By Kola Johnson
Precisely 29 years on Monday, that historic moment, November 11, 1995, when Nigerian politicians converged at Eko Hotel for the colorful summit of all Nigerian politicians – a historic first mammoth gathering of all Nigerian politicians cutting across diverse party shades and affiliations – after the June 12 annulment of the 1993 election, of which the Billionaire business mogul, MKO Abiola was the popularly acclaimed winner – optimism ballooned to euphoric heights.
It was an occasion that commanded all the trappings of a big event, parading notable and immensely influential movers and shakers in the Nigerian political hemisphere, in the likes of Alex Ekwueme, Bola Ige, Olu Falae, Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, Abubakar Rimi, among others, just as it also furnished for me, a congenial milieu for a direct interactive interface with the likes of Iyorchia Ayu, Isiaka Adeleke, Lema Jibril, Ojo Madueke, Senator Ayo Fasanmi, Yemi Farounbi, and ex-Governor Michael Otedola, whom I had been privileged to meet before, at Airport Hotel, in December 1988, during the Gala Nite celebration of Epe Lions Club.
Of the distinguished lists of
attendees, one unique figure that irresistibly tickled my fancy, whom I had
fanatically admired many years back, almost to the point of idolization, was
Yusuf Bala Usman, the radical and eccentric fire-spitting Marxist who with his
ideological alter-ego, the Jamaican-born Patrick F. Wilmot, both highly visible
and influential lecturers at the Ahmadu Bello University, in their heydays of
intensely vibrant activism – shook the Northern bastion of feudal anachronism
to its foundation – a development which impelled the panicky feudal overlords
of the North in conspiracy with the military tyrant, Ibrahim Babangida, to
deport him out of Nigeria hoping that the sadistic deportation would frustrate
Bala’s burgeoning steam.
Despite the impairment on his
leg, arising from a stroke he sustained following a fatal motor accident, you
will marvel at his spirited dash of movement, his exuberant and active temper,
as he roved hither and thither, in irrepressible restive fervor.
At a point, I could see Dr.
Ibrahim Tahir, the cerebral scholar and Sociologist unabashedly shouting out
his name, Baalaa! Baalaa! Baalaa!, so loudly from a distance, ostensibly borne
of his fond admiration of the ease with which he carried himself in spite of
his physical limitations.
Quite as would have been expected,
the advent of the NADECO patriarch, Chief Adekunle Ajasin, was to provide a
befitting climax to the occasion. The rapturous air of jollity and popular
acclamation that greeted his advent was in itself worth a special recount.
In his epic keynote address to
that memorable gathering, he spoke with vigor, authority candour and mental
acuity that belied his old age and frail physique, as he highlighted the
disappointed optimism in a Nigeria which from a big black hope expected of it,
now languished in the epithetic cognomen of a big black sheep.
When at the end of his address,
Bola Ige and Olu Falae literally held guard the frail old man clad in white
Agbada both on the left and right hand respectively, into a blue color Mercedes
Benz, in departure from the meeting which incidentally happened to be his last
major outing before his passing to glory – the ovation that greeted the
tireless old Trojan war horse of Nigerian politics, might perhaps have led him
to believe that at last, the spirit towards a new Nigeria was already set in
motion.
But as it would turn out on a
disappointing note of irony, his hope in this regard was unfortunately fated
for the rocks when only few hours later, Abacha struck!
A band of misguided fierce-looking, dare-devil
perverts, hoodlums and vandals derogatorily referenced in popular local
parlance as Area Boys, emerged from nowhere.
Brandishing guns knives,
machetes, axe, broken bottles, iron rods huge stones and sticks among sundry
lists of dangerous objects, they shot into the air, tore every banner in sight,
smashed every flower-pot, overpowered the security men and before you could say
A-B-A-C-H-A! pandemonium took over as the cream of eminent personages ran for
dear lives. An epic race that would put the Olympic marathon to shame.
This writer, in a report filed
the next day, gave a vivid account of his first hand witnessing of how a
shamelessly timid and desperate Arthur Nzeribe ran for dear life as his body
guards displaying a keen sense of alertness, swiftly parried him to safety.
