LAGOS Nigeria's last military ruler, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, planned a coup in 1994 against his boss, the late Sani Abacha, but it was foiled, an aide said Monday, according to AFP.
Abacha's Chief of Personal Security, Major Hamza al-Mustapha, told a human rights panel that Abubakar and Abacha's former number two, Lieutenant General Oladipo Diya, had planned to oust Abacha four years before he died.
"Diya was at the helm of affairs of the 1994 coup. His desire to overthrow Abacha started in 1994," Al-Mustapha said.
No claim has ever been made previously of a coup plot in 1994 against Abacha, the military dictator who ruled Nigeria from November 1993 to his sudden, ill-explained death in June 1998.
Abacha accused now President Olusegun Obasanjo of plotting a coup in 1995 and accused Diya in December 1997 of plotting against him.
But Al-Mustapha said Monday a coup plot had been made and foiled.
The major, who is currently on trial over two murders and one attempted murder, has made a string of claims in hearings at the human rights panel in the past week.
His unproven statements have been rubbished as fantasist by opponents but have gripped the Nigerian press.
Al-Mustapha said that the coup plotters intended to free detained politician Moshood Abiola who was believed to have won 1993 presidential elections annulled by the military.
He said two senior military officers, former chief of army staff Major General Chris Alli, and former chief of naval staff Rear Admiral Allison Madueke, were retired over the alleged coup plot.
Diya and Abubakar were simply "cautioned", he said.
Al-Mustapha then told the panel that he could not give evidence to back his claims because of threats to his life and asked to give his evidence behind closed doors.
"I expect a bullet while I speak," he said, telling the panel he had information that those he was ready to expose had planned to kill him at the hearing.
An agent of the State Security Service (SSS) urged the panel to allow a closed-door hearing.
The panel adjourned the hearing to consider the request.
"All over the world, issues of state security are taken in camera," panel chairman former Supreme Court judge justice Chukwudifu Oputa said.
"Nigeria cannot be an exception. But we have to see if the issues involved in this case border on national security," he added.
Earlier, the personal physician to Abiola had told the panel he believed the late politician was killed "slowly" in detention by the denial of proper medical care.
"He was assassinated by the military. He was denied medical care and killed slowly in prison," Ore Falomo said.
Abiola died of a heart attack while in detention on July 7 as he was meeting top Nigerian and U.S. officials amid negotiations on his release.
The Abiola family has ever since complained of the conditions in which the politician was kept.
"He was kept in the most inhuman and oppressive conditions for four years," Falomo said.
"He was in solitary confinement in mosquito-infested single-room cells, denied medical care and detained incommunicado without any access to the outside world," the family doctor said, according to an AFP dispatch.