The Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, (ABUZ) students’ “Ango-Must-Go” protest of May 22-23, 1986, led to the shooting, raping and killing of students and other citizens by police. The protest was triggered by Professor Ango Abdullahi’s expulsion and rustication of students’ leaders. The crisis led to a national confrontation between Babangida government and the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), led by Emmanuel Ezeazu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Although the student’s held solidarity marches within the campus, the crises escalated when the Police used live-ammunition to quell the marches. This led to serious injuries and death. In the public domain, frayed nerves were exacerbated by Professor Abdullahi’s statement of “no regrets inviting the police … only four died,” and justified by Police Commissioner Nuhu Aliyu’s as the “law authorised them [police] to shoot.” These obtuse responses were described by the Daily Times of May 28, 1986, as “display of heartlessness and nonchalance of Ango Abdullahi over human lives;” and by the New Nigerian of May 30, 1986 described as “fascist-like rationalization of the ABU killings.” The lackadaisical handling of the crisis by the Babangida government, which refused to react to the violence for three days, coupled with the popular disenchantment with government’s anti-working peoples’ programme of Structural Adjustment made the nation bristle with contempt and anger for the regime and the ABU administration.
NANS warned Nigerians “that fascism is already on the agenda in Nigeria” and directed its members to mobilise students, including secondary and primary children, to solidarise with ABU students. The Students’ Union of University of Lagos called on “all mass democratic organisations to show the present regime the way out.” Students marched within and outside their campuses, held night vigils in their schools, destroyed campus police posts, barricaded major roads, burned government vehicles and disrupted government activities and carried coffins, crying, wailing and shouting “We want to die” and “Police kill us”! Students of the University of Ife burned down a police station, went to Ife Prison Yard and “liberated” 218 in-mates, before setting it ablaze. Kaduna Polytechnic students burned down a 42-block police flats barrack. Placards carried by demonstrators read: “We dey Read, Dem dey Kill”; “We dey Born, Dem dey Kill”; “Zaria Killing is a Coup Against Our Generation”; “Students Today, Who Next” “Nigeria in South Africa”; “One Cause, One Class, One Struggle”; etcetera. In response, Governments, closed schools, especially tertiary educational institutions.
Journalists were equally enraged and observed that, despite the accusation of youthful exuberance and “infantile” radicalism against the students, they have never carried arms against constituted authorities; and that those raped and killed were not engaged in demonstrations. The Police had driven them out of their hostels and classrooms and they became casualties. “Whoever authorized the shooting”, The Guardian of May 29, 1986 editorialised, “should be held responsible. His is not an act of a patriot, or lover of law and order, but of someone who seems to prefer anarchy to order…” The Daily Times of May 27, 1986, wrote that the unguarded actions of the overzealous police tarnished “the good image of this government. For there is no fundamental human right more valid than the right to life.” Renowned journalist, Ray Ekpu, argued that the “popular criticism against youth is lack of restraint, but adults can be guilty of it and, there can be no justifiable reasons why armed policemen can be permitted to shoot at unarmed students with live bullets … Law and order cannot be the semantic equivalent of terrorism, the same kind of terrorism that made Soweto and Sharpeville dark chapters of South African history.”
The crisis equally provoked a national confrontation between the government and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), led by Ali Chiroma. NLC refused to collaborate with the government’s Abisoye Panel, charged with investigating the ABU crisis, positing that it was not representational and democratic. It resolved to hold a “National Day of Mourning” on June 4, 1986, to be observed by peaceful marches nation-wide in solidarity with Nigerian students. Government aborted the march, in Chiroma’s words, by mobilising the entire security forces, declaring “an all-out war, by land, sea and air against unarmed workers, more serious than even the shoot-at-sight order.”
The defunct New Nigerian newspaper of May 30, 1986, described the confrontations as “a season of madness.” NANS, NLC and ASUU, however, saw it as a “season of solidarity”.
The lesson to be learnt from Ango-Must-Go and subsequent such confrontations therefrom are countless. Fundamentally, any government interested in constructing a united, developed, progressive and prosperous nation must start with education. No nation has ever developed more than that its educational institutions, as they are centre of excellence. Students, besides, are a microcosm and an organic composition of society. They are the seeds and flowers of today and the fruits of tomorrow. How they are educated and treated in schools have the potentials to make or mar the nation. Therefore, when students are shot, injured, raped and killed, so is the nation shot, injured, raped and killed. Humiliate and destroy the campuses, so is the nation humiliated and destroyed.
The military juntas of Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida and Abacha subverted academic freedom, destroyed campus autonomy and shattered educational institutions. In so doing, they underdeveloped Nigeria politically, economically and culturally. The 1986 crisis was a resistance against military destruction of education and a cry for democracy, development and justice. If the current democracy is to grow and blossom, the historical injustices committed against education must be addressed, with the goal of, at least, returning the schools to what they were in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu YUSUF
YUSUF, a Deputy Director in the Federal Civil Service, retired as General Manger (Admin.), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet), Abuja. aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com
