till today. I also thought of what the scheme would be doing in the next 10 years because I don’t believe in running an organisation that will run from year to year on the same principle and practice. I wanted to see improvement.

We had a meeting in Argungu and it diverted completely from the set pattern because all the state directors came and read what they did; but it was always the same thing. In Argungu, I said we were going to set up two committees to look at the NYSC and suggest what it should be doing in the next 10 years as different from what we were doing. The first committee was made up of all the members while the second committee had only me. I told them to go and start discussing and bring recommendation on what the scheme should in 10 years. I also went back and started writing my own idea of what the scheme should look like and use that as a means of regulating the NYSC programme. We have a kind of roadmap of where we should be in 10 years. It was in the course of that that the idea of NYSC farms came up. They adopted that for some time, but I don’t know if they have jettisoned it. We ran the first year and I came in with this idea in second year. In the third year we did beautifully, and in the fourth year, I knew I was leaving the place and I continued with the same process, not knowing that certain things were happening that would be really unsavory. In all honesty, I got some reports that certain things were going on and my way of checking was to get into the account department to see what was given out, who was paid what and how much was paid. And I was doing that daily. After sometime, I withdrew their register so that nothing again was going out. Here, I must say that I was not involved in awarding contracts. I didn’t know the contractors. I had no company of my own getting patronage from the scheme. I could never have done that. My sense of responsibility and the ethics of my upbringing would stop me from doing that. I didn’t even know any of the contactors, but I had things to the extent of withdrawing the ledger with records of payments made, and cheques. Nothing could be done because I kept that with me. If they had anything urgent they could come to my office and say there was an urgent need, but nobody came. I had the register in my office for a long time.

Towards the end of October, I knew I was leaving at the end of the year and I had already prepared. I started writing my handover note. After that I returned the register to the account and I handed over at the end of the year. I couldn’t even hand over properly because I was sick and I left. I didn’t suspect anything because I had done my own checks and balances, only to hear that there had been some financial impropriety seven months after I left the scheme. And I was arrested. I didn’t quite understand what it was all about, but what I saw was that my account was frozen. I didn’t even know it was frozen; it was an army officer that told me about it.

I went to the chief of army staff and asked why my account was frozen and he told me that they said a Central Bank of Nigeria cheque was paid into my account through a merchant bank. People don’t use merchant bank but commercial banks, so he said I should prepare a defence. I thanked him and he said he would give me as much protection as I would need. I saluted him and left, but before I got to the door he called me back and repeated his offer of unsolicited protection for me. I thanked him and said the truth would defend itself. The special investigation panel they set up came to my house and searched. They said they discovered certain things, which they listed somewhere and I signed.

 

What were the items discovered in your house?

They were my two cheque books, my account here. I had an account in the United Kingdom with a small amount of money; a draft of a letter which had not been handed over to anybody but not written by me, and other few things like that. When they asked me to make a statement, I wasn’t told it would be used in court because under normal circumstances I should have been informed that it would be used in court. They brought some documents and asked if I could comment on them. They were many and appeared to be contracts awarded by the NYSC to certain people. I told them that I didn’t know who authorised the documents because I was seeing them for the first time and knew nothing about them. And I was not sure if the contracts were genuine. That was the statement I wrote. They put things up and I said I was going to be tried on five charges or thereabouts, but before we started the trial, I appealed to my God, asking for direction and he gave me. I am happy that God is still keeping his promise up till today. That’s the reason I was able to come up to make certain claims, 35 years after.

 

What are your claims?

My claims are numerous and they are all contained in the book I wrote. Everything I am talking about is there. All my experiences with the special investigation panel and the tribunal are there, as well as my gratuity and pension, and so many other demands.

 

What was your experience with the special investigation panel and the tribunal?

When the special investigation panel went to the tribunal, they brought out a lengthy list of things they said they recovered in my house. I said that those things were not from my house and insisted to see the ones they listed which I signed, but the chairman of the tribunal said they should accept what they wrote to save time.

 

Can you remember the name of the chairman of the tribunal?

General Paul Omo. He said we should accept the fake list to save time. When they started bringing out exhibits, I looked at them and told them that I didn’t know anything about it, and that I was seeing it for the first time. He also said we should accept them and save time. So they accepted all of them, up to 800 things I didn’t know anything about. The only documents I was able to identify were my own cheques taken from my house and the letter I mentioned earlier.

