A former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (retd), who is a pro-democracy activist, tells FEMI MAKINDE why June 12 should be recognised as the authentic Democracy Day in Nigeria and the need for the restructuring of the country
Why did you get involved in pro-democracy activities and how?
After I retired from the military, I served in Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s government, it was then I read a lot of things about democracy. I read a lot of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s works and many others and I discovered that some things were not right about Nigerian politics.
After that, I became a full member of Afenifere although there was no formal registration yet I was fully involved in their activities. Leaders like Chief Adekunle Ajasin and the rest including Chief Abraham Adesanya who came after him were great tutors and I learnt a lot under them.
Nigeria was preparing for civil rule then and we went round sensitising Nigerians about their problems, on what to expect in civil rule and why civil rule was important. We discussed with some groups across the country and we came together.
Did you have any relationship with Chief MKO Abiola before the annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election?
No, but I met him (Abiola) once long before the election at Senator Joseph Wayas’ residence. I just resumed then as the General Officer Commanding 1st Mechanised Division and Chief MKO Abiola came. Our interaction was brief.
What is the significance of June 12 to the history of democracy in Nigeria?
June 12 1993 presidential election was the first time in the history of Nigeria when Nigerians jettisoned religious beliefs and ethnic consideration to vote for the candidates of their choice. If you study it, the same pattern was followed by those who voted for Bashir Tofar (the presidential candidate of the defunct National Republican Convention). Region and ethnicity were not considered before Nigerians trooped out in large numbers to cast their votes.
Even the international observers said the June 12 election was the freest, the fairest and the most credible election conducted in Nigeria. There are facts now that the elections conducted during the colonial era were rigged. But June 12 remains the most credible till date. Although most people did not like the idea of a two-party system, it (two-party system) had its merits only that we failed to build on them.
Many Nigerians believe that Chief MKO Abiola was killed in detention. Do you believe this?
MKO Abiola died in detention. Gen. Sani Abacha also died in a mysterious circumstance just like Abiola. The two of them died within a short interval and people were curious. The coincidence was too much. The military, after annulling June 12, wanted their own man to be in charge. They wanted Obasanjo and there was no way he could get there when the two actors (Abacha and Abiola) were still around. So Abiola died and Abacha later died. Look at it: Abiola was an Egba man, so Obasanjo who benefited from the whole thing is an Egba man. This coincidence is too much. It may be right to say that Abiola was killed.
Is it correct to say the military killed Abiola and eliminated Abacha in order to install Obasanjo?
Aje ke lana, omo ku loni, tani ko mo pe aje ana lo pa omo? (A witch cried yesterday and a child died today, who doesn’t know that the child was killed by the witch?). It is very obvious! Come on, somebody drank tea and died, another one ate apple and died. Are you kidding me that these are natural deaths? I think they just had to get rid of both of them to get Obasanjo to become President, they can’t deny it but that is my own conclusion.
What do you think was the role of international community in this?
These people (the international community) act like our friends but they have their interests. They might be involved. They knew that Abiola was a wealthy businessman with a lot of influence; he was voted for by the majority and they knew these people would support him. In order to have their way, they might be involved in the whole thing one way or the other.
What role did you play in the struggle for actualisation of June 12?
Like most people did, we had organisations which were targeted by the government and we had to decide who were the most vulnerable. After deciding that and realising that MKO Abiola could no longer form a government in exile which some people advocated, and because he was already arrested, we decided to have an outfit no matter how small so that we could be heard; that was why Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi ( former External Affairs Minister) was sent abroad.
But then, Abacha started personal harassment. He sent his goons after some people and made life very unsafe for many. If you remember, he first of all burnt down the house of Dan Suleiman, a very top member of NADECO. After that Baba (Anthony) Enahoro, Cornelius Adebayo and I were arrested one morning in our hotel room.
Where were you arrested?
We were arrested at Sheraton Hotel in Lagos. Baba (Enahoro) had just checked in there and we went to meet him, we had not started discussing anything when the three of us were arrested and taken to SSS office in Shangisha.
