In July 1984, Umaru Dikko was living in London.
He was not an ordinary political exile. Dikko had been a prominent member of the civilian government of President Shehu Shagari and had served as Minister of Transport and Aviation.
That government was overthrown by the military on 31 December 1983.
Muhammadu Buhari became head of the new military government, and the authorities in Nigeria began pursuing former officials over allegations of corruption. Dikko was among those the new government wanted brought back to Nigeria.
But there was a problem.
Dikko was in Britain.
Nigeria could seek his return through legal channels. In fact, Britain and Nigeria had arrangements under the Fugitive Offenders Act. But no request had been made for legal proceedings to return Dikko before the events of July 1984.
Instead, someone attempted to take him by force.
That decision would turn a Nigerian political dispute into a British criminal case and, within days, a diplomatic crisis.
Then Umaru Dikko Disappeared
On 5 July 1984, Dikko left his home in Bayswater, London.
He did not get far.
According to the account later presented in court, he was seized on the street by several men and forced into a van after a struggle.
His personal assistant, Elizabeth Hayes, contacted the Metropolitan Police at about 12.40 pm.
The police immediately faced a frightening possibility.
If Dikko had been abducted, the people responsible might try to get him out of Britain.
So the search expanded.
British authorities placed special watches at ports and other points from which someone could be removed from the country.
That decision would lead directly to the discovery that changed the entire case.
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The Search Reached Stansted Airport
At about 4 pm, two large crates arrived at Stansted Airport.
They were due to be loaded onto a Nigerian Airways cargo aircraft.
The crates attracted suspicion.
This was important because the police were already looking for a missing Nigerian who might be taken out of Britain.
The crates were connected with Nigeria, and a Nigerian aircraft was waiting to transport them.
But there was another question.
Were the crates protected by diplomatic immunity?
British officials determined that they were not diplomatic bags as defined by the Vienna Convention. They could therefore be opened.
The crates were opened.
What police discovered inside transformed the search.
Umaru Dikko Was Inside the Crate
One crate contained Umaru Dikko.
He was unconscious.
Beside him was another man who was conscious and had drugs and syringes.
A second crate contained two more men.
Dikko had been drugged and was being prepared for transportation out of Britain.
He was alive, but in a condition serious enough that he was taken to hospital under police guard.
Seventeen people were arrested and questioned during the initial investigation.
The search for a missing Nigerian politician had suddenly uncovered something much bigger.
Someone had apparently arranged for Dikko to be transported from Britain to Nigeria by hiding him inside a crate.
And now British police had to find out who was behind it.
Why the Crates Made the Case International
The destination of the crates was Lagos.
The aircraft waiting at Stansted was Nigerian Airways.
The crates were addressed to Nigeria.
The consignment purported to come from the Nigerian High Commission in London.
Members of the Nigerian High Commission were also present at Stansted when the crates were opened.
That created a serious diplomatic problem.
The Nigerian High Commissioner denied that the Nigerian Government or the High Commission had been involved.
But British investigators needed to question members of the High Commission staff about what had happened at Stansted.
The British Government formally requested access to them.
At this point, the Dikko affair was no longer simply a kidnapping investigation.
It had entered the world of diplomatic relations.
Britain Wanted Answers From Nigerian Officials
On 9 July, British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe told Parliament that police inquiries had shown the need to interview Nigerian High Commission staff.
The reason was straightforward.
At least one member of the High Commission staff and vehicles belonging to the High Commission had been present at Stansted when the crates were being handled.
The British Government therefore wanted the relevant officials made available for questioning.
The Nigerian Government declined the request.
Three days later, the British Government announced that the investigation had produced evidence that appeared to implicate members of the Nigerian High Commission.
Two Nigerian diplomats, Counsellor Peter Oyedele and Attaché Okon Edet, were ordered to leave Britain within seven days.
The Nigerian High Commissioner was recalled by his government and left Britain.
The diplomatic consequences were now unmistakable.
