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Femi Obayori
June 12 in Perspective
[Five Critical Essays]
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June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
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June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Contents Page
Postscript……………………………………………..98
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June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Preface to the First Edition
January, 1996
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June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Preface to this Edition
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June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
NADECO-CD ALLIANCE: VANGUARDING JUNE 12
I
Every political vanguard organisation must continually make
critical appraisal of its strategy and tactics and alliances it is
objectively conditioned to enter in the process of the
struggle. The Campaign for Democracy cannot be an
exemption and, of course, has never pretended to be such.
On July 5, 1993, Campaign for Democracy pulled the
wool from the eyes of self-defeating progressives, paper-tigerish
radicals, as well as cynics and opportunists of both the Left and
the Right by successfully mobilising the mass of our people for
street protests over the annulment of the June 12 election. This
feat was re-enacted in the following months in novel forms
including sit-at-home protests and neighbourhood rallies due to
the cold- blooded massacre of our people on the third day of
the July event. It was the leadership provided by CD that sent
Babangida sobbing out of Aso Rock in the dying days of August
1993, and later, the Interim National Government (ING) on the
night of November 17, 1993. Thus far with the first phase
of the June 12 Struggle. The emergence of National
Democratic Coalition, NADECO, and by its side, the Eastern
Mandate Union, EMU, in the early days of May, 1994, ushered
in (in concrete terms) the second phase of the June 12
Struggle. This ‘great beginning’ also marked the end of all
illusory hopes of the half-hearted pro-June 12
bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeois, as well as the mass of our
deprived people, compelled under confusion and the pain of
extinction in a struggle whose main weapon stifles and
strangulates its bearer to finally rest their fate in a hope for a
change of heart by the Abacha Junta, a change which would lead
to the handling over of power to the bearer of June 12 mandate.
6
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
The role played by Eastern Mandate Union is now part
of history. The EMU dramatised its mission by giving an
ultimatum to the Junta to quit office and install the winner of the
June 12 election in power. But the Mandate Union finally
decreed itself out of relevance when in response to the Junta’s
threats it conducted a furious retreat. This notwithstanding, a
couple of mandators again made high-flown speeches
reminiscent of the last kicks of a dying horse but simmered down
shortly after. The rest of the mandators, home and abroad,
scampered for cover, their feathered caps beneath their armpits.
Thus far with the mandators and their mandate. But for now let
us be assured that at another moment, and as may be
opportune by fate, the mandators shall return to gather
their scattered mandates. In time we trust. So it happened that
NADECO became the undisputed vanguard of the second phase
of the June 12 Struggle. And it was with NADECO that CD had
to row in the same boat on the course of glory. NADECO
captained the boat.
Let us recall that during the first phase of the June 12
Struggle, CD co-opted a host of platforms and interest
groups into an alliance it was able to dominate by dint of
its superior tactics and preponderant audacity. But when CD
entered the second phase of the June 12 Struggle it did as a
member of a coalition notwithstanding its status as a coalition of
about 42 affiliates. It is important to note that right
from the very first day CD’s rank-and-file became aware of
‘our’ role in NADECO only very few had any hope in the
coalition. Although one often heard, informally, that CD was at
the centre of NADECO, the rank-and-file had little confidence in
an alliance led by ‘these NADECO people’.
The ‘NADECO people’s’ approach to mass
struggle started coming to light when on May 22nd, 1994, the
eve of the Constitutional Conference
7 elections, only very few
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
posters and leaflets appeared. It is now on record that while
people, especially in the South West and the Edo home state of
the NADECO stalwart and renowned nationalist Chief
Anthony Enahoro, answered the NADECO call for a boycott,
nothing serious was done about physical stoppage of
elections. Living history as recorded in police
statement pads, dungeon graffiti and court records would have it
that most of those arrested for electoral offences on that day
were CD activists, perhaps the NADECO people were more
tactical and successfully avoided security agents by using
esoteric power (?).
At the same time as NADECO openly rejected
mass action it devoted the bulk of its flabby strength to
exhuming the corpses of democratic structures butchered by the
Abacha Junta in the wake of the November 17th sneak to power.
It would appear that NADECO had predicated its eventual
victory over the Junta on mere threats on pages of newspapers
and its ability to make the corpses of the State and National
Assemblies, like Zombies, walk our streets, like ghosts out
of Hamlet striking fear into their foes who disturb their
sleep by holding their wards, the people, captive. They wanted
to make these structures, in their shredded shrouds,
sprout to nature once more! But as it turned out, the ghosts
and sabre-rattling of NADECO notwithstanding, Nigerians
soon realised that May 30 wasn’t quite different from any
other day after all.
And have we not seen how these walking corpses
have faded before the slashing sabre of the Khalifa like the
mist before the rising sun and how the captains have been
dismounted from their cockroach horses and shoved into the
dampening recesses of dungeons, albeit, bourgeois, civilised fashion. And
the last of it was yet to be seen. There is much more behind six
than seven, say the Yorubas.8 Now NADECO was going to
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
release its programmes piecemeal like jokers in a casino.
Meanwhile, the people must wait for the Big Bang. For when
the bearer of the June 12 mandate would finally announce his
government, the mere proclamation was bound to send the Junta
fleeing into the barracks where it belonged. These events
loomed and hovered like a ‘haunting’ Messiah over the
consciousness and being of our people than their real existence.
The magical pronouncement came after a couple of hide-and-seeks
theatrics and left in its wake a couple of no less monumental
appearances and disappearances. The scenario was so clear
that no activist was to be left in doubt as to what was left of
NADECO.
But more importantly, no event has ever provided us with a better
opportunity of understanding our ruling class and politicians as
well as our people than the events of the last one year, if only we
bother to take a keener look. What is the character of this
NADECO? What is its understanding of the June 12
Struggle? And did CD go wrong in allying with NADECO?
To use the words of a foreign electronic outfit, most
members of NADECO are “respected members of their various
communities,” and not one or two but quite a number of them
are known to be “basically honest politicians.” But need not
somebody tell them that the issue went beyond communal
respect and basic honesty; that the essential nature of these
people and their position within the political economy of Nigeria
made them the wrong specimens for the cap they
pretended to wear. NADECO chieftains, no matter how we
look at it, are members of the discredited ‘political class’, if
indeed class be the appropriate definition of this motley
aggregate of self-seekers and hustlers. And indeed, has
their history of hustling and political opportunism, nay, self-
delusion, not bloated our voluminous book of inglorious history?
Is the present generation not 9a living witness to how the
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
political class endorsed the subversion of the Politburo
Report because of its socialist contents? Did not the political
class hail to the high heavens the implementation of SAP? What
about their connivance, open and covert, in the banning of mass
organisations, including the NLC, ASUU, and the NANS in
the blooming days of IBB’S fascism? And what is more, did not
the political class North, South, West and East, united by
opportunism and settlement, allow the dissolution of political
associations in 1989? What indeed stopped them from seeing in
the first place that they ceased to be the determinants of their
fates the very day they allowed these things to happen
unchallenged? And what is more, did they not, in the pursuance
of their opportunistic egunje line, start to scramble to ‘belong
somewhere’ the moment the Junta burst two parties into the open
from the blues? And are we not also living witnesses to the
scheming, infamy, vagabondage and vagrancy that streaked our
shredded history book in the last three years of transition before
the June 12 bubble burst?
As in Germany in 1919-33, Bulgaria 1919-23,
Spain in the 30s and countless other places, bourgeois
democratic illusions and liberal inconsistencies have always
oiled the wheels of ascending fascism. The movement to
full-blown fascism is always blessed with copious donations of
opportunism and vacillation on the part of the so-called political
classes.
This holds true for our political class, whether respected,
honest or dishonest. But at no other time has this manifested
more vividly than the short-lived existence of the
legislative assemblies whose corpses, as earlier
mentioned, and tried to walk our streets once again.
Imagine an elected legislative arm of government bearing the
peoples’ mandate (or rather with people’ mandate forced into its
hands) being sworn in by an10unelected Junta! This National
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Assembly, could not even deliberate on matters to which it was
restricted - monuments, antiquities, motor parks. For
six months it deliberated on matters of its members’
welfare and salaries. And the Junta made sure the ‘new breed’
legislators got enough NICON-NOGA HILTON spoiling
treatment both bodily and spiritually as to make them forget
that they were indeed supposed to be legislators,
deliberating on the interests of our people and accountable to
their various constituencies. And have we not seen how these
assemblies-upper and lower houses alike- allowed
themselves to be turned into a Babangida’s weapon for stifling
the June 12 Struggle? Did some NADECO chieftains not aid and
abet the imposition of an Interim National Government [ING] by
60 to 30 overwhelming majority votes in the Senate? And what
is more, need not somebody ask why the legislators refused to
resist the dissolution of the Assembly but waited only to regal us
with some voodoo spectacle.
