21/10/2025
The Untold story of Chief Alex Ekwueme's contrøversial arrest, detent!on by Buhari and how Babangida restricted his movement
One of the political arrests that have remained contrøversial had to do with Dr. Alex Ekwueme, then Vice President under Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
Ekwueme was arrested with some others on January 17, 1984 immediately after the government of Shagari was overthrown. When Buhari was asked about his continued detention while Shagari was only placed under house arrest, the head of State was quoted by Concord newspaper as saying Ekwueme was detained in Lagos in the Kirikiri maximum-security prison because of suspected involvement in shady oil deals.
"I have not seen anything against the former president. You cannot say the same thing of the former vice president. I doubt he can absolve himself from what we have seen so far. He is going to be faced with the facts. So the question of treating him and Shagari on the same pedestal is just not on."
Many years later, Ekwueme recounted his ordeal during the period. Read his narration to Premium Times below:
"I was first the person to be arrested. They came to my house at about 1am and then it was my friend’s (Emir of Gwandu) son, Major Jokolo, who came to arrest me.
After I was arrested, we went to the House of the Speaker where they arrested Benjamin Chaha from Benue...Benjamin Chaha was coming to the House for the first time. He was a school teacher and my house was very close to his place and apparently, the driver forgot the way to his house and he went round and round looking for it. So, when we got there anyway, he was very frightened. When he came to the car and saw me, he calmed down. He said if I was there and was not panicking, why should he be panicking.
First, in the Buhari period which lasted for 20 months, I was in detention. I went from Bonny Camp first to a House in Temple Road and from there to Kirikiri then from Kirikiri to Ikoyi Prison. It was there in Ikoyi prison in August that Buhari was shunted aside by Babangida (1985). It was Babangida that got us out of Ikoyi prison and back to house arrest where we started. House-arrest first at Hawksworth then from Hawksworth to Roxton then from Roxton to Milverton. That went on like that for a space of about 10 months.
From there, I was taken to my home at Oko and placed under restriction. I could not go out of my Local Government. I was not allowed to make any statements so naturally, I had to comply because I signed that I would comply with and I did comply. After the restriction within my local government, they expanded it and said I should not move out of my state. From my state, I was kept within Nigeria until 1989. Six years after that, I was allowed to travel out of the country. That was why you didn’t hear much from me. Then Babangida came and promised to hand over after a period of time. He set up institutions, Centre for Democratic Studies, so many institutions, and created parties. Well, what I decided was that I would not participate in any political activity. I wouldn’t be a member of any of the parties and institutions.
Then when Abacha came, what really tr!ggered me was his modus operandi. He came and it was clear that he didn’t have any regards for the civilian population. He thought everything was to be accomplished by førce of arms. We organized first as civil society, nine of us to tried and really appreciated that if we don’t extricate ourselves from the military, we will remain slāves to them forever. Then from the Institute for Civil Society, we decided to hold a summit which was held at Eko Hotel. While that was holding, he (Abacha) sent thugs to disperse us. After that, we heard that he was planning to transit from a military to civilian Head of state and we found that that was unconscionable.
So, after the summit, all of us in civil society met again and recognised the summit and felt it was widely assumed that they were all supporting Abacha because he was a Northerner so we agreed that they would make the first move, telling Abacha that what he was doing was not acceptable. So, we met at Kaduna and drafted a memorandum which Solomon Lar delivered to him (Abacha) by a group of 18. Then after that, I called a full meeting at Glover Hotel in Yaba where 34 of us met and I prepared a memorandum which we gave to him which was G34 Memorandum."
It is good to know that the G34 later metamorphosed into what is today known as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria.
Ekwueme was born on this day (21 October) 1932. He left the world on 19 November, 2017. He would have been 93 years old today.
Credit: Ethnic African Stories
