Al Mustapha: I’m Just Learning How to Use Mobile Phone, Ipad

Major Hamza Al Mustapha

Since his release by a court weeks ago, after about 15 years in detention, Major Hamza Al Mustapha, chief security officer to late former Head of State, General Sani Abacha, has been striving to catch up with things that are in vogue. In this encounter with Tokunbo Adedoja, this erstwhile powerful man in the nation’s seat of power, speaks on what he has been doing since he gained his freedom and also reveals his other side that is unknown to many

It was a Wednesday evening and there was traffic snarl around the Federal Secretariat in Abuja, as I made my way to a location on a street somewhere around Garki area. On one of the plots on that street, is a storey building with a relatively high perimeter fence and a fleet of about seven vehicles, including an SUV marked NPF. Some youngmen, likely in their early 30s, were seen discussing just by the front door of the building. The main entrance leads to a room which has all the features of a reception, though finishing touches were still being put on the internal fittings.

Four youngmen, three in jackets and one in caftan, stood behind what looked like a front desk or a security checkpoint. But with a known face leading the way, it was straight to the stairway that leads to the first floor. In the small waiting room on that floor were three men who were holding a conversation in hausa. They looked like they were in their 40s. Just then, a familiar face walked in. He wore a caftan with a cap to match. It was Ibrahim Abacha, son of late General Abacha. The two men who were sitting immediately stood up and greeted him. Uttering few words in hausa, he exchanged pleasantries with everybody in the room before taking his leave.

I was then ushered into a relatively expansive office. It had a TV, a sofa and a love chair on one side and on the right side of the door was a desk, three visitors chairs, and a book shelf sparsely stocked. Sitting behind the desk was Major Hamza Al-mustapha, former chief security officer to late Head of State, General Sani Abacha. He wore a green caftan with a cap to match. I took my seat just directly in front of him, sandwiched by his younger brother, Hadi, and a friend. After the exchange of pleasantries, I went straight to the point. “I am here to find out how you are fairing and catching up since your release”, I said.

He chuckled, looked straight into my eyes, then with a slight grin, he began a long story of his life outside prison: “Well, when I lost my freedom, I was incarcerated for so long. Now that God Almighty has brought me out, I want to catch up with the digitalised world. Since I came out, I have been a student. Everybody around me is a teacher. I am learning, right from the capacity to manage telephones, Ipad - the one you are holding -computer, the children are teaching me, my friends are teaching me even other means of communication, all aspects of the social media. I am just a student. I am reading hard also to catch up with some other activities that I believe that I should get my mind accustomed to. I am being talked to by different groups everyday, knowing their issues, the objectives of their associations, all these put together.”

“You mean you are just learning about how to use mobile phones, computers and Ipad?”, I asked in a surprise tone, having read news stories about his life of luxury in detention.

“I hadn’t access to any of such things”, he said. Sensing that it would be difficult for me to believe, he went on to buttress his claim: “I was in solitary cell. You can’t have access to some of those things. All you can have is your capacity to operate within your own limitations depending on the state of your offence. For nine years, seven months, I was also in different prisons. Ikoyi maximum security prison and Kuje prison in Abuja. I had a series of restrictions unknown to prison laws. Deliberately, some restrictions were created for me alone. Out of 50,000 inmates in Nigeria, you could not see me without passport size photograph, you must have an application, you must leave your phone number or your full address and you are being visited by security agencies to know who you are and why you visited. And even while there, you have your visitors under the eyes of the prison staff, they listen, and monitor everything you do and submit report. That started right from 1999. So, I hadn’t the kind of freedom that you think.”

Recalling some of the reports that made headlines at different times during his incarceration, Al Mustapha said: “There were several times that allegations came that we all were staying in Sheraton Hotel, that was in Lagos. At one time, they changed it and said Durbar Hotel. They came and investigated, we were there (in prison). What used to worry those in authority then was that we never came to court in very clumsy or ranshackled manner, according to some people’s expectations. We were always coming to court clean.

“So, investigations were done and they realised that we never moved an inch. Out of the entire fifteen years I stayed, it was only one occassion that I was unconscious. I didn’t know. When I woke up, I found myself in Navy hospital in the immediate neighbouring barracks to maximum security prison. That was the only time I can tell you that I was taken to the hospital. And if that is pleasure, that is a wrong definition of pleasure. As soon as I was treated, I was returned back. That was 2011. The issue of pleasure, certainly no. And if anybody visited and still see us smiling, it was because we trusted in God Almighty. Our faith in God Almighty is undoubted. If you are talking to me and I have a little breath, I will smile.”

