Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, the current Leader of the Senate, has shared a dramatic account of how his wife, Yemisi Bamidele, a pharmacist at Garki General Hospital, smuggled him out of Abuja in an ambulance to escape the General Sani Abacha junta.
His narrow escape ultimately led to his political asylum in the United States due to persistent threats to his life and family.
Bamidele recounted this experience in Abuja yesterday as part of the 2025 National Democracy Day commemorations, reflecting on the annulment of the June 12 presidential election won by the late Moshood Abiola.
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He explained that he was in a court session in Wuse II, Federal Capital Territory, defending 11 expelled student union leaders from the University of Abuja when he received alarming news: security operatives had raided his law office, purportedly searching for arms and weapons.
Upon hearing this, Bamidele immediately asked a colleague to take over his court matter. His wife then orchestrated his “miraculous escape” from Abuja.
He detailed the communication challenges of the time, stating, “There was no GSM then. We only relied on landlines. One of the lawyers in my office had called my wife from the NUJ Secretariat because they had my wife’s office line at Garki General Hospital, where she was working as a registered pharmacist.”
The lawyer informed his wife that security officers had taken over his office, saying, “As one of the people who managed to come out of the street, he heard that the security agencies said they were looking for arms and ammunition in that office. It was that bad to come and look for arms and ammunition in a law office.”
Bamidele further narrated how his wife quickly called an assistant registrar she knew at the court, asking her to relay the news of the invasion.
Since his case hadn’t been called yet, the assistant registrar whispered the urgent message to him. He managed to inform a colleague to stand in for him.
“What I did was to walk across to the law office of another colleague. I stayed there until I was able to reach my wife through her office line. My wife brought an ambulance from Garki General Hospital to convey me to another location. It was the ambulance we used to go to a place where a friend could convey me in his car. We then drove out for almost three days before we got to a safer place,” he concluded.
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