We spent an afternoon there and we were interrogated. Baba was the first to be interrogated and when it was my turn to be interrogated, I insisted that the gentleman (the SSS officer) was too young a person to deliver the message I wanted to send to Abacha. Apart from the bugging they had done, I insisted that they should provide a tape recorder because I would say some nasty things. I did not want them to twist the message. Thus, they did and we had a very good discussion. I warned them (SSS officers) that they would be the first victims of the dictator that they were acting like goons for. I told them that I did not see how they could win the struggle and asked what was the point of Abacha staying in power? I told them that Abacha should just activate June 12, hand over power to Abiola and return to the barracks with his soldiers. The conversation went that far and I think it annoyed them when it got to Abuja.
Sudenly, I was told that the Chief of Staff to Abacha, Dipo (Diya) had called and asked them to release me. We had a long argument about that and I said three of us were arrested, none was a criminal and why did they want to release one and hold on to the other two.
Baba asked the gentleman present there to excuse us so that we could discuss; he did and Baba said there was no point for all of us to be in detention when there was nobody to be speaking for us. He said, ‘you must go now and go to Baba Alfred Rewane go and tell him exactly what happened.’
What happened after?
I left but listening to the tape in Abuja, they decided that they should re-arrest me. I was grateful to one young SSS operative from Delta, who then came to my house, he was one of the top officials at SSS in Shangisa. He came and warned me that he did not want anything bloody in that place. I thanked him and later thought it would be cowardly to run away from them but I remember what Baba Enahoro said, that some of us ought to be free to be doing the speaking. The next morning, they showed up in my house to search. But like a soldier, I was not there, I had escaped to a neighbour’s house. I spent some time there. A sister came and said she had the feeling that the soldiers would soon begin to search house-to-house and asked me to follow her. I told her that the soldiers looking for me were outside but she said I should not worry, I should just follow her. I did and we drove in her car. Three of us were in the car; her driver, the woman and I. We drove through the cordon and everything but nobody recognised me.
Did you disguise?
No, I did not. I just got unto the car with her and the driver drove away. We got out on Opebi Road, Lagos, because they had blocked all the roads. After, I had escaped, I called my neighbour, (Senator Olabiyi) Durojaye, that he should not worry because I had escaped.
Where did you escape to?
I went to Surulere in Lagos. I went to a friend’s house. I asked her to drop me before we got there. I trekked the remaining half-a-mile to the friend’s house. A doctor friend took me to his house deeper inside Surulere. From there I arranged with Dan Suleiman, whose house had been burnt, and I told him that we should go out of town. That was how we followed the NADECO route and escaped.
Where did you escape to?
We went to Cotonu. We decided we had to keep going and we went to London from there, where we joined Bolaji Akinyemi. Already, Kayode Fayemi and Ralph Nweche were there. That was how we became NADECO abroad.
How did you start Radio Kudirat?
Before we left Nigeria, we had been arranging with Abiola on the need to have a radio but we were not thinking in terms of having a radio abroad. He said he gave a young man $150,000 to buy a radio so we could set it up but it never happened. I won’t mention the name of the gentleman but he knows himself, he is still alive.
The gentleman had told us when we were in Lagos that the radio was in Cotonu, he said the radio was kept in a cemetery in Cotonu so that nothing would touch it. When we got out, he had escaped to London, we volunteered to go and pick the radio in Cotonu where he kept it. That was the end of the story. He is still alive today. He was a senator. He became a senator after that, that is how crooked the whole system is.
In any case, we then decided that we could have a small pirate radio. I bought the first two, they were not expensive. They were about £2000. Fayemi got a Rastafarian fellow from Jamaica, who knew about how to put radio together. He did and it was like £2000. We put it in my house in London and he taught us how to operate it, how to strip it down and put it together. You can disguise it and do all that, the man was very good at running a pirate radio in Europe.
I then enlisted the services of David Mark, who was also in London. David Mark was enlisted because he was a signal officer and he was also in London. I asked him to certify it and he said ‘yes sir.’ We would get in a car and somebody would travel about three miles just to see what the coverage was and he would keep telling us if he could still hear us from that distance. So we were broadcasting from my house, we did the test transmission from my house and we had no licence. It was a dangerous thing to do but we became satisfied that it would serve the purpose.
Was Mark still a serving officer then?