For him, there has not been any dull moment since he left prison. From dawn till dusk, he is engaged in one activity or the other. “You see, I work almost round the clock listening to different groups, reading about so many issues presented before me,” he said, adding, “I have also pyschologically prepared myself that I am but a student. I am catching up fast.”

Speaking further, he said, “Like today, I had eight meetings with eight different groups. The time is 5.15pm, from the hour of 10, I have had eight meetings. Four were from the South; one, their leadership came from Ghana, they are managing Nigerian association in Ghana, and then three were from the North. To me, I do not select, I don’t segregate, everybody is mine.”

He also disclosed that he had Al Mustapha Foundation which he founded as far back as 1987. “The motor is service to humanity. And I didn’t tell anybody that I am into many services, the foundation is into many things in different communities - education, reformation, renovation of schools and then scholarship, transportation that are very low rate.”

Al Mustpaha would not want Nigerians to believe all the tales they have heard about him, particularly when he was the chief security officer to the late maximum ruler. These were just campaign of calumny, he said. In his words, “By nature and contrary to the campaign that I suffered from or I am still suffering from, distortion about my type of character and personality is what gave a kind of impression to some people who do not know me. I don’t keep people away, I do not harass people, I show love, I show care, I show concern to people, whether I know you or I do not.”

In a low tone, he said while he was in government people didn’t know much of me. Apparently trying to correct the impression that he was a tin god and that merciless military officer whose words were as powerful as those of the commander in chief whom he served as his chief security officer, Al Mustapha said: “They only could hear my name and see what I was doing because I kept away from publicising myself. Some who out of jealousy believed that I was blocking their negative activities against mankind, formed a force, a force to present a diferent Al Mustapha. The me you see, that is the me that was, that is. No change. I always can go out of my way to support, to help, to show care. That is the way I have been and that was the way I was brought up. You know him ( pointing at Hadi), when you see him that is the way you see me.

“That was the way I was all along. I have never charged an officer, I have never charged a soldier. I have never written and charged one and I don’t have that policy. I don’t also take a soldier to guardroom. I have never done so. You know what I do? If you commit an offence and you are a soldier, I will show you my anger that what you did is wrong and then I will now hand you over to an instructor to teach you that aspect that I know you are lacking. That is why anywhere I command, I had the training team always at work. So they get you retrained. So if you take that retraining as punishment, then there is misunderstanding about what the profession is all about”.

But why are people milling around him? From the moment he was released from prison to his arrival at Kano airport, he has continued to attract a large crowd. Even right in his office building, young men were seen around him. Responding to this question, Al Mustapha went down memory lane. He said: “The youths you see that are hanging around, their activities started since 1984, registering them out of nothing, moulding them to have something of their own, owning their own associations, promoting their activities from the little contacts I have had in government since ‘84.

“Some of them have grown big today. Some of them are senior lecturers in universities, polytechnics, some are senior civil servants, some are in paramilitary today. Those are the activities I have been doing all alone. But I am not the type that will make noise about what I do. I do it in the name of God and I do it for the country. For those of them who had been benefitting from what I have been doing and now that I have my liberty right now, they are those that you see around.”

But if he had done so much, why is it that all we hear about him are stories of brutal use of state power? He paused for a while and then went on to adduce reasons for this: “It is simply because we are not the talking type. When we do, we do it in the name of God. Otherwise, I think we can claim to be among those who will say that these philanthropic activities have occupied our programmes. That is why you keep seing people around. Besides, the youths actually, many of them who were less than ten yesterday are today active teenagers. Some of them were in their early twenties right when I left, they are very senior youth leaders today in the country. They know what they inherited in different organisations in the North and South put together. That is why you see them coming all the time.”

His detention was a sort of school of life for him, as he maintained that there were precious lessons he learnt in those difficult years. Responding to a question on what he learnt in detention, he said, “I have learnt so many things. First, I had opportunity of deep reflection, reading, and then coming from the state of hopelessness to look at Nigeria from that point of view and see activities of some institutions, particularly against the poor where some of the institutions from that point of view of hopelessness, constitute themselves as grinding machines against the poor.”

On what he missed most during his detention, Al Mustapha paused for a few seconds and then sighed before sounding philosophical. “Once you take somebody’s liberty, then you have taken everything. If you give a man everything and you take away his liberty, you have taken away everything,” he said.
Questions about his family were no-go-areas as he pleaded that he was emotional about it. Is family is too dear to him, he said.

Twenty minutes had passed and there were still questions to be asked. But I needed to catch a flight back to Lagos. There were also several people in the waiting room, all of whom I met there. After being assured of further opportunities for more interractions, I hopped into my car, and off I headed for the airport... waiting for another opportunity to come back to have him recount his days in the corridors of power.