Nigeria’s government announced Monday that it had re-arrested notorious Biafra secessionist, Nnamdi Kanu. No details were given on where or when and how the so-called arrest happened. This has left everyone suspicious of the circumstances in which Nnamdi Kanu was brought back into Nigeria. Did Buhari violate international laws and state boundaries by kidnapping Kanu in a crate and smuggling him to Nigeria? We recollect the 1984 attempted kidnap of Umaru Dikko as narrated below on BBC:
In London in 1984, a team of Nigerians and Israelis attempted to kidnap and repatriate the exiled former Nigerian minister Umaru Dikko. The plot was foiled by a young British customs officer, Charles David Morrow.
On a summer’s day, Mr Dikko walked out of his front door in an upmarket neighbourhood of Bayswater in London. Within seconds he had been grabbed by two men and bundled into the back of a transit 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,” he told the BBC a year later.
Mr Dikko had been minister for transport in the government of Shehu Shagari until it was overthrown by the military at the end of 1983. He fled to London accused by Nigeria’s new rulers of embezzlement – a charge he has always denied.
Labelled “Nigeria’s most wanted man”, a plot was hatched to get both him and the money back.
The extraordinary plan was to kidnap Mr Dikko, drug him, stick him into a specially made crate and put him on a plane back to Nigeria – alive.
Israeli anaesthetist
An Israeli alleged former Mossad agent, Alexander Barak, was recruited to lead the kidnap team. It included a Nigerian intelligence officer, Maj Mohammed Yusufu, and Israeli nationals Felix Abitbol and Dr Lev-Arie Shapiro, who was to inject Mr Dikko with an anaesthetic.
The kidnappers switched vehicles in a car park by London Zoo and headed towards Stansted airport where a Nigerian Airways plane was waiting. They injected Mr Dikko and laid him, unconscious, in a crate.
The Israeli anaesthetist climbed into the crate as well, carrying medical equipment to make sure Mr Dikko didn’t die en route. Barak and Abitbol got into a second crate. Both boxes were then sealed.
At the cargo terminal of Stansted Airport, 40 miles (64km) north of London, a Nigerian diplomat was anxiously waiting for the crates to arrive. Also on duty that day was a young customs officer, Charles David Morrow.
Diplomatic bag
“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,” Mr Morrow said.
“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.”
Read full: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20211380
