By Tope Babatola
The annulment of the presidential election held on 12th June 1993, by self-styled military president Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, sparked a chain of events that began with civic uprisings in Lagos and across Nigeria. That criminal annulment of the sovereign wish of the masses is 30 years old.
Many are aware that the turning point in the June 12 Struggle was the hijack, by four teenagers, of a Nigerian Airways plane on October 25, 1993 in protest against the annulment of the presidential election won by the late Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. The youngsters primarily implicated in that plot were Richard Ogunderu, Kabir Adenuga, Benneth Oluwadaisi, and Kenny Rasaq-Lawal – all members of the Movement for the Advancement of Democracy (MAD).
The Nigerian Airways flight was initially scheduled for Lagos to Abuja route but was diverted at gunpoint by the hijackers, a first of its kind in the history of Nigeria. The gun was later discovered to be a toy. The quad after being arrested in Niamey following the storming of the plane by Nigerien forces, were remanded in custody in Niger Republic and were only released in 2001.
While the government of the Republic of Niger, for reasons best known to it, refused to release the suspects to the Nigerian junta as requested by Abacha, unknown to Nigerians, the Abacha junta expanded its dragnets at home in search of a Jerry Yusuf who was claimed to be the mastermind of the plane hijack plot. In doing this, for inexplicable reasons which perplexed the management of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), agents of the junta arrested and hounded into detention not less than four students of FUTA with the false claim that they were part of the plane hijack plot. The students were Tunde Ibikunle, Tunde Adeagbo, Tunji Ariyomo and Niran Kueminu. The first set of arrests was that of Adeagbo, Kweminu, and Ariyomo. Each student was kept in solitary confinement with daily sessions of interrogations. The trio was only released upon the ceaseless intervention of the university’s then Vice Chancellor, Prof. Albert Ilemobade, and senior management staff, A. W. O. Attoye. Tunde Ibikunle was arrested separately and was released much later after suffering extensive academic deprivation.
Yet, investigations have revealed that FUTA students were not part of the plot in any way but had their names corralled unto the suspects’ list because of the institution’s budding fervid democratic nationalism as a citadel of learning. In 1993, FUTA was a twelve (12) year-old relatively young university. Regardless, every single radical national organization such as the Campaign for Democracy (CD), the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), etc, all had their active students’ wings or branches in FUTA. This also meant that the covert operatives of the military junta would maintain an active undercover presence in FUTA to keep their eyes on the budding student nationalists.
In retrospect, Tunde Adeagbo’s true offense for instance was strong support, at students’ congresses, for concerted protests by students against the annulment of the election whilst Ariyomo’s offense was starting a daily anti-annulment barrage of campus asymmetric journalism to sensitize students to their power to remain in defiance of the illegal annulment. In other climes, such students would be considered exemplary heroes and not listed as furtive rogues marked for secret detentions or elimination. Indeed, the activities of this duo were not different from those of other audacious students across university campuses all over Nigeria who rose to the extraordinary call to save their nation from military arbitrariness. Their courageous response was surely disconcerting enough for the military junta to zero in on them with the trumped-up charge that they were part of a plane hijack plot.
It’s been 30 years since that experience. Many across the nation did not survive the military experience during the June 12 imbroglio. Bagauda Kalto, a journalist with The News and Tempo magazines, was believed to have been murdered by a bomb. Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the wife of the winner of the presidential election, was assassinated in broad daylight in Lagos on June 4, 1996. Her Personal Assistant, Comrade Akinola Orisagbemi, was shot repeatedly.
The number of those killed during the June 12 struggle remains under-reported, as only the prominent elite that were victims of the totalitarian regime made the headlines. Many other campaigners for the validation of the democratic expression of the people died unsung and largely unnoticed through agents of the state, police, and undercover agents, as well as goons hired by the military junta who laid siege with the intent to subdue and annihilate the promoters of the quest for democratic rule.
30 years after, the people have survived. Many known henchmen of the military junta who heartlessly offered themselves as shameless tools of terror against the people died miserably. Democracy wins!