Enough of this nauseating political scenario. Let us now
take a look at the kind of economic arrangement that has made it
the lot of our people to be ruled by such an aggregate of
disparate lot.
There is no way the roll call of developing countries is to
be made without Nigeria bursting forth to seek for itself a first grade in the
rank, nor is Nigeria, though a neo-colony, to be passed off with a
mere wave of the hand in the gathering of capitalist countries.
But it remains to be seen how a capitalist country can stand
without capitalists.
The Nigerian capitalist manages capital without
employing productive labour just as he has ran a nation in
more than three and a half decades without the spirit of
nationalism. The Nigerian capitalist inherited an agriculturally-
based productive economy from the colonial master which he
soon turned to an oil money-gulping,
11 usurious, contract-based
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
economy in which the nepotic habits and psychology of ‘man-
know-man’ and ‘kick-backs’ have become official state policy.
Eight years of Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment
Programme (SAP) was later to introduce into this pathetic
national economic scenario the now hegemonic culture of
settlement and money-as-a Godhead. Indeed, whenever
the history of this generation is to be reappraised by the future
generation (if we assumed that the present curse upon us would
have passed by then) one wonders what an uphill task it would
be understanding that over 100 million full-blooded Nigerians
allowed their homeland to be maimed, sucked and raped in eight
inglorious years of ascendancy of military dictatorship. Need we
quickly step in to save this yet-unborn generation this agony by
pointing out that sections of this 100 million found themselves
places of dishonour either as key actors or as back-ups in this infamous
drama of nation-breaking.
He who wants to accuse Ibrahim Babangida of leaving
without having taught our people any lesson should look at our
emerging middle class. Examine the banking sector and see the
level of ramification and upliftment” it witnessed in the past half
a decade! Look at what fat profits they declare. Or take for
instance the Labour Movement and check out how, in step with
the worsening of the conditions of the working class, the
conditions of their leaders in the trade union movement have
continued to improve courtesy of ‘new thinking’ and ‘scientific
trade unionism’. And what about the car ‘loans’ given to army
and police officers in the dying days of the Ibrahim Babangida
Junta. It was also to the glory of the Junta that at no other
time, under no other regime, did the contractual system
fatten the pocket of the ‘capitalists’ than the one under scrutiny.
The skeletons and carcasses of abandoned projects that
strewn our scotched landscapes bear testimony to the wanton
fiducial lawlessness of the era 12under examination, just as the
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
large number of the members of the middle class that committed
monumental landed properties to the care of God leaves
nobody in doubt as to the resting places of funds flying
out of government coffer. All this courtesy of an endlessly
black gold.
It should be clear by now that we are grappling with a
class whose outlook is limited by crass parasitism. Concretely
speaking, it has not been able to define itself as a capitalist class
in the classical sense of it. It is wholly unable to engage
labour for the production of surplus wealth for its
accumulation, but has defined itself by a mode of appropriation
which amounts to stealing from the public treasury through
inflated contracts, over-invoicing and direct day-light
robbery. It also fronts for foreign multi-national finance and
commercial interests for which it has earned the well deserved
name of ‘agbero bourgeoisie’ after the motor park touts.
Significantly, its politics is just a reflection of the parasitism,
opportunism and long-throatism that mark its mode of economic
existence.
II
III
Thank God July 5th came to pass and the hope in our people
rekindled! Thank God our people separated their fate from the
fate of a scoundrel. Thank God we have our people, we have the
CD and now we have NADECO, all one and the same - the
product of a common existence. We must return to where we
started out. As belated an effort as it may appear, and no matter
how inconsistent its members have been, NADECO represents
a gigantic leap forward in the expansion of our democratic space.
For the first time in the course of our
disgustingly interrupted, bloodstained history, the
‘political class’ has come forward to challenge the military
under a banner not sanctioned by the Constitution or by decree.
For the first time our bourgeoisie come out to defend the
people’s mandate illegally. For the first time, sections of our
political class are organising and learning the methods of
struggle their colleagues in other parts of the world like Latin
America and Europe take as a matter of right and responsibility.
It could also mark the beginning of the emergence of
bourgeois statesmen who would insist on bourgeois liberal rights
and structures as becoming of a true capitalist class.
It is also significant that this is happening at a time when
the oil dependent political economy, the basis of the
squandermania of the ruling18elites, is in troubled waters.
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Without oil money (or similar revenue) of Nigeria’s scale, no
nation can sustain a mammoth class of retainer capital ists the
kind we now have in Nigeria. The demand for
autonomy, self-determination or independence as the case may be by the
oil-producing communities is a demand for an end to the
personalisation of public wealth. In fact, it is a demand for the
abolition of that class whose existence has been based on oil
money.
And since the current political scaffolding called Nigeria
is based on oil, the re-configuration of the balance of
nationalities could well mean that oil- money would no longer
be preyed upon by the Oligarchy and its junior partners
supported by a huge state machine.
The implication then is that those politicians who are
likely to dominate the affairs of this country or what would
become of it in the not-too-far future would be those who
have purged themselves of the leprous plague of
parasitism and contract-greed. For those few elements within
NADECO who have resisted Abacha’s baiting with oil-money
and contracts, the hardship they now experience may as
well be a dress rehearsal of what would indeed be the rule
of the future - a future in which every capitalist would have to
prove his worth as a capitalist only by his ability to organise
labour for the purpose of wealth creation rather than dipping
fingers into public purse.
For the majority yet to see the difference between
NADECO and the SDP or say UPN/NPN we only hope that the
ridicule they would receive would not dwarf the type of demise
that would befall them a hundred folds. And so far as the spirit
that brought NADECO into existence is concerned, they are
aliens, or rather, mere fellow travellers. The sooner they are
yanked off as the journey progresses the better. In essence, the
fewer the better, a la V. I. 19Lenin. Initially the base of the
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
struggle broadened in size, now the broadened base must acquire
a new quality.
It would have become clear by now that there is nothing
fundamentally wrong in working with NADECO, given its
support for the actualisation of the June 12 mandate.
What needs to be tidied up, and was never properly
done, was the nature of the alliance. On the other hand, we have
an already existing umbrella organisation or a coalition based on
the programme of the restoration of democracy via a Sovereign
National Conference (SNC) and the expulsion of military from
power; that was CD which was tested in action, the problematic
is precisely the subsuming of the CD into another coalition
which was yet to stand the test of real, practical struggle. That
was problem number one.
Secondly, there is also the problem that the exact role of
the CD within the Coalition was not clear outside some vague, verbose
designations and heart-soothing pronouncements.
By committing these two initial errors, CD
authomatically stripped itself of playing the role of the tutor of
NADECO, of infusing it with the drive and dynamism
necessary to neutralise and nullify the vacillations and
inconsistencies of the other elements within the coalition.
Notwithstanding the initial oversights, it remains the
duty of CD to lure and draw trusted elements within the coalition
directly and openly against the regime, making them share
responsibilities for the consequences of those actions. But CD
must concentrate its effort primarily on strengthening its own
structures for an independent programme for the actualisation of
the June 12 mandate within the limits of its own human and
material resources while maintaining its position within
NADECO. The first step towards this has already been taken.
********
20
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
An objective analysis of NADECO’s vanguard role or CD’s
involvement in NADECO cannot be complete without a look at a
couple of events similar in their appearances and representing
links in the chain of events before us.
Whenever our activists criticise the half-heartedness of
NADECO’s leadership and the consequent failure of some of
their actions or when seeming lack of success of our actions are
seen as a reflection of the incorrectness of our
involvement in NADECO, it is often forgotten that the
history of failure on our part has not always been the history of
alliance with NADECO.
It remains to be seen how a link is to be drawn between
our failure to successfully mobilise the masses to stay at home
on May 9th, 1994 and our involvement in NADECO. This is
without prejudice to the claim by CD’s Chairman Dr. Beko
Ransom Kuti and active cadres generally, including
yours truly, that we were satisfied with the outcome of May 9.
