October 1 bombing: Henry Okah ‘d have killed Jonathan, others; Amada confesses

Zion Amada is one of the three prosecution witnesses who testified at the South African court against Henry Okah, the man jailed for masterminding the October 1 Independence Day bombing that claimed no fewer than 12 lives in Abuja. Last week, Okah granted a national newspaper an extensive interview and described Amada as his driver who allowed himself to be used to frame him up in South Africa and denounced him for treachery.But in this interview, Amada insists Okah actually detonated the bomb directly from his base in Johannesburg and was never framed by anyone.Amada also says only the timely leakage of the wicked plot by Okah and his ilks by some patriotic Nigerians including himself saved President Jonathan and other top Nigerians from being killed at the Eagle Square on that fateful morning.Tell us about how you came to know Henry Okah and what you knew about himMy name is Zion Amada. I was once the Secretary of Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State. It was my childhood friend, Boyloaf who introduced me to Henry Okah during one of his visits to Nigeria in 2006. I had never met him before then.An undated private photo obtained on October 19, 2010 from Oka’s family in Johannesburg shows Henry Okah, the former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.After that meeting in 2006, Boyloaf called me and said that Henry said he liked my company and would be happy to be associated with me as I could be taking him around in my car any time he was in Nigeria. Then, I did not know that he was a gun runner. I just met him on the face value of meeting someone. Boyloaf further told me that Henry would be calling me and indeed, he used to call me. Once, when he called me, he asked me what I was doing for a living and I told him I was doing private business. At that time, I had not been given the appointment as the Secretary of my LGA.So, we got talking and he said he liked me since I was from Bayelsa I was like his kid brother and that I could be assisting him whenever he was around. Sometime, he would ask me to take him around and go tothe bank for him. I never knew that one day he would call me his servant. After a while, I started noticing this gun running tendency by Henry Okah. He was always talking about buying and selling guns and talking about killing. He showed signs that he was bloody and ready to kill at any time. Of course, that is not my back ground and I had to begin to withdraw from him.Despite being tried and convicted by the South African court, Henry insists that he was merely framed by the Nigerian and South African governments. You want to respond to that?He was not framed by anybody because the evidence before the court that sentenced him stated clearly that he was the mastermind of the October 1 bombing. When he was arrested for gun running in Angola, was he also framed by the Nigerian and South African governments?Tell us more about that. Do you think that Henry was directly involved or merely brought into the picture because of his past deeds?To the best of my knowledge, Henry Okah is the mastermind of the October 1 bombing at the Eagle Square.Why do you say so?I am saying so because before then, I had overheard him say more dangerous things than the bombing of the Eagle Square.What did he say?I overheard him say something like trying to overthrow the Government of Equatorial Guinea and others. Infact, one day he gave me money to go and give to somebody and when I returned, he asked whether I knewthe person I had just met and I said no. He told me then that “if what we are planning succeeds the man you just met would be the next president of Equatorial Guinea”. I was surprised.But in this particular instance, what evidence do you have to support the fact that Henry was directly involved in the planning and execution of the bombing of the Eagle Square?Look, it would be an understatement to say that Henry Okah was involved in the October bombing. The truth is that he personally planned and implemented the terror act with some other elements. He did it. I know the kind of things Henry used to say about bombing Abuja before what happened. He had said it overand over before bombing Abuja. I was close to him and I know his disposition.But one person cannot successfully plan and executive such an action?That is why he had these people whose names had been given to the court. We cannot mention their names. It is one of the original persons who planned the attack with Henry Okah that leaked the plot to me.He had confirmed to me that Henry told him to drive one of the primed cars directly to the Eagle Square. When the information got to me, I called one of the boys to tell Sele, Boyloaf’s brother and ask whether he was aware that Henry Okah was planning to bomb the venue of the October 1 event. That was how Sele took the informant to Boyloaf.It was when Boylaof heard directly from one of the guys who was originally involved in the plot that he alerted the security agencies, who immediately swung into action and restricted movement to and from theEagle Square. Without that timely information that made the security agents to cordon off the venue, the casualty figure from the October 1 bombing would have been overwhelming.some victims of Friday’s Abuja Bomb Blast at the Intensive Care Unit, National Hospital, Abuja, inset Senator David MarkThat prevented Henry’s boys from driving directly into the venue. The information had been leaked two days before the event.  