Frank Kokori: The Struggle For June 12

Frank Kokori was the General Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) when the struggle for the actualization of the June 12 Presidential mandate broke out. In his book, Frank Kokori: The Struggle For June 12, he gives a vivid account of the roles he and other heroes played in the quest to revalidate the mandate. Here is an excerpt from the book..
Beginning Our Fight For June 12
THE annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, set off a nationwide cacophony of rage. As Vice President elect, Kingibe was very sad. I was equally sad and enraged. For the millions of Nigerians who hoped that the election would end long years of despotic military rule, the annulment came as a huge shock. Initially, nothing concrete was done to display the collective resentment, just a few wildcat demonstrations here and there by the civil society groups.
From all I knew about revolutionary struggles, a strong military dictatorship anywhere in the world would not be shaken by placard-carrying demonstrations. The junta would just laugh such efforts to scorn. Peaceful placard carrying demonstrators and street protests would only bother civilized democracies like Britain, US and France. However, it could have little impact in South America, where you have such hardened autocrats like Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Fidel Castro in Cuba, nor would it move stone hearted friends like Adolf Hitler in Germany or a Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. As a matter of fact, African dictators generally modeled themselves after these hardened characters.
Looking at the horizon, you could find no immediate response to the military’s assault on Nigerians’ popular wish, as expressed through the ballot box on June 12, 1993.
In the words of Bob Marley: How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?
Taking the task of rallying a formidable opposition to the annulment as a personal challenge, I called my NUPENG kitchen cabinet, made up of my two deputies – Joseph Akinlaja and Elijah Okougbo, and the union’s President, Kojo Agamene. I asked them what they felt about the political jam. They expressed their resentment, and I responded that if it was that bad, then we had to do something about it. We all agreed and decided to use our platform as organized Labour union to protest against the annulment.
That took us to Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC. We presented our resolutions to them and seek for their support. After several meetings held together, many communiqués were issued condemning the annulment and asking for a disannulment.
After passing a resolution that Abiola’s mandate remained sacrosanct and that the Babangida government should restore it by disannulling the election, the NLC had mandated me, being Labour’s highest political office holder, and knowing my connection with the SDP national executive and the state governors, to go to Abuja and present the Labour’s position. At the SDP Secretariat in Abuja, I was told the SDP Chairman, Chief Tony Anenih, had retired to his hotel room. The Secretary, Sule Lamido, had traveled out of Abuja and only the treasurer, Okechukwu Odunze, could be found around. I thereafter went to greet him in his office.
Odunze looked at me suspiciously and finally said, “Frank, you are here, welcome. But don’t think your name is in MKO’s list! We have the list of his cabinet members and your name is not there. You are just wasting your time with all this running around. MKO’s brother, Oladipo Diya, is the Minister of Defence.
Odunze reeled out some other names and their supposedly allotted positions.
I quickly cut him short, “Look, Odunze, you have started again. Did I tell you it is my hunger for a ministerial appointment that is fueling my struggle? If I wanted to be a minister, the military regime would have made me one long ago. So why are you telling me about this! “Take your resolution. This is the resolution NLC sent to all of you. Where can I find Chief Anenih?
“The Chairman is in his hotel room. You will find him there,” he said, snatching the paper from me. “I am going to my hotel now.”
“Well, before you go to your hotel, I am taking your car. You know I did not come with a car and the taxi that brought me from the airport has left.”
“Okay, but the driver has to drop me in my hotel first. Then you can take the car anywhere you like, he concluded.”
The car dropped Odunze off at his Sheraton Hotel lodging and thereafter took me to NICON-NOGA Hotel to meet Chief Anenih. When I got there, I phoned him at the reception and he immediately told me to come up to his room. Getting there, I gave him the resolution. To my surprise however, he read it disinterestedly.
Chief Anenih finally looked up and said: “Frank, you know I am even tired of all these things. Do you know that even MKO’s kinsmen are already lobbying for his position?
The government had by then, told NEC to organize fresh polls for February. In fact, that had been the mandate of the Interim National Government, ING, instituted by General Babangida. That was why it wore the appellation ‘interim’ government.

He continued, “In fact, the posters of one of them are already pasted all over the streets here in Abuja. As for me, the way politics is going in this country, I will just return to Uromi, my home town and go into farming. I am just tired of all this mess, he said dejectedly.
For over 90 minutes, I was trying to convince one of my earliest political mentors and Chairman of the party, whose victory was being so contemptuously traduced, to keep up the battle. But it was clear that Chief Anenih was already discouraged. However, unlike Odunze who appeared to have made up his mind that June 12 was a dead horse not worth flogging, Anenih behaved maturely like the father of a terminally ill patient, who must still hold on to hope, although his shrewd judgment made it clear that chances of survival were 50-50. I could see, even as far back as then, that Anenih no longer believed in June 12. What may have killed his interest at this stage still left me guessing. In the process of our interactions, he had mentioned that certain kinsmen of MKO were already warming up for the fresh election already announced by the military junta. To that direction, he had mentioned Olu Falae, among others. And that Falae’s campaign posters were all over the place was very difficult to believe? Olu Falae, to me is a known distinguished Nigerian elder statesman, and one of the first pro-June 12 party leaders. I however kept this to myself. I was therefore taken aback at the Abuja airport when I ran into Olu Falae, accompanied by Comrade Ekpo Bassey, one-time Mayor of Calabar municipality. Even though we greeted warmly, but I was a bit suspicious of their mission to Abuja at that period in time. I bade them goodbye and left to catch my flight to Lagos. If he did, as the Chairman of the victorious party, Anenih would have mobilized against the annulment. He failed to. But his vast political experience dictated he could not be openly anti June 12. What may have killed his interest was the unprincipled opportunism displayed by MKO’s kinsmen who appeared eager to bury the mandate. Perhaps Anenih also felt alienated by the way MKO kept him in the dark about strategies for reviving the mandate.
I left the SDP Chairman’s place for the governor’s meeting. By the time I arrived there, the meeting had ended and they had all dispersed. Only Governor Felix Ibru was around and he was just about leaving in his car.
“Frank, take it easy o,” Ibru said after reading the NLC resolution. “I know, the way you carry things to the extreme.” Since the other governors had departed, I returned to the airport and flew back to Lagos immediately.
However, it soon became clear to me that Paschal and a lot of people in the Labour movement were insincere in their fight for June 12. Paschal dragged his feet on real action. At meetings, I would speak tough, trying to convince the people on the need for aggressive action. I managed to win some of us to my side. But after some time, the whole enthusiasm simply petered down and fizzled out. But why did Paschal show so much apathy to the struggle for June 12?
They say only a thin line separates love from hate. Paschal had hotly courted Abiola while hoping to be his running mate, but having lost the fight, Paschal quickly turned against Abiola. This grudge Paschal used against everybody in the country, including me. He took the bitterness too far.
Frustrated at the NLC level, NUPENG decided to mobilize on its own. The union gave me leave to tour the four zones of NUPENG. We began to hold meetings with the zonal councils, which were the crucial organs of the union. The Warri Zone had the old Mid-West or Bendel, comprising all the oil workers’ units and chapters in the riverine areas from Benin, to Escravos, to Forcados and to Ughelli. They all came to Warri. The Port Harcourt Zone had the old Eastern Region of Nigeria – Eket, Brass, Owerri and Enugu: and they all heeded our summons and converged at Port Harcourt. With depot units coming from as far as Maiduguri, the Northern zone met with us in Kaduna, Lagos Zone contains the old Western Region, having units and chapters from towns like Ibadan, Ondo, Ore and Sagamu, and we spoke with all of them in Lagos.
To same places, I went alone, other places I went with one or both of my deputies where we all addressed the members. In a nutshell, we sold the idea that: This struggle for June 12 is not an economic struggle, and not for monetary gains. You are not going to claim allowances. You are not going to claim arrears. You will not have salary increases. You are only going to fight a political fight – a fight that will liberate your children and your children’s children. You are not going to gain anything monetary. In fact, you will make sacrifices.
All we said must have sounded like strange gospel to NUPENG members previously used to aluta for personal and immediate gains. Our mobilisation was the first in the history of trade union struggles in the country. Every other struggles – by Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), ASUU, civil service, organized private sector, etc. aimed at securing immediate economic gains for the welfare of the agitating workers, but not this one. This was a clear-cut political struggle. And our maxim became ‘Gain first, political freedom, and every other thing will follow.
Much depended on the outcome of our tour of the zonal councils. If the zones indicated they would not support the cause, it would puncture whatever dreams we had that NUPENG would launched the struggle for June 12, end-of-story. But it turned out that workers themselves nursed a grudge against the military’s action. They only needed an articulate leadership to forge them into a potent fighting force. We provided that leadership. This we easily won the support of the zones. With the zones passing the resolutions to support the struggle, we secured the needed mandate to launch a struggle against the annulment.
However, there remained one more battle to win before we could proceed. Although the zonal councils had given their support we still ended to make it a joint decision of the National Executive Council. Should the NEC say no, that would have automatically aborted the plan. No bird flies with one wing, especially when the organisation’s constitution had strictly forbidden such. Having heard from the zonal councils, we summoned a NUPENG NEC meeting for Petroleum Training Institute, Warri.
Based on the zones’ endorsement of the struggle, we developed an 11-point demand to be presented to government. This, we took to the National Executive meeting of the union at the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Warri, which gave full support to go ahead with the action as a one-man show. It helped later on. Throughout my incarceration, the government could not prosecute nor bring charges against me in court, for I was merely executing the mandate of the National Executive and other organs of my union.
Thereafter, we returned to Lagos. I called on my friend who was Vice President-elect, ambassador Kingibe to tell him what NUPENG had decided to do. I told him “I am tired of all this talking and talking. I am not seeing anything happening. Babangida and his boys have taken this mandate from us. The civil society, the Press and the public are all doing their best, but the military government will not budge.
“Beautiful. It is a good idea. You mean your union is behind this? he told me. I replied: “Within the NLC, we tried to do our best, but the NLC will not…”
“Forget the NLC,” Kingibe interrupted. His response clearly showed he was abreast of happenings in the NLC. I had always admired his Intelligence network that appeared to feed him with important information in the country. In our days as SDP executives, Kingibe used to tell me the specific time, place and room number of the hotel that some power brokers were having secret meetings. I guess he usually got such information from his former colleagues in the intelligence services. Now he told me: “I know your NLC, you can’t get anything from them. Forget it. Your people have sold out to government. But Frank, please, there is one thing. I know you are a tough person and you didn’t need anybody, but let us go and see MKO. At least, let him know about your plan. Because I know you, you will just go solo. You won’t tell any person. I know the reason you reveal this plan to me is because I am your friend. If not, you will just go on your own and carry out this action. But the man is the President-elect, let us go and meet him and tell him, he suggested.
Based on his suggestion, I met Kingibe at home. Then, we both drove from his Victoria Island residence to Abiolas’ palatial abode at Ikeja. Abiola’s place looked like a Mecca, with huge presence of top politicians. Hordes of supporters camped outside the gates on the street. Members of the local and international press also formed part of the vast crowd. I saw foreign correspondents with recorders and still cameras. The CNN crew stood out with camera and satellite gear. Despite them all, we had immediate access. Abiola dispersed everyone with him and immediately met Kingibe and I.