By Comrade Taiwo Omoniyi Otitolaye
I. June 12: The Mandate and The Betrayal
History has moments when a people discover themselves. June 12, 1993 was such a moment.
It was not an election. It was a plebiscite against hunger and against military messianism. The Nigerian masses – from all regions, from all walks of life, including Army Barracks formation across the country- voted as a conscious class for democracy.
Nigeria is a multiethnic, multilingual and multi-religious Nation-state. That day, Nigerians transcended region and every primordial division to speak with one voice.
The mandate of Chief M.K.O. Abiola was therefore a pan-Nigerian mandate.
That mandate was betrayed.
General Ibrahim Babangida, the self-styled evil genius, annulled the freest and fairest election in our history. He annulled hope. In its place, he installed an illegal contraption called the Interim National Government. It was a stillbirth.
From that betrayal, tyranny did not just emerge; it erupted. On November 17, 1993, General Sani Abacha, the dark-goggled despot, pushed aside the interim charade and declared himself absolute ruler. Decrees became law. Fear became policy. Nigeria became a vast prison yard, and every home became a potential cell.
We had a choice: to submit or to resist. We chose resistance.
II. The Vanguards of the People: The Architecture of Resistance
Tyranny always creates its gravediggers.
The resistance was not spontaneous; it was organized and focused. It had architecture, ideology, direction, vanguards, and from phase to phase.
The Campaign for Democracy (CD) was the militant, mass-based engine of street confrontation. We believed that democracy is not negotiated in banquet halls; it is won on the streets.
The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) was the ideological and legal backbone. It gave political defence to the defenceless and taught that human rights are not charity but class struggle.
When the need for a broader unity became urgent, the United Action for Democracy (UAD) emerged as the united front – welding CD, CDHR, student unions, labour, professional groups and market associations into a single fist.
And the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) became the broad historic bloc of the political class, elders and progressives, both inside and outside exile, demanding the restoration of June 12.
We were not civil society in the donor sense. We were the combatants of civil society. We were the Vanguards of the People.
III. The Chain of Comradeship: From Saro-Wiwa to Iyayi
A movement is only as strong as the continuity of its cadres.
Comrade Ken Saro-Wiwa was not just an Ogoni leader. He was our National Vice Chairman (South-South) in the Campaign for Democracy. A poet who weaponized the pen. He linked the oil spill in the Niger Delta to the moral spill in Dodan Barracks. He internationalized our local struggle.
When the junta, using a compromised judiciary and a kangaroo tribunal led by Justice Ibrahim Auta primitively convicted and later hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 on November 10, 1995, they thought they were killing a man. They were killing their own legitimacy before the world.
The mantle fell, and it did not fall. It was lifted by a giant – Professor Festus Iyayi. Former President of ASUU. National President of CDHR. Marxist, novelist, organizer. Prof. Iyayi proved that the intellectual who does not join the street has betrayed his books. He succeeded Comrade Saro-Wiwa as the South Zone of the Campaign for Democracy and brought theoretical depth and uncompromising courage to the leadership.
From Saro-Wiwa to Iyayi, the line was clear: the struggle for democracy and the struggle for social justice are one and the same.
IV. The Mass Resistance: How Nigerians Were Conscientized
This is the chapter bourgeois writers erase.
They write about leaders, but not about the masses. Yet without the masses, we were nothing.
We went from community to community. From town hall to town hall. From student campus to campus. We did sensitization. We did conscientization in the Freirean sense – we made people see that their personal hunger was political.
And Nigerians listened. Oh, they listened!
V. The Barricades and Trenches: The Battles Were Tough
The battle was fought on the streets, in the markets, at the motor parks, and at midnight with a printing machine that could cost us our lives.
Leafleteering and grafty was our artillery.
We did not have NTA or Radio Nigeria. Abacha had them. We had paper. We had ink. We had courage.
We produced leaflets, bulletins, and communiques – sometimes handwritten, sometimes cyclostyled in hidden rooms – all across the country. We called it conscientization material. The junta called it sedition.
How did it move?
We partnered with the Newspapers Distributors Association of Nigeria (NDAN). Those comrades were heroes. They knew every vendor, every route. Our leaflets entered inside newspapers. A citizen buying Daily Times would find our call to action inside. That was our internet.
The Market Associations were our distribution centres. The Iyaloja and Babaloja who believed in June 12 opened their stalls to us.
The Student Union Governments (SUGs) were our ready Field Commanders. From Unilorin to ABU Zaria, from UNILAG to UNN, they took the bundles and spread them from hostel to hostel. They were fearless.
The Labour and factory cadres carried them into the factories, into the industrial estates in Ilorin, Kano and Lagos.
The Akara (bean cake) sellers – yes, our mothers – wrapped akara with our leaflets. Who would suspect an akara seller?
The Drivers’ Unions – NURTW, RTEAN – were our logistics corps. They transported our materials from town to town, and village to village, inside engine compartments, under seats, inside spare tyres. A driver could be our cadre without ever shouting Aluta.
And I must record this for history: The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria were consistent allies. While others kept quiet, their communiques eased the tension in society. They were consistently progressive. Their pastoral letters gave moral legitimacy to what we were saying on the streets.
But the barricades had blood.
Many Nigerians lost their lives at the barricades due to police and military extrajudicial killings.
We watched many fall by our sides through bullets.
We carried comrades who were shot for holding a leaflet. We saw market women beaten for shouting “June 12”. We saw students gunned down for mounting a barricade.
The battles were tough. But every bullet that killed a comrade produced ten more.
Every barricade they dismantled in the morning, we rebuilt in the night.
That was the spirit of the barricades.
VI. The Plateau Zone and Our Unsung Heroes
It is expedient and germane for me to pause here and express my sincere condolences and love for our late Comrades, Basil Chianson and Peter Ogaba of the Nigerian Airways.
History must record this: the duo played unquantifiable roles in the struggles and in my leadership team especially in the Benue and Plateau axis.
They were not just sympathizers. They were logistics commanders. Nigerian Airways staff at that time had access, had movement, had networks across the country. Basil and Peter used their positions to move our mobilisation materials, to give us cover, to provide safe passage and information. In the dangerous terrain of Benue and Plateau, they were our wings.
Their death is a monumental loss to the democratic struggle. Their names must be etched in gold whenever the story of June 12 is told in the Middle Belt. May their militant Souls continue to live.
I salute them.
VII. Close Calls: The Makurdi Escape and The Mystic Shield
In this kind of struggle, you live many lives in one day.
I remember one of my most dangerous escapes in Benue, Makurdi. I had made the usual trips across the Plateau Zone which I coordinated to strengthen the zone and deliver mobilisation materials.
On that particular trip, my mission was to formally constitute a strong CD Branch in Benue.
In that historic meeting, Comrade Samuel Ortom (NOW FORMER GOVERNOR OF BENUE STATE):and Comrade Abubakar Borjov were elected Chairman and Secretary respectively. The zone was now solid.
It was time to go to Jos in continuation of my trip. Getting to the motor park in the morning, our vehicle was loaded. I thought we were heading to Jos unhindered.
To my surprise, our vehicle parked just outside the garage and the driver said, “Please everybody come down for police check.”
The previous day, the State Security Service (SSS) had traced me to the office of NULGE for my arrest. They had gotten wind that I was in Makurdi. Comrade Sanni of NULGE and others were hosting me. I had escaped that arrest by whiskers.
Now this checkpoint. When I saw plain clothed policemen, hot blood ran through my spine, and all over my body.
I composed myself for another arrest. I became determined that no matter what happened, I was ready to pay the price.
What happened next, I owe to the ECK Masters of the Order of Vairagi.
Three ECK Masters stepped in at that garage. For the Spiritual Law of Silence, I keep that part of the story sealed.
I had many similar escapes in that era. Each one reminded me that the struggle is both physical and spiritual.
Baraka Bashad.
VIII. Five Minutes Away From The Phantom Coup: Patrick Aziza’s Panel
The junta was not just hunting us; it was framing us.
My escrow account campaign – demanding that Nigeria’s crude oil revenue be DEPOSITED IN AN ESCROW ACCOUNT for the Nigerian people – had penetrated into the junta’s fabrics. I had touched their loot. I was therefore to be either eliminated or given life imprisonment.
Their plan was to rope me into General Patrick Aziza’s Phantom Coup Panel.
This was premeditated. The junta’s excuse for wanting to rope me into a coup was linked to the junta’s self-styled violence across the country. Ilorin, Kwara State was one of the first places the junta’s dark agents planted and detonated bombs. They were negatively portraying activists as people behind the violence, to justify crushing us.
Our Chairman, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti and Comrade Shehu Sani who was coordinating Kaduna Zone were already arrested and in prison to be linked to this phantom coup.
I was next.
Again, to the credit of my INNER MASTER, I was STERNLY WARNED to vacate the Safe House I was staying at the time.
I had to open up to my host because he had provided cover to me when it mattered most. I told him,
“Look, my Inner Master whispered to me to leave your house within 5 minutes or I will be arrested to a point of no return.”
I have always packed my bag ready for any emergency.
Sadly, my host insisted on taking his bath before leaving the house.
Within that 5 minutes window, they struck.
He was arrested and spent about three weeks at the State Security Service (SSS) detention center. He paid the price for his solidarity.
I escaped by 5 minutes. Five minutes between freedom and a phantom coup tribunal that would have ended my life.
IX. May 6, 1994 and the Triumph of Collective Leadership
I and Late Dr. Frederick Fasheun were the first casualties of Abacha’s terror on the 6th of May 1994. While preparing for the mass street protests and burn fires slated for Monday 9th May, we were arrested. Abacha was in Ilorin for the All Military Games, and his security apparatus wanted to preempt us.
They thought if they cut the head, the body would die.
But IVhad been schooled by the Legendary, Comrade Baba Omojola, in the COMMITTEE SYSTEM OF LEADERSHIP.
The struggle was not built around me. It was decentralized. Every cell had its own autonomy.
So inside detention, I was jubilating. My esteemed comrades carried out the protests and the burn fires effectively without me. That is the beauty of collective structures. Individuals may be detained, but an idea organized cannot be imprisoned.
I Was charged “Security Risk against the Head of Srate and Commander-In-Chief (C-in-C).
X. The VOA Campaign and Becoming WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE
The judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa radicalized me further.
I was being interviewed regularly by William Eagle of the Voice of America (VOA). I decided to escalate the ideological warfare. I used that global platform to campaign for Nigeria’s crude oil revenue to be DEPOSITED IN AN ESCROW ACCOUNT – to be held in trust for the Nigerian people, outside the thieving reach of the Abacha junta.
That single campaign touched the jugular of the regime. They could tolerate political abuse; they could not tolerate a threat to their loot.
I was declared wanted. A combined team of military intelligence and MOPOL was dispatched from Abuja with a clear order: bring him DEAD OR ALIVE.
XI. 17 Grueling Months: The Tramp With No Home
I permanently left my home for 17 grueling months. Until Abacha transited to a higher realm of existence.
I became a tramp with nowhere to lay my head. A nomad in my own country. From ONE SAFE HOUSE TO ANOTHER.
I became persona non grata to many friends and relatives. Fear made them distance themselves. I do not blame them; tyranny makes cowards of many.
But VERY FEW STOOD SOLIDLY FOR ME.
They opened their doors when the state had marked my me. They are the true HEROINES AND HEROES OF OUR COLLECTIVE STRUCTURES.
The cost was not mine alone. My own sister was arrested 26 times between 1994 and 1998 in lieu of me. Twenty-six times!
We had to organize to smuggle her out of Kwara State into safety until the tyrant fell.
They risked everything for the struggle.
CODWA: Why We Still Struggle
I tell this story not for pity. I tell it for continuity.
From the struggle against military tyranny to the struggle against economic tyranny today, it is the same fight.
We moved from the barricades to the ballot, from burn fires to budgets, but the weapon remains the same: ORGANIZED COLLECTIVE STRUCTURES OF THE PEOPLE.
We remain unbowed. We remain unconquered.
It is not yet UHURU
Vigilance is the Price for Eternal Liberty
VICTORIA AETERNA
– Comrade Taiwo Omoniyi Otitolaye is the Executive Director of Community Outreach for Development and Welfare Advocacy (CODWA)
