Adisa Meredith Akinloye, born in 1913, was among people who were held as suspects in the alleged coup plot of 1995. Akinloye was a lawyer and a politician, one of the highest ranking of Ibadan chiefs, he became a minister in the Western Region government of Obafemi Awolowo in 1952 when the highest ranking Nigerian in the former British colonial army was a Major. He was one of the troopers of Ladoke Akintota during the turbulent sixties.
Akinloye’s career in politics reached its zenith during the Second Republic when he emerged the chairman of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, in 1978. When General Sani Abacha staged his first successful coup, December 31, 1983, Akinloye fled into exile and married a new wife. Although Abacha gave a fellow fugitive, Umaru Dikko a kind reception when he finally came to power on his own, such gestures were not extended to him. Instead, Akinloye became a leading prisoner of the junta, taking his queue behind General Olusegun Obasanjo and Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. His arrest was initially for “dangerous rumour mongering.”
