Alli Must Go. (an Eye witness)

Alli Must Go by the Count
Every Nigerian worth his salt knows that cry – ALLI MUST GO! It was the cry that defined the strike action that swept the whole country during the education crises in the late seventies, 1978 to be exact. The country was at the tail end of military rule under General Obasanjo and his Education Minister then was Colonel Ahmadu Alli. Yes the same Alli who became Chairman of PDP, purportedly the largest Political Party in Africa!

There had been crises since February 1971 when Kunle Adepeju a Student Union leader was shot dead by anti-riot policemen in front of Zik Hall at the University of Ibadan during a peaceful protest. It was also the crises that first brought the great Gani Fawehinmi into the limelight when he defended some of the students at the Judicial Panel of Inquiry set up to investigate the causes of the killing. Students went on peaceful marches each year on the anniversary of his death with disastrous results. The police put down such protests with violence each time with great casualties.

By the time school fees were introduced into the Federal university system in 1978, riots broke out across all the Universities with Ahmadu Bello University and University of Lagos being the hotbeds of the resistance. Police used live bullets and teargas to quell such uprisings, firing canisters at point-blank range into student’s faces and chests to injure them. It was during one such suppression that a student and then Head of State, General Obasanjo’s godson Akintunde Ojo was shot dead by police at the University of Lagos gates. Nine students were shot dead at Ahmadu Bello University by police that same day. A sympathetic Unilag Vice chancellor, Professor J.F. Ade-Ajayi was subsequently sacked for attending Adepeju’s funeral by military authorities.

Funnily enough, I had ‘front row seats’ at two of the major riots. The first being the riot of 1972 at the University of Lagos and quite by accident as a Secondary school student. The second time, I was a major participant at the ‘Ali Must Go’ riots of 1978 at the University of Ife. Since you insist, let me tell you about both.

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It was in February 1972 and I was in Form Three at Igbobi College, Yaba. I think there was a lull in school activities because we did not have to cut classes. Three of us Olus (Olu Adegoke, Olu Banwo and I) decided to go to the University of Lagos to visit the older cousin of one of us who resided in one of the Male Hostels close to the Lagoon. We did not realize that it coincided with the first Anniversary of Kunle Adepeju’s death and that the students had planned a demonstration for that day. The government authorities apparently knew and had marshalled government forces to quell the expected uprising.

We were being entertained by Olu Adegoke’s cousin in his room when we heard the first explosions of teargas canisters and salvos of gunshots. The entire hostel immediately went into a panic and everyone girded themselves for action. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the main gate to the campus. Soon, news filtered in from those that had rushed in from the gate that there were armed Anti-riot policemen storming the campus through the main gate and they were firing teargas canisters directly at students injuring some of them.

We felt like crying. It was not our fight and we were only fifteen years old. This was way, way above our heads. We were too young to die! We decided to flee towards the Lagoon front along with the undergraduates who were not keen on confronting the police. But then we heard booming sounds and gunshots from the Lagoon front also. It turned out the police had decided on a two pronged attack of the campus from the front and the rear. They were coming via the lagoon front by motorboats we were told. We did not wait to verify. The sounds were proof enough.

The only way out was through the impenetrable swamp that bordered one side of the campus and was several kilometers wide. We knew it was infested with crocodiles, snakes and all manner of dangerous creatures but we had no choice. When we got to the edge of the swamp, the older and bolder undergrads plunged in while we stood unsure of what to do. Suddenly we heard the boom of teargas guns near us. It seemed the police were chasing us and were very close behind! We plunged into the swamp without further ado. It reached up to our knees, it was vile and smelly and there were all manner of dangerous looking insects I had never before seen. Mosquitoes swarmed around us and bit us ceaselessly. Movement was tedious and the swamp sucked at our legs as we pulled them out of the mud for each laborious step forward. We broke branches off trees with which we tested the ground in front of us before we advanced for fear of stepping into a deep bog or a patch of quicksand. Soon the older students with longer and stronger legs left us behind and we did not know in which direction they had gone as the mud evened out seconds after someone stepped out of it. We forged on nevertheless, fleeing the booming sounds behind us until we had penetrated more than a kilometer into the swamp and the sounds were dying behind us. We were safe from the police but now we were lost in the swamps! We had no idea in which direction we should move.

We felt that since the swamp led to the open sea, then to move towards Akoka, we had to keep heading towards our left. we did so until we came to a large wide stream. It looked deep and dangerous and we came to a halt trying to decide what to do. Suddenly along came a large canoe paddled by a young and beautiful Ilaje woman wearing nothing other than a pair of men’s swimming shorts. At another time and another place our adolescent interest would have perked up but this was no time for foolishness. We hailed her and she stopped without any consciousness of her naked state. We explained to her that we were running from police who were attacking the campus and we needed to get to the other side of the river. Without hesitation she paddled to where we were and bade us get in. She ferried us all across the small river in no time and showed us the direction to go in order to get to Akoka.