No. He was no more in the military. He had ran away. Abacha was after him too. We got that pancake together and we were looking for how it would get to Nigeria. Prof. Wole Soyinka had a friend, a professor, in Cotonu and he contacted him. We had somebody in the UNDP who rode a diplomatic vehicle, so these two radios, we gave one to the diplomat to carry into Lagos and the other one was given to (Olalemi) Lemi and Dapo Olorunyomi to take to Lagos.
In Lagos they started it. That was how Radio Freedom started broadcasting in Lagos.
We sent one to Delta. We had our people there like Oronto Douglas and others. We were supposed to send one to the Middle Belt but did not know if it got there. But we were able to cover most parts of the West and Lagos that really mattered to us.
But later we found that we had to be broadcasting to the whole of Nigeria, that is the origin of Radio Kudirat, We gathered some money, Prof. (Bolaji) Akinyemi, Soyinka, Fayemi, a few other people and Tinubu decided to run the radio. Again, we worked under the auspices of Prof. Soyinka because he had huge connections in the Scandinavian countries. Radio Kudirat was not broadcasting from Nigeria, it was broadcasting from South Africa. Radio Freedom was a small radio you would take about and broadcast but Radio Kudirat was not. The broadcast was coming to Nigeria from South Africa but the studio was in Norway funded by some people because Soyinka had so much influence there. We then deployed an old man called Johnson; he is dead now, his brother and one Noah. Two of them would be in Norway and one would be in London. The programmes were produced from London, Germany and Washington. The programmes would be transmitted to them through Howard University, the university gave us a beautiful place as a studio.
What was the role of Walter Carrington in this?
He was still in Lagos doing his own but I am sure because of the report he was sending to Washington, they accommodated us. Then of course London became very impossible for me because the Nigerian Embassy in London mobilised and they went after some of us. Tinubu was the first, he was lucky to get out. My wife was there and my children were in the boarding house. I don’t think they knew anything about it.
As this was happening, Bolaji Akinyemi decided to stay in London. He stayed back because of his connections in the external affairs and he was a Professor at Oxford University, he was able to manage better than most of us. But whenever there was a big meeting, he would come and join us.
You fought in the Nigerian Civil War, do you have any regrets?
If you must know I am regretting fighting in the civil war. I am regretting even to this morning because we did not learn anything from the war. The war could have been avoided but about three million lives were lost and a lot of properties destroyed. There were emotional trauma and many effects of wars but we learned very little or nothing. It is sad. Let me tell you, if I knew this much then, I would not have participated in the war. It is useless fighting that war. No country fights civil war twice.
Why did you say this?
What led to the war then has come back and in a bigger form and everyone is fighting against another in Nigeria. The pro-Biafra groups are there in the South East, Boko Haram is in the North, Niger Delta Avengers are in the Niger Delta and the herdsmen are killing everywhere. The war could have been avoided if the Aburi Accord (reached in Ghana) was not unilaterally jettisoned by General (Yakubu) Gowon.
We had an opportunity to restructure the country then but that was not done. Some civil servants went to Gen. Gowon and told him that the Aburi agreement was not in the interest of the country. Even if there was any part of it (the agreement) those in power then were not satisfied with, the best thing they should have done was to sit down and panel beat it.
They said the agreement would return the country to confederacy and that the Federal Government would become very weak. They should have sat down and adjusted some parts of it instead of jettisoning the agreement. It is not gentlemanly to renege on any agreement. This would have saved the nation the war, the lives lost would not have been, the fund spent to fight the war and the country would have been saved. It would have saved everyone the stress too. But the sad thing now is that we learnt very little or nothing.
How do you think the Boko Haram problem can be solved?
The government is trying but the use of force should not be the order of the day so that we don’t invite another Boko Haram in the future. The ones we are faced with now cannot be negotiated with because insurgents are not easy to talk with especially when it is based on religion and it is a very complicated issue unless somebody has the insight to the happenings, psychology and how they are sustained. I don’t think anyone from outside can easily prescribe a solution to the problem.
What is your take on the call for restructuring of the country?
