THE NATION
President Bola Tinubu was among top National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) chieftains who fought for the revalidation of the annulled June 12, presidential poll won by the business mogul, the late Chief Moshood Abiola. Deputy Editor EMMANUEL OLADESU revisits the contributions of the irrepressible pro-democracy crusader and apostle of justice to the titanic battle.
The ‘June 12’ battle was not for men of frail will. On the battle field were great fighters who dared the military. These democratic forces were scattered at home and abroad. Many lost their lives and property. When the fight became hotter, some developed cold feet, betrayed the cause and deserted the battle. However, many also endured the heat and fought to the end during the delicate period.
The twilight of military rule, particularly between 1993 and 1998, when pro-democracy forces, led by the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), pressed for the revalidation of the annulled June 12,1993 presidential election, was a very turbulent period.
The historic poll was won by the late Chief Moshood Abiola of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Among pro-democracy arrowheads who stood firm to the end is Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a Third Republic senator, who later served as two-term governor of Lagos State and leader of opposition before becoming president.
Reflecting on the period, Tinubu who had narrated his story to some reporters in Lagos, shortly after vacating office as governor, said the battle took its toll on many freedom fighters.
After the military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who annulled the election, stepped aside, the interim contraption headed by the late Chief Ernest Shonekan filled the void for three months before Justice Dolapo Adesanya declared it illegal. Then, the late Gen. Sani Abacha took over and renewed the onslaught against NADECO.
Tinubuhad to leave Nigeria in a hurry. While decrying the injustice of cancellation, he was tagetted for liquidation by the military.
He was detained in Lagos, and when he left detention, he disguised with a huge turban and babanriga and escaped into Benin Republic on a motorbike.
Tinubu said: “My old Hausa friend gave the clothes to me. In fact, when I appeared to Kudirat Abiola, she didn’t know that I was the one. I gave her some information and some briefing. I left at 1 a.m.
“While in Benin Republic, I was still coming to Badagry to ferry people, organise and coordinate the struggle with others on ground. We put a group together, ferrying NADECO people across. It was a very challenging time.”
While in exile, the military broke into his house and the residence of his illustrious mother, the late Chief Abibat Mogaji. When Babangida annulled the poll, Tinubu who had opposed the satanic act as a senator, also took his mother to Abuja to appeal to the military leader to allow the election to stand. IBB, as he is fondly called, refused.
Mrs. Mogaji’s residence was later assaulted. The soldiers stormed the place, broke her soak-away, believing that Tinubu kept guns there. They carted away the generating set and cut the telephone line
When Tinubu returned to Nigeria, he had no Victoria Island home to return to. He said it had been taken over by Abacha’s men. “They dispossessed me of the house, as well as my office on Saka Tinubu Street. My vehicles and everything else I owned. They claimed they found bombs in it and dispossessed me of it,” he recalled.
Tinubu started making sacrifice to the Abiola’s cause as a senator, long before the Aare Ona Kankanfo of Yoruba joined the presidential race. Although the SDP senator had wanted to be Senate President, he was advised to jettison the ambition because of the understanding that the presidential candidate should come from the Southest. Therefore, he stepped down for Senator Iyorchia Ayu from Benue State.
Also, while some senators thought Tinubu would be used against the democratic project by IBB because of the military president’s closeness to the Tinubu family, Senator Tinubu proved them wrong.
Tinubu supported Abiola because of his vision for the country. He brought to bear on the Abiola project his corporate experience and capacity for strategic planning.
The military did not want to disengage. Human right activists and the media were resolute that soldiers should return to the barracks. Therefore, Tinubu and other like-minded federal legislators strategised and organised a successful joint session of the National Assembly to reach a resolution against military stay beyondAugust 27, 1993. “In a motion moved by a House of Representatives member and supported by a senator, at the joint session of the National Assembly, it was resolved that the military must hand over to a democratically elected civilian president by August,” Tinubu recalled.