A young boy tried to smash an
object on Doyin Okupe, clad in white Agbada. Okupe was lucky, he managed to
dodge it. But Barry Ade Salawu later Ebenezer Babatope’s Special Assistant and
also ex-Chairman, Somolu Local Government Council was not so lucky. He had his
head smashed as blood oozed freely.
On that occasion, Alex Ekwueme’s
big belly posed no hindrance to the emergency marathon for dear life; Ibru ex-governor
of Delta State, spotting a creamy-white long-sleeve Buba Silk, was sighted by
this writer and a reporter, who took him up on the wound below his left leg,
which he tried to explain away as a non-issue. He must have accidentally hit it
on an object, during the grueling escape bid.
The Ibadan based Monitor, for
whatever reason known to them would see none else to single out for a special
treat of burlesquing, than Bola Ige, at whom they poked fun for his good panic
run at that serio-comic moment in the libertarian agitation for democracy. This
writer did see him at that seismic moment of crass anarchy, but unfortunately
not right within the hall of venue,as he paced and looked visibly crestfallen.
On the lawn outside the
hall,this writer was locked in frantic discourse with Isiaka Adeleke, who in a
fit of anger, insistently vaunted with unequivocal certitude that the..boys
were sponsored by the powers that be.
Barely a minute into the
discussion, Lema Jibril, a northern political elite of Fulani extraction
accidentally stumbled on us as a hot exchange ensued between him and Adeleke,
when he insisted on the contrary that it was the handiwork of some disgruntled
politicians, and necessarily not Abacha.
Like the notorious reign of
terror popularly associated with the period of the Jacobins, during the
conundrum of the French Revolution, fear held sway, as Eko Hotel which hitherto
was the hub of a variety of the creme-de-la-creme in Nigeria’s political
firmament, wore a cemetery-like abandonment! Even a pin-drop will thud!
A later attempt was actually
ventured to reconvene after the conquistadorial savagery, but it was
apparently, a meretricious face-saving recourse, as a good number of the
top-notchers, whose presence would ordinarily have made quite some difference,
had terrifyingly petered to the blues and would no longer be part of it.
It was at best a come-back
stripped of the elemental soul and spirit, pith and effervescence heralding the
initial moment of the evenement, which otherwise had held out an auspiciously
transformative portent of immensely seminal proportion for the unfolding
political process.
Indeed as long as it lasted out,
in its lustre less recrudescence, it was as if the haunting spirit of Abacha’s
goons and hirelings lurked like a ghost, all round the precint.
It was therefore no surprise
that as they hurriedly hushed up the affairs, in what eventually turned out a
meretricious non-event, the scenario quickly wore a solitary desolation as
diverse shades of attendees, hurriedly sped off.
Pronto! I quickly sped down the
main road and was just so lucky for a chat with Senator Ayo Fasanmi, Dr. Tunji
Otegbeye, my very close pal, and an Ado-Ekiti-born Professor of Philosophy at
Obafemi Awolowo University, who was a regular contributor of articles to the
newspapers. His name I can’t readily remember.
While they hurriedly granted me
an interview while seated in their cars, right on the main road, in their impatience
to leave, a highly calm and remarkably composed Yemi Farounbi,had made me quite
at ease, as he took every sense of patience to attend to my questions.
So did Abacha and his hired
myrmidons eventually succeed in scuttling by sheer totalitarian brutishness,
what easily would have passed for one of the most memorable gatherings in
Nigerian political history.
Day Two. November 12, 1995. Yaba, the strategic vortex of vigorous socio-commercial interaction and leading hub of entertainment, industries, and fore-most agglomeration of leading academic institutions in the nation, became the very ghost of its former self, as a formidable Garrison of Abacha’s foot-soldiers and police like an invading army of occupation held sway.
Armed to the teeth, even to the details of armoured tanks stationed at various
strategic points, they exuded, every inch, a grotesquely intimidating aura of
savage sadism, as the spirit of blood bath hovered in the horizon, and the air
conspicuously thick with ominous foreboding. This remarkably cosmopolitan
melting pot of humanity, and beehive of intensely phenomenal wave of
activities suddenly became a
no-go area. An area where even the Angels feared to tread!
