Tsvangirai, Britain duped by Nigerian fraudsters offering coup against Mugabe

The MDC split of 2005 appears to have been a consequence of the differences between Tsvangirai and the others including Welshman Ncube over whether or not to carry out a military coup against Mugabe. Unfortunately at the time of the split in August 2005, it was popularly believed that internal MDC disagreement over whether or not to participate in the then impending Senate elections, was the cause.

The October 2011 edition of the New African Magazine reported that between 2001 and 2003, the British government were duped out of a whopping US$15 million in a scam involving five retired "Nigerian" generals who offered to organise a coup against President Robert Mugabe on behalf of the British government.

The five "generals" claimed credit for bringing General Ibrahim Babangida to power in Nigeria and they also claimed that they knew most of the senior officers in the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) and that they had trained many of them during Zimbabwe's war of liberation.

They said US$I2m would be initially required to pay off the commanders at both senior and lower levels of the Zimbabwean army and that the most senior officers would be paid a minimum of $100 000 each.

At the time the British were eager to stop Zimbabwe's land reform programme and shortly after the meeting in South Africa they released the $I2m to the Nigerians who then apparently deployed themselves in the various provincial capitals of Zimbabwe.

The Nigerians went on to advise against any unsolicited contact between themselves and MDC officials inside Zimbabwe. The coup was set on the day Zimbabwe's 2002 presidential results would be announced. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his close aides would be booked into a central Harare hotel, the Meikles, a strategic point from which to drive to State House, just under two kilometres away.

The British are reported to have been worried when the coup did not take place as promised. While Tsvangirai waited impatiently, the "Nigerian generals" apparently asked for an extra USD$3m which the British paid.

Two MDC officials were then dispatched to meet the Zimbabwean Air Force commander, Air Marshall Perrance Shiri, to deliver a message that Tsvangirai was interested in working with him when he became president.
Unbeknown to the MDC officials, the meeting with the Air Marshall was recorded on tape, after Shiri had notified his political superiors and Zimbabwe's intelligence service before the arrival of the officials.
Needless to say, the Air Marshall rebuffed their offer.

Air Marshall Shiri showed no knowledge of the coup plan by the Nigerians and this, more or less, confirmed that the British and the MDC had become victims of a 419 scam. The fraudsters then demanded USD$5m to be given to the coup leaders but the British refused but offered to open off shore accounts for them instead.

They then referred Morgan Tsvangirai to Ari Ben-Menashe, an Israeli national who lived in Montreal, Canada, who apparently was hired by the Nigerians. Tsvangirai was made to believe that Ben-Menashe was part of the communication system of the "Nigerian generals" so he travelled to London and Montreal to meet him.

In meetings held in the two cities, recorded secretly on video by Ben-Menashe, Tsvangirai confirmed that he wanted President Mugabe "eliminated". Ben-Menashe later reported Tsvangirai to the Zimbabwean authorities (including supplying the tapes and all), which led to Tsvangirai being indicted for treason back home in Harare. (He was later acquitted.)  

The issue suggests that the real intention of the Nigerians appears to have been to extort money from the British, which they succeeded in doing, and to have Tsvangirai locked up for a long time. Soon after the meeting with Air Marshall Shiri, one of the two MDC officials who went to see him fled to Britain.

New African Magazine says when Welshman Ncube, then secretary-general, got to know about the coup plot, he protested and refused to be party to the project as, he believed, it would not produce a democratic government. Ncube is now the leader of the breakaway MDC faction, which split from the main body in 2005 and won 10 seats in Parliament in 2008.