Continued from yesterday
…In this connection, Abiola would move into a friendly foreign embassy, be sworn in, and appoint his cabinet. The third option, namely the Epetedo plan, autonomous and free from the meddlesomeness of a foreign third party, prevailed.
The second incident can be prefaced with a question: Did Abiola surrender his mandate? Amidst diplomatic manoeuvrings spawned by the international community, Mr Kofi Annan and Chief Emeka Anyaoku, Secretaries-General of the United Nations and the Commonwealth, respectively, urged Abiola to sign a statement to the effect that he would not declare himself president after his release, which was a negation of the call for his unconditional release.
The visit was spun to mean that MKO had abandoned his mandate. His 5 July 1998 letter to Pa Abraham Adesanya negated the allegation. This is important because it underlined the political sophistication of Abiola and perhaps would have characterised his government had he governed. Here is an excerpt from that letter:
I learnt that a newspaper published disinformation about my meeting with Kofi Annan and Chief Anyaoku. Yes, they asked me for a signed statement that I will not declare myself President again after my release. They believe such a signed statement will enable the Federal Military Government to give me an UNCONDITIONAL release. Firstly, the release, I said, ceases to be unconditional if it can only be brought about by the type of statement they demanded. Secondly, any statement will be worthless, being [having been] obtained by duress.
Thirdly, my declaration of 11/6/94 was made at a big rally with thousands present. A private statement of the type they demand will do a discredit to me and to the Federal Military Government. No withdrawal of the earlier declaration can be valid if not made in the same way as the one it wants to negate. Fourthly, I do not need to make another declaration since the 11/6/94 one still subsists and has served and is still serving the purpose for which it was made. It is this last point that must have been twisted as a withdrawal. Tell me, Sir, if I was told to withdraw, was it to the two diplomats that I would withdraw? Something seriously must have been wrong with them.
THE SECOND MAJOR POINT they made was that after 5 years, the mandate has lapsed. Anyaoku was said to have sought a legal opinion which said that! My replies: 1. The lapse was caused by series of illegalities and criminalities perpetrated by IBB and Abacha: IBB’s purported cancellation and Abacha’s determination to usurp my legitimate position by locking me in one room until I pass away. Can a criminal profit from his criminality? They had no answer to that. 2. On legal advice, I told the diplomats that no political crisis is ever settled by “legal advice.” I told them confidently that the logic of events will disprove their theoretic diplomatic fancies, God willing. And by the way, I learnt the “London Times” asked for my recognition in its Friday edition. Enough for their “time-lag” arguments. Both of them behaved as Diplomatic Advisers to the Federal Military Government. God willing, they will have no effect on our progress.
“The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny”, Soyinka echoes in his The Man Died (1972).
The Epetedo Declaration came with its consequences. The Abacha regime chose strong-arm tactics all the way. First, Abiola was arrested and charged with treasonable felony. Many opposition members were put on a watch list and banned from travelling while their homes and property were targeted by arsonists. In one instance, NADECO deputy leader, Chief Anthony Enahoro, was detained on the staircase. Better counsel held sway; many of the key pro-democracy figures fled the country through the famous NADECO route on Nigeria’s southern border.
Professor Soyinka would form the National Liberation Council of Nigeria (NALICON); their activities abroad led to the establishment of Radio Kudirat and the convening of the World Congress of Free Nigerians. These complemented the opposition campaign of defiance at home sustained through the collaboration of the Campaign for Democracy, United Action for Democracy, factions of the labour movement, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN).
The author references the role of sympathetic state operatives. This needs a bit of accent, as Soyinka has observed in his prison notes, “…no matter how cunning a prisoner, no matter how ingenious—and the definition of a prisoner’s nature is animal cunning—the humanitarian act of courage by the exception among his gaolers plays a key role in his survival”.
Nonetheless, the author presents the resistance of the opposition with a dose of philosophical reflection on the nature of opposition politics, the corresponding dangers, and inevitable incarceration. Also, the philosophical lens is beamed on the logic of followers’ behaviour and the commitment of opposition actors in times of repression. In this context, the historical betrayals of the “June 12” struggle are treated in what the author calls “the hall of shame”.
Importantly, the author regales us with the endgame and its dynamics. The bugbear of the US-led international community was the would-be domino effect of a Nigerian implosion, an aspect of which Robert Kaplan had foreshadowed in his The Coming Anarchy (1994) that envisioned turbulent West Africa. The West formula, whether it came from the Pakistan experiment with Zia-ul-Haq, as the author had suggested to the diplomats in the US mission in Nigeria, was a surgical operation that removed the two actors from the stage, doused the Nigerian fire, and preserved their existing interests. A few months before the events of June and July 1998, the West had deployed special operatives who posed as diplomats. Both Abacha and Abiola died. Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post, though unconvinced that nothing went wrong, noted:
Fantastic, fatal coincidence? Or transparent plot to do in a troublesome politician who may have been balking at the deal the Americans were underwriting? If you lived in a country split by civil war, cruel dictatorship and intense social and ethnic tensions for three decades, which would you be more likely to believe?
And Thomas Friedman would later note in his “Rattling the Rattler”, New York Times of 19 January 1999, that:
No one quite knows how Nigeria’s evil dictator Sani Abacha died last June at age 54, but the story that has made the rounds goes like this: Several Nigerian officers who finally got fed up with General Abacha’s utterly venal and corrupt rule got together, imported three prostitutes from India, sent them to his villa with a poison, which he somehow ingested (One report says it may have been in his Viagra) and then dropped dead. The three prostitutes were back on a plane to India before General Abacha’s body was cold. Whatever the details, a senior U.S. official privy to the intelligence told me: “Let’s just say Abacha did not die a natural death and he did not die alone.
Nevertheless, the author notes, the demise of the two principal actors in the Nigerian impasse presented new frontiers to resolve it. These were the NADECO’s position, the military position, and the position of the international community. With the emergence of Abdulsalami Abubakar as Head of State, the NADECO delegation met the new regime and presented its position: the formation of a GNU to be headed by Abiola with the sole agenda of convoking an SNC to address the national question.
The Federal Military Government refused the GNU proposal on the basis that there was no grassroots support for it and was disposed to manage a short transition to civil rule. The international community wanted Abiola to drop his claim to the mandate and pave the way for a new transition process. The views filtered through engagement with the diplomatic community were evident in the diplomatic shuttle of Annan and Anyaoku. President Clinton’s press interview in Accra to the effect that the US would support any democratic process erased any doubt.
Despite the contradiction, the author generously acknowledges the salient role of the international community. The role of Canada, which closed its embassy in Nigeria, was particularly notable. Ambassador Walter Carrington stood with the pro-democrats in Nigeria in ways that contradicted the realist position of his home government. The Nordic countries, such as Sweden and Norway, lent their support in immeasurable ways.
It should be emphasised, however, that the struggle of NADECO and the broader prodemocracy movement has unleashed a process of re-configuration of the power equation in Nigeria. 12 June is Nigeria’s Democracy Day. But the scale needs to be tilted in favour of ordinary Nigerians.
Furthermore, and in conclusion, the NADECO Story has different dimensions that future researchers should critically engage with. The work, a harvest of raw data and documentary evidence for present and future chroniclers of Nigeria’s political odyssey, is presented in ways that readers can decipher Nigeria’s power dynamics and easily identify the heroes and villains of our struggle for democracy. The author was right to note in the very last line of this book: “…let Nigeria be blessed with the types and memory of the political saints and martyrs, within and outside NADECO, who joined the godly angels in the struggle to make Nigeria, not just the greatest Black nation in the world, but a shining star in the galaxy of superpowers”. CONCLUDED
