“No, Your Majesty, I would like to return. Let them murder me too if they kill me. When General Babatunde Idiagbon learned that General Buhari, the then-head of state, had been ousted in a coup headed by General Ibrahim Babangida in 1985, he told the King of Saudi Arabia that. General Idiagbon, Buhari’s deputy, was a strict disciplinarian who never smiled. He was the administration’s face, and his iconic War Against Indiscipline campaign brought order back to the system at the time.
When General Idiagbon was in Saudi Arabia in 1985 for the Hajj, he heard about the coup. At the time, he was a guest of the Saudi king, who begged the general to stay and promised to send his family to Saudi Arabia to join him. General Babatunde Idiagbon declined and returned to Nigeria on the next available flight. After being under house imprisonment for three years upon arriving in Nigeria, he returned to his village of Lorin and had a very quiet life till his passing.
Idiagbon passed away on March 24, 1999, under highly dubious circumstances. His age was 56. On Thursday, March 25, 1999, General Idiagbon was laid to rest at his home at No. 5, Aderemi Adeleye, GRA, ILorin. The burial was quick. His wife, dressed in black, sobbed uncontrollably as he was buried at around midday.
