When General Murtala Mohammed was assassinated in 1976 and Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo took over power as Nigeria’s Head of State, Benjamin Akaai Chaha was an ordinary primary school teacher and village headmaster in Zakibiam NKST Primary School, Benue State. Nigeria had been under military tyranny for almost ten years then. For a man of his exposure and education he knew and understood the nature of military rule and the proclivity of the military to abuse human rights and even take human life.
“But I felt safe in Zakibiam. This was a village founded by my grandfather and I had no problems with the inhabitants not to talk of an Olusegun Obasanjo who sounded so distant, powerful and so high up there that I never felt he posed a threat to me or on the other hand I was not a threat or could ever be one to him,” Hon. Chaha told this writer.
He had tried to hold political in the First Republic without success. In his efforts to become a member of the Northern House of Assembly, he won the hearts of his constituency, but every time he won the primaries and his name was forwarded to the President of his party, UMBC, the man, Joseph Tarka would just shred it into pieces and that would be the end of story.
A new government of Murtala Mohammed came to power in 1975 and promised restoration of democracy in 1979. Now headed by Obasanjo after the killing of Mohammed, the government promised to stick to the promise. But such promises had been made before by the military only to be broken. Even if they were going to keep this one, was he sure Joseph Tarka who was very much around and still the power broker going to allow the people’s voice to be heard in his own case? The chances of his ascending the political ladder were rather remote.
Still he hoped for the best. Amazingly Tarka called him and other party stalwarts one day to a meeting where he praised him to high heavens for his loyalty and promised him his desire for a ticket to go to the House of Representatives in Lagos. With Tarka’s endorsement, he did not face any opponent at the primaries; not even in the election proper did anybody contest against him. He ended up the only House of Representatives aspirant in Nigeria who went to House that year unchallenged.
Tarka did not stop at that, in an interview with me, Dr. Joseph Wayas who was elected Senate President that year and later in 1983 revealed that Tarka took Chaha to all that mattered in the ruling party, NPN, and introduced him as the most trusted man he brought from Benue down to Lagos. Thus in 1983 when another round of elections were held even as Tarka was dead three years ago, and Chaha won and was returned to the House, once the search for new Speaker started and with the NPP Speaker, Ume Ezoeke out of contention, the NPN stalwarts remembered the faithful party man Tarka had endorsed before his death. It was easy to get Hon Chaha as the new Speaker of the House. Thus within a period of four years, Benjamin Chaha rose from an obscure village Primary School teacher to the number four most powerful man in Nigeria.
Sadly, it did not last long. After three short months, the military moved in, demolished all democratic structures and fired all democratically elected persons. Hon. Benjamin Chaha, a notable victim of the change returned to his roots to live with his people in Zakibiam. That is what makes him the gem of his people. Always with them and living among them.
Meanwhile, the conflict between the Tiv ethnic group and the Jukun which is as old if not older than Nigeria itself continued to fester. From colonial times to the first republic, through the succession of military regimes through the second republic and through its fall in 1984 when Speaker Chaha returned to live with his people. It exploded in 1990 and took a break in 1991 only to come again in 2001, this time as a low grade civil war.
There was an indication that the crisis of that year would result in something else. In the middle of the fighting, a
former Minister in the Second Republic, Wantaregh Paul Unongo (a Tiv man) wrote a lengthy letter to
President Olusegun Obasanjo accusing his Minister of Defense, General T Y Danjuma (a Jukun man) of using
Nigerian troops to join forces with his Jukun kinsmen to fight the Tiv. Nothing was done to investigate the
accusation or stop the partisanship of troops who were supposed to act as impartial peace makers. On October
12, 2001, Tiv militants were alleged to have abducted 19 soldiers at Gbeji a village on the borderline who were
known to be assisting Jukun militants in raiding Tiv villages. They were taken to Zakibiam by the Tiv militia
and under the mistaken belief that they were carrying out some patriotic acts, the Tiv militia invited camera men to record their brutal and barbaric murder.
A gory victory procession was then held in the town led by one girl who pierced the huge genital organs of one of the victims on a spear and held it up as a trophy. Some of those who witnessed the victory parade predicted a tragedy would soon come to the community if the victims were truly soldiers. Some were happy that the Jukun and the soldiers who supported them to terrorize the Tiv were finally dealt with.
President Obasanjo ordered George Akume a civilian and Governor of Benue state to arrest those who murdered his
soldiers and bring them to him in Abuja. When the governor, not a policeman, could not carry out the order,
he ordered his troops to move in. They first went to Gbeji, a Tiv border town between Benue and Taraba and
called for a meeting, pretending it was a peace meeting. With the Tivmen assembled for the meeting, an order was
given and the assembled TIv men mowed down en mass. That was the trick that was used to gun down Tiv men en mass in many surrounding Tiv villages who knew nothing about the killing of the so called soldiers in Zaki Biam.
In Zaki Biam itself soldiers were looking for the most prominent son of the soil, Hon. Benjamin Chaha, former
Speaker of the House of Representatives under the overthrown Shagari government. When they couldn’t find him, they planted bombs in his modest three bedroom flat and reduced it to rubbles Only God knows what they would have done to the poor old man if they had found him.
In neighboring Katsina Ala Local Government, Obasanjo’s soldiers went to the country home of General Victor Malu,
whom he removed as Chief Army Staff because of a dispute over official policy and reduced the whole village to rubbles ashes. General Malu was not at home but his ninety year old blind uncle and his wife were burnt alive in a thatched house set ablaze by the rampaging soldiers.
Until he left office, Obasanjo never agreed that he did anything wrong in the attempted assassination of Hon
Benjamin Chaha, the carnage against innocent civilians in that invasion and the destruction of lives and property. He
denied with a straight face that he never gave such orders. When the Tiv elites called on him to dismiss his Minister
of Defense who must have given the order to help his kinsmen, he refused to do it. Anyway, the accused Minister
defended himself excellently saying that for movement of troops of the magnitude as went to Zakibiam, the 1999
Constitution recognized only the President, Command in Chief. In other words TY Danjuma said it was the President
who sent troops to kill Speaker Chaha.
It took the incoming government of Yar adua to apologise to those who suffered in the hands of Obasanjos troops.
Excerpts from the book “From Teacher to Speaker: the amazing story of
Benjamin Chaha.
Written by Emmanuel Yawe to be released next year.
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