It is the best way to go. It is long overdue and doing this will address many of the problems confronting us. However, you have to structure the country in such a way that every ethnic group, no matter how small it is, will have this sense of belonging because I think that is what should follow June 12. If you would remember the proponents of June 12, the Afeniferere and the rest of them, had in their manifestoes that whoever came in at the Federal Government level would restructure the country. Thus, fiscal federalism, I think, should be in the agenda of the government. Some tribes and people are working while the others are eating and this is not practised anywhere in the world except in Nigeria. Chief Awolowo in his works advocated federalism as the only basis for national integration. He predicted that South Sudan would break from North Sudan. Did it not happen? He said the two were not one and it happened just like he said it.
If we have state police, the herdsmen will not be doing what they are doing all over the country. Since state police will be under the control of the governors, I believe a governor can say he does not want livestock to stray in the towns in his state and he will call on the police in the state to enforce this. But do you think a policeman from Katsina State will see anything wrong with herdsmen driving their cattle about inside towns and cities in other places where he is deployed in under the present arrangement?
How do you think the country should handle the fresh agitation for Biafra Republic?
This problem would have been solved long before now but every region is fighting now. Those agitating for Biafra Republic are there and those fighting in Niger-Delta are there. However, it is better for all of us to stay together as one Nigeria. Those agitating for secession should be called and told their part of the debt owed by Nigeria and it should be spelt out how they would pay. They should be told that the moment you secede there is no coming back to Nigeria without visa and they should also be told to carry their property along or sell them. There will be no dual nationality. They should be told that after going away from the rest of Nigeria, they cannot claim to be a Biafran and at the same time claim to be a Nigerian, it is not possible. I believe many of them will realise that staying together is more beneficial to them and to every region. But they (the government) must talk with them.
What is the solution to the problem of Niger Delta militancy?
This is a big problem and it is not going to be a war that can be won easily. There is still a war going on in Iraq. Nigeria cannot be fighting wars on all fronts. The military is fighting the Boko Haram in the North-East, they are deployed against the Niger Delta Avengers and against herdsmen. A country which is spending half of its budget on security can’t develop. The country needs money for many things but the wars are draining its scarce resources. I am happy a bit about the price of crude oil; this will force us to wear our thinking cap. Before now very few states had Internally Generated Revenue, they are Lagos State and maybe two others. Others are just recycling the allocation, they deduct tax from civil servants and call it internally generated revenue but if there is no allocation from Abuja the so called IGR disappears.
The Ogoni Bill of Rights and other documents written on how to address many issues in the country should be studied by the President and anyone aspiring to lead us. The President should look at what was recommended there for implementation.
The first arm struggle against the country happened in the Niger Delta. It was led by Isaac Adaka Boro. Niger Delta armed conflict did not start with the Niger Delta Avengers or MEND. This Ijaw nationalist, Isaac Adaka Boro, started it. He was passionate to ensure the freedom of his people and self determination for the people of the Niger Delta. Thus, like I said earlier, the solution to this problem also can be found in the restructuring of the nation.
How do you think President Buhari can make Nigeria better?
President Buhari should restructure Nigeria. There should be political restructuring and fiscal restructuring. I can assure you if Buhari does not ensure restructuring, no matter how hard he fights corruption in the next eight years, if he is still the President, he would discover that he has not achieved anything.
The Federal Government is too powerful. They concern themselves with too many things they should leave for the state and local government to handle. Can you imagine right here in front of my house there is a borehole sunk by our federal representative, there is another one very close to it sunk by the Federal Government but we don’t need the boreholes here. We have other sources of water. The boreholes should be taken to the villages where they will be better appreciated but someone will sit in Abuja and think they know everything and everywhere in Nigeria. With the restructuring, greater responsibility will be given to states and the Federal Government will be concerned with security and foreign affairs.
The President’s advisers should also tell him that this command economy will not work. Now we have two exchange rates for the dollar. We run an economy where supply and price are regulated by the government rather than market forces. The former Soviet Union practised it but it failed.
The fuel issue is also there. During the fuel scarcity we bought a litre of fuel for as high as N200 depending on where one bought from. The money was shared from those at the depot to the drivers and the filling stations. This ought not to be. The government should have allowed people to import fuel then and just make sure that the Department of Petroleum Resources is just concerned with the quality of fuel imported to make sure they do not destroy our vehicles.
When you create opportunities for corruption, human beings would explore them. It is natural; it is human. – Culled from Punch.
