Antjie Krog is a South African writer, academic and broadcaster. As a radio journalist with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, (SABC) Krog reported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proceedings under the chairmanship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Thereafter, she chronicled South Africa’s Apartheid regime’s human rights abuses and assassinations in a 1998 book entitled Country of My Skull. In that book, Krog attempted to define what she meant by ‘memorialization’ as the remembrance and keeping memories of the dead and living victims of conflicts. Krog dramatizes it as: “Beloved, do not die. Do not even dare to die! I, the survivor, I wrap you in words so that the future inherits you. I snatch you from the death of forgetfulness. I tell your story, complete your ending – you who once whispered beside me in the dark.”
As he appeared last week at the Joint National Assembly session on the 32nd anniversary of the June 12 election annulment, it was obvious President Bola Tinubu also aimed at memorializing heroes and victims of the June 1993 election annulment crisis. He however bungled it so irredeemably. And this was because he lacked an understanding of the concepts of remembrance; why remembrancers remember their dead and heroes and why memorialization without memory of justice ends in failure.
When societies emerge from conflicts and violence like the Nigerian June 12 crisis, there are rituals usually made for healing of wounds. Honouring memories of the dead and the wounded living (emotionally, physically and psychologically wounded) is one of such. Erecting monuments to memorialize them is another. In some societies, native rituals are made to appease the roving spirits of the dead so as to ward off tragedies associated with shed innocent blood.
Apartheid South Africa and June 12 have so many features that unite and differentiate them. While Apartheid endured for 46 years, from 1948 to 1994, the crisis of Nigeria’s June 12 lasted from June 1993 to October, 1999. On one side, Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination enforced by a white minority government, and on the other, June 12 was cobbled together by a tiny minority military Generals with deadly power of coercion.
Sergeant Barnabas Jabila, known by his alias of Sgt. Rogers, was a member of the Strike Force of the Gen Sani Abacha Presidential Body Guard. It was a specialized military squad deployed by former Chief Security Officer to Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha against opponents of that regime. Rogers reportedly confessed to having shot Alex Ibru, publisher of The Guardian on top of the Lagos Falomo Bridge on Friday, February 2, 1996. He also confessed to killing wife of MKO Abiola, winner of the June 12 election, Kudirat Abiola. While his bullets hit and killed the woman who later became a martyr of the struggle, Rogers’ bullets missed Ibru’s skull but hit him in the eye. For the 16 years he lived thereafter, Ibru was partially blind.
Ibru’s case was similar to Father Michael Lapsley’s. Born in New Zealand, Lapsley was trained as an Anglican priest in Australia and became a member of The Society of the Sacred Mission which in 1973 sent him to South Africa where he served as a university chaplain. The injustices of the Soweto massacre of 1976 where scores of students died made Lapsley subscribe to ANC ideals, a move which incensed the white minority rulers. The white government then refused to renew his visa, leading to Lapsley leaving for Lesotho and later Harare, Zimbabwe, where he served as ANC’s chaplain.
However, on April 28, 1990, as he sat in his living room, Father Lapsley received two pieces of mails from South Africa. It was a correspondence ostensibly containing two religious magazines – one in Afrikaans, and the other in English. As he opened the English mail, the two, obviously twined, exploded. Like the parcel bomb that killed Dele Giwa in 1986, Lapsley’s was suspected to have been mailed by the South African Government’s covert security apparatus named Civil Cooperation Bureau.
Lapsley’s two hands were brutally wrung off by the bomb. Today, he uses prostheses in their place. He also lost one of his eyes like Ibru, as well as his ear drums which were shattered by the bomb. “I had accepted that I may die because of the side I had chosen, but not that I would have a major disability,” he says thereafter. “There was a short time when I wished I was dead, I had never met somebody else who had no hands so I did not think I would be able to live an active life again.”
As he walked into the venue of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu-led TRC, even Tutu smothered welling tears on seeing the mangled remains of Lapsley’s hands as they were held together by a pair of manacles-looking improvised hands. Asked if he had forgiven those who parcel-bombed him, Lapsley, who now believes in restorative justice, said he had, but wished to meet those who made him this miserable someday. “If I ever met them, I would ask: What do you do now? Do you still make letter bombs? If the answer is no, and in fact I help out at the hospital, or I do something to benefit others, then I (will) happily forgive them,” he replied.
In events after Gen Ibrahim Babangida annulled the June 12 election, Nigerians were subjected to horrendous and inhuman violence as we were in Pieter Willem Botha’s Apartheid. A rising tide of assassinations enveloped Nigeria like a miasma. Many of the unresolved assassinations of the period were that of Chief Alfred Ogbeyiwa Rewane, a nationalist, philanthropist and NADECO chieftain who was murdered in Lagos on October 6, 1995; Mr Femi Oyewo, Medical Director, Pfizer Plc., who was murdered on December 25, 1995 in Lagos; Mr Boniface David Izegwire, a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, killed alongside his son, Mike Oshoike Begwire, in their residence at Ojodu, Ikeja on December 29, 1995; Mr Nurudeen Alowonle, a Lagos businessman and socialite, murdered in Abeokuta on January 9, 1996; Mr Kayode Awosanya, a public affairs officer to Mobil Producing Nigeria Ltd., who was assassinated in his residence at Idiyan Kelani Street, Iju Road, Oko-Oba, Lagos on January 20, 1996; Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, June 4, 1996; Chief (Mrs) Bisoye Tejuoso; the Iyalode of Egbaland, murdered in Abeokuta on September 19, 1996; Alhaja Suliat Adedeji, an Ibadan business tycoon, killed on November 14, 1996; George Idah, former Chairman of Oredo Local Government Area, killed in Benin, Edo State; Simeon Akpata; Tunde Ashafa, a pilot; Bishop Hayford Iloputaife, the Bishop and President of the New Generation Church; Mr and Mrs Funsho-George, both pastors and Alloy Uche George, a Lagos businessman. So many others who were murdered during this period.
The murder of Alhaja Adedeji was particularly pathetic. Assassinated in her Ring Road Kobomoje mansion, Adedeji was a philanthropist and fearless politician who had just returned from a long day of community meetings. The assassins walked into her living room, dragged her to her prayer room and shot her in her private part. The symbolism the murderers tried to convey by that gory killing is lost on all till today. Before joining politics, Adedeji was said to be a nurse. Unconfirmed rumours said she once attended to Gen Abacha and that the reason for her murder was hidden in those nurse-patient relationship. Chief Layi Balogun, said to be from the same Kobomoje family as Adedeji, was also assassinated not long after. Rumours were rife that Balogun was attempting to uncover what led to Adedeji’s murder. Till today, like all the above victims killed during the June 12 imbroglio, the killers of Suliat Adedeji and Balogun were never found. There was no justice nor closure.
Thirty two years since the June 12 election was annulled, with all its attendant horrors, Nigerians, like Father Lapsley, are ready to forgive those who inflicted those incalculable pains and agonies on them, from Generals Babangida, Abacha to the lowliest subaltern who carried out their nefarious orders. It is obvious that the present Nigerian government, under a man who himself escaped the June 12 messengers of death, wants closure of our national grief. Unfortunately, he and his government are going about their search for closure in a wrong way.
The first thing to realize is that, closure and justice can only come for a contrite killer and not one locked up in a circuit of non-disclosure. Dullah Omar, Minister of Justice in the Nelson Mandela government, saw the process of closure from griefs suffered by South Africans under Apartheid as a moral imperative. “(In) the National Executive Committee of the ANC, there was a strong feeling that some mechanisms must be found to deal with all violations in a way which would ensure that we put our country on a sound moral basis… open up the truth for public scritiny… to humanize our society,” he said.
The above is exactly what closure does. How can the children of Rewane, Suliat Adedeji, the family of Olu Onagoruwa, whose son, Toyin, was assassinated, allegedly by the Abacha junta as retaliation for his Attorney General’s obstinacy, find closure? How can Nigerians who lost friends, families and relatives in the June 12 imbroglio find eternal relief? Certainly not from Tinubu’s mealy-mouthed speech at the National Assembly on June 12 nor even the payment of N45b said to have been demanded by the Abiola family. President Tinubu is the only one who can facilitate final closure and healing for Nigerians from the June 12 wounds. And it can only be done with a heart of purity.
In a world of grief and mourning, the goal of treatment of the bereaved is for them to reach an endpoint, which is popularly called closure. Though there are grieving people who cannot wrap themselves round losses, so much that, for them, there can be no end to grief, there are still so many people for whom simple therapies can grant closure from griefs. This is why confession of those who inflicted injuries and caused deaths, as well as bringing them to justice, often help in a strong way to arrive quickly at closure gate. In many cases, even those who suffer ambiguous losses, which is a stubborn loss, one that defies closure, can also be made to find closure by such therapies.
Getting Nigerians and direct families of victims of June 12 to arrive at a closure is more desirable than a thousand and one hagiographical deification of dead and living heroes at the parliament. The first action that can help quicken national healing from the wounds of June 12 is for this government to find out what and who actually killed MKO Abiola and Sani Abacha. Their deaths have been ascribed to many theories and individuals, ranging from Israeli MOSSAD squad, to America and so on. It is in Nigeria’s national healing interest to know the causes of the deaths of these people.
Second, who killed General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua? So many theories have been propounded for the death of this soldier-politician in the Abakaliki, Ebonyi State prison. While Nigerians believe Yar’Adua was poisoned by the Abacha Strike Force of the Presidential Body Guard, that government claimed he died a natural death.
Third, the identities of members of the Strike Force of the Presidential Body Guard should be made known. Are they men who today loiter among normal men and women? Since murder investigation is not time-bound, if the living families of the Rewanes, the Onagoruwas, the Adedejis etc can have government ensure that they can attach faces and persons to the assassinations of their murdered patriarchs and matriarchs, it will expedite the process of closure. A time there was when the identity of Sergeant Mshela Jabilla was revealed as the infamous Sgt. Rogers, only for him to disappear into thin air. Sometime in 2009, it was reported that he was involved in an accident and got his spinal cord injured. However, Nigerians, who were equally told of the disappearance of a certain Gloria Okon during the Dele Giwa parcel bomb matter cannot believe a claim of such unverified lie from the powers-that-be.
The Tinubu government should thus let Nigerians know what happened to Sgt. Rogers, as well as dreaded Colonel Frank Omenka, the notorious Director of Military Intelligence under Abacha. Omenka was one of those who held Nigerians in a chokehold during this period. So, where is Omenka? I had thought, now being president, Tinubu should be eager to let Nigerians know where the man who tormented and killed many of his democracy canvasser companions is. If he has fled abroad, it is time to repatriate him for the sake of justice. Without the final denouement of the June 12 macabre drama, there can never be closure for Nigerians. Revealing the identities of their tormentors, squeezing confession of guilt from them will afford Nigerians the opportunity to scientifically attach each of the scores of deaths in the June 12 debacle to a particular killer. This will cure faster.
Most of the countries that went through Nigeria’s kind of June 12 conflict and violence got closure by going back to look at the stone they hit their foot against that made them fall. It will be good to know how Sgt. Rogers, Omenka and the like became as bloodthirsty as they were. Do we still have them among us? Those are critical levers of justice that can keep national progress rolling. It was still this lack of closure that made Mrs Maryam Abacha to go on a binge of historical revisionism on the 27th anniversary of her husband’s death last week. She had claimed Gen Abacha helped Nigeria keep her national patrimony and didn’t loot Nigeria’s wealth.
For the records, Abacha will go down in history as one of the most despotic military juntas in the world. His government’s tyranny can be compared to that of rulers of his persuasion like Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Francois Duvalier of Haiti and others. Later revelation showed that Abacha wasn’t just a blood-sucking tyrant, but a man who looted Nigeria’s resources like one possessed by a psychotic disorder. The stolen monies, much of which have been repatriated and many more that may never be recovered, showed that Gen Abacha was ruled by the twin demons of inordinate power and Mammon.
Mrs Abacha’s claim that her husband kept Nigeria’s money in foreign personal accounts on behalf of Nigeria is laughable and devoid of any financial logic. If the military despot indeed desired to save Nigeria’s money for the country abroad, there are laid down processes for doing that. It certainly cannot be done outside of the Nigerian Central Bank. I suggest that Mrs Maryam Abacha’s laughable defence of her husband’s blind looting of Nigeria’s patrimony should be pitied. It is the frustration of a woman feverishly attempting to rescue her husband’s name from the global Hall of Infamy. It won’t fly. She however may be excused for this laughable logic. Today, at the financial helm of affairs of this country is a known Abacha bagman who America held for helping Abacha siphon Nigeria’s wealth abroad. There are many villains of the June 12 who are leading lights of a government led by a man who fought Abacha. How then do you blame a dotting widow who just wanted to clean her husband’s mess? A national closure which includes revelations would have prevented this attempt to make a fool of Nigerians.
- Popular columnist, Dr Festus Adedayo first published this in Sunday Tribune of June 15, 2025