Then Britain and Nigeria Had Another Crisis
While British police were investigating the attempted removal of Dikko from Britain, another extraordinary event was unfolding thousands of kilometres away.
A British Caledonian aircraft had been detained in Lagos.
The aircraft had its crew and passengers with it.
The Nigerian authorities held it from 5 to 7 July.
Britain protested strongly, describing the detention as unlawful and unjustified.
The aircraft was eventually released at 2 pm local time on 7 July and returned to Britain the following morning.
This changed the character of the Dikko affair.
Britain was investigating an alleged kidnapping on British soil.
Nigeria was holding a British aircraft in Lagos.
The governments of the two countries were now exchanging protests while British police were investigating possible links between the kidnapping and Nigerian diplomatic personnel.
What had begun with one missing man in London had become a dispute between two governments.
The British Parliament Was Now Discussing the Affair
The case was no longer confined to police stations and airports.
It reached the British Parliament.
British ministers were answering questions about the kidnapping, diplomatic immunity, the Nigerian High Commission, the aircraft detained in Lagos and the conduct of the Nigerian Government.
There was also a wider legal issue.
Britain had rules for dealing with people wanted for offences in other countries. Nigeria could have pursued the appropriate legal route to seek Dikko’s return.
Instead, the affair involved an attempt to physically remove him from Britain.
That placed British law and Nigerian political interests on a direct collision course.
Three Israelis and a Nigerian Were Charged
The international character of the operation became even clearer when four men were charged in Britain.
Three were Israeli nationals.
One was Nigerian.
They were charged with kidnapping and administering drugs with intent to kidnap.
The four were Alexander Barak, Mohammed Yusufu, Felix Abitbol and Dr Lev Arie Shapiro.
Shapiro was an anaesthetist and had been found in the crate with Dikko.
The presence of Israeli nationals produced another international dimension.
Questions quickly arose about whether the operation had any connection with Israel or Israeli intelligence.
But the British Government stated that there was no evidence of Israeli Government involvement.
The criminal case therefore had to be separated from the wider speculation surrounding it.
The men who were prosecuted were dealt with by British courts for crimes committed in Britain.
The Nigerian Government Denied Involvement
Throughout the diplomatic crisis, the Nigerian Government denied involvement in Dikko’s abduction.
That denial became an important part of the dispute.
British officials, however, had evidence they said appeared to implicate members of the Nigerian High Commission.
Because the Nigerian Government refused permission for the relevant High Commission officials to be interviewed, British investigators could not complete that part of the inquiry in the way they wanted.
This left one of the central questions of the affair unresolved at government level:
Who had organised and authorised the operation?
The criminal proceedings established the guilt of the four men who were convicted.
They did not establish that the Nigerian Government had officially ordered the kidnapping.
The Men Behind the Operation Went to Prison
The criminal case eventually reached the Central Criminal Court in London.
All four men pleaded guilty to the offences.
On 12 February 1985, they received substantial prison sentences.
Alexander Barak was sentenced to 14 years.
Mohammed Yusufu received 12 years.
Dr Lev Arie Shapiro and Felix Abitbol each received 10 years.
The court also recommended their deportation.
The convictions gave the extraordinary affair a clear legal conclusion in Britain.
The men had attempted to kidnap Dikko and drug him as part of the operation to remove him from Britain.
But the wider diplomatic questions surrounding the affair remained a subject of controversy.
Why Was It Called an International Affair?
The answer lies in the chain of events.
Dikko was Nigerian.
He was living in Britain.
Nigeria wanted him returned.
He was abducted in London.
The people involved included Israeli nationals and a Nigerian.
He was discovered at a British airport inside crates intended for transport to Nigeria.
The crates were connected to the Nigerian High Commission.
A Nigerian Airways aircraft was waiting to carry them.
British police investigated the operation.
British courts prosecuted the suspects.
The Nigerian Government denied involvement.
British officials sought to question Nigerian diplomatic personnel.
Nigeria refused.
Two Nigerian diplomats were ordered out of Britain.
The Nigerian High Commissioner was recalled.