When President IBB later came to address the joint session of the National Assembly, the lot fell on Tinubu to speak on behalf of the SDP caucus. “I frontally told him that he should not miss the opportunity to leave the legacy of handing over to a democratically elected government,” he said.
After that incident, he became a persona non grata to the military administration.
Tinubu went to 22 states to campaign for the SDP candidate. The Option A4 and the Open Secret Ballot System introduced by Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), were effective. There was no room for manipulation and the number of ballot papers could not be greater than the number of registered voters and vice versa. It could be lower because some people could get accredited and not vote. Everybody would vote at the same time. At the close of poll, Abiola won.
In Tinubu’s view, the two-party system would have been the greatest legacy of IBB.
When the the news of the annulment came, Tinubu was with Abiola. The collation of results had stopped abruptly. Figures from all the states, except Taraba, were ready. But, the military had unleashed crisis on the country.
As the military was mooting the idea of ING, a ministerial offer was dangled Tinubu. He rejected it. Also, some people advised him to return to Mobil, where he was treasuer. He rejected the option. He was among the G-30 senators pushin for de-annulment.
The military leaders were smart. In post-IBB period, they cajoled SDP leaders, promising to address June 12. But, after Gen. Sani Abacha displaced Shonekan and made Gen. Oladipo Diya his Chief of General Staff, they disowned June 12 altogether after stabilising his regime with the active support of politicians in his cabinet.
Tinubu rallied some senators for a session at the Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos. There, they declared Abacha government illegal. Later, he went underground.
“I went underground, using the 090 mobile phone. I was still granting press interviews to foreign media. The military people were mad. I became a thorn in their flesh and they arrested some of my colleagues, including Abu Ibrahim, the late Polycarp Nwite, Ameh Ebute and Okoroafor. I was still underground, holding press conferences. The military declared me wanted,” Tinubu said.
However, they granted bail to the arrested senators, excluding Tinubu. Instead, there was a manhunt for him by the police and the SSS.
Later, Tinubu disguised, dressed like a malam, and went to the police at Alagbon, Lagos. The officers did not even know him when they saw him.
Reminiscing on his ordeal, he said: “I went in, deposited my phone and my charger. Senator Abu Ibrahim was with us. The officers were wondering why I, a Mallam, could not speak Hausa. I removed my turban, showed up at the front desk and declared that I had come to surrender.
“There was pandemonium among the officers, as to how I got there. The AIG then was very nice and they put me in the cell. They poured water into the cell room and said, ‘sleep there’. That was the nastiest experience I had within first 48 hours that I was there.
“It was on a weekend. I told them I would embark on a hunger strike. The late Anthony Enahoro was on the stairway and Beko Ransome-Kuti was at another angle on the stairway. They brought me out repeatedly for interrogation. They asked me to renounce, but I said no, I would not recognise Abacha.
“They took me and my colleagues to court. People who were supposed to meet their bail conditions were stopped from doing so immediately they saw me. They cancelled everybody’s bail because they could not isolate me.
They gave an order that we should be taken out of court, but kept in the police custody at Alagbon. They kept about eight of us in a photocopying room, an eight-by-eight room. We were sleeping across one another. It was a matter of the first to sleep would maintain the position. If your head was this way, your leg would be there and so on. It was a nasty experience.”
Although his colleague, Abu Ibrahim, was let off after interrogation, and following the intervention of the influential northern leader, the late Gen. Hassan Katsina, he refused to leave. He rejected the isolated bail. Ibrahim and Tinubu are still very close till today.
The matter shifted to court and on the day Tinubu was denied bail, market women protested. Eventually, the Court of Appeal granted him bail in enforcement of his fundamental human rights. “Our passports were confiscated and deposited with the court. Later, the High Court ruled that our passports be released to us. That night, they finally announced our bail and conditions attached to it. The presiding judge then is today the Emir of Ilorin, Sulu Gambari.
“We heard that they put so much pressure on him not to release us, but he ordered our release. They were going to re-arrest me and I suddenly went underground to continue my protest,” Tinubu recalled.
