By Kola Johnson/
Precisely 28 years on that historic moment, Nov 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 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 millieu 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 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 would frustrate Bala’s burgeoning steam.
Despite the impairment on his leg, arising from a stroke he sustained following a fatal accident, you will marvel at his spirited dash of movement, his exuberant and active temper, as he roved hither and thither.
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 out of his fond admiration of the ease with which he carried himself inspite of his physical limitations.
Quite as would have been expected, the advent of the NADECO partriarch, Chief Adekunle Ajasin, was to provide a befitting climax to the occasion. The raptourous 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 epithethic 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, matchetes, axe, broken bottles, iron rods and sticks among sundry lists of dangerous objects, they shot into the air, 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, 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 saw 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 Adeleke and him, 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.
As the premises was almost empty, and virtually no one else to interview, I quickly sped down to the street and was just so lucky for a chat with Senator Ayo Fasanmi and an Ado-Ekiti-born Professor of Philosophy, who was a regular contributor of articles to the newspapers, whose name I can’t readily remember.
While they hurriedly granted me an interview, in their impatience to leave, a highly calm and remarkably composed 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 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 foremost 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 bloodbath 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 receeding 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 managed to keep 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.
At 10.30 a.m. or there-about, one man dramatically emerged in a whittish – 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 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, he 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 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 wholistic prism of appraisal, when they eventually brace up for proper characterization of the man, and his rightful place in history.
KOLA JOHNSON IS A WRITER AND JOURNALIST
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