There was also the January 2, 1993 ultimatum CD issued
to IBB to vacate office which it could not venture to follow up
with any concrete action not just because we lacked the courage
but also because our courage carried us too far ahead of the
masses. January 2 was a reflection of our alienation from the
unprepared masses at a certain point in their struggle against
fascism. But there was no NADECO then.
Perhaps the problem basically was trying to
work according to some schematic design whether or
not such fitted into the objectively existing situation.
The mammoth street protests of July 5 and 6 cannot always be
re-enacted nor could they always be standards to measure CD’s
popularity with the masses. Just as August 12, 13 and 14 were a
novel advancement over the shortcoming of the nonetheless
more attractive and more inspiring deeds of July 5, 6, and 7, so
21
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
must we at every point in time, be able to introduce new and
decisive methods to the struggle.
It is in this sense alone that one can begin to understand
Dr. Ransome Kuti, the CD Chairman better when he said
CD was satisfied with the outcome of May 9 Sit-At-Home.
The refusal of the people to stay at home on May 9 was not
deemed by CD to be a reflection of dwindling support for its
agenda unlike ‘The Champion’ (May 10, 1994) would want us to have it.
The posture of the people was a demand for more
meaningful, more result-oriented method of struggle. It was
an expression on the part of the people that the only condition they
could lose what they have is the possibility of getting what they want
either in the present or in the future.
Once more, the current struggle is strictly for
power. It is a revolutionary struggle. What it means is that
the novelties we begin to introduce into the struggle must not
be those that would drag us away from the path of
collision with the state machinery. The people and the people’s
power must come in collision with the ruling order at a certain
point in time. But the question that remains to be answered is
whether we have the wherewithal as an organisation to do this or
not. I have my doubts. Meanwhile the struggle continues. It
must continue on CD platform and on NADECO platform.
Everybody involved in the struggle against fascism and against
30 years of oligarchic domination, no matter his disagreement
with others and his love for his own method, must have a
platform from which to operate and must be allowed to
operate. New platforms are going to emerge and new alliances
forged, but the people’s real movement towards progress and the
future remains one big social movement without a tag. This
movement, I think, is the most important. And surely, it has
passed its first infantile test, now it must go through the ritual of manhood.
15-20 July, 1994. Lagos, Nigeria. 22
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
AREA BOYS IN JUNE 12: OF HEROES, VILLAINS AND
SCAPEGOATS
I
The June 12 Struggle can hardly be fully appreciated
and chronicled without taking cognisance of the special
contribution of the Area Boys community in Lagos and
their equivalent all over the South West. Of all the classes and
social groups that jumped into the June 12 bandwagon, only the
Area Boys played their expected role most consistently; only the Area
Boys needed the most minimal mobilisational impulse for the
most far-reaching effect. This is true of the June 12 Struggle as
for all popular protests for a reform of the existing order, or for
the pulling to pieces of the existing order. They lurk in the
shadow, bidding their time, waiting for such moment as that
society that scorns them puts forward a demand for scorn upon
itself but by its civility, its advanced culture, could not generate
enough faith to do so, to come out and save the society from its
self-afflicted dilemma. At every opportune moment the Area
Boys come out of their dark alleys to loot by rage and fire, to
impress their stamp on our national psyche. June 12 was one
such opportunity, an ample one.
It would therefore be doing a great service to ourselves
by, once and for all, seizing this opportunity to
investigate and understand the Area Boys phenomenon.
It is essential to go a little bit beyond the chagrin and hatred of
the middle class for this ‘non-class’ to the arena of concrete
deciphering and proper definition of the social relation and the
psychology that always put the society at the mercy of this
lot at the moment of every social upheaval. Their history
dates before June 12. The beginning is where we must begin.
On May 13, 1992 when the Olusegun Maiyegun-
led NANS called a general23 strike and mass action against the
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
harsh economic realities of the IBB days occasioned by the
Structural Adjustment Programme [SAP], which
intensified earlier in March, 1992 as a result of the deregulation
of the economy, nobody was in doubt as to whether or not the police
would drench the popular movement in blood. What indeed caught many
off balance was the manner of justification of the killings and the
middle class support it generated.
The protest, flagged off at the University of Lagos,
Akoka campus, had been relatively peaceful after the initial
verbal confrontation between the students and the police at the
University gate. At first, it was an all-student-affair. Hoodlums,
street urchins, vandals, vagabonds, in short, all that could pass
for Area Boys in the eyes of a typical student in his
state of elevated ignorance were actively prevented by the
police, ably aided by the students, from joining the protest. But
by the time the protest got to the “Areas” controlled by the
“Boys” typified by such landmarks as underbridge shelters, cul-
de-sacs, dark alleys and ‘fox holes’, the ‘civilised’ students and
the police had lost control. Then the trigger was activated and
by evening, not less than six corpses had been deposited in
various morgues in Lagos and many more people were receiving
treatment for varying degrees of gunshot wounds. The police
had no cause to deny the killings. Those shot were said to be
‘Area Boys’ seizing the opportunity of the protest to loot. And to
further drive home its point the police PRO spent lengthy media
time and resources trying to convince himself and the of the
world about how peaceful and civilised the protest was before
the ‘Area Boys’ took over. But police claims reeked heavily of
falsehood in the light of the reality on the ground. For it
remains to be seen how the schoolboy who was shot at
Ojuelegba could have passed for an Area Boy in his school
uniform and with the very conspicuous satchel, which he
slouched with youthful aplomb. 24 One prime-time lie of a
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
thousand police PROs could also not have convinced anybody
that the banker whose entrails spilled out of his well-tailored
suit was a ‘hoodlum’. It would appear that the Area
Boys propaganda has become in the hands of the police an
omnibus excuse for their homicidal exuberance - a kind of
‘justifiable homicide’-ala Los Angeles Police Department
(LAPD).
In 1989, the drenching in blood of the Anti-SAP Protest
was also justified by the police, though without any profound
effort, through the claim that they were restoring order and
putting an end to the free looting being carried out by hoodlums
who had taken over the protest. The question that remains to be
answered, however, is whether or not hijacked by Area Boys or
by some other species of marginal people, it can be
possible in our situation to pull off a really peaceful protest?
The answer to this question is definitely to be sought in the
objectively determined social psychology of the various classes,
sub-classes, non-classes and ‘marginadoes’ with which our
society is blessed and among whom you can’t but count first the
Area Boys and their allies.
On the eve of the July 5 event, what troubled every
radical mind the most, apart from the inevitable police interference, was
the fear of free-looting and area boys’ hijack of the popular protest.
However, on July 5, what shocked the radical mind more than
any other thing, having recovered from the spell of seeing the
‘whole of Lagos’ on the streets, was the near-absence of
looting and the cooperation given the protesters by Area Boys
and hoodlums of whatever shade. July 6 was later to shake the
radical mind out of its earlier pleasant shock when it witnessed
free looting by hoodlums. Once more that gave Abacha a cheap
(but needless to say, unnecessary) excuse for unleashing fascist
troops on the South West to ‘maintain law and order’.
25
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Although it is clear from all indications that the Area
Boys mean no other intention when they join a popular
protest save the looting and robbing of the society by rage,
it is a matter of opinion whether or not this species of marginals
actually contribute to or detract from the people’s
struggle. Before going further as to what special role was
played by Area Boys in the June 12 struggle, it is important to
quickly put our understanding in correct perspective as to the
kind of conditions of existence and social psychology
that inform the kind of niche this tribe of marginals has created
for itself in our popular struggles.
II
III
29
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
July 5 did not only shake the minds of the radicals but also those
of the Area Boys. So spell-bound was this tribe of traditional
looters that some of them actually participated in crowd control and in
cases, actually helped in ensuring a successful ignition of the action,
even under the watchful eyes of the arms-of-the-law. Others,
more respected than the rest, having demonstrated their bullying
power in many machete-wielding and charm-throwing as well as
incantation-chanting duels in the past, automatically became de
facto kommandos of processions to the residence of the president-elect.
And it must be said on this day that the democratic forces found
the raw, albeit weed/charm-induced, courage of these
lumpen elements most useful in overwhelming and frustrating police
resistance as well as holding those few Area Boys who would not
show some understanding in check. Though it must be pointed
out too that this surprising attitude of the Area Boys bosses must
have been informed by some other hidden agenda of higher
stakes. Citing one or two instances of the on ground situation
would tell the reader more.