And, at the same time, Nigerian authorities detained a British Caledonian aircraft in Lagos.
The affair had therefore crossed several borders even though Dikko himself never left Britain.
That is what made it international.
The Manhunt Had Become a Diplomatic Crisis
There is a remarkable sequence to what happened.
First, there was a missing man.
Then there was a police search.
The search became an airport investigation.
The airport investigation uncovered a planned journey to Nigeria.
The investigation then raised questions about the Nigerian High Commission.
Those questions became a diplomatic dispute.
The dispute was worsened by the detention of a British aircraft in Lagos.
The British Parliament became involved.
Israeli nationals became defendants in a British criminal case.
Nigerian diplomats were expelled or recalled.
A political quarrel that had begun in Nigeria had now spread into the streets of London, the diplomatic offices of both countries, the British Parliament, the courts and the international press.
And at the centre of it all was still one man.
Umaru Dikko.
Dikko Never Reached Nigeria
The entire operation had apparently been designed to get Dikko back to Nigeria.
It failed at the airport.
Instead of arriving secretly in Lagos, Dikko was taken to a British hospital.
Instead of disappearing into Nigeria, the men involved ended up in a British courtroom.
Instead of quietly resolving a political dispute, the operation triggered a diplomatic confrontation between Nigeria and Britain.
Dikko eventually recovered.
The crates became the enduring image of the affair, but the real significance of the episode went far beyond what was found inside them.
It demonstrated how quickly an attempt to settle a political dispute across borders could become a matter of criminal law, diplomatic immunity, international relations and government-to-government confrontation.
The Search for One Man That Escaped No Country
Umaru Dikko was never successfully transported across an international border.
Yet the attempt to move him created consequences in several countries.
Britain had to deal with an alleged foreign-backed kidnapping on its own soil.
Nigeria had to respond to the detention of its officials and the growing accusations surrounding the High Commission.
Israel became part of the story because three of the convicted men were Israeli nationals, even though the British Government said it had no evidence of Israeli Government involvement.
The British Government and Nigerian Government then found themselves in a diplomatic confrontation.
That is the extraordinary story behind the Dikko affair.
The search for one Nigerian man did not become an international affair because he travelled across the world.
It became one because the people looking for him, the people trying to move him, the aircraft waiting for him, the diplomats connected to the operation and the governments responding to it crossed the boundaries of ordinary law and diplomacy.
And before Umaru Dikko could leave London, the whole world was already watching.
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Author’s Note
The Umaru Dikko affair began with Nigeria’s determination to bring a former minister back from Britain, but the decision to seize him by force transformed the matter into something far larger. Dikko’s disappearance triggered a British police search, his discovery inside a crate at Stansted exposed an international operation involving Nigerian and Israeli nationals, questions surrounding the Nigerian High Commission created a diplomatic confrontation, and the detention of a British aircraft in Lagos brought the two governments into direct conflict. The four men convicted in Britain went to prison, Nigerian diplomatic officials were expelled or recalled, and Dikko remained in Britain. What began as a search for one Nigerian man therefore became a remarkable international affair involving crime, diplomacy, aviation and the relationship between Nigeria and Britain.
References
UK Parliament, Hansard, House of Commons, 6 July 1984, “Mr Umaru Dikko (Abduction)”.
UK Parliament, Hansard, House of Commons, 9 July 1984, “Mr Umaru Dikko (Abduction)”.
UK Parliament, Hansard, House of Commons, 12 July 1984, “Mr Umaru Dikko”.
UK Parliament, Hansard, House of Lords, 6 July 1984, “Nigerian Ex-Minister: Abduction”.
UK Parliament, Hansard, House of Lords, 12 July 1984, “Nigerian Ex-Minister, Mr Umaru Dikko: Abduction”.
British Court of Appeal, R v Barak and Others, 1985.
United Press International Archives, “Four sentenced for trying to kidnap Nigerian exile”, 12 February 1985.
The Washington Post, “Nigerian’s Abductors Sentenced”, 12 February 1985.
