Mbaya and the other student leaders remained on campus to investigate and document the extent of the violence and damage done by the security forces. They publicised their findings and submitted same to the junta judicial commission,led by Justice Mohammed. Mbaya was expelled for his role in the protest. But ABU students appreciated his sacrifice. They in fact considered him as one of those youths, who, “out of relative obscurity discovered his mission” and fulfilled it.
One of the biggest and most challenging protests in Nigerian history broke out forty six years ago. Christened ‘Ali-Must-Go’, it was triggered by an astronomical increase in the cost of education. Organised by the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), its core leaders were NUNS President, Segun Okeowo; the President of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Students’ Union, Bukar Mbaya; his University of Calabar counterpart, Offiong Aqua; and the Chairman of the University of Benin Students’ Union, Ekpen Appah. All were expelled by the General Olusegun Obasanjo-led military junta. Their offence was in leading students in their demand that education must be: “reformed and democratised”, “made a popular commodity and not an exclusive elitist luxury”, and “compulsory and free at all levels.”
The peaceful students’ protest was transformed into a bloody one by the security forces. It was, however, in ABU, that the security most brutishly suppressed the protest. Mbaya, a gentle, unassuming, soft-spoken, easy-going, but principled and dogged fighter for education, democracy and development, led the ABU protests.
He called congress meetings from 16-18 April, 1978. They discussed the protest, clarified issues, gauged the mood of the students and, reduced to the barest minimum, intra-students’ disagreements on the protest. There were two camps: the “pro-boycott” group, predominantly made up of Continuing and School of Basic Studies’ students, and the “anti-boycott” group, largely comprised of final year students. A similar scenario played out at the Kongo Campus.
The division, however, ended on 18 April, when the news of the killing of Akintunde Ojo of the University of Lagos reached ABU students. The news transformed the divisions into a solid pro-boycott block and the protest ensued.
On 19 April, while students were awaiting the commencement of a congress meeting, police invaded the campus with tear-gas. Students braved the choking gas and chased the police with stones,bottles and sticks. The police retreated when they ran out of tear-gas. A policeman was captured by the students but released when it was discovered that no student had been arrested.
Students took to the Zaria-Sokoto highway carrying anti-school fees placards and singing. They explained to passers-by and travellers the purpose for their protest, and distributed handbills, pamphlets and posters.
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Shocked by the brutality, and in tears, Mbaya went to the University Registrar, Yahaya Aliyu, asking him to plead with the soldiers, “… to stop the killing, but the university administrator said he could not help the situation.” So, the military attacks continued. Students, staff and villagers around the campus were beaten and shot at indiscriminately. On the campus, female students were molested, with tear gas thrown into their rooms,choking them. The soldiers looted dining halls and food stores and vandalised property.
On 20 April, at about 5:00 a.m., the police again invaded the main campus. Students replied with stones and successfully forced the police to retreat. Afraid that the police would invade the campus again, students barricaded the Zaria-Sokoto highway. Some retreated to the campus only to find other students fleeing in their direction,shouting that soldiers had invaded the campus through the University Dam.
The soldiers shot rubber bullets, which caused serious harm. Students replied with stones. Later, without warning, the soldiers switched to live bullets, which forced the students to flee in various directions. The soldiers demonstrated full scale military combat manoeuvres by “rolling on the ground, camouflaging in trees … in bushes and on storey buildings.” They used military helicopters to monitor the movement of “fleeing students for soldiers to round off and shoot, [and] kill.”
But Mbaya stood with the students. With some medical students, he rescued “the wounded and dying, but they were thoroughly beaten and sent back by the soldiers.” They insisted on carrying wounded students to hospitals, but were ordered back into the campus by the soldiers at the gate, who told them they “don’t care whether the student was dead or dying.”
Shocked by the brutality, and in tears, Mbaya went to the University Registrar, Yahaya Aliyu, asking him to plead with the soldiers, “… to stop the killing, but the university administrator said he could not help the situation.” So, the military attacks continued. Students, staff and villagers around the campus were beaten and shot at indiscriminately. On the campus, female students were molested, with tear gas thrown into their rooms,choking them. The soldiers looted dining halls and food stores and vandalised property.
In Samaru, the university town, life came, “…completely to a standstill. Houses were ransacked and Samaru market was looted by soldiers as the whole village was in great confusion. Students were fished out from where they took refuge. Those of them suspected to be students were mercilessly beaten up and kept in the sun to do frog dancing. A few persons among them, mostly females, lost consciousness in the process… the … atrocities… lasted more than four hours. It was an act of extreme fascism, savagery, barbarisms and thuggery”, comparable to the Sharpeville and Soweto massacres of defenceless Black people in Apartheid South Africa!
The operations of the security forces on both campuses led to the severe injury of forty-two students. Officially, four students, a primary school pupil, and an “unknown” person were reported killed. Soldiers and police, however, took away an unknown number of students and others whom they had shot, wounded, killed, and “whose corpses were never deposited in the hospital.”
In Kongo campus, the soldiers began “shooting indiscriminately as they were jumping out of their vehicles right at the gate.” They were joined twenty minutes later by the police. Even before their vans stopped, the police started throwing tear gas. They invaded the hostels, forcefully broke into the rooms, brutalised the students, locked them in, then tossed tear-gas. This first operation ended about noon.
Another batch of armed police began the second operation two hours later. They “behaved in a most barbaric and vandalistic manner, destroying everything along their way. The Students’ Union Secretariat was invaded and damaged. Students were chased into nearby bushes and mountains… houses were searched to flush out students and beat them up. During the whole operation, some University workers and school children were either beaten up or molested.”
The operations of the security forces on both campuses led to the severe injury of forty-two students. Officially, four students, a primary school pupil, and an “unknown” person were reported killed. Soldiers and police, however, took away an unknown number of students and others whom they had shot, wounded, killed, and “whose corpses were never deposited in the hospital.” At Kongo, a student was reportedly shot in the head and carried away by soldiers. Some students were reported to “have died later in their homes due to gas poisoning and wounds sustained during the invasion.” Residents of Samaru simply buried their dead or treated their wounded. The university was closed by the junta on 20 April.
Mbaya and the other student leaders remained on campus to investigate and document the extent of the violence and damage done by the security forces. They publicised their findings and submitted same to the junta judicial commission,led by Justice Mohammed. Mbaya was expelled for his role in the protest. But ABU students appreciated his sacrifice. They in fact considered him as one of those youths, who, “out of relative obscurity discovered his mission” and fulfilled it.
ABU students never regretted their actions. They saw their struggle as necessary sacrifice to make education available, accessible and affordable to all Nigerians, irrespective of their class, ethnic, regional and religious background.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email:aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com
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