At about 8.20 a. m on Monday, July 5, 1993, a group of
youths charged with the responsibility of mobilising and leading a
contingent of demonstrators to the Ikeja residence of the
president-elect had arrived at Agege Motor Road, Mushin only
to be confronted by armed policemen stationed at bus stops and
by street lamp posts. There was no doubt that the people were
ready to move, as they hung from balconies and windows
expectantly without attempting to go to work. Friday 2nd to
Sunday 4th had been spent doing house-to-house agitation,
leafleteering and pasting posters, so lack of awareness about the
intention was completely out of the issue. But here, the people,
there the police, between them the leaders, prowling in their soft
soles, jeans and khaki or T-shirts. The latter had students written
all over them so to say. Time was running out. Then somebody
came up with the idea of talking 30 to the Boys. It wasn’t difficult
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
getting to them - they were known and had their bases. After
some cross examinations - asking to see the student’s ID card or
at least a ‘proof’, questions about knowledge of the terrain, the
day’s objective and the like, they declared with enthusiasm that,
indeed, they had all the while been waiting for the students to
come and lead the ‘action’ having seen the leaflets during the
weekend. Then they got down to drawing the battle plan. What
a weird thing it was! Burn a couple of Danfo buses on the road;
fire a couple of shops! -that was action! And it had to
take some painstaking effort explaining the objective of the
day once more to the Boys before they finally agreed to shelve
the ‘original plan’. But all the same tyre was needed for the
‘action’. It meant some token amount for petrol, which they got
promptly. Tyres, petrol, petrol and more petrol - for the tyres
were wet (it rained the previous day) a couple of teargas
canisters and gunshots materialised and the people flooded the
street. An attempt was made by the students’ leader to address
them, but the people swarmed him, they swarmed the police and
the police retreated - the movement had commenced.
All the way to Ikeja, the student leaders kept in close
contact with the Area Boys’ bosses, always reminding them of the day’s
objective and getting them to deal with those boys who would
not abide by this objective in the traditional way - they were
usually bullied and dispossessed of their loots which in most
cases were not fully returned to their owners. These were mostly
wristwatches, trinkets and wallets of passersby defying the
strike, some of who took to their heels after being waylaid. The
unreturned loot apparently belonged to the bosses who,
alongside this, enjoyed every bit of the forced march puffing
ganja - you could not stop them after all.
Having gotten to the destination and listened to what
‘Baba’ had to say, the bosses started trying to ‘identify and
organise’ their respective groups.
31 They definitely had hoped to
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
get something from Baba, as usual, not realising that the issue at hand
went beyond the traditional politician-Area Boys’ ‘egunje’ connection -
they were most disappointed.
But on July 6, they started a looting spree, and by noon
of the same day, the wanton killing had commenced. By the
evening, Abacha officially backed up the killings and sent out
more troops on the morning of 7th to complete the job. And
once again an excuse was found for killing innocent people.
Throughout the remaining scene of the first act of the June 12
circus, the Area Boys never had the opportunity to fully
exhibit their trait on a mammoth scale. August 12, 13,
14,26 and 27 couldn’t have afforded them such because they
were Sit-At-Home protests; likewise September 29th to October
1st because, mainly, protests never took off before they were
nipped in the bud. On the Lagos Island, however, on September
20th, they defended the democratic process without looting.
On November 10, the day of the Federal High Court
verdict that declared the Ernest Shonekan-led Interim National
Government illegal, the Area Boys were also at Baba’s house to
swell the crowd, also apparently to take crumbs from Baba’s
table, and honestly, they did have their lunch at Baba’s expense
(by right or by force). But to show the true character of our tribe
of lumpen -the very following day, Thursday the November
11th, University of Lagos students returning to their campus
after going to town to call for the resignation of the ING
were attacked with dangerous weapons under the Yaba-
Jibowu Bridge by the Boys for refusing to allow them turn
the peaceful but angry charge into a free-looting exercise.
As Abacha’s sneaky coup of November 17 drew a
curtain on the first act of the June 12 circus, the Area Boys also
rolled back into their traditional shell of living-by-smartness.
We shall encounter them in a more profound colour and shape in
the next act. However, we shall 32 attempt to assess the lessons
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
drawn by the new Junta from the by no means good showing of
the Boys in the first phase of the June 12 Struggle.
IV
One of the very first ‘sanitising’ acts of the Abacha-appointed
Military Administrator of Lagos State, Colonel Olagunsoye
Oyinlola, was not only to start ridding the streets of refuse and
garbage, but also to clear street traders and Area Boys from the
streets. On Saturday 26th March, 1994, shortly after Colonel
Oyinlola assumed office, seven Area Boys were put on display
before pressmen by officials of the State Task Force on
Environmental Sanitation after which they were sentenced to
varying jail terms without any legal aid of meaning. Their
shabbiness of appearance, resulting more from brutalisation by
the rifle-wielding Task Force troops than their vagrancy and
vagabondage, invariably served as enough evidence against
them before the presiding mobile magistrate who for
obvious reasons was always eager to dispense with the day’s job as soon
as possible.
In the following days, there would even be many more round-ups
and clamping in jail. It became even more intensified with the
opening of the second act of the June 12 circus mid-1994, which
we shall soon come back to.
Ordinarily, it would appear that the Area Boys’ clean-up
exercise was merely directed at stemming the menace of these
‘social miscreants’. And no wonder that middle class and
popular grassroots sentiments (particularly among the traders)
weighed heavily in favour of the anti-Area Boys action at its
commencement. It must, however, be said that behind the
pretence to sanitise was the determination of the Junta
to rob the popular democratic process of one of its major constituencies-
the unemployed youths.
33
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
For often times, those arrested as Area Boys
were jobless youths and apprentices in the
neighbourhoods who had nothing to do with drugs,
gold-fingering or toll collection, but nonetheless were always on
hand to lend their energy to every popular action against
the status quo that oppresses and alienates them. These are
the people mostly bundled to jail and not the Boys-lack of
identity card (by an unemployed!) is enough to brand him an
Area Boy and be carted to jail.
But just as the battle was indirectly aimed at the ordinary
unemployed youth so was it directed at the Area Boys proper.
The Area Boys that lent their weight to the democratic process,
turning it into riot, nonetheless also have some commitment to
the process to a large extent. Every Area Boy knows fully well that
the community thrives better under a civilian administration than under
the military. The military don’t need paid thugs, for they already
have officially paid ones in the form of soldiers and police, all
belonging to one party-the Establishment. It is the politicians
that need thugs to settle scores. And as many parties as there are
and as many factions and sub-faction as there are within each
party, as many brigades of tough hands must be mobilised, this
many bands of thugs must be constituted. The boys, therefore,
have a stake under civil rule as much as other classes of the
society. With what experience they had gained in the
gubernatorial primaries in 1991, stuffing N50 notes into loaves
of bread and swelling the voters ranks for a fee in the
Agbalajobi-Sarumi imbroglio and in all the previous numerous
ballot peddling exercises that muralled the expensive canvass
of IBB endless transition since the November 1987
Local Government elections and their antecedents in the 1983
kill-and-go Adewusi era and more remotely the pre-1966 coup
Wetie bloody circus-the Boys needed no intelligentsia to tell
them that a civilian government 34was needed badly.
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
Equally important is the ethnic factor. From afar it
would appear that the boys have no ethnic loyalty - that they
serve the highest bidder. But this cannot be entirely true. Many
of them are Yorubas displaced from their family houses by
‘foreign tenant’ mainly Igbo traders and fellow Yoruba from the
hinterland (Ara Oke). They hate the Ibos as much as the
Mallams (Northerners) and definitely prefer Baba to IBB. So
they must put all their energy into pushing out the Junta.
It must be said also that there are moments this special
group of marginals genuinely side with justice with no strings
attached. In moments of blatant police brutality against one of
their kind or a youth in the neighbourhood, they never failed to
show their solidarity through positive action - one of the very
few moments they ever organise independent action.
The brutal killing of the Dawodu brothers in 1987 in central
Lagos brought out the humanity in the Boys who held Lagos
Island for almost a week until the first move to do justice was
made by the authorities. After the January, 1992 killing of a
Danfo driver by a trigger-happy cop, the Boys were also handy
in effecting the drivers’ one week strike at Mushin where it
happened.
