'I'm recovering from spinal cord injury after imprisonment'- Former CSO, Major Al-Mustapha

The Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Nigerian Head of State, General Sani Abacha, Major Hamza al-Mustapha, has said on Monday that it was God that saved him from the spinal cord injury he sustained as a result of different kinds of physical, mental and emotional torture he was subjected to for years while incarcerated for almost two decades.


Al-Mustapha said this in an interactive session with media men in Lagos, on Monday, where he also stated his determination to ensure that the peace and unity of the nation remained intact.

While answering some of the questions thrown at him by journalists, Al-Mustspha, who didn't  disclose the identity of his “persecutors,” said his plights in various Nigerian prisons, including the dreaded Kirikiri Maximum Prisons, in Lagos, was the will of God, who he said, had mapped out that route for him in life.

Al-Mustapha recalled different kinds of physical, mental and emotional  torture he was subjected to for years, saying he just miraculously got healed from a spinal cord-related injury which he said was part of the telltale signs of the gruesome torture he was constantly subjected to mostly by masked soldiers.

“I bear no grudge against my persecutors, many of who are powerful people in the country and whose identities, the public already knows. What I have gone through was because God wanted it to be so. I have forgiven them all, as I have moved on,” he said.

The former CSO insisted that ex-president Goodluck Jonathan did not orchestrate his release from prison, as believed in some quarters; rather he attributed this to the work of Providence and the lack of witnesses and evidences against him, a development he insisted had been a recurring decimal all through his travails.

“If he (President Jonathan) had brought me out, I would have worked for him, especially during his campaigns or for the PDP. But as things stand now, I am not a member of PDP, or APC or any political party for that matter. What I am saddled with now is how to have full recovery of my health. I just recovered from a spinal cord-related condition, and I still have two more surgeries to undergo,” he stated.