Members of the panel were treacherous group of people. They actually sent someone to me and said they had looked through the whole thing and knew that I was not involved in awarding contracts, and that I possibly didn’t even know the contractors, but they found some money in my accounts and I should let us divide it and they would let me go. I told their emissary that I had decided to let the truth prevail. I said I would tell the tribunal what happened and they should be able to detect the truth.

They brought in four witnesses. Oh my God, it was horrible. The witnesses were people I never had anything with or conversation with. They had never even been to my office, and they were asking them questions and they were answering. I felt very depressed that human beings could go into a trial process and tell such heavy lies against their neighbour. I had an assurance from my God, so I just took it in my stride and waited. Then the trial ended and they said I was guilty of taking kickbacks from contractors. As I said, I didn’t award contracts to anybody and I didn’t even know the contractors. What I had were gifts by friends, which I kept in my account. I did my job with a clean heart.

 

What happened to those in the committee who were responsible for awarding the contracts?

They were also tried and some of them were found to have given contracts to their own companies. The sad thing was that the money they spent didn’t come from our votes, it came from somewhere else. It means they went outside our votes to take money from the Central Bank.

 

Was the money they took from Central Bank a loan?

I was later told that the NYSC had a facility where it could overspend its votes and the Central Bank would honour their cheques. I was not even aware that we had the whole of Central Bank to ourselves and we could take all the money to do whatever we wanted.

 

Do you have any information about those who were indicted and jailed with you? Are they still alive?

When I came back from prison I was told that some of those who gave false testimony against me had died. I heard that one of them took his children to the Bar Beach and the tide took away one of them. He jumped into the water to rescue the child, but unfortunately, the tide took all of them away. Sadly, I heard that some of them ended like that. A number of them, I learnt, have passed on.

 

What is your unforgettable experience as an army officer?

The only thing I can remember is the false accusations and the trial before the tribunal, which I regard as a kangaroo court. It was set up by the Supreme Military Council. Its chairman and some of the members belonged to the council. So the same people who accused you tried you, judged you and punished you. I don’t know where that is done in the world. The laws were backdated for three years. The Nigerian Bar Association condemned the whole thing and said their members should not appear before the tribunal to defend anybody.

 

Have you made any attempt to correct the injustice you claimed was meted to you?

I have tried severally. The first thing I did was to write to the Army to give me my entitlement. And they told me to show the original gazzette because I took a photocopy to them. I came back to Ilorin from Abuja to get the original and took it back. They looked at it and photocopied it, after that, they told me to write to the president to grant me pardon. I asked them; pardon for what? I didn’t commit any crime. They just took me for a trial at a kangaroo court. My book contains everything about the trial.

When the Army refused to give me my entitlement I took the case to a Federal High Court in Lagos. The hearing went on for more than a year. From the argument of my legal counsel and those representing the Army, I was sure that the case was going my way. When the case ended, the trial judge said he was going to give a ruling on a particular date. When we got to the court on the said date and we were told that the judge took a sick leave, I knew that something wrong was happening. He gave us another day and we waited. On that day, before the judge said anything, the Army’s counsel came up and said the court was not competent to hear the case. We spent a whole year. We went on appeal and they also kept dribbling us for six months. I left after six months and asked God to take care of the case. I started writing petitions to different presidents, but they didn’t act on it, and that is why I felt like going public.

 

What is the motive behind your book?

I wrote the book to let the world know what I experienced from 1984 onward, the illegality and injustice of the tribunal. The details are in the book, and I believe that anybody who is interested in what is true and just would want to have a look at what I have written.

 

What is your take on democracy in Nigeria?

It is too expensive. How do you spend about 70per cent of our gross domestic product maintaining people in administration and the remaining 30per cent on infrastructure? There is no way the country will progress like that. There is nothing devoted to scientific investigation, research and analysis in this country. A country can only prosper on research, which is what is happening in developed nations.

 

What system of government do you think would be suitable for Nigeria?

We can have democracy, but it must be a cheaper one. For instance, buying a fleet of jets for the president should be stopped because we don’t have the expertise to maintain them. Why do we have to buy what we cannot maintain locally?

 

Do you see any way forward for Nigeria’s socio-economic challenges?

I believe the president has brilliant ideas, but my fear is that people around him will not allow him to carry out his projects. If we allow him to carry out his programmes, he will perform excellently, just like what he did as the chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund. We can still see some of his achievements and Nigerians are proud of that.

I welcome the idea of revoking oil blocks to individuals. Buhari should set up a commission like the PTF to handle all the oil blocks and give us authentic account.