The Boys are therefore not merely trouble-making
miscreants, they are also human beings with hearts in their
breasts. Thus in moments, they break out of the sectarian
cocoon of the underworld to make themselves relevant to the
laws and norms of the outside world, so that it is not always to
be taken for granted that when the outside world moves against
the Boys through parliamentary legislations, council
edicts and military government decrees such are targeted at
the underworld. No! They may as well be targeted at the
already bleeding heart of the society - after all the Boys are a
product of the society, a part of its burden, just as they also carry
its shameful burdens for it. It 35
is not enough to hate the Boys, it
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
is more meaningful to know why the Boys must be hated and to
what depth this hatred must go so that the society, and more
importantly, the middle class and the oppressed masses do not
end up doing an emotional storm stropping job for the ruling
class where the stakes are not theirs parse. Anybody who wants
to properly handle the Boys must be ready to meet them in
their sober moments in the dungeon houses and back
alleys, perhaps with some wraps of fancy weeds for
enlivening the occasion. The secrets and mutual treachery
shared between the Boys and the Establishment would definitely
overwhelm him.
Meanwhile, let us once more direct our attention to the
practical, on the ground involvement of the Area Boys in the
June 12 struggle and how the (the Junta and its running dogs)
responded to them, as exemplified in the several battles of the
second act of the June 12 circus.
V
The Abacha regime exemplifies the most pervasive and unskilful
use of lies in the history of authoritarian statecraft in Africa.
However, its fate has also dramatised the futility of this
medium as a means of political and social engineering. Clearly,
social reality has left the grip of propagandists and has refused to be
obfuscated, misrepresented or subverted by even the most
degenerate fascist liars. Simply put, to want to convince a man
that he is a woman is about the most foolhardy lying expedition.
And it matters less if at the end of the day, at the bayonet point
or in the grey walls of the calaboose, you are able to get him to
agree he is a woman - the reality is not changed a bit. Indeed,
Abacha and his tribe of power seekers, both within Nigeria and
elsewhere in Africa, now and in the future, must always be
reminded that it wasn’t lies and the naked bayonet that sustained
Babangida for eight years in office. 36 Rather, it was synthesised
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
lies, embellished truth, cunning and garlanded bayonet that put a
hundred million people belonging to over 250 nationalities at the
mercy of a single man. Skilful machinations made a near all-
time successful cardsharper of IBB. One of the Abacha’s regime
greatest undoing remains the fact that he has failed to realise that
Chekwumerije’s propaganda did more to hasten IBB out of
office than giving him a lease of life.
The history of the second act of the June 12 Struggle, so
far as the junta controlled media and their apologists are
concerned, is that of lies-churning.
The Junta’s functionaries exposed themselves as
formidable czars of lies in the wake of the massive boycott of
elections into the Constitutional Conference conducted on May
23rd, 1994. In entire the South West and, indeed all over the
country, a dismal number, 300,000 voters out of a
registered electorate of over 14 million, turned our in an
exercise that marked the first major defeat in the second act of
the June 12 circus. Although it clearly paraded a bloodied nose,
the junta answered everybody that all was at ease. It would later
claim that the boycott and physical disruption of electoral
activities took place only in the South West.
Predictably, it narrowed down the events to that of timeless
tribe of culprits - Area Boys. While it would be out of the
question to deny that Boys readily participated in the disruption,
it remains to be seen how Area Boys alone could have been
responsible for a total boycott of elections if the people were
really willing to participate. But ‘we haven’t seen nothing yet’ as ghetto
people would say.
On the day of the Lawyers’ protest against the Junta, in
July 7, 1994, an innocent police driver was overpowered and
lynched by an irate mob along Igbosere Road on the
Lagos Island. This was in response to the killing by the
police the same day of a schoolboy37 by overzealous anti-
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
riot cops. Although the Area Boys visibly partook in the
vengeful killing of the policemen, it would, however,
amount to devaluing the patriotism that motivated the
social fury evinced by the civil populace of that part of the Island
on that day. In other words, the action drew a lot of people from
a host of backgrounds. To use the words of our source, the
people defined the mission, the Boys supplied the courage - it
was a mob action. Yet again the Junta ‘hasn’t seen nothing yet’.
On Monday July 26 when about 70 heavily
armed policemen tried to disrupt a peaceful protest of
youths and women numbering about 4000 at Sangrose Market on
the Lagos Island, Area Boys came handy in forcing the armed
junta dogs to beat a hasty retreat. The Boys had
suddenly appeared from their hideouts, encircled the police
contingent and cut off all possible escape routes. At the end of
the day, outnumbered and overwhelmed, the police had to pacify
the protesters and Area Boys. The Boys heeded but only after
seeking the consent of the women.
The pro-Junta media on these two occasions,
unable to ‘kill’ he event editorially, decided to play up the
Area Boys’ involvement. And true to type they must again
exhibit their trait-they must loot by rage and fire. On the day
following the Sangrose Market incidents, Area Boys went on a
looting spree - their excuse being to instil sense in those ‘penny
wise’ traders who felt they could open their shops without
deference to the June 12 Struggle. Their action invited the full
force of State fury, but also helped in no little way in
demonstrating the courage and resilience of the Boys. Their
mastery of neighbourhood routes and hideouts has always come
handy, giving them an edge over the police. Their sheer raw
confidence in the face of hissing bullets often drew many
more to their ranks, such that, in moments of real struggle,
to distinguish between the Area 38 Boys and an ordinary, socially
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
infuriated neighbourhood youth becomes difficult for an
outsider. Even the honest journalist not given to ‘risking’ it to the
scene of ‘ugly’ incidents is also susceptible to such difficulty.
And unfortunately enough, since media owners hardly
provide insurance cover for their workers and many
media workers lack creative adventurism, picking rumours from
the streets and formulating conclusions with the solace of whisky
glass become the most attractive options in such
circumstance. Significantly, within this context,
contrary to the Junta’s thinking, junk journalism or
ignorant half-a penny scribbling helps it far more than they help
the progressive movement. Against this background, the
journalist must be careful the way he uses the term Area Boys to
qualify sloppily dressed demonstrators lest he hurls the
proverbial stone into the marketplace. For most of
those people he encounters on the street and passes off
as Area Boys are, indeed, as educated as himself if not better
educated, not to use it to self if not better cultured, and more
responsibly placed in the society. Among them are
medical doctors and medical students, lawyers, Ph.D
holders, engineers, and composers of no mean abilities. They
are intellectuals with full understanding of the philosophical
basis of their actions, with well-conceived notions of strategy
and tactics as well as the likely consequences of such actions.
It is only circumstances that always compel them, in moments of
social upheaval, to discard their airs of middle-classhood and
don the tattered garb of the wretched of the earth. In short they
commit class suicide in the interest of the whole society. And in
so doing they invite the hatred of their class colleagues who have
not recognised the need for or are incapable of such suicide for
selfish reasons. Those who pretend to commit class suicide by
staying indoors or by cheering the protesters from behind the
‘safety’ of their window curtains
39 and balconies do as well as
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
those who actually come to the street if pass mark is all that is
needed. But to stay indoors only to come our later on the pages
of newspapers or some podium of Junta-backed rallies to
denounce the effort of the people as the handiwork of city vandals
alone is most indicative of slavery-as-a way-of-life. It does not get
anybody anywhere, especially anybody belonging to an
already decimated middle class. Sycophancy on the part of
the middle class is the taproot of blossoming fascism. So
far, so good.
VI
***
It is the tradition of the Area Boys to give their dead a befitting
burial with pomp and vengeful jigs so that the
heavenward journey is not made tortuous for lack of
money to pay the boat-man of purgatory. The Boys that passed
on during the June 12 Struggle were mostly deprived of this
singular ‘honour’ due to the particularly harsh circumstances of
those days. Our struggle owes it a duty to build a monument of
the eternity of their ‘heroism’, if only in anticipation of
the total emancipation of this undesirable class as well as
its total extinction.
March 14-April 18, 1995.
Lagos, Nigeria
43
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
KONGI’S MARCH FOR JUSTICE - REBEL LAUREATE
I
Enlightenment has always been the greatest enemy of the oppressing
classes and the enlightener their first target of assault. If the
English nobility had declared in the years of that Empires great
Revolution (a Revolution cited in that country’s book of
revolutionary history as glorious and regarded by feudal
chroniclers as an ‘aberration’ occasioning mutual
slaughter of Englishmen by Englishmen), that: “God
preserve us from scribblers and speakers. We will live to
regret the day the press was invented”, it is to the extent that
men of letters, when at the service of the people, are
sometimes more formidable than whole army divisions.