The NADECO rally that was
supposed to hold there, the day after the disrupted summit of politicians, as a
climax to the event seemed to be receding to the realm of sheer empty dream.
Ten O’clock the appointed time
ticked, yet no single “Jupiter” in sight. Of course on this, you needed no
explanation. Not with the ineffaceable sample of dare-devilry brandished only a
day before, by Abacha’s suicidal savage hounds.
This writer and a handful of
other journalists present, but decidedly kept a safe distance, were keenly
immersed in an imaginative gymnastics of the savage-bingo treat that awaited
any “obstreperous felon” with suicidal daring and audacity to stick neck into
the gaping hoary pit of death.
Is this a failed mission? Is the
day lost? Is no one showing up after all? Has Abacha carried the day?
These were the diverse
imaginative interrogations dancing on the lips of the coterie of news
reporters, there gathered, that day, this writer inclusive.
At 10.30 a.m. or there-about, one
man dramatically emerged in a whitish-creamy jacket and trouser. His boyish
look betrayed the grey specie generously dotting his scalp, making the isolated
paucity of the few black hair reeling in envy. He looked like a lone man in the
wilderness.
“What could only this man do?
Femi Falana is not there, same with Fawehinmi and Co”, so we reasoned, as we
pitied the man for the severe yoke of responsibilities fatedly imposed on him –
and the heart skipped a beat in frightful fore-boding of what we were then all
too confident would happen to the man any moment.
Along the line, just a few
minutes after, an argument ensued between him and the leader of the contingent
of forces, who with imperial military fiat, quite in tune with the
conquistadorial brutishness of the prevailing season of anomie, hollered, that
no rally must hold, to which the man in reference, Frederick Fasheun
countermanded with unreserved remonstrance, that such whimsical fascism would
amount to the height of impropriety in a supposed dawn of modernity, which
allowed for an unfettered latitude for free peaceful expression.
Tension mounted. Irresistible
pang of fear, as could petrify even a stone heart to jelly held a terrifying
subjugation on the general mind and psyche.
It was a tribute to his
quintessential sense of courage, valour and soldiery, that Faseun eventually
succeeded in breaking the myth of invincibility of Abacha’s notorious goons,
despite the terrorising grandstanding and stiff resistance of the overzealous
trigger happy police and military which at that critical state of tumult were
verily in aptly descriptive terms, a transmogrified extension of Abacha’s
killer squad.
In a rare show of defiance,
Fasheun addressed a rally, “assaultingly” right at that very spot in Yaba, the
spot where even the angels feared to tread, spiting the nose, and spiting the
gritty teeth of Abacha’s power apparatchik.
This was followed by a spirited
solidarity March from Yaba to Oyingbo, and again round through Herbert Macaulay
Street, to Ikorodu Road among others.
On this momentous day, November
12, 1995, Frederick Faseun would go down in history as the man who stole the show,
because no sooner had other politicians learnt through their intelligence
antenna that Faseun had broken the ice, than they started showing up one after
the other: Ayo Adebanjo, Enahoro, Kudirat Abiola, Femi Falana, including even
the enigmatic Gani Fawehinmi – they all started showing up, whether by sheer
stroke of coincidence or otherwise, after Faseun had broken the myth of
invincibility of Abacha’s killer-Squad deceptively called the army and police.
For this writer, November 12,
1995, was a particularly significant day, because it afforded me the
opportunity of estimating the valor-essence and fire-power embedded in the
lion-heart, called Faseun, the man, who on that day, walked even where the
Angels feared to tread; the Ondo-born stormy petrel, the enfant terrible, and
generalissimo of the then, highly dreaded Odua People’s Congress.
To be sure, Faseun started out
on his avowed mission of social reform, on a dynamic visionary spurt, only to
plunge, in the course of his later trajectory, into some militating
controversial derailments, that wrought quite a considerable deal of havocs to
his hitherto impeccable heritage – this article might perhaps throw up an
attenuating dimension for historical chroniclers, in their holistic prism of
appraisal, when they eventually brace up for proper characterization of the
man, and his rightful place in history.
*Kola
Johnson is a commentator on public issues
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