Mildred, the wife of Late General Iliya Bisalla, one of the mastermind of the 1976 bloody coup that claimed the life of former Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed is dead. Her passing was announced today by her family. The late General Iliya Bisalla was one of the men implicated in the 1976 military coup d’état that led to the death of one of Nigeria’s most loved head of state till date, General Murtala Ramat Mohammed on February 13, 1976 at Obalende, Lagos. Murtala Mohammed was on his way to observe the Muslim Jumat prayer when he was waylaid and shot to death by the coup plotters.
General Bisalla who as at then was the then Commissioner of Defence, now known as Minister of Defence under the regime of Murtala Mohammed and the 4th in command to the head of state. He was implicated by the confessional statement of one of the coup masterminds, Colonel Bukar Suka Dimka, who was arrested in Abakaliki, in present day Ebonyi State. This was after 3 weeks of manhunt following the failure of the coup.
Indeed, the period was a very try one for Mrs. Mildred Bisalla whose elder sister, Helen was married to another top military officer, Joseph Gomwalk who was also implicated in the 1976 coup. Both Bisalla and Gomwalk were executed by a military firing squad at the Lagos Bar Beach on March 11, 1976. Till date, there are still controversies surrounding the involvement of Bisalla and Gomwalk in the coup, as there are those who still believe they were framed and until she breathed her last, the late Mrs. Mildred Bisalla and her children have continued to maintain that her husband was innocent.
Some followers of military politics have continued to maintain that the secret Special Military Tribunal that convicted Bisalla of conspiracy and concealment of treason did so in a controversial fashion because his complicity was not clear. For instance, while the Federal Military Government asserted that Bisalla gave Dimka operational orders, Dimka under interrogation disclosed that another officer, one Major Rabo was the one who provided the operational order. Indeed history has it that Dimka gave a lot of inconsistent testimonies during hid interrogation and was even drinking beer in the course of it.
Bisalla was a product of the prestigious Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, United Kingdom and was a Major General as at the time he was executed.
It is interesting to note that when former head of state, General Yakubu Gowon was getting married in the thick of the Nigerian civil war on April 19, 1969, Mildred Bisalla was one of the four ladies-in-waiting, the others were Hilda Adefarasin, Dora Adefowope and Ruda Mohammed. Late Mildred Bisalla nee Kwashie is originally from Pankshin in Plateau State, but her family as missionaries settled in Wusasa, Kaduna State.
He death must be a personal loss to the family of former head of state, Retired General Yakubu Gowon and his wife, Victoria, not only because their families are very close but also because they are both from Pankshin and their families both settled in Wusasa.
Source: Opera News