What with their ‘vulgar libels’, their screaming
headlines and ‘junks’ and their sneers at ‘corruption and political
debauchery’, those two enchanting mermaids that have always spiced
the peaceably purulent séance of those ‘incubuses’ that weigh
down on the living like dead weights and those ghosts that suck
out the memory of the living dead. The adage that the “pen is
mightier than the sword” is itself mightier than the few words of
which it is made. And nothing could be more mortifying to the
oppressor than to be a soldier with the barrel of the pen trained
on him by a bloody civilian in mufti. He must get his ‘military
respect and honour’ back at all costs (even at the risk of losing
his honour as a human being in the first place).
The situation becomes even worse for the bloodsucker
when the scribbler is not just another half-a-penny juggler or
famished radical who, realising that his revolutionary heaven on
earth is yet to come, now begins to court ‘settlement’. Nobel
prize-winning rebels are difficult to come by but are equally
‘dangerous too’. They become even more dangerous when they
decide to add political street-craft
44 to their trade, when they align
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
with the masses with their pens put aside, their leaflets-filled
jackets flying ruffian fashion and their ‘impudent’ lips
reeling and churning out ‘popular grammars’ in readiness
to summon the popular masses to a peaceful but defiant march
against the oppressor.
On Sunday, 24th July, 1994, Kongi marched for Justice;
on Sunday, July 24th, 1994 the Abacha Junta men of guns and
baton marched for injustice. We must begin from the beginning.
II
Several days before the D-day, newspapers had been splashing
the event on their pages. Professor Wole Soyinka was going to
lead a March for Justice as part of the events commemorating his
60th birthday. Other people would have cut a gargantuan cake, a
gangsters wedding affair-ala Graham Greene, but not my Kongi
People conversant with the way of the Junta in recent times
would have known that the march was not going to be, at least
not in the way it had been planned. Everybody knew the Junta in
its usual disgust for even the most harmless expression
of rebellion and defiance would stop this march - and if need
be drench it in blood. But they had come out all the same. Our
people, if not in the quest for freedom and justice but just to
catch a glimpse of the glittering mammy water skin of Kongi
and see the breeze waft that fluffy Martian grey
‘hirsute hell’ crowning his Nobel brain, turned out all the
same.
July 24th was a trial for the people and for the Junta.
Kongi came on time, the Junta was there before the H-hour but
our people came late. Some rather stayed away watching from
the safety of their balconies, windows and streets. With a few
guns and canister launchers trained on residence of
Tejuosho and passers-by, stern-faced troops displayed
few martial steps reminiscent45of those colonial steps-‘Yan
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
bi ologun’ romanticised and ridiculed by Kongi in his
famous play “ Death and the King’s Horseman” and the
arena was set. It was now Kongi and a few determined
loyalists against the full force of fascist fury. The men of the law
were also armed with their instructions ‘bery bery clear’ as
declared by their citrax-faced commander: Kongi must not
be allowed to march. He was therefore ‘adbised’
(advised, really) to go home so hoodlums would not hijack the
March.
It was a moment of trial; it was a moment of decision.
Should Kongi insist on marching ahead of a mob? Would the
mob allow him to march ahead of it with the gun trained on the
“mob” and not Kongi or should Kongi turn tail and declare
the play ended and risk newspaper banality and press ridicule.
Kongi insisted on marching. In his own judgement he was as free as any
Nigerian and could not be prevented from “taking a walk” with
his “friends” on the occasion of his birthday. But this
only after all attempts by him to blackmail the police with his status
as a Commander of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a Nobel
Laureate had failed. The police conceded to a march with
‘friends’. But such friends must exclude ruffians, rabbles and
even students - all potential materials for the topsy-turvy
characteristic of the July days must be kept at bay.
The rest is now history. The ubiquitous Western press
screamed: a protest march in support of June 12 mandate was
stopped in Lagos by the police. The local press went further to
tell how the Nobel Laureate was sandwiched between a
horde of 20 policemen on his March for Justice from the
Lagos Mainland to the Island and how he later threw away the
insignia proclaiming him ‘Commander of the Republic
of Nigeria’ in vexation over the state of the country and the
refusal of the men of the law to allow him a bottle of drink at the
Island Club after a day’s work. 46 But for the press hype that
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
followed and for Kongi’s reputation, it would have been a fair
enough judgement to say the Kongi-led March for
Justice was sufficiently managed to ridicule by the Junta.
And the argument has cropped up over and over
again in the recesses of ‘secretariats’ and ‘hideouts’ of
progressives whether or not Kongi had been right in demanding
his right to march with only “friends” and not the rest of the
mob?
But if one must say, the question is neither one nor the
other. The era under scrutiny called for neither of the two
variants of passive struggle save for the symbolism of it - which
the press hype had achieved. An attempt to lead a mass protest
stopped by the fascist is as good as a successfully executed
protest march in the eyes of the world- so long as a Nobel
Laureate of Soyinka’s calibre occupies the center stage. Kongi
could not have performed better than he displayed on the 24th of
July without spoiling the show. And at the same time Kongi,
given some other objective realities, could have performed
better. When the agenda of a people’s struggle has gone beyond
the level of petitions and stone-throwing, but they are yet to
grapple with methodological imperatives commensurate with
these higher goals, the struggle must either continue to
march, petition and rigmarole on a spot like in a circus or
pull the mask of orgy of comedy from its face and drink in the
full glare of shame. The former signifies hope and determination
of a sort; the latter could reflect either a higher courage
or an early capitulation, borne of lack of courage at all. The
former is easier to place; the latter is dual in character.
Kongi has never been a soul deprived of courage - to
hold a region as big as France to ransom at gunpoint in the
name of justice is not a mark of cowardice. July 24th
was never an indictment of Kongi but rather an indictment
47
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
of our struggle and our nation. To this we shall return at the
appropriate time and place.
If in recapturing of radical traditions of the 60s
America in his remarkable work, “Last Best Hope” ( Peter)
Tauber had written “Demonstrations had run the course of
audience tolerance; it would take greater circuses to move the
populace” (pp.612) this is even truer for the July days in Nigeria.
But if demonstrations would not move the populace, same could
not be said of the bloodsuckers. A regime that would not
hesitate to drench a nation’s honour in the muck by setting
soldiers against defenceless citizens as Abacha did on July 6 and
7, 1993 and by sneaking to power under the cover of darkness
and under sweet pretences as he did on November 17, 1993,
could hardly be trusted to treat another peaceful march of the
same people with kid’s glove-notwithstanding the
presence of a Nobel Laureate. Demonstrations are
more than enough to set the fascist running dogs
cracking. And have we not long since been brought face to face
with this truth? Has it not come to pass how only four days after
Kongi’s March, July 28th, a peaceful protest at the venue of the
Junta’s trial of the winner of the June 12 mandate at Abuja was
drenched in blood leaving at least four people dead, how shortly
after the Junta’s ‘Enough is enough’ fascist speech, Benin and
Ekpoma universities were turned into some rowdy
shooting ranges with the students as targets, and how the regime
has stepped up its campaign of intimidation and violence against
activists and progressives? What else does such a regime require
than that force that would shoot it out of office? The struggle in
the July days demanded more than just marches and protests.
Treason against the existing state, treason, not by mere
declaration as Basorun Abiola did, but an active treason aimed at
destroying and reconstituting the state to reflect the desire of the
people was what the time demanded.
48
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
III
July 24th, 1994 was not the only novelty Kongi introduced to the
June 12 ‘circus’ to the utter disappointment of a
number of his young admirers. Saturday September 18,
1993, a peaceful rally jointly organised by the Lagos Mainland
branch of the Campaign for Democracy, CD, and Mainland
Progressive Youth Movement, MPYM, came under police
battering. It was at the Evans Square, Ebute Metta, Lagos. The
youths of the neighbourhood gave it back to the police and the
whole neighbourhood became one big arena of running battle
(hide-and-seek and game of wits between the people and fascist
running dogs). Residential buildings in the area were turned into
fortresses and strongholds by the youths from which they
skilfully stone-picked policemen. The ‘dogs’ dared not penetrate
the people’s castle and the people dared not walk the streets, for
both parties were unrelently vigilant. Each party held its own.
Then the spectacle changed. Youths came out of their
fortresses, on guard no doubt but not attacking. The running dogs
stopped prowling, astounded and thankful for the momentary
cessation of the attrition. In the arena, just disembarked from his
Peugeot 505 Saloon car, was Kongi like a god out of the sea,
fluffy-haired, polish-skinned. For a short while, there was peace
spiced with an exaggerated sense of victory on the part of the
rebelling youths.
