by Wole Soyinka
AND THEN, AS I F the political scene were not sufficiently heated or complicated for such a young democracy, the nation was riveted by news of a far grimmer dimension than a mere rough-and-tumble among lawmakers—a conspiracy had been unearthed that sought to execute what would have amounted to a civilian coup d’état. The nest of conspirators was located in the Action Group. There was talk of proscribing the party altogether. Its leading figures were rounded up; some were placed under house arrest, others taken straight to prison. It all left the nation, especially the Western Region, in shock. Gradually the net contracted, closing in on the real target. No one was especially surprised when the party leader himself, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was arrested.
The trials followed lengthy, drawn-out investigations, during which the name of a white South African police officer, Ceulman, pioneered the conflation, in Nigerian modern history, of an individual name with torture. When the trials began, a number of the accused protested that their statements had been made under duress, their confessions extracted under torture. The statements were nonetheless admitted as evidence. Not surprisingly, virtually all the accused, including Obafemi Awolowo, were found “guilty as charged” and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The judge then committed the astonishing indiscretion of proceeding to recuperate from his marathon hearing as a vacation guest of the head of the ruling (and “persecuting”) party, directly after convicting and sentencing the accused. Never was a well-known Yoruba saying more eagerly seized upon: “The witch cried one night, and the child died the morning after; who still disputes that it was the witch that consumed the child?” It contributed in no small measure to the interpretative twist given to the judge’s words when, before delivering judgment, he declared, “My hands are tied.” Even while considering his verdict deeply flawed, I still believe that his words were completely innocuous, being no more than the standard observation by any judge that, no matter his personal inclinations or public expectations, he was duty bound by the law. To the majority of government adversaries, however, the judge had admitted that he was carrying out orders!
With those trials, the Nigerian political atmosphere was drastically transformed. The hunt continued for the fugitives, including Tony Enahoro. Nearly all of them had taken refuge in Ghana, then enjoying the reputation of a radical nation under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah.
I remained one of the skeptics. I believed there was never any weighty matter to the treason attempt, and hold till today that Awolowo, in particular, was a victim of political intrigue, largely fomented by the NPC but with the full collaboration of elements from within the breakaway party, the NNDP. This, perhaps, was because I was aware that, in pursuit of its increasingly socialist objectives, the Action Group leadership had decided to send some cadres to be trained at the Winneba Ideological Institute in Ghana. A number of young African revolutionaries in the anticolonial struggle also attended the course; some of them returned home to take up armed struggle against colonial domination in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique. Additionally, however, clobbered by the strong-arm tactics employed by the governing parties as well as the extralegal deployment of the local constabularies under the control of the governing parties—thugs and local police were becoming indistinguishable—the Action Group engaged in some soul-searching and concluded that it had been negligent in its physical department. The party thereupon assigned a number of its youths to specialized training—self-defense and general toughening-up sessions—in a camp said to have been set up in northern Ghana. I had a good rapport with some of the inner circle of the Action Group and its allied opposition groups. In addition to Bola Ige, who was never arrested or charged, I had become quite close to Dr. Chike Obi, a wiry, eccentric mathematician who was reputed to have come close to uncovering the proof of the elusive Fermat’s theorem—nobody knew exactly what Fermat’s theorem was about or who Fermat was, but academic folklore had placed this theorem at the pinnacle of mathematical genius, and the media had enshrined the name in public consciousness. It was a surprise to me to learn that Chike Obi had launched a political party in the Eastern Region, the Dynamic Party, but no surprise that it was a radical-leaning party that preached revolution—and even dictatorship!— as the only recipe for the nation’s ills. The latter remained our main point of disagreement. It was typical of the mathematician to have driven one of the suspects—Tony Enahoro himself?—to safety across the border, for which he was arrested but later released. Between Bola Ige and Chike Obi, I obtained quite reliable information on the thinking within the party.
