Babaginda and Vasta : A tale of friendship and betrayal
Pictured below are 'best friends' Majors Babangida and 29 year old Vatsa on March 1969 at Okigwe in present day Imo State during the Civil War.
Mamman Jiya Vatsa was childhood friends with Ibrahim Babangida and both men were peers who attended the same educational institutions.
Vatsa was a senior Nigerian Army officer and writer who was executed by the government of Major General Ibrahim Babangida on 5 March 1986 following a military tribunal conviction for alleged treason associated with an abortive coup.
He served as Minister of the Federal Capital Abuja, and was a member of the Supreme Military Council.
In a 2006 letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Sufiya, Vatsa's wife who believes IBB framed her late husband stated:
“Although there was no iota of evidence linking my husband with the phantom coup, he was convicted and sentenced to death by the Special Military Tribunal which purportedly tried him and other coup suspects. My husband’s appeal to the Armed Forces Ruling Council against his illegal conviction was yet to be considered when the Head of State, General Babangida had him secretly executed along with the other coup convicts.”
Till date his body has not been returned to his family and his final resting place remains unknown.
Mamman Jiya Vatsa was childhood friends with Ibrahim Babangida and both men were peers who attended the same educational institutions.
Vatsa was a senior Nigerian Army officer and writer who was executed by the government of Major General Ibrahim Babangida on 5 March 1986 following a military tribunal conviction for alleged treason associated with an abortive coup.
He served as Minister of the Federal Capital Abuja, and was a member of the Supreme Military Council.
In a 2006 letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo, Sufiya, Vatsa's wife who believes IBB framed her late husband stated:
“Although there was no iota of evidence linking my husband with the phantom coup, he was convicted and sentenced to death by the Special Military Tribunal which purportedly tried him and other coup suspects. My husband’s appeal to the Armed Forces Ruling Council against his illegal conviction was yet to be considered when the Head of State, General Babangida had him secretly executed along with the other coup convicts.”
Till date his body has not been returned to his family and his final resting place remains unknown.
