Forty years ago, an army of battle-ready policemen invaded Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Samaru, Zaria. This was on 22 and 23 May, 1986. The mission was to disperse a peaceful, carnival-like, students’ protest. The dancing students chorused: “Ango-Must-Go”. The police were invited by the Vice Chancellor, Professor Ango Abdullahi to disperse them.
Many students, and children of ABU secondary school, were mercilessly beaten and teargassed. Some went into coma. Some female students were harassed and sexually molested. Students were forced to kneel down, kicked and jumped upon. It was as if the police had deep-seated grudges against the students!
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Officially, two students and two children were killed. But the national and international press put the figure at between six to thirty-nine, while the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) put it at twenty-five.
The violence raised national resentment and condemnation. NANS organised and led a nation-wide students’ uprising in which school children and the urban poor angrily participated.
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Abdullahi’s lack of empathy and demonstrable disregard for human lives, and the Kaduna State Police Commissioner, Nuhu Aliyu’s unsympathetic, unprofessional and undiplomatic statement further enraged Nigerians.
Abdullahi told the press he had “no regrets inviting the police”, and that “only four people died” while Aliyu justified police violence by saying the: “law authorized them to shoot… The police do not operate outside the laws…”
Abdullahi was largely and rightly blamed for the crisis. He was highly intolerant, undiplomatic, and hostile to the students. He, it was, who invited the police. Doubtlessly, therefore, he indeed made the crisis!
Abdullahi was a serial violator of student rights. In 1981, ABU students protested over inadequate catering facilities, poor feeding, worsening accommodation services, and poor academic facilities, amongst others. Students attributed the causes of the problems to corruption within the ABU establishment, and the nonchalant attitude of Abdullahi to their problems. The protest led to the destruction of university and private property.
In reaction, Abdullahi expelled thirty students, rusticated 165 others, suspended the Students’ Union, and amended its Constitution. He also de-unionised the University’s preliminary students, and appointed the Students’ Affairs’ Officer as the “Sole Administrator” of the students union.
In the 1983/1984, Abdullahi again suspended the Students’ Union, banned all union meetings, and appointed the Students’ Affairs as the “Sole Administrator” His excuse was that the union had internal crisis. Student leaders however, maintained that it was the union’s stern opposition to the Vice Chancellor, its critical opposition to the government, and its active roles in NANS affairs that led to Abdullahi’s actions.
In August 1984, the Union hosted the 14th Senate Meeting of NANS which was then “banned” by the despotic General Muhammadu Buhari regime. Armed anti-riot mobile police men invaded the campus, dispersed the meeting, arrested 150, as well as detained and charged ten student leaders to court. The case was dismissed and the student leaders freed.
Abdullahi retaliated by suspending the Students’ Union, and again appointing the Students’ Affairs Officer as the “Sole Administrator”.
In 1985, the student union embarked on an indefinite boycott of all academic activities in support of, and solidarity with, striking medical doctors. The National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) and Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) had called the strike over the progressive degeneration of health services.
Abdullahi responded by expelling three student leaders, suspending four others, and gave serious warning to at least six others. He also ordered others to apologise within twenty-four hours.
On 15 April, 1986, ABU students, along with other tertiary students, staged public demonstrations against United States bombardment of Libya, and in solidarity with the Libyan people led by Muammar Gaddafi.
The protest, amongst others, took place in front of the US Consulate in Kaduna. They burnt the US flag, and made caricature of US President Ronald Regan. The Consulate criticised the students’ actions and, alleged that some of its property were destroyed or stolen. It therefore demanded compensation.
The Union responded angrily by describing the US allegations as “arrogantly dishonest” and “highly provocative”. It then warned the Federal Military Government (FMG), not to compensate the Consulate, adding that that ABU students: “would resist with all our might any attempt by the FMG to compensate the dubious claims laid by the US Consulate.”
Six days later, the union complied with NANS’ directives that all its member-unions should peacefully commemorate the 1978 “Ali-Must-Go” protests within their campuses. Speakers at the occasion criticised Abdullahi’s high-handedness, the government’s subversion of democratic struggles, its flirtation with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and its pro-imperialist foreign policy.
Ango retaliated by expelling two student leaders, while the remaining were seriously warned: “to be of good behaviour and avoid being used for ill-motivated reasons which could easily result in an unrest in this University”.
Consequently, a student group, ‘Students’ Vanguard’, called a Congress Meeting, where it was decided that, “Enough is enough”; and “Ango-Must-Go”!
However, Abdullahi is not solely to be blamed for the crisis. He was only following a tradition enthroned by military despots who glorify power, oppose consultation and dialogue, and subvert human, civil and democratic rights.
Besides, Ango was indirectly assigned the task of checking student radicalism and maintaining “peace” by whatever means.
The General Yakubu Gowon regime in 1971 had attempted to maintain peace at the University of Ibadan by using police to quell a minor students’ protest for improved conditions of living and study. Adekunle Adepeju, a second year Agricultural Economics student, was martyred.
The Murtala-Obasanjo regime promoted and glamourised the subjugation of the universities in 1978. It authorised the military and police to invade universities and suppress the ‘Ali-Must-Go” students’ protests. It blamed radical student leaders and academics for the crisis.
Students, school children and other citizens were injured, maimed and martyred. Four student leaders were illegally arrested, detained and expelled. Eight academic staff, one university administrator, and a journalist were dismissed. Two Vice Chancellors and a university medical officer were compulsorily retired, amongst others.
The Shehu Shagari and Buhari governments continued with the tradition. The General Ibrahim Babangida government solidified and elevated repression to a new pedestal.
But the Federal Governments could not have enthroned such culture of repression but for the collaboration of politically conscious and opportunistically-minded ultra-rightwing academics. Their desperation for power and wealth, led them to collaborate with the state to subvert university autonomy, academic freedom, and human, civil and democratic rights on campus.
The most notorious of these academics was Dr Ibrahim Tahir of ABU, who in 1978, secretly wrote to the state, that Marxist academics and students were responsible for “Ali-Must-Go”. Therefore, they must be identified and shown the way out for allegedly creating: “an intellectual and psychological climate which has made revolutionary insurrectionary conduct respectable even glorious”.
Tahir added: “no state system permits employees paid by the state in the universities and elsewhere to convert their professional function into an avenue for the promotion of ideas and activities with the explicit aim of overthrowing the state and its existing system of order”.
Surely, Professor Ango Abdullahi must be blamed for the “Ango-Must-Go” crisis. But so also must the governments which tacitly enabled him to do what he did forty years ago.
My submission is that the struggle against all forms of despotism must be simultaneously directed against not only the despots, but also the system which generate, fertilise, and utilise despots to reproduce despotism.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: [email protected]
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