That some elements within the Winneba trainees may have been converted by the actual revolutionaries in waiting at that school and organized themselves into an insurgent unit bent on overthrowing a government that was considered reactionary, a stooge of the British government, and so on, was a distinct possibility and probably closer to the truth. That Obafemi Awolowo was involved in such an attempt was a charge that I found incompatible with the man’s nature—he was legalist-constitutionalist to a fault. Chike Obi was an astute reader of politics, quite close to Awolowo, and he was contemptuous of those charges. I visited him at Kirikiri prison a few times, taking, naively, a bottle of cognac to keep him company. The bottle was taken into charge by the prison officer, who promised that it would be kept among his other possessions until his release. That was my first intimation that such indulgences were not permitted on the prison menu.
Tony Enahoro became Nigeria’s “most wanted,” accused of being one of the masterminds of the plot—now, that, I felt, was likely to contain more than a grain of truth. In the anticolonial struggle, Enahoro’s record was one of direct, confrontational activism, while Awolowo was a convinced, indeed punctilious, legalist. Alerted in good time of his impending arrest, Enahoro fled to Ghana, then to the United Kingdom, convinced of his safety in a thriving democracy. At the request of the Nigerian government, he was arrested and detained in London. A determined attempt to extradite him back to Nigeria to stand trial with others turned into a cause célèbre. It wound its way through the British courts, the Houses of Parliament, and the Privy Council, then the final court of appeal. Whether Enahoro was guilty or not, I found it intolerable that all the progressives were being netted and incapacitated. In any case, there was the issue of equity: any means to recover what has been unfairly or illegally acquired cannot be unfair or illegal. Electoral robbery, rather than equitable contest, was already the rule in the nation.
Enahoro’s case now took center stage in the British Houses of Parliament— to sustain the time-honored claims of political asylum or to butter up the egos of democratic neophytes in apprentice nation-states? I became restless with the knowledge that I was fortuitously placed to lend a hand, thanks to relationships I had developed with one or two figures in the British establishment while undergoing my apprenticeship at the Royal Court Theatre in London. An interventionist tendency had begun to manifest itself in my temperament, though I was yet to become fully conscious of it. I scraped together what money I could find, borrowed the rest, bought a ticket, and flew to London to add my own quota to the lobby against his extradition, profiting from my friendship with Tom Driberg, an enfant terrible of the British Labour Party, and Lord Kenneth of the House of Lords, whom I had known in his plebeian days as Wayland Young.
To my astonishment, the battle was lost. The space of political sanctuary had always seemed a universal given; now it appeared that there had been huge gaps in my history education. Tony Enahoro was flown home to stand trial, like the others, on the charge of treasonable felony. He was found guilty and joined his leader, Awolowo, and other party leaders for a long sojourn in prison.
THE RULING PARTY and its allies could now afford to throw all democratic restraint to the wind, the opposition having been demonized and discredited. The government was now well placed to lay claim to the mantle of democratic defenders even as it engaged in undemocratic conduct. Alas, it had completely misread the mood of the West!
Long before the c
onvictions, the emergency had ended, the worthy doctor had retired to his clinic, but not without first restoring order—that is, overseeing the emergence of the breakaway party, the NNDP, as master of the West, with its leader, Ladoke Akintola, as premier. In the federal chamber, the NCNC, having served its purpose, found itself increasingly marginalized, fed only crumbs from the “national cake.” The honeymoon was over, and the NCNC filed its divorce papers, citing spousal abuse and public humiliation. It was promptly replaced by the bride in waiting, the NNDP.
The power of incumbency now decided electoral results. The Action Group, leaderless, lost direction. It would boycott elections, reverse itself, box itself into strategic corners, retreat, lick its wounds, reorganize, and await the next elections. From his prison cell, Obafemi Awolowo gradually acquired the image of a victim of political intrigue and injustice, a martyred visionary and leader, thanks to NNDP misgovernment and repressive measures. There was no ambiguity about it—the NNDP was unpopular. The West seethed with resentment.
