by Wole Soyinka
Always with a succession of tightened jaws, grimaces, silent imprecations, moments of deflation, elation, imprisoned laughter—well, one could always chuckle afterward, but at the time... hardly a laughing matter.
The Germans were a mixed bag. The junior minister of home affairs, who had the attitude of an undertaker deprived of a corpse, had been unbearably curt. My visit was not even so much on behalf of our own struggle as in solidarity with our German chapter; NALICON had begun to sprout chapters in several countries. The chapter had joined forces with a group of Nigerians who had fled—or claimed to have fled—Abacha’s persecution and had entered Germany illegally. They had sought sanctuary in a church, backed by its servants of God and their followers, but the earthly ministry was determined to evict and deport them. Our reception by this thin-faced undertaker hovered between diplomatic incivility and downright rudeness, the ultimate and unpardonable expression of which was—according to our German-domiciled Nigerian liaison—his failure to offer us coffee and biscuits! Knowing nothing of these protocols, I was still left with his vocal nuance and body language—and were they eloquent!
I responded by signaling an end to the meeting. I summoned my best Humphrey Bogart lopsided smile, got up with my “entourage” from our now clearly confrontational side of the table—the setting appeared to be always: government on one side, delegation on the other, (missing) line of coffee/tea/ sparkling water and biscuits in the middle—and announced that there appeared to be no point in continuing with the session. My relief was unbounded on discovering that our Nigerian facilitator was even less of a diplomat than I; the missing coffee and biscuits, he insisted, demanded a stronger response, a total diplomatic rupture, maybe a challenge to a duel at dawn, sabers drawn on the banks of the Rhine.
Germany did make up for the boorish undertaker, however. The first opposition radio, Radio Freedom, enabled by the dissident general Alani Akinrinade, had been set up in early 1996 and was functioning inside Nigeria. Its range was limited, but it nettled the regime sufficiently for it to secure the expertise of the German Dornier company in the effort to track down the source of transmission. I flew to Germany. The foreign minister himself, Klaus Kinkel, was more than generous and affable when I again invaded the Rhineland—protocol of coffee/tea/biscuits being anything but lacking. Kinkel, whose grasp of profound issues was rather disparaged, we learned, by his compatriots, displayed an appreciable sense of humor when I reassured him that I had not come to deprive the German company of legitimate business. However, forget that biblical promise “Seek, and ye shall find,” I urged. This is a time to seek, but not to find. Take Abacha’s money and contribute a small percentage to our movement. The minister chuckled loud and long; he guaranteed the former but declared that it was beyond his ministerial powers to make a business enterprise part with hard-earned money. Still, through Kinkel’s influence—or at least with a nod in that direction, I am persuaded—two of Germany’s foremost foundations made contributions toward some of our logistical requirements, in addition to their own efforts at assisting some of our younger, imperiled writers.
Contradictions in the actions of some foreign governments remained baffling. An especially annoying instance was the plight of Cornelius Adebayo, a former governor of Kwara state in northwestern Nigeria. Having barely eluded a hit squad from Abacha, he headed for Ivory Coast, where he applied to enter Canada. But he found himself stuck for more than a year while both exile groups made strenuous representations, putting pressure on the Canadian government to allow him in, assuring its officials of Adebayo’s bona fides. For an otherwise supportive government, this was a game of impenetrable ambiguity and cruelty that left a fugitive stranded in a place that was meant to be a temporary stop. It was incomprehensible, since the same Canadian government had shown itself so uncompromisingly hostile to the Abacha regime that it had been forced to close its embassy in Nigeria!
In many ways, the diplomatic field remained part of the battlefront, and once an eruption of that battle took place in a rather odd way. Long after the event, echoes of a day of—what else could have been responsible?—paranormal attack would assail my ears, a day when turbines of a hydroelectric power churned uncontrollably, pursued me from meeting to meeting with commissions of the European Parliament, vindicating my instinctive designation of water as an unruly tenant of the human intestines, especially its aerated version and when taken on an empty stomach! Never had a delegation’s leader felt so mortified as a swallowed concertina or Scottish bagpipes insisted on participating in serious exchanges. All stomachs do rumble occasionally, but this was a marathon! In vain did I contract my stomach muscles, change seating positions, cough energetically, punch the offending guts surreptitiously under the table—all that provoked was a subversive will of its own, while my interlocutors did their best to pretend that a seismic event was not taking place right there, across the table. And it was not one of those one-off days when the work is done at one meeting, two, or three, all humanely spaced out. No, it had to be the day of the serial killer rounds, when one was ferried from room to room, from building to building, with little recovery time in between. Nothing, not even a quick lunch, could silence that windbag until after the last of the day’s engagements. I was left to wonder if Abacha’s long arm had finally caught up with me, since we knew that he engaged a round-the-clock squad of marabouts both to guarantee his survival and to pursue his enemies across the waters. No other explanation was possible, since the purpose was to undermine the talks—and this was evidently a stomach in demonic possession!
