Buhari Sent Me To Prison For Being ‘Too Rich’ – Anenih

[caption id="attachment_14115" align="alignnone" width="699"]Chief Tony Anenih, former PDP Board of Trustee chairman[/caption]

As part of the many revelations in his biography titled ‘My Life and Nigerian Politics’, former PDP Board of Trustee chairman, Chief Tony Anenih, has revealed how President Muhammadu Buhari jailed him for 18 months during his regime as military President.

Anenih’s biography revealed that the ex-leader of the NPN in the then Bendel State was in prison between March 1984 and August 1985.

The book further revealed how President Buhari went about arresting politicians arbitrarily based on “anonymous petitions”.

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In his case, Anenih was arrested for simply being “too rich”.

“The military regime of General Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon threw me into detention for 18 months on the basis of an anonymous petition that as a prominent and wealthy politician and leader of the NPN in Bendel State, the military administrator would not find his footing unless I was removed from the scene,” Anenih wrote.

“I was sent to Kirikiri Prisons where I spent three months before I was transferred to Ikoyi Prisons.

“I must emphasise it again and again that I did nothing wrong to anyone, the government or the state to merit a detention. My crime was that I was a wealthy, influential and highly respected politician.

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“We were transferred to Ikoyi Prisons because of the riot that took place while we were there. The condemned prisoners, whose death warrants had earlier been signed by Alhaji Lateef Jakande when he was governor of Lagos State, broke loose on sighting him as one of the detainees.

“They broke out of their cells and headed towards the building where Jakande and the rest of us detainees were kept. As the prisoners were attempting to force the iron door open, mobile police were called in to quell the riot.

“Where we were staying, the bucket latrines or toilets had opening to the rooms. These buckets were emptied maybe once a week from behind, and if for any reason the buckets were not emptied once a week as the rule, you lived with the stench.

“At night, cockroaches, rats and lizards passed through these holes housing the bucket latrines into our cells after crawling on the buckets to disturb us. So, you could really not sleep for one hour without getting cockroaches perch on you,” he said.

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