Mr Femi Falana at the Oputa Panel

By Femi Falana

Upon the inauguration of civil rule in May 1999, the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa Commission of Enquiry was instituted by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration to investigate the gross human rights abuse that characterised successive military regimes in Nigeria.

The family of the late Bagauda Kaltho submitted a petition to the commission. In the petition the family requested the Oputa Panel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the brutal killing of Kaltho, a journalist with TheNEWS, TEMPO and PM NEWS.

On August 18, 1998, an assistant police commissioner, Zakari Biu, who was Head of the Task Force on Terrorist Activities, had claimed that Kaltho died in 1996 while trying to plant a bomb at Durbar Hotel in Kaduna. But the police authorities on January 19, 1996, disclosed that the body that was found at the scene of the bomb incident at the Durbar Hotel in Kaduna was burnt beyond recognition.

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During the sittings of the Oputa Panel in Lagos and Abuja, some members of the official killer squad set up by the Sani Abacha junta, confessed that they killed some Nigerian citizens and attempted to kill others on the instructions of the military junta. They also admitted their involvement in the burning of houses and bombing attacks unleashed on opponents of that military rule. Throughout the proceedings of the Oputa Panel, the defenders of the Abacha murderous regime could not extricate themselves from the brutal killing of Dele Giwa and Bagauda Kaltho.

However, at the sitting of the Oputa Panel in Kano in 2001, Mr. Zakari Biu claimed that Bagauda Kaltho was given the bomb that killed him by me and the management staff of TheNEWS, TEMPO and PMNEWS, namely Bayo Onanuga, Dapo Olorunyomi, Kunle Ajibade, and Babafemi Ojudu.

I appeared at the Oputa Panel in Kano and subjected Biu to rigorous examination (you can visit Falana vs Zakari Biu – Oputa Panel on YouTube) during which he admitted that he was fed with the wicked tissue of lies by the State Security Service concerning our involvement. But the SSS refused to corroborate Biu’s testimony. It was all found to be a figment of Mr. Zakari Biu’s imagination. In its report the Oputa Panel had recommended that the case of disappearance of Bagauda Kaltho be reopened for investigation.

Since the version of Mahdi Shehu on the disappearance of Bagauda Kaltho is totally different from the official account of the defunct military junta the case ought to be reopened for full investigation. More so, that the then military administrator of Kaduna State, Colonel Jaffar Isa (rtd) mentioned by Mahdi Shehu has denied knowledge of the Arise Television story.

*Femi Falana is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and human rights crusader