Even before the return of Abiola to the country, to be followed by his arrest, the United States had been a primary target of the opposition’s diplomacy push. Less than a year into my exile and soon after the birth of NALICON, I requested the U.S. government to assist in dismantling the Korean-trained killer squad set up by Sani Abacha and placed under the command of the notorious Major Hamza al-Mustapha. Our contacts in Abuja—code-named “Longa Throat”—had supplied details of their secret location, a nondescript hotel in a crummy section of Abuja, their methods of operation, and a draft list of their targets. An overseas section was also being assembled; hence the resolve of the regime to establish consulates in Atlanta, where I was teaching, and also Houston, which had also been identified as a den of Nigerian dissidents. I passed the details on to Susan Rice, then at the Africa desk of the State Department, requesting assistance in dismantling or at least destabilizing the killers’ operations. Not long after, the squad struck down Alfred Rewane, a close associate and backer of Abiola, right in his bedroom, shot him through a pillow placed over his head. They had gained entry into the protected home by using a fake delivery van that claimed to have come from Rewane’s own factory. Kudirat, the combative wife of that ill-fated tycoon politician Abiola, had been another prominent victim, shot in a busy Lagos street. A number of other assassinations and disappearances have since been traced to this sinister force, including the failed attempt on the life of the proprietor of The Guardian newspapers, Alex Ibru. He survived but lost an eye and some fingers and remained badly traumatized for years.
Susan Rice, together with a fortyish, serious-faced colleague, Marc DeShaezer, had been part of a triumvirate with whom NALICON maintained direct contact in the White House. Occasionally, Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security adviser, would wander into his subordinate’s office as well, as if by accident. A rather thoughtful, intellectual-looking type, Lake would listen intently to the discussion for some moments. Later, we met privately in his office. Rice and DeShaezer leaned significantly to the anti-Abacha cause, while the third, whose name my mind stubbornly refuses to retain, was insecure, pugnacious, and a miserable listener. I distrusted him on instinct, even before we had a sharp exchange. With no attempt to disguise his resentment, he groused that everyone expected the United States to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. I reminded him that most of the world’s raging infernos had leaped from U.S. and European campfires. As the U.S. policy app
eared to begin to shift toward accommodation of our enemy, I fantasized my invisible self slipping into his stuffy little office to catch him working on sneaky memos that advised against us, slipping them in the dead of night under the office door of his boss without the knowledge of his colleagues.
Rice exhibited a quiet intelligence and a deceptive guilelessness that could easily throw one off guard. Once, when we met her in her office after a spate of bombings began at home, she looked me in the eye and asked, without any preliminaries, if I were behind the campaign. The directness was unexpected, but I returned the look and told her no. The subject of violence having been broached, however, I asked her in turn—emphasizing that it was a purely hypothetical question—what the position of her government would be if the opposition found that it had no choice but to take up armed struggle. Not to plant bombs all over the place, but suppose we asked the government to open up some abandoned facilities in the United States for the training of volunteers— such mothballed facilities were scattered all over the American landscape— what would be the likely response? She appeared to mull that over for some moments, but in fact, the answer was already obvious on her face—after the Iran- contra affair, the United States was not overanxious to support any acts of insurgency, real or hypothetical. I imagined not, I replied, and there the matter ended.
It was, most ironically, South Africa that handed us our bitterest defeat. Civil society—the labor union, writers’ groups, Chamber of Commerce, the individual institution known as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other public leaders—remained staunch, but the attitude of the government slid from lukewarm to the level, in one instance at least, of sabotage. This took place during efforts to weld all outside-based opposition groups into one. Toward that end, a congress was organized in Johannesburg in 1996, on the invitation of civil society. Kayode Fayemi and Olaokun Soyinka, my son, shuttled between London and South Africa, consulting with civic leaders, government officials, and representatives of the ruling party, the ANC. The go-ahead was given by the South African government. Passports were gathered and sent in a bunch to embassies in London and Washington for visas.
At the beginning, all went smoothly. Then, with no explanation other than that “instructions had been received,” the London embassy not only stopped issuing further visas but became passionately attached to the passports when we moved to retrieve them. The timing was nearly fatal. Delegates had taken leaves of absence, wound up their affairs, and geared themