“Cease Blaming a Useless Man”: Maryam Abacha Dismisses Looting Allegations, Urges Unity and Stronger Civil-Army Cooperation
Maryam Abacha, widow of the late army ruler Normal Sani Abacha, says decades-old claims that her husband stashed away billions are baseless and fuelled by misinformation.
Talking on TVC’s Politics on Sunday, Mrs Abacha argued that these accusing the previous head of state have by no means produced concrete proof. If cash was actually hidden overseas, she requested, “the place are the signatures and the witnesses?” She additionally identified that funds her husband supposedly “stored for Nigeria” disappeared inside months after his dying, but the blame nonetheless falls on him.
Addressing the annulled 1993 election, Mrs Abacha insisted her husband was not accountable. If he had been, she mentioned, it might have meant he wielded extra energy than the sitting president—an concept she known as implausible.
Past defending her husband, the previous First Woman lamented rising ethnic and non secular divisions. Nigerians, she mentioned, should decide each other “not as Northerners or Southerners, Muslims or Christians, however as compatriots.”
Turning to safety, she expressed frustration that Nigeria’s well-resourced army has struggled for years to subdue insurgents whereas smaller nations have resolved comparable conflicts. Citing the success of ECOMOG peacekeepers overseas, she urged nearer collaboration between civilian authorities and the armed forces: “The federal government should work hand-in-hand with the army to finish this.”
Mrs Abacha additionally criticised the stop-start nature of presidency programmes. With out coverage continuity, she warned, even good initiatives stall—pointing to the Africa First Women Peace Mission, a undertaking from the Nineteen Nineties that also features, as proof that lasting establishments are potential.
Whereas acknowledging that army regimes function otherwise from civilian governments, she maintained that each administration—army or civilian—can succeed if Nigerians cooperate. She concluded with an enchantment to the media to practise accountable journalism: “Let’s pray for our nation, converse properly of our leaders, and construct reasonably than destroy reputations.”