Coup: They planned to kill me, says Defense Minister Musa

By Omolade Adegbuyi and Samuel Ogunsona

The coup plotters who recently tried to topple democracy actually planned to kill the Defense Minister, Gen. Christopher Musa.

He was listed among those on the hit list including President Bola Tinubu, the Senate President, Godwin Akpabio and some state Governors.

The Minister spoke in an interview on Channels TV.

He said “I was also a target. I am sure you know. I was supposed to be arrested,and if I refused,I was supposed to be shot,” the Minister said. He said “But that’s the job. Anybody who goes into coup zeroes his mind because he knows if he succeeda, good, If he doesnt succeed, whatever consequences come, you are ready for it.”

The coup plotters were essentially from Northern Nigeria indicating the ethnic motive of the coup.

Musa said the plotters were “a bunch of very unserious individuals.”

Musa said he was involved in the intensive investigation that led to the arrest of the soldiers.

He said “I was also a target, I am sure you know. I was supposed to be arrested, and if I refused, I was supposed to be shot,” he said.

“But that’s the job. Anybody who goes into coup zeroes his mind because he knows if he succeeds, good.

He said if coups fail, whatever consequences come, “you are ready for it.”

He said the coup plotters lacked the capacity to engage the Nigerian military.

He said “but again, I think these guys were just a bunch of very unserious individuals that I really don’t know. If you look at the calibre of the individuals, I really don’t know what got into their heads to think that they could take on the armed forces like that,” he said.

Musa said he was confident that the Nigerian Army and the ordinary people would have resisted the coup plotters if they had succeeded in carrying out the coup.

Hear him “What I even said was that even Nigerians would have fought them. Even without the armed forces, Nigerians would have stood against them. Remember how Nigerians fought against the military rule for quite some time. And that’s why Mr. President has always been one of them.

“So now, for them to think they could just wake up one morning and do that in Nigeria, I think something went wrong in there. They need to reset their brains.”

He said most of the main actors of the coup have been arrested adding that if there were others, they should be very few.