When Miss Mildred Kwashi married the Sandhurst trained Iliya Bisalla she expectedly signed on for better and worst. The good times rolled by only to be paradoxically shattered by a hail of friendly gunfire at the peak of General Bisalla’s military career.
When in 1995, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was clamped in prison, Jos was deliberately chosen, perhaps for additional psychological torture.
Interestingly, his erstwhile army juniors that jailed him completely misread the optics as Mrs. Elizabeth Pam, then Nigeria’s most senior military widow with Mrs. Bisalla in tow, tremendously rose to the occasion to ensure OBJ was most welcomed despite the circumstances.
The late General Bisalla’s brother in-law and Anglican Bishop of Jos, Benjamin Kwashi was the point man who had the absolute cooperation of the Comptroller of Jos Prison, Stephen Ibn Akiga whom OBJ as president would variously appoint as his Minister of Industries, Police Affairs and eventually Sports.
General Obasanjo (rtd) was tried in 1995 on suspicion of concealment of treason. It was the same law that he had signed into effect in 1976 as military Head of State that was used to charge him 20 years down the line!
Of course, the charges against OBJ were frivolous. So were those against General Bisalla and many others including Assistant Commissioner of Police Joseph Gomwalk that were summarily executed by firing squad back in the day.
The Abacha government must have presumed the good people on the Plateau still had an axe to grind with the Chicken Farmer. The junta grossly underestimated the overwhelming power of forgiveness.
Interestingly, the wife of Nigeria’s first Commander in Chief was, Flora Azikiwe. She shared the same first name with Flora Shaw, wife of Colonel later Lord Lugard. So would Mrs. Victoria Nwanyiocha Aguiyi-Ironsi precede Mrs. Victoria Hansatu Gowon.
Yakubu Gowon, Alexander Madiebo, Michael Okwechime and Arthur Chinyelo Unegbe were all Sandhurst course mates. Gowon would be Unegbe’s bestman. On January 15, 1966 the same Major Anuforo that executed Pam gunned down Unegbe in the presence of his pregnant wife.
Lt. Col. Unegbe was then Quartermaster General of the Nigerian Army. According to Madiebo who would later be Biafra’s Army chief, Unegbe’s close friendship and brotherly affinity with Brigadier Zakaria Maimalari cost him his life.
Unegbe and Maimalari were course mates at Command and Staff College, Pakistan where Lt. Col. Abubakar Sadi Maimalari, a retired Armored Corps officer and onetime Military Administrator of Jigawa State was born in 1961.
When the Gowons became a couple on April 19, 1969 the Head of State’s best man was his Number Two on the Supreme Military Council, Rear Admiral Joseph Edet Akinwale Wey.
The bride’s ladies in waiting were Madams Mildred Bisalla, Dora Adefowope, Hilda Adefarasin and Ambassador Ruda Mohammed. Colonel Iliya Bisalla was in charge of security.
Soon after the wedding, Bisalla would proceed to take over as GOC 1 Division from Colonel Mohammed Shuwa and Mrs. Pam becoming substantive Lady in Waiting.
Meanwhile, according to Fatima Mzamber Waziri in her 2020 memoirs entitled, “One Step Ahead: Life of a Spy, Detective and Anti-Corruption Czar” she was appointed as Police orderly to Mrs. Gowon under the overall supervision of Malam Sani Yaroson, Police ADC to the Head of State and brother in-law to Mrs. Gowon who in turn was previously her own mother’s Chief Bridesmaid when my parents got married at the Holy Trinity Church in Kano.
Mrs. Waziri would also in her book give an interesting insight on OBJ’s plight under General Abacha;
“One evening after an interrogation session, it was getting late, and Obasanjo, a diabetic patient, was waiting for his meal of beans from his farm in Ota. There was a delay in getting the meal to him. He was in a great deal of discomfort as his blood sugar level began to drop.
Feeling sorry for him, I approached the senior officer and offered to dash home, not far, to prepare a meal of beans for him. The officer smiled and said nothing.
I missed the message. Another officer pulled me aside and cautioned me about getting involved with the detainees, to avoid getting implicated. ‘What if you prepare food for him and something happens?”
In a moving tribute legal luminary and activist, Chidi Odinkalu writes;
“In April 1957, 21-year old Elizabeth from Kano married James Yakubu (J.Y.) Pam, then a young 2nd Lieutenant and graduate of the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, England. J.Y. Pam was senior and commander to a generation of military officers who would later become major figures in the bloodiest years of contemporary Nigerian history, including, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Theophilus Danjuma and Iliya Bisalla.
As wife to their senior officer, these men were regular callers to the Pam household and beneficiaries of Elizabeth’s famous hospitality.
J.Y. Pam was the first Artillery Officer to be commissioned into the Nigerian Army. By January 1966, he had risen to become a Lieutenant-Colonel and Adjutant-General of the Nigerian Army.
On the night of January 15, 1965, J.Y. Pam was abducted from his residence in Lagos and subsequently killed in the coup.”
Pam was abducted from home by his number two, Major Humphrey Chukwuka who was the Deputy Adjutant General of the Nigerian Army who with;
“2nd/Lt. Godwin Onyefuru, and Sgt. Donatus Anyanwu attacked Pam’s Ikoyi Crescent home, shot out his car tires, and abducted Pam who was with his wife Elizabeth. Chukwuka, a regular guest at Pam’s home, is said to have assured Elizabeth that Pam would not be harmed.
They drove to the Brigade Officer’s Mess where Major Chris Anufuro, one of the principal coup plotters, confronted and scolded Chukwuka for bringing Pam to the Mess alive. Chukwuka responded to Anufuro that he wasn’t prepared to spill any blood and had guaranteed Pam’s safety to Pam’s wife….. Anuforo shot Pam at close range.”
When OBJ eventually became president, Humphrey Chukwuka strenuously sought Mrs. Pam out to personally apologize for his ignoble role in handing over her husband, his boss.
After his professed entreaties, she quietly declared, “I forgive you.”
Never underestimate the awesome power of forgiveness.
