Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele has recounted the dramatic escape that led to his exile in the United States during the brutal era of the late Military Head of State, General Sani Abacha.
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday as part of the events marking National Democracy Day, Bamidele revealed how he narrowly fled the capital in 1997, hidden in an ambulance from Garki General Hospital, thanks to the swift intervention of his wife, Yemisi, a pharmacist at the hospital.
According to Bamidele, the escape was triggered by an alert that his law office in Wuse II had been raided by agents of the military junta who claimed they were searching for arms and ammunition.
“I was in court when one of the court registrars informed me about the invasion of my law office in Wuse II. There was no GSM then. We only relied on land lines,” he said. “One of the lawyers in my office had called my wife from NUJ Secretariat because they had my wife’s office line at Garki General Hospital where she was working as a registered pharmacist.”
He explained that the lawyer, after witnessing security operatives swarming the office, called his wife to alert her. She in turn contacted a court registrar to discreetly warn Bamidele, who was at the time defending 11 University of Abuja student union leaders expelled for political activism.
“My case had not been called. So, the assistant registrar came to whisper what happened in my law office to me. I managed to inform one of my colleagues to stand by and represent me,” he narrated.
Rather than return home, Bamidele said he quietly crossed over to a nearby colleague’s law office and later contacted his wife, who orchestrated his escape.
“She brought an ambulance from Garki General Hospital. It was that ambulance we used to move me to another location, where a friend picked me up in his car. We then drove for almost three days to get to a safer place,” he said.
Flying out of Abuja wasn’t an option due to heavy military surveillance at the airport, Bamidele revealed.
Worse still, he learned that on the same day his office was raided, the security forces had also searched the offices of prominent pro-democracy activists Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti and Chief Femi Falana in Lagos.
He eventually joined the NADECO underground route used by many fleeing activists.
“Once you found your way to Lagos, you went to Badagry. From there, there was an arrangement to take you to Cotonou — a very dangerous route. They paddled a canoe at night. A number of us went through that to get out of Nigeria,” he recalled.
From Cotonou, Bamidele made his way to Accra, Ghana, where he sought help in obtaining a plane ticket.
He eventually arrived in the U.S., where he was granted political asylum.
That asylum, he said, gave him the opportunity to continue the pro-democracy struggle from exile.
“It gave me a platform to assist other comrades to leave the country, and we continued our resistance against the military junta abroad,” he said.