Kongi’s appearance was no accident; he had been billed
to speak at the rally. And when he had appeared, the
militant youths on ground had expected him to begin his
speech outrightly, using his intellectual charm and unbeatable
grammar to force the police to concede to an ‘illegal
gathering’ against ‘bery, bery clear instructions’ from
Headquarters.
49
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
The disappointment on the young rebellious faces
around Kongi could best be imagined when he pointed out that
having made the point in the first place by starting the rally at all, the
people should avoid confrontation with the fascist killer squads and
disperse or find a cool enclosure within which to hold
discussions and reflect. Under pressure from the youths,
Soyinka’s attempt to seek out and speak with the commander of
the squad came to naught. And it is on record that at the end of
the day, it wasn’t Kongi’s advice that eventually dispersed the
people but the burning teargas and crashing truncheon. The
Nobel Laureate also inhaled quite a dose of the poisonous gas.
Perhaps if the people had accepted Kongi’s elderly word?
By sundown, 21 youths were in the police dungeon
gaping at the grey walls. Kongi’s attempt to put aside his
Rebel laureate garb for Nobel Laureate gown for the
sake of the youths came to nothing - the police denied
holding anybody.
What other lesson can we learn from September 18th
than that running dogs know not what it means to be a Nobel
Laureate; that running dogs deserve none other than dog
treatment.
When the running dog is confronted with the
spellbinding aura of the intellectual, the ease with
which he reels out ‘big grammar’ and his demonstrated
understanding of the secrets and logic of that law which the
running dog claims to protect, he is taken aback. The running
dog cringes, shivers, then simmers to a sudden realisation that
not only must he necessarily carry out his ‘bery, bery clear
instructions’ but must also defend his person against the
oppressive air of the intellectual. Such defence would
definitely not come in the form of intellect or logic in which the
opponent is most learned. It must come by brute force. But even
50
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
at that, each blow of this attack comes with such half-
heartedness that bespeaks an acute inferiority complex.
The dilemma of the running dog becomes even more
compounded when he sees the ‘Professor’ in the midst of
ruffians and Area Boys haranguing the ‘breakers of law and
order’ to ‘bloody rebellion’; when his intellect and logic could
not dissuade him from associating with street urchins
and trouble makers. And soon, in the eyes of the running dog,
the Professor becomes the greatest problem -the Chief Area Boy
who must be dealt with according to the law, but with some
dignity. He must receive the gas, but only enough to make him
clear from the scene of trouble. He must see the
truncheon crashing, but only to the extent that it does not yet
draw more than a few splashes of blood here and there. He may
even be hustled into a station but only to the extent that such is
defined as a ‘protective custody’. And when he is finally taken
away from the scene of trouble it is to clear the shooting range
for easy target practice.
The Professor is not only a problem to the
running dog because he harangued the trouble makers or
because he sometimes pretends to play the role of troubleshooter,
but also because he obstructs his targets and bears a poetic
witness to his atrocities, magnifying them in the imagination of
the world with such linguistic flourish as to move even the Rock
of Gibraltar.
And what is more, with a background spiced with a rich
crop of mythical images of gods and supermen, fetish and
omnipotent deities, the running dog could hardly comprehend
the origin of the Professor’s enchanting erudition save by some
celestial power. For if the Quran had been revealed to
Mohammed in some fast and prayer-inspired trance and it had
taken forty nights of communing with God on the mountain for the Ten
Commandments to be revealed51 to Holy Moses, who else would
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
say some gnomes in the Mountain of Ascension at Ife or some
mermaids in the River Osun had not inspired the Professor’s
condensed metaphors.
This is what the intellectual must count on, but only to
buy time and impose some sanity on the rowdiness
characteristic of all encounters between an embittered
people and fascist running dogs. For the running dog is
nothing but a dog. His universe in the final analysis is
not the spellbinding rhetoric and aura of enigma in which the
intellectual is encapsulated but his ‘bery, bery clear
instructions’. Those instructions are his daily bread, his
freedom, his future, and the future of his children, of
his wife. In short, the instructions mean the difference
between life and death. Not to carry out his instructions is to put
himself between the jaws of the lion - the instructor. He, must
therefore recoil from whatever spellbinding rhetoric the
intellectual presence has cast upon him and carry out his
instruction. And this he must do with exaggerated zeal and
diligence. For those few words of compliment and those soothing pats
on his sore, weather-beaten back from the immediate
instructor count so much to him. And the
recommendations and pips.
This, the intellectual must count on to cast his spell,
which he must also do in good time except there are some higher
points to be made. Kongi was not prepared for those higher
points on July 24th 1994, just as he was not prepared for same on
September 18, 1993.
But July 24 was a success so long as the objectives were
gotten correctly in the first place. Kongi marched in Lagos and
cast a spell on a few running dogs while Lagos sprawled
unhindered, but the same march cast a spell on the whole of
civilised world, a debilitating foreign relations blow.
52
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
***
In the dying days of the earlier Junta, the Association of Nigerian
Authors, (ANA) had honoured Nigeria’s sole Nobel
Laureate with a befitting award- “A Triple Heritage
Award”. And so Kongi was at the Museum Kitchen in the midst
of poets and storytellers representative largely of the younger but
already frustrated (not wasted yet) generation.
Here again, as usual, poetry and politics found
harmony. In Kongi’s opinion the unilateral cancellation
of the presidential elections’ primaries by the IBB junta
was nothing but “dictatorial, undemocratic”, nay,” fascistic.”
He searched but could find no ‘lavender’ word for it. Evident
from the ‘tortuous, convoluted, circuitous’ nature of the Junta’s
transition programme, it was clear that it would not leave unless
pushed out of office by the people.
And what was more: that if the Junta would not allow
people to meet and discuss at home we would “go to Republic of
Benin and hold our discussion.” So it was that Kongi in a
brief moment, like a prophet, prepared the young minds
before him for the tasks ahead in the coming year. Kongi left the
kitchen like all else in a sober mood - so near to feast but without
a feast.
In the third month of the year prophesied by Kongi as
the year of intensified struggle, letters on Africa Democratic
League (ADL) letter-headed papers and signed by Kongi himself
went out to groups, etc., inviting them to a conference on the
theme: Consolidating Democracy, to be held in Cotonou, Benin
Republic come August. Then there was June 12 and its products.
Kongi again had to hurry another missive to his democratic
colleagues in Nigeria regretting the inability of the League to go
ahead with the democracy workshop as scheduled and urging
them to use any means within their power to prevail on the Junta
to handover to the winner of53 the June 12 elections. After all,
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
even meetings abroad could also become difficult. Meanwhile,
the dynamics of the struggle later made meetings at home
inevitable and people found the means to meet and
discuss, and even brought their meetings to the street in the full
glare of the Junta, albeit with some painful losses. At any
opportune moment Kongi had joined these meetings - objective
reality teaches after all. Let us say sixty poetic cheers to
Kongi at sixty and wish him many selfless, novel
contributions to our struggle. Even with airport harassment,
hovering choppers and ‘portrait hunting expeditions’, Soyinka shall
outlive our ‘last dictator’.
***
A critique of Soyinka’s novel contributions to the June
12 struggle as exemplified by the July 24th event cannot in
anyway be complete without due tribute to one man who has
equally contributed in no little measure to the struggle for a
better Nigeria. He was a hardworking man, a disciplinarian, an
educationist and over and above all, a man of principle
- honest in a society where to be honest is to be out of the
ordinary, where to uphold one’s honour and dignity is to stand
for poverty and tribulations.
Tai Solarin took time off convalescence to speak with
the people at Evans Square on September 18, 1993.
However, the police honoured his presence with some
show of fascist bestiality - but he even tually spoke to
them that had come to listen.
On July 24, 1994, himself and his wife, Sheila, were also
with Soyinka at Tejuosho. Uncle Tai insisted he was going to
march and he did march, not alone, but with friends - more than
Kongi was allowed, perhaps on account of his age.
“Talo so pe ao ni baba? Kai ani baba. Tai Solarin baba
wa kai ani baba”. Three days later on Wednesday 27th July,
1994, Baba Tai Solarin passed 54 away in active service to the
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
nation and mankind. And according to his will, he was buried on
a piece of the farmland at Mayflower School, Ikenne, which he
founded 40 years ago. He wore his inevitable khaki shirt and
shorts on this last journey home - to mix and mingle with the
elements and as such with nature. Even in death he clung to his
principle. Indeed, it must be said that men like him are not like
‘pieces of cloth on the market square’. They are hard to come
by.