That was why when the president said recently in Lagos that Henry had planned to assassinate him, he was very correct because if his boys had succeeded in taking the bomb-rigged vehicles to Eagle Square, the damage would have been very devastating. It could have killed the president and other top government functionaries present.But the President appears to have contradicted himself by claiming that the bombing was not done by Niger Delta militants. What do you make of that?He said it was not done by MEND.But is Henry Okah not a member of MEND?Well, I am not a member of MEND and would not know. However, the Nation described him as the MEND leader and there are facts showing that Henry is the leader of MEND.From your closeness to Okah, what do you think is Henry Okah’s grouse with President Jonathan?Henry is a man who sells guns and he makes money whenever there is crisis. There are people who manufacture guns and if there is no crisis to propel sales, they go to certain places to instigate one in orderto sell their arms.They cannot just produce arms and stockpile for the sake of producing. Henry is of that school of thought. He was not actually agitating for the Niger Delta cause as he claimed but was in business and merely exploited the prevailing situation in the region to sell his arms for the purpose of making profit unknown to the genuine freedom fighters like Boyloaf. People like Boyloaf were genuinely concerned about the plight ofthe Niger Delta people.It might be that Henry had the initial interest to work for the people but lost that altruistic focus along the line and went all out for profit-making in the name of the struggle. Look there is one point I want you to note about Henry Okah. He is smart but he is not clever. I am saying so because for him to say that he wasframed up and that we were all paid by the government to bear false witness against shows that he is lying. He knows that all that we said was nothing but the truth.Why were you invited to testify against him in South Africa and at what point did you withdraw from Henry Okah?The truth is that I started withdrawing from Okah when somebody who was working with him had a nasty encounter with him. I went to see him that morning in a hotel in Port Harcourt and he started accusing me of something I never contemplated doing. From that point he started plotting how to eliminate me. He never trusted me. There was another incident in Port Harcourt when he was almost killed on the Port Harcourt-Aba Expressway and the man who carried him in a motorcycle died on the spot.But I managed to carry him in that unconscious state to a nearby clinic and he was revived. But less than two weeks after his recovery, he began to check my phones and plotted how to kill me.  That day he seized my phone and checked all the dialed numbers and said that if any of the suspected numbers had appearedon my phone that day it would have been my last on earth. That was what Henry told me and that was the man I had just saved his life two weeks earlier.     Because of his attempt on my life, I had to severe my relationship with him.There is an oil company mentioned by Henry that it got an oil block in return for the Government framing and jailing him. Is there any truth in that?That is a pure lie. When he wrote in the paper that Jonathan was a coward and a timid person, he would have mentioned my name and other witnesses that had the original plot with him. Don’t forget that he was jailed based on the evidence before the court. Let me tell you, when I gave my testimony in court, Henry’s lawyer could not ask me even one question. He requested for 30 minutes break and the judge obliged and when he returned he could still not cross examine me because he had nothing to challenge what I said.What was the crux of your testimony against Henry?Well the crux of my testimony was that one of those involved in the plot told me that Henry was planning tobomb the venue of the independence celebration in Abuja, the nation’s capital. The State Security Service agents, who carried out the investigation, were by all standards very thorough and I thank God that they saw my patriotism in the whole thing and believed me. If it were some other agencies that are not thoroughin their work, they might have roped me into the plot and that would have been it. I did that based on my pledge to be faithful and loyal to Nigeria.The security agents asked me why I told the governor of my state, and I told them I had to do so since he was the chief security officer of the state. I went to testify because of the anger in me. I did not want Nigeria to be destroyed by a band of people. Let me tell you that Henry personally detonated the bomb thatrocked Eagle Square on that day from his base in South Africa. He was in control of the whole deadly exercise and no other person did it.So, based on the information given by one of the masterminds to the security agents that he mentioned theplot to some persons including myself, I was invited to testify in South Africa and I did purely out of my patriotism for my country. They asked me what I did when I got the information and I told them I sent a text to my governor and the evidence was found on my phone to be intact.When the boy also called me and told me that Henry said one of the wired cars had exploded I asked him to give me the number he used to call him from South Africa. I also forwarded it to the governor. I did not delete the numbers and the records from the service providers confirmed my testimony. They realised that