BY Chidi Chima
There must be something about Alhaji Umaru Dikko and London: this is the city where he survived drugging in 1984 and this is the city where he could not survive strokes 30 years after.
The second republic politician, who was generally regarded as the de facto No. 2 in the government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari from 1979 to 1983, died in the Queen’s city on Tuesday morning at 78.
Two things defined Dikko: the statement credited to him that Nigerians were not as poor as being portrayed by the media since they had not started eating from the dustbin ─ and the failed attempt to smuggle him out of the UK in 1984 to come home and face corruption charges.
The two were linked, in some sense. Nigerian economy was in tatters in 1982-83, partly as a result of a global economic crisis and partly because of mismanagement. As prices of goods and services went haywire and workers were being owed salaries, Dikko ─ then minister of transport ─ told the media Nigerians were not that poor. His “dustbin” analogy drew public anger.
But the Shagari government soon collapsed as the military took over to the delight of millions of Nigerians who had been enduring economic hardship. Dikko and several other top politicians fled the country and took asylum in the UK. The new head of state, Major-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, began to prosecute and jail politicians for corruption. Dikko, who was the chairman of the presidential task force on rice, was declared wanted, accused of embezzling £1 billion.
The plot to kidnap him from London and parcel him in a crate to Nigeria failed, leading to a diplomatic face-off between Nigeria and the British government, led then by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Britain recalled its high commissioner to Nigeria ─ and Buhari replied in kind in a massive row between the two countries that lasted for two years.
The Nigerian government insisted it was not behind the kidnap attempt, but it was impossible to believe.
The kidnap, which took place on July 5, 1984, happened as Dikko walked out of his flat in Bayswater, London. He was immediately grabbed by two men and bundled into the back of a van.
“I remember the very violent way in which I was grabbed and hurled into a van, with a huge fellow sitting on my head – and the way in which they immediately put on me handcuffs and chains on my legs,” Dikko told the BBC in 1985.
The movie-like plan was to kidnap him, drug him, pack him into a crate and fly him to Nigeria alive. It was alleged that former Mossad agent, Alexander Barak, led the kidnap team, made up of a Nigerian intelligence officer, and Israeli nationals ─ one of whom was to inject Dikko with an anaesthetic.
The kidnappers changed vehicles in a car park and made for Stansted airport, London. A Nigerian Airways flight was waiting. Dikko was by now unconscious, apparently from the injection. The anaesthetist was also in the crate with medical equipment to keep Dikko alive. They were on their way to the cargo terminal of Stansted Airport.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian diplomat was at the airport, waiting for the crates.
Two years ago, the young British customs officer, Charles David Morrow, who foiled the plot, narrated his experience to the BBC World Service Witness programme.
Morrow said: “The day had gone fairly normally until about 3pm. Then we had the handling agents come through and say that there was a cargo due to go on a Nigerian Airways 707, but the people delivering it didn’t want it manifested.
“I went downstairs to see who they were and what was happening. I met a guy who turned out to be a Nigerian diplomat called Mr Edet. He showed me his passport and he said it was diplomatic cargo. Being ignorant of such matters, I asked him what it was, and he told me it was just documents and things.”
“Diplomatic bag” was strange to them at Stansted, so Morrow decided to check the procedure.
But, wait─
A colleague alerted him. Scotland Yard had issued an All Ports Bulletin: a Nigerian had been kidnapped and could be smuggled out of the UK.
Dikko’s secretary, who had seen the abduction from a window in the house, had alerted the police.
Morrow continued: “I just put two and two together. The classic customs approach is not to look for the goods, you look for the space.
“So I am looking out of the window and I can see the space which is these two crates, clearly big enough to get a man inside. We’ve got a Nigerian Airways 707, which we don’t normally see. They don’t want the crates manifested, so there would be no record of them having gone through. And there was very little other cargo going on board the aircraft.
“If you want to hide a tree, you hide it in the forest. You don’t stick it out in the middle of Essex.”
There was a little problem though.
Going by the Vienna Convention, a diplomatic bag is not supposed to be checked. This was being called a diplomatic bag. Morrow immediately called the British Foreign Office.
He said: “To qualify as a ‘diplomatic bag’ they clearly had to be marked with the words ‘Diplomatic Bag’ and they had to be accompanied by an accredited courier with the appropriate documentation. It was fair to say they had a Nigerian diplomat – I’d seen his passport – but they didn’t have the right paperwork and they weren’t marked ‘Diplomatic Bag’.”
The British authorities decided the crates should be opened, but they were now about to be loaded to the aircraft.
He added: “Peter, the cargo manager, hit the lid on the bottom and lifted it. And as he lifted it, the Nigerian diplomat, who was standing next to me, took off like a startled rabbit across the tarmac.
“You have to remember we are on an airfield which is square miles of nothing. He ran about five yards, realised no-one was chasing him and then stopped.
“Peter looked into the crate and said: ‘There’s bodies inside!'”
Morrow quickly called the emergency number.
“My name’s Morrow, from Customs at Stansted. We’ve got some bodies in a crate. Do you think you can send someone over,” he recalled to BBC.
“They said: ‘Alive or Dead?’
“I said: ‘That’s a very good point. I don’t know.’
“They said: ‘We’ll send an ambulance as well.'”
Police arrived 30 minutes later, opened the crate and found Dikko, unconscious, lying on his back in the corner. The anaesthetist was wide awake.
“He had no shirt on, he had a heart monitor on him, and he had a tube in his throat to keep his airway open. No shoes and socks and handcuffs around his ankles. The Israeli anaesthetist was in there, clearly to keep him alive,” Morrow said.
The Nigerian intelligence officer and the three Israelis were later sentenced to prison terms by the UK authorities.
In retrospect, it was a worthless mission. All the politicians that were jailed by the Buhari government were released by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who launched a coup in August 1985.
Babangida granted Dikko pardon, and the fugitive eventually returned to the country.
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