The military started throwing bombs in Lagos and held the activists responsible. They bombed Tinubu’s house, but as he recalled, his wife and children had been evacuated. He was also accused of planning to bomb the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) depot at Ejigbo.
It was double crises for Senator Tinubu, who was being tried for treason which carried a penalty of life imprisonment. He was declared wanted.
On the advice of his uncle, the late Kafaru Tinubu, former Commissioner of Police and lawyer, Tinubu left Nigeria for Benin Republic by the “NADECO route.”
When he escaped abroad, soldiers stormed his house, carted away his eight vehicles and other properties to Alagbon. His wife and two toddlers were dropped in a bush. The late Dr. Beko Ransom-Kuti and the diplomatic missions came to his aid and ferried them to the United States while Tinubu was still in Benin Republic.
Besides, Tinubu became immobile due to lack of passports. Through military spies, his routes were discovered. “Twice, I was caught and I fortuitously escaped. They traced me to one dingy hotel I was hiding.The day they came for me at the hotel. I had gone out on an Okada to buy amala at a market, where Yorubas are dominant.
”I was also to meet Akinrinade and the rest of them. The spies went to the hotel and as I was approaching, I saw two people wearing tajia at the front desk, asking questions. The man attending to them at the reception winked to me and I turned back.
“I contacted a friend in Benin Republic, who was an architect, and had very strong sympathy for us. Professor Wole Soyinka and Alani Akinrinade, who lodged in a better hotel, were fortunate to have escaped that night. The people on their trail pursued them to the hotel, but fortunately missed them,” he stressed.
Tinubu’s saving grace may have been the British High Commission, which got proper information through the Consular-General that his life was in danger. He stamped a visa on a sheet of paper and did a letter, authorising the airline to pick him from Benin Republic to any port of entry in Britain.
He ecplained:” I didn’t know how they got to me. A lady just walked up to me and handed me an envelope. She said I had been granted an entry into the United Kingdom. She said I could be killed if I failed to leave in the next 48 hours.
“It was Air Afrique that took me from Benin Republic to London. Meanwhile, my wife was still in the United States. I landed in Britain and worked my way back to Benin Republic. I picked up my passport from somewhere. I went to an African country and through their connections, they gave me a diplomatic passport as a cultural ambassador.”
Tinubu said he used the passport to travel to Cote d’Ivoire to hold meetings at the Hotel Continental, where they were planning to make anti-Abacha broadcast. When he returned, he found that military assailants had broken into his hotel room and taken away his briefcase and diplomatic passport.
“They dropped a note, saying: ‘You cannot be twice lucky.’ I was taken over by panic. Fortunately, in my back pocket, I had the photocopy of the sheet of paper on which the British had stamped a visa for me to travel out of Benin previously.
“I took that to the British High Commission in Abidjan. They listened to my story and asked me to come back at night. They did all their verification and found my story to be true. I returned to them and they gave me another sheet of paper and wrote the number of the flight that would take me out of that country.
“But I had no money. Somebody suddenly drove in. The person is a well-known name I don’t want to mention. I met him and explained my condition. He had a traveller’s cheque, but the money was not enough. I went back to the British High Commission and the woman said she could assist me with her own personal money to bridge the shortfall in cash.”
For two years, Tinubu never set eyes on his family.
To boot the anti-military fight, Tinubu was among those who founded and coordinated Radio Kudirat and Radio Freedom.
On how he later joined his family, he said: “The law of political asylum stipulates that your first country of landing and acceptance is the safe haven, so it’s not transferable. That was how Cornelius Adebayo was stuck in a United Nations camp.
“My wife had to invoke a family clause that exists in America to fight for her husband to join her before they granted me a special privilege to leave UK to join my family in the United States.”
The struggle was intensified by NADECO at home and abroad. Abacha was planning his transmutation to a civilian president through the endorsement of the five fingers of a lepros hand when he suddenly died.
Then, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar took over. Suddenly, Abiola also died in mysterious circumstances.
It was the end of the battle.
