The chicken is finally coming home to roost. One time close pal of Flt Lt Jerry Rawlings and chief architect of the 31 December 1981 coup, Matthew Adabuga has let the cat out of the bag alleging Rawlings knew of the killing of the three high court judges and a retired army officer in 1982.
Ex-corporal Adabuga who flew in from Norway, where he is in exile told journalists in Accra on Wednesday that the boys who abducted and murdered the judges and the army officer were his boys and they confided in him that Rawlings ordered them to commit the abduction and murder.
According to Adabuga when police started investigating the killings Lance Cpl Amedeka, Dzandu, Senya and Tekpor, the men who actually carried out the deed, feared for their lives and approached Adabuga to assuage the fears. ?I went to confront Rawlings and asked why he did that. Why only Akan judges were killed? Why did the boys wear northern smock for the operations? Rawlings replied that the whole thing was a state secret so I should keep it to myself and not to discuss it with anybody.?
Answering questions from Captain Ben E. Duah, himself a victim of the revolution and Secretary of the Victims of Political Injustice, Adabuga said when he pressed Rawlings about the future of the boys, he offered to take them to Bulgaria and Cuba to escape the consequences. ?I was disappointed,? Adabuga emphasised.
He said since Rawlings burst onto the political scene, he has pitched one tribe against the other and reaped the fruits. To begin with Adabuga said Rawlings told Amedeka, Dzandu, Senya and Tekpor who killed the judges to wear northern smocks and embark on an operation in which only Akans were the victims to create the impression that northerners are at war against the Akans.
Adabuga said Rawlings convinced him to join the 31 December coup by his statement that the Akans in the Limann Administration had planned to remove Limann and replace him with Kankam da Costa. Limann, therefore needed the cooperation of all the northerners in the army. After the operation had succeeded, he would return Limann to power.
?To reinforce his claim, during a meeting at Achimota forest, a state protocol Mercedes Benz car drove into the forest. Rawlings excused us and went to speak with the occupants of the car. After 15 minutes, he returned and said it was the oldman himself, Dr Limann he had spoken to.?
Adabuga said several months after the coup, he asked Rawlings about Limann?s position and Rawlings replied that ?Limann has fucked himself up by trying to run away and besides, he had turned down an offer to work with us. Immediately, I realised that some of us had been duped and used.?
He together with Corporal Alidu Gyiwa then set about to correct the wrongs they had helped Rawlings to perpetrate. In 1982, 1983 and 1984 he and Gyiwa attempted coups, but all failed. Most of his colleagues died in the process, but he survived.
After being in the storm of the revolution, Adabuga feels he is in the position to advise Ghanaians to be wary of Rawlings and all he stands for. ?Ladies and gentlemen, I want to take this opportunity to advise the youth to be wary of this man Rawlings. He is deceitful, a liar and a fraud. He is indeed evil?He uses you and dumps you after he had achieved his objective.
You may even count yourself lucky if he does not in the end, succeed in eliminating you. Of all my colleagues, who actually prosecuted the 31 December Revolution none is still with him except, probably, his wife.?
