Gideon Okar: A Coup That Almost Wiped Out Babangida’s Military Regime

Abbas Yushau Yusuf

On April 22, 1990, a group of military officers attempted to overthrow the five-year regime of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Major Gideon Gwoza Okar, as he was popularly called, was said to be dissatisfied with his co-conspirators on how General Babangida was running the administration.

One of their main blunders was excising some parts of Nigeria when they made the radio announcement via Radio Nigeria Lagos. NIGERIAN TRACKER gathered that the attempt to overthrow Babangida was not only made by Gideon Gwoza Okar, but few months after his ascension to the seat of power at the then Dodan Barracks, Babangida’s military regime caught his longtime old friend and a member of the association of Nigerian authors, Major General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, in an attempted coup. That coup led to Vatsa and his conspirators facing the firing squad, which was approved by the Armed Forces ruling council headed by General Ibrahim Babangida.

But all attempts to overthrow Babangida during his eight-year rule as Nigeria’s President, Gideon Okar’s coup was the bloodiest. Apart from the soldiers that were lost during the bloody mutiny, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida also lost his ADC, Colonel Usman Kakanda Bello. The loss of Usman Kakanda Bello by General Ibrahim Babangida almost signifies that the administration was about to be wiped out by Gideon Okar and his co-coupists.

Major Gideon Okar

Another serious blunder perpetrated by Gideon Okar and co was citing the appointment of Late Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, the 18th Sultan of Sokoto, as the reason for the coup. The coup also became scary to Babangida and even high-ranking members of the Armed Forces ruling council because, at the time of the sporadic gunshots that greeted Lagos Nigeria’s former seat of power, the attempted coup did not leak, unlike other coups that leaked before they were foiled by troops loyal to the Government unless they were overpowered.

30 years After Gideon Okar Coup: What lessons for Nigeria

One of the reasons why the coup did not succeed was that Nigeria’s former Chief of Army Staff, Late General Sani Abacha, mobilized troops on time and immediately quelled the coup. Strategic military formations across the country also dissociated from the Gideon Okar coup, like the 1st mechanized division in Kaduna and the Second mechanized division in Ibadan.

After the trial of Gideon Okar and his fellow conspirators, 41 of them were executed by firing squad in July 1990.