[Agidimolaja]

In the military, each day is a busy day. You must always sleep with one eye opened.
Be suspicious of every other soldier be he Officer or Other Ranks. Anyone of them can do you harm.
Perform your military duties as best as you can but look after yourself very well.
Love all but trust no one. Always be security conscious especially when you are invited out of your house/quarter,an ambush party may be waiting to recieve you. Military life is not a good life but I did not regret being there for over ten years because it was service to my country.
There are few schools of thought about Vatsa/IBB case. The sad thing is that most of us{the general public} may never know the whole truth and the clique who knew may never tell us until the grave is closed up on them.
I was in the military when the coup of Muritala took place.Everyone of us who were a little closer to the centre scene then knew and still remember the active roles played by Vatsa, starting from his boldly denouncing the coup while it was still going on to hunting down and investigating the plotters.
His roles {although justified} helped so much in the arrest,prosecution and eventual executions of a large number of the arrested plotters.
Most of those executed were from the then Benue/Plateau State including the former Governor. It was a sad period for the people of BP State.Trust me,they never forgot.
It may be true therefore that servicemen from that segment of the country did not forgive Vatsa for his roles which which is a recipe to the fate suffered by their loved ones.
They saw to it that Vatsa suffered the same fate as their homeboys when such opportunity arrived. Looked exactly like "what goes around comes around".
It may be true also that between IBB and Vatsa,it was a case of "Macbeth!Macbeth! beware Macduff!"
In the military you have to keep eye on your best friend{s} too and take no chances.
It was evidenced that there were such rivalries between those two friends.IBB may have founded Vatsa to be too close for comfort.IBB may be fearing the inevitable as a result of which he reduced Vatsa's threat by removing him from command post where several troops were under him to ministerial appointment where he became like a "lone ranger". Such is not an uncommon excercise in the military.
Also,Vatsa as writer was becoming too popular for IBB considering the books he published,awards he recieved and the calibre of folks he is associating with like Chinua Achebe,Wole Soyinka etc. Possibly IBB fell threatened by the giant strides of his friend.
But why was Vatsa executed? Like I said ,we may never know the whole truth except IBB and his loyalists.
The only sad thing was that the man was never linked directly to the plot if in truth there was any.The coup was never allowed to take place neither were they caught red-handed doing the coup. They were executed as what the court of law would call "suspects". It is sad though!
Domkat Bali's heart is beating so fast today because his fingerprint remained forever indelible in the death of people whose involvements in percieved crime was never proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Has he told the whole truth?I don't think so.
Did IBB try to save his friend from execution?I also doubt it much.He probably was happy that his great threat is going away. IBB according to himself concluded that Vatsa was indeed plotting coup hence he{Vatsa} wanted to escape out from air-conditioning hole.
But who wants to believe Maradona? Vatsa would not have made any attempt to escape knowing fully that his residence was surrounded by armed military guards. The rest is history!