The regional elections of 1965 approached. Virtually every woman and child, the aged and ailing, donned their battle gear in readiness for a desperate fight. For that contest, the Action Group teamed up with the former partner of the ruling party—the NCNC—to form a new coalition, the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). The alliance boosted the morale of both the Action Group and the Western electorate. Tacticians were exchanged. Badly needed resources flowed into the strangulated coffers of the Action Group. The region simmered as even the normally apolitical prepared for what they embraced as a revenge match, where scores would be settled definitively and the world would know just who enjoyed the people’s support. It would prove to be a contest between terror and resistance into which I would be drawn for my first taste of political blood.
MY LIFE OF SPONSORED and footloose research—and private theatrical activities—ended at the University of Ibadan in 1962. After a few months’ unemployment, I transferred to the University of Ife to earn an honest living as a lecturer in the English Department; Ife’s temporary campus was then still located in Ibadan, the seat of government of the Western Region. The NNDP government, which now ruled the West, was proprietor of the university—and this was where the problem began.
In preparation for an electoral blitzkrieg throughout the region for the 1965 fight, the NNDP designated the university a den of opposition that had to be either bought or crushed. Thus, one unexpected day, the deputy vice chancellor, standing in for his boss, summoned a special congregation. Its sole purpose, conducted with all pomp and due solemnity, was to announce a new university credo. The word was actually used in the address: The credo of the university is that it must support the government of the day! It was that crude, an inglorious performance whose shame, or thought of potential consequences, must have overwhelmed the messenger himself, since he did not even wait for the usual comments or debate but fled the hall—and the campus—immediately after. He did not return until a week later, after the government had virtually taken over the campus. He could hardly be blamed—the vice chancellor had himself earlier transferred to Lagos, leaving the unsavory work to his deputy.
Five or six resignations followed immediately, among them those of the taciturn—except in political matters—Professor Victor Oyenuga, a biologist and die-hard card-carrying member of the Action Group; Sam Aluko, an economist and another Action Group strategist; myself; and two or three expatriate lecturers, notably Robin Horton the anthropologist, who would move East and settle down with a Nigerian wife. We gave the university the required three months’ notice. Obedient to instructions from the Ministry of Education, however, the university responded by accepting the resignations—but with immediate effect. All resigning lecturers would be paid three months’ salary in lieu of notice, and we were ordered to vacate our university residences within forty-eight hours!
The arena of polemics outside campus had already degenerated into the physical. Even theater—especially political satire of our kind—had become fraught with such violence that the actors had to be trained in basic self-defense, my favorite innovation being an unorthodox use of fire extinguishers in enclosed spaces. We learned quickly to adjust, since those performances, to reach their audiences, required spaces where the actors could be exposed to instant reprisals. Now the ivory tower itself was about to be physically assailed by the crudity of political intolerance.
Sam Aluko was a smallish lecturer with slightly bulging eyes that blinked furiously above a permanently truculent posture while he launched his rapid-delivery tirades in a heavy accent that was easily recognizable as that of the Ondo people. An Action Group economic adviser, he was away in Lagos attending a political meeting when the strong arm of the NNDP government descended. To leave no doubt whatever in the minds of the anticredo group that the government’s intent was understood, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education filled his white Mercedes-Benz with thugs, invaded Sam Aluko’s house, terrorized his wife and children, flung their furniture and luggage all over and out of windows, and smashed a few household items. They left, warning that they would return after twenty-four hours. They tried also to find the residences of the other lecturers but failed—in any case, they were not eager to remain too long on campus, and two of us actually lived off campus.
We heard the news, mobilized what forces we could, and rushed to protect Aluko’s family. Legally, the resigning lecturers were entitled to remain in their residences until the end of the three-month notice, so we prepared to keep guard over Aluko’s home until the time had expired. Sam’s wife, Joyce, and the children were, however, much too traumatized; all they wanted to do was quit campus as fast as possible. I could hardly insist, since I lived off campus and my quarters were well secured. We had to content ourselves with guarding the premises until she and her family could leave in an orderly and dignified manner, then occupying the house for a week or so afterward in the hope that the permanent secretary’s goons would return, expecting to find a defenseless family.
