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
By Festus Adedayo
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.
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
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 the 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 eardrums 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. The murder of Alhaja Suliat 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 scrutiny… 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.
•Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly of the writer/author and do not represent the news of The Daily Crucible.