throughout that year, nobody else called me from South Africa.What about the things he said about President Jonathan that he is timid and coward? Could this be true based on your knowledge of the president?The President is an educated man, a former lecturer with a PhD in one of the best universities in Nigeria. How do you describe such a man as unintelligent and timid? Henry was not framed because when he was arrested in Angola in 2007 Jonathan was the governor of Bayelsa State.One of the Abuja bomb blasts suspects, in handcuffs being led out of the Court by the SSS, at the F.C.T Chief Magistrate Court, Wuse Zone 6, in Abuja.So, was it the president who framed him in Angola? Before this time, the former president of Angola Dos Santos had said that he reported in African Union meeting that Henry was a potential terrorist threat to theAfrican sub-region. Was Jonathan in that meeting? So, you can see that Henry is just looking for some lies to tell in order to get undeserved sympathy from those who do not know him and his antecedents.What if he is found to be innocent and freed by the South African Supreme Court that he had appealed to?I don’t think he can be freed just like that. The evidence against him was so solid. As the judge was passingthe verdict he made it clear that the testimonies by the various witnesses did not contradict themselves and as such they were overwhelming and that from Count One to 13, Henry was found guilty. This is part of the judgment that I quoted. Henry could not even mount the witness box; he could not defend himself in court even though he had a lawyer.But don’t forget that the first lawyer had to withdraw from his case because he knew that he had a bad case. He is a reputable lawyer in South Africa and he had to go and bring one young boy to defend him instead. I described Henry as the father of modern day kidnapping in Nigeria. But the lawyer could not ask me any question and Henry was telling him what to do.I know that the blood of those innocent persons who died will not be in vain. I am surprised that they did not jail him for life because of the enormity of the offence he committed.What do you think of the Niger Delta struggle?There is time for everything. Time has changed and there is no need to be killing people like animal. Shedding of blood cannot solve any problem in the Niger Delta. We still need to approach the negotiation table for solution at the end of the day. Of course, after all these years of killings and destruction, is it not the programme of the Amnesty that has brought about the peace we are enjoying today in the region? Is it not the programme that has brought about the peace?Henry is not more Niger Delta than others. He is not even from an oil producing community. I am from Oloibiri where oil was first discovered in Nigeria and his community has no oil. He merely exploited the people for his personal gains and nothing more. He should surrender to God and be saved.From all you have seen in the Niger Delta, what would you advise the youths to do?My advice is that the people should not listen to characters like Henry Okah because he is like Pharaoh that has refused to hear the warning of God. God has saved him twice but he has refused to heed His warning.Henry was first arrested in Angola and deported to Nigeria. He would have gone in Angola but God broughthim back to Nigeria but refused to learn. He is acting like Pharaoh who refused to allow the children of Israel to go as God instructed. The only thing that Henry needs to do is to genuinely repent and accept Christ. I don’t think that he has done worse than Saint Paul in the Bible and there is still room for him to make amends with God so that his sins can be forgiven by the Almighty.Have you had any interface with the people he described in the interview among them, Sele, Boyloaf’s brother, Asari Dokubo and Edwin Clark?Let me start with Sele. He is a prince and with royal blood from Bayelsa State and was never Henry’s driverand can never be in this life. He has been a genuine struggling man. He cannot be Henry Okah’s driver.   If he had assisted Henry one day that does not make him his driver.Henry is the same person who claims he is protecting the Niger Delta and insulting an elder like Edwin Clark. Do you think that God Almighty would allow such a person to go free?I am not close to Asari so I would not be able to say anything about him. I cannot confirm if indeed what he said about Asari is true.  But let me tell you that whatever he said in the interview was not necessary.   Let me tell you that I am not a militants but a full Niger Delta son and I believe in the genuine struggle for emancipation of our people.File photo of the Abuja Independence Day bomb explosion.Do you think that Amnesty was necessary in the first place and that it has changed anything so far?Of course, it was imperative and it has solved a lot of problems. Many of our people who were educated but not privileged to go to school have been able to go to elite schools at home and abroad. There are people who have been able to fly planes today courtesy of the Amnesty Programme. Amnesty has done very well but those criticising it can continue to do so.But what the Amnesty programme has done to the Niger Delta is revolutionary and with time the results will reflect on the way of life of the people. For me, it has done so well for our people and the region.The President is a gentleman.   Of course, I was not compromised to testify against him. I cannot bear false testimony against any fellow man.