Babangida’s Security Aide Linked With Dele Giwa’s Murder, Is Dead
Brigadier-General Ajibola Kunle Togun (rtd.), one time deputy director of the State Security Service, SSS, has passed on in his native Saki town in the northern edge of Oyo State.
Mr. Togun, whose age could not be verified at the time of filing this report, died a pastor early Monday, September, 30.
Details of the late officer’s death is also sketchy at this time.
Rev. Togun came to national attention when he was linked to the Oct 19, 1986 brutal murder of Dele Giwa by parcel bomb.
Mr. Dele Giwa was co-founder of Newswatch Magazine,
Rev. Togun famously claimed that at an October 9, 1986 media parley for media executives and the then newly created State Security Service, Dele Giwa and Alex Ibru purportedly reached a secret censorship agreement with government. Under this presumed agreement, the media was to report to the SSS before
publication any story with potential to embarrass the government.
Rev. Togun and his then boss, Colonel Haliru Akilu, director of the SSS, were close aides to then General Ibrahim Babangida.
Brig-Gen. A.K Togun was later reported to have given an interview to airport correspondents of the Guardian on 27 October 1986. In the said interview, Rev. Togun, when asked about Dele Giwa’s murder and the suspicion that he was killed by the Babangida administration, reportedly said, ”…one person cannot come out to blackmail us. I am an expert in blackmail. I can blackmail very well. I studied propaganda so no one person can come and blackmail us after an agreement…”.
Prolonged efforts by Dele Giwa’s lawyer, the late Gani Fawehinmi, to prosecute Messrs Akilu and Togun in court , was unsuccessful.
In 2001, Messrs Babangida, Akilu and Togun declined to testify before the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa-led national human rights investigative commission about Mr. Giwa’s murder.
The trio went to court and obtained an order restraining the commission from summoning them to appear before it.
Justice Oputa said then that the commission had the power to issue arrest warrants for the trio but decided against this “in the over-all interest of national reconciliation”