The “refuseniks” had learned their lesson, however. What was a hastily improvised group of “vigilante” volunteers—actors, academics, the odd poet and writer, a few civil servants, a handful of fiercely politicized patrons, the Mbari Club, which badly “wanted to do something!”—was whittled down, streamlined into a close-knit group to develop tactics for confronting the incipient fascism. At the time, it did not even bother to give itself a name.
THE MOBILIZATION WAS TIMELY. It meant that we were not too ill prepared when the elections began and the people’s will was openly ridiculed by the incumbent government. Before all-out violence finally replaced all pretensions to legality, the opposition had circumvented the government-controlled public radio with its steady announcements of falsified results. The true results from both urban centers and far-flung villages, straight from the desks and trestles of the counting rooms, certified by the contending candidates and returning officers, were telephoned to the broadcasting studios of the Eastern Region, from which they were broadcast to the nation and to the outside world. A team of radio journalists from the alliance partner, the NCNC-controlled East, also arrived in the West to cover the elections. Led by a seasoned broadcaster, Mazi Ukonu, who was also a comic performer on radio, the team arrived with a transmitter that was installed—I discovered to my horror—in the home of the imprisoned leader of the Action Group, Awolowo!
It was too late for relocation; we could only monitor what knowledge or plans the government had for the transmitter and make contingency plans for its evacuation, if necessary. The field team from Enugu, pointed in the direction of key areas by our group and sometimes escorted for their safety, recorded and transmitted comments on the ongoing electoral charade and reported graphic incidents of violence. Hunted by NNDP police and “stalwarts” and denounced by the government as foreign infiltrators sent to rig the elections, they had intended their operation to last only two or three days, but we managed to persuade them to remain until the
very last result from the remotest hamlet had been recorded and broadcast. Ukonu and his team were “held prisoner” till their task was completed, but never were prisoners more willing and obliging, even though somewhat apprehensive for their safety.
On the penultimate night of the presence of the Eastern Region broadcasters, we were finally alerted that the location of the transmitter had been discovered by the police, who would raid Awolowo’s house the following day. The information came too late to dismantle and transfer the equipment, so we slept in strategic positions and quickly improvised a defense of the transmitter, awaiting the police assault. Some set up a diversionary ambush around a school across the road from Awolowo’s home. My favored couch was the carpeted floor beneath a massive oak desk of the imprisoned leader. The assault did take place, but only after the final broadcast by Ukonu’s team. When the police forces arrived for the planned dawn raid, Awolowo’s house had been emptied, and Ukonu and gang were well on their way back to safety. The band of volunteers had had their baptism of fire; they slipped out before dawn, returned to their homes with relief, and awaited the next developments. The region hung on edge. An election had been stolen—would the robbers insist on clinging to stolen goods?
THE ANSWER WAS PROVIDED in time-tested ways. More opposition leaders were arrested, their homes and businesses vandalized, and, in some cases, thugs were sent to rape their women, at times with the husband forcibly held down as witness. The people, at first on the retreat, began to respond in kind. The homes and offices of government loyalists were torched, agents killed— sometimes in broad daylight, openly, and in urban centers—and ambushes laid for the marauding police squads. A new expression entered the vocabulary of politics: Weti e!—literally, “Douse it” (with petrol, then set it on fire). The police had their tear-gas canisters, Mark IV rifles, pistols, and even the occasional submachine gun; the resisters had in the main just the locally fabricated Dane guns, some shotguns, machetes, and—improvisation. The recipe for a concoction invented by the farmers and used to deadly effect remains elusive still. When the police arrived for their raids in rural areas, the seats and backrests of their unguarded trucks were smeared or sprayed with this substance. Minutes after the raiders returned and regained their seats, the effect began— presumably by then the mystery unguent had percolated through their clothing, the process being accelerated, we learned, by the amount of sweat on their shirts. They would leap up and tear off their clothing, convulsed in pain. It was nothing I ever witnessed personally, and nobody seemed to have died from its effect, but it was narrated by the victims themselves, who described the effect as one of intense, sticky burning. An African prototype of napalm, perhaps? I called it the Medea effect.