55
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
ON THE NUPENG STRIKE
I
Those who claim that oil is the basis of Nigeria’s unity are
indeed more than mere enunciators of what appears like
the absolute truth. Oil -petroleum- confined to a small
corner of the geographical entity known as Nigeria is indeed the
lifeblood of the nation. This is true not only in the sense that it
constitutes more than 90% of the nation’s source of foreign
exchange but also that the sections of the country that control
this oil are exactly those outside the geographical limit of
the oil sources, and are expectedly dependent on it for the
running of their comparatively advanced economic life. He who
controls the oil and all the activities associated with it controls
the nation. He who holds sway in the oil sector, either for the
progress of the oil industry or for its temporary disablement,
controls the economic life of the nation. In the hands of an
oppressive regime, the oil becomes a source of financing
reckless economic spending, life of debauchery and corruption
as well as mean of sustenance of the instrument of repression of
the people. In the hands of the opposition, to hold the oil
industry and hold it firmly is to have sounded the death knell of
the ruling clique.
The NUPENG pro-June 12 strike, commenced on
July 4, 1994 with overwhelming enthusiasm and hope, and
ended on August 17 unceremoniously, has more than
demonstrated this. And what is more, than that a whole array of
even more salient points has been thrust out from the dark
chambers of our collective national tragedy of absurdity to the
full glare of dispassionate, naked self-criticism. The potency of
labour strikes, strike in the oil industry, political strikes, the June
12 errors of strategy, the gulf between rhetoric and action, the
relationship between the leader 56 and the led, the dichotomy
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
between sentiment and clear philosophical (ideological)
commitment and many more are issues on which lessons must be
learnt.
We must, as usual, always endeavour to begin from the
beginning without boring the reader with unnecessary
details. For this is not a mere chronological record of the
events of that time but, rather, an attempt to locate the chronicle
itself in our social consciousness.
The much awaited but hurried declaration of government
by Basorun M. K. O. Abiola on Saturday June 11, 1994 in one
remote corner of Lagos was predicated on certain assumptions.
Among these, we must count first the readiness of the labour
unions to embark on political strike, the mobilisation of the
people for civil disobedience by pro-democracy and human
rights bodies, the winning over of the mass of the
soldiers and officers of the Nigerian Army to the side of June
12 and the realisation by Abacha and his cohorts that the most
honourable thing to do would be to handover peacefully to the
winner of the June 12 elections. History has proven these to be
none but fatal assumptions. We have seen how the July 13 civil
disobedience was checkmated in the street, how those officers
and men of the Nigerian Army exhibited their patriotism over
bottles of beer and pepper soup plates in the mammy market
rather than spill their entrails on the altar of nationhood,
how the police, destined to aid rather than harass the
people, had at the last minute reckoned only with wither their
daily bread flowed. And have we not also seen the dilly-dally of
the labour movement, the struggle to adjunct the pro-June 12
demands to some more immediate economic demands on the
part of the worker? And has it not come to pass how,
disillusioned and desperate for a new comedy to the circus, the
Basorun had come out of hiding on June 22, was arrested in the
small hours of June 23rd and 57 hauled off to the calaboose to the
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
dismay and disillusionment of our helpless and hopeless masses?
For what was June 12 if not the hope of the hopeless and heart of
the heartless. June 23 did not put the Basorun in jail. What
was imprisoned was a people’s collective willingness to
put an end to three decades of misrule and despotism. The ability
of the people to break out of this prison would determine
whether or not their fate is once and for all settled.
But it turned out also that June 23 was another fatal
assumption. All labour unions that had earlier threatened heaven
and hell if the Basorun was ever harassed much less arrested by
the Junta kept mum. All politicians who had tried to make the
corpse of democratic institutions disbanded in the wake of the
November 17, 1993 Abacha coup walk the streets again,
Zombie-fashion, had either been spirited to the calaboose or had
scampered for cover; the students movement was in disarray; the
pro-democracy bodies had not yet recovered from the
paralysis and mass impotence of the days immediately
following the declaration. This done, it would only have required
a self-deluded simpleton not to see that an early death had been
pronounced on the second act of the June 12 circus. Now the June 12
opposition must prepare itself for the post-defeat ridicule accruing to
every defeated opposition irrespective of the loftiness of ideas
professed.
Then came NUPENG. July 4 not only rekindled the hope
of the hopeless but also practically shook the Junta to its
foundation. The gains of popular struggle in those July days
were doubtlessly gains predicated upon the foundation
laid by the NUPENG strike.
For the purpose of this discourse we shall
recognise three [3] periods in the NUPENG strike, each
differing in its purpose, intensity and the enthusiasm that greeted
it and as such in the mass psychology of the time. The first
period spanned the period58 of preparation for the strike
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
before July 4 and the early days of the strike ending with the
‘arrest’ of NUPENG General Secretary, Comrade Frank Ovie
Kokori, the second period embraced the period of Kokori’s
‘incarceration’ ending on July 23rd. The third and the last period
enompased the period from July 23rd to the time of the official
breaking of the strike.
***
Since the second act of the June 12 circus was officially
confiscated to the cooler with one Herculean speech on
August 17, 1994 and the Junta unleashed fascist gangsters
on the people and their leaders, the NUPENG and
PENGASSAN leaders have been hauled off to some
remote Sahel concentration camps and ‘normalcy’ has returned,
if only for a while. But does this discount from the unique contribution of
the oil workers to the June 12 Struggle?
73 Or does it even mean an
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
end to the struggle itself? Definitely not. The struggle of our
people has become even richer since the strike than before it.
June 12 is a spirit that will continue to haunt the memory of the
nation until the contradictions it reflects are resolved. The
struggle of a people cannot be confiscated to the waste bin of
history by confiscating their leaders to the calaboose, or by
defeating one nascent phase of it.
74
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
I
The 40-hour NLC’s Political Strike of August 3rd and 4th,
1994 has helped answer more questions than it bargained
for but left many unanswered - at least so far as the burnt out will
of the pawny mass is concerned.
But need it be said that only RUSE itself
reserves capacity for springing up unsurprisingly
predictable surprises as had been demonstrated by Pascal
Bafyau’s NLC. At no other time in the history of both the trade
union and the labour movement in Nigeria has honour and dignity been
consigned to the refuse dumps of Lagos streets than the period
under examination.
And to hear that this 40-hour strike, this lame strike, half
heartedly embarked upon by an equally lame labour movement,
has been seen as totally uncalled for, as a step too gigantic for
the fabric of the sick (not weak) Nigerian system to absorb! And
what is more, that these objections, these complains, and NTA
Network-orchestrated grumbling and side-talks
predicate themselves on the mere (inexplicable) argument that
trade unions are not bodies set up to participate in politics - why
then must trade unions embark on political strikes? Short memory - short
memory indeed, sickeningly glaring demonstration of lack of
memory!
But far more important is the fact that if all these woes
have been the result of lack of knowledge, our problem (or rather
their problem) would have been half solved. Before us,
however, is a classical species of mischief-makers and dishonest
labour confronting an equally mischievous opposition. That is why no
matter how boring or unpleasant 75 this story of infamy may
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
appear, we have no option but to go over it. And if we have
chosen to do this, then it must be done with the thoroughness it
deserves. The rotten Congress is not to be helped by sparing it
the agony of bashing its rotten essence against the brick wall of
reason. The rottenness of the Congress cannot be masked
from reality, just as it cannot be magnified in our
imagination beyond the reekiness and foul of its reality.
It is the duty of revolution theory in our time, no matter how
unpleasant this may be, to kill in images and vivid pictorial
details the rottenness of the Congress as it is today in order that
a space may be created for the rejuvenation of the
labour movement. Pascal’s Congress must necessarily come
under the barrel of our revolutionary pen ala Ngugi. Then and
only then will it be possible to properly locate and appreciate the
arguments of the accused and accusers alike in their utter nudity. The
congressional political strikers and their congressional and non-
congressional non-political strike advocates are
identical twins of the same pair of monstrous beings-a
consummate expression of the opportunism characteristic of
our social life. We must begin from the beginning.
II
III
IV
August, 1994
Lagos, Nigeria
102
June 12 In Perspective Femi Obayori
POSTSCRIPT
105