Newspaper report-This is our first state pardon, says Diya

A FRESH dimension has been added to the controversy over the state pardon granted by President Goodluck Jonathan on March 12, 2013 to the former Chief of General Staff (CGS), Gen. Oladipo Diya (rtd). Diya also served as the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) in 1993.

Contrary to insinuations that Diya and others who were implicated in the phantom coup of 1997 during the regime of Gen. Sani Abacha were granted pardon by the Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar-led administration, the former CDS said he was only given clemency.

During a press conference in

Lagos on Thursday, Diya said: “Some people mix up the meaning of clemency and state pardon. What Gen. Abubakar granted us was clemency, which was different from the state pardon President Jonathan granted to others and me on Tuesday, March 12, 2013.”

According to him, “the clemency was the authority vested in the Head of State to release us from our various places of detention. I was released from the Potiskum Prison. If there were no clemency, the sentence would still have been on, which was execution. Our ranks were not restored, nor our entitlements. If what Abubakar granted us was pardon, immediately we were released from prisons, all payments due to us would have followed but that was not done. Even my personal security, the one for my family and my house would have been returned through pardon and not clemency.”

Several newspapers as well as some human right activists and legal practitioners reacted to the pardon, describing it as a “double pardon.”

Diya, however, cleared the issue, saying: “As a former CDS and that, by interpretation, is the highest you can attain professionally in the armed forces. Up till now, policemen are still guarding me and not soldiers. Even the security meant for my house and my family, as a former CDS, has not been restored but now that a pardon has been granted, I would not be surprised if a formal letter is written to me as a former CDS and everything will take proper and official shape from the very date the letter stipulates.”

The former CDS said the President did not err by granting them pardon as  “what we were granted before was clemency.”