It took us another two hours of wading through deep mud sometimes getting high up on our thighs to get to dry land. Olu Adegoke had the worst of it all as he was the smallest of us and the mud threatened to reach his waist. We feared leeches and kept looking out for them on our legs. We were lucky not to find any. We saw mudfish, toads and frogs of every size and description and at one point saw a huge snake sliding away into the undergrowth as we approached noisily. The smell was overwhelming and we finally understood the statement made in his funny accent by our Indian teacher that, “Hydrogen Sulphide smells like rotten eggs”. The experience was frightening and exhilarating at the same time. We were high on adrenaline and did not tire despite all our exertions.

We finally emerged at a remote building site where we used the not so clean well water to wash the filth off our legs and clothes. It would do till we got back to school. The labourers told us we had reached an area adjacent to ‘Chemist bus stop’, close to Bariga. We eventually wended our way into the main community from the isolated site on the edge of the swamps. Shortly after, we found our way back to the school compound where we told our afternoon’s escapades to an incredulous audience.
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My second experience with ‘Aluta!’ as students call any struggle after the Angolan revolutionary cry, “Aluta Continua, Victoria ascerta” (The struggle continues, victory is certain) was planned and intended. I was an undergraduate in my third year at the University of Ife. The all Nigeria Student riots to protest against the action of the Minister of Education Ahmadu Ali were in the third day. Anti-riot policemen had sealed off the campus gates and were not allowing anyone in or out. Students would gather along Road One, the main access to the campus just beyond the reach of the Policemen’s bullets and Teargas guns. From there they would chant, sing taunting songs and hurl missiles at the policemen.

A group of students decided to find a way to bypass the police cordons at both the front and back gates to the campus and take the protest into town. I joined them. We were about 200 in all. Someone knew of a bush path about halfway between both gates, a distance of about 6 kilometers trek that would bring us smack into the town centre just by the market. Carrying sticks and clubs, we half-ran, half-walked the distance in no time at all. Going in a group like that we did not notice the suffocating midday heat or the discomfort of cuts and bruises while creating a wider bush path as we overflowed beyond the existing one. We soon burst out into the market chanting,

‘ALLI MUST GO! ALLI MUST GO! ALLI MUST GO!’

Soon the market women joined in our march and were equally shouting,

“ALLI MUNGO! ALLI MUNGO!”

It would have been hilarious if we had not been on the warpath. We stormed across the city centre to the High Court where a trial was going on. We disrupted proceedings and forced the Judge to say, “ALLI MUST GO!” before we left the Court premises. He said it with an alacrity that belied the compulsion which we seemed to have put him under. I suspect he was sympathetic.

As we streamed out of the High Court heading for the next target which was the Oni’s Palace, someone shouted, “The Police are coming. Run!” and headed in the opposite direction from which we had intended. Everyone immediately followed him except me. I’ve never been one for running blindly. It may be like a death-wish but that’s the way I’m built. You never know, one could actually be joining the Lemmings and running into danger. I have to see what I’m running from. I peeped around the corner from which the guy had just come and saw a detachment of police, about fifty-men strong swerving to take a parallel route with the one my comrades had just taken. That way they would cut them off at the top of the road where the junctions meet.

As soon as I had seen the last of the policemen run to the left, I ran down the hill in the direction that they had come from. Within a short while I heard the sounds of shooting of teargas and guns behind me. I needed to get far away! I flagged down a passing motorbike and told the Ife indigene I was a student and I had to get back to campus. Willingly he agreed to take me to campus for free and was on the lookout for police all the time. The Ife town people had sympathy for us all the way and did their best to help students. As I heard later, they harboured as many who sought sanctuary with them, hiding them until it was safe to move around.

As we approached the campus gate by the old road in order to avoid any police patrols, we saw a large detachment of police at the campus gate. He obviously could not drop me there so he drove down the road about half a kilometer towards Ede and I entered the thick bush once again thanking him profusely. I eventually emerged a long way from the gate but still beyond the limit of the Students’ barrage.

A small Suzuki jeep with three students all dressed in black took off from the Student’s barricade and came to pick me up. I knew them as guys I greeted and had suspected they belonged to a campus fraternity. As we drove back to the barricade, I told them the story of how we had stormed the town and I had escaped getting caught by the police. They exclaimed at how “rugged” I was and how I should join their fraternity at the next recruitment exercise.

“You’re the kind of person we want”.

I was naturally flattered but it still took another two years to study them and what they stood for. I had not shunned all the aimless social campus clubs whose only goal was to arrange dances only to join a bunch of misfits. They had to have a purpose and they had to be clean and bereft of all the horrific innuendo that people spread about them for me to contribute to their cause.

The stalemate with government went on for a little while more but I did not join anyone in any foray out into the town after that. We had lost the element of surprise and anywhere students went, the police would be waiting for us. I had also escaped injury or death the first time around and was not ready to tempt fate again. I do not recollect if Alli went or stayed, but that period was a defining one in the annals of students’ revolution in Nigeria. The Student Union warrior-leaders of that time and their lawyers are mostly the leaders of today’s struggle for democracy. We have just lost Gani to the fight, but Aluta Continua Victoria Ascerta! His spirit lives on!

The Count