By Sunny Igboanugo

Frank Kokori spent four good years behind bars for his historic efforts in the war for the restoration of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola but annulled by the military government of Ibrahim Babangida and sustained by Sani Abacha. As the General Secretary of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), he became the arrowhead on which the war was fought.

His modus operandi was leading the famous NUPENG strikes, which completely crippled economic activities in Nigeria and almost made it ungovernable. These strikes were said to be the most effective weapon that made the most impact to the government of the day, if not the only weapon.

Abacha, then Head of State, who by records ran the most despotic regime in the country, was not one to be enamoured of street demonstrations or media criticisms, be they locally or internationally. But the crippling of the economic foundation of Nigeria, which Kokori and his men effected through those strikes, was said to have hit him where it hurt.

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Worse still was that Kokori, having fought his war by going underground, could not be physically contained like other traducers of the government, who the dark-goggled dictator simply picked up and threw into his overflowing gulags across the country. But through some special military engineering, tactics and special operations, his efforts finally paid off, as the Chief of Ovu Kingdom in Ethiope East Local Government of Delta State, was eventually captured.

Sprung out from his underground fortress in August, 1994 and detained thereafter, the nine-week strike of NUPENG ended effectively. So too, the June 12 struggle. In fact, there must have been a party in Aso Rock, the seat of power in Abuja for Abacha and his henchmen to celebrate that particular feat.

To underscore the importance of Kokori’s capture and ensure there was no repeat, the junta made sure they put him so far away from the rest of the Nigerian society and from an environment he was familiar with – the Bama Prisons in Borno State – reputed to be one of the worst of such facilities in the country. Even there, he was forbidden from contact with human elements – detained in solitary confinement, where he only had ants and mosquitos as companions.

That was his ugly fate until the end of the Abacha junta in 1998. Kokori was eventually released by Abdulsalami Abubakar, the military General who not only took over from the ex-military dictator, but began a set of counter actions to redeem the testy firmament of the hitherto iron-fist regime, starting with the release of political prisoners and eventually the transition programme that produced a civilian government in 1999. That was how Kokori was relieved from his near fatal ordeal.

Now, with this stellar performance as the arrowhead of the June 12 struggle, it would have been expected that Kokori, would naturally assume a central place in the sharing of the accolades and the booties accompanying it after the war was finally won. Nada! This same Kokori died on December 7, 2023 and about three months later, was buried on March 8, 2024.

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Accounts in certain quarters indicate that the fiery labour leader, who once boasted that without me, there will be no June 12, not only died in penury, but did lamenting on his deathbed about being abandoned, before he succumbed to the protracted kidney disease he battled for years. This was a whole five years after the June 12 struggle had been given its full essence in Nigeria’s democratic history and structure.

Recall that Muhammadu Buhari, President – 2015-2023, had in 2018 – ahead of his re-election campaigns, put in place a set of measures aimed at full recognition of the historic events in the Nigerian polity. Apart from recognising Abiola as the winner of the election, he capped it all by instituting June 12 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day.

It means for this period, no one remembered him. Of course he was not alone. Other frontliners in the struggle, many who had similarly passed away in all the ceremonies in Abuja and elsewhere, as the airwaves were practically thrown open to celebrate and mark the June 12 struggle, shared and still share the same fate.

Only a completely bereft would would be wondering about this turn of events. But for even a passive observer, the reason for this is not farfetched. It is all about the Yorubanisation of the epochal event. For a certain tendency in the Nigerian South West, June 12, was a struggle of the Yoruba, by the Yoruba and for the Yoruba. They hug this essence and guard it so jealously that any other non-Yoruba, no matter his contribution(s), is a gatecrasher.

Indeed, June 12 today is more associated to Tinubu and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, who actually took refuge in beautiful cities outside Nigeria from where they launched attacks, than those who actually sniffed gunpowder and were bloodied on the battlefield, including those who either died in the struggle unofficially or officially sentenced to death as a result of immediate and related events.

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It is more wont for those names to prop up immediately, in some cases spruced up with other Yoruba June 12 leaders, especially those who lived long enough to be in the camp of Tinubu’s political machinery from the Alliance for Democracy (AD), up to the All Progressives Congress (APC) than other warriors from other ethnic groups.

Yes, the likes of Niran Malaolu of The Diet, Kunle Ajibade of The News Magazine, do not seem to come into much reckoning for the simple reason that they are not prominently known APC members, regardless that they not only bore and still bear the physical lacerations of the struggle, but practically smelt death. They come into distant mentions, not to talk of Chris Anyanwu of The Sunday Magazine and George Mba, the non-Yoruba, whose lives were equally sequestered and put on the slaughter slab in the struggle. They have since taken distant positions in reckoning and as outsiders, at best, get nothing more than some peripheral mention – offhandedly referenced in speeches and official statements.

So, at the burial of the ex-NUPENG leader last year, the highest he got for his effort was some feeble comments from Heineken Lokpobiri, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil), said to have represented President Bola Tinubu. For those, who expected a major democratic edifice to be named after him, their anticipation, naturally came to naught.

Of course, Kokori was not alone. Before him, Ndubuisi Kanu, the vibrant June 12 campaigner suffered the same fate. Yes, the Lagos State Government named a park after him. But it was probably for his record as once Military Governor of the state than his efforts in the struggle.

Chukwuemeka Ezeife, too, whose face was permanently etched on the same struggle, must also have died a broken man as his efforts came to naught. His struggle to free Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) flopped, even while ostensibly leveraging his relationship with Tinubu in the June 12 struggle. At best, he was rewarded with some indecent silence.

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Like Ezeife, who went home empty-handed, as Nigerians would say, Dan Suleiman, a retired Nigerian Air Force officer, who died on February 1, 2023 and buried in his Guyuk town, Guyuk Local Government of Adamawa State home on February 17, also went to his grave without any fanfare and without any visible June 12 imprimatur.

Ralph Obioha – yes, the same Obioha, who stood on the same podium with Abiola during the Epetedo Declaration, who was harried by day and haunted by night by the infamous Abacha goons and who eventually lost his First African Trust Bank (FATB), has continued to bemoan his fate privately and silently.

So, for the South East caucus at National Assembly in that pitch at the Senate for the immortalisation of Humphrey Nwosu, this picture could not have been lost. Their pitch for the astute Professor of Political Science, before his burial on Saturday, March 29, 2025, must have been the case of the proverbial hen, who said its hysteria at the kite soaring away with its chick. It must be for the world to hear its voice and not for the predator to release its prey.

In other words, they simply put up a show at fulfilling all righteousness or perhaps, much like continuing to stoke the consciousness and conscience of the powers that be in today’s Nigeria. Someone must at least remind these people that they owe the country a debt to maintain some decency in their nepotistic attitude to governance, if anything, to preserve some level of national sanity.

That must be the reason for the proposal. Else, the mere paucity of logic, almost zero insensitivity and extreme callousness reflected in the argument of the naysayers either in the Senate during the debate or elsewhere amply demonstrated that June 12 is not a booty some people in the South West wants to share with anyone. Indicators show that they believe they not only own it exclusively, but would guard it jealously.

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Even Adams Oshohmole, who they must have gone to procure purely for his vacuous rhetoric, apparently to add fillip to this obvious mindset, seemed quite stuck. Words seemed to have failed him. Not only that his submissions appeared quite obtuse, infantile and untenable, but his lines failed him.

On the floor of the Senate he had claimed Nwosu never indicated that Abiola won the June 12 election, but this was something the former election boss, even wrote down in a book, almost a decade before. Even his subsequent appearance on Channels Television, where he further attempted to dress up his earlier floppy position as to why Nwosu did not deserve to be honoured, sounded more pitiable.

This was the same Oshiohmole who, as Labour leader, sold out to the same junta Nwosu stood up to, turning around to accuse him of cowardice. His ground was that he failed to defy the court injunction and announce the result of the June 12 election willy-nilly.

In fact, as Chairman of then National Electoral Commission (NEC), Nwosu was actually waiting for the Court of Appeal, whom he was sure to reverse the decision of the Abuja High Court that stopped him from announcing the full result.

He was still waiting for this outcome when he was sacked from his job with the dissolution of the commission. But the self-same Oshiohmole, who never defied his removal as National Chairman of APC or remained stuck in office to demonstrate courage, believes that Nwosu ought to have defied both the military and the courts.

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“He should have announced the result even if it means death,” he insists. Now confronted on this by Omoyele Sowore during and interview, the simple question the former NEC boss posed was: “As what?” As sacked NEC Chairman? In other words, Quo warranto? Translated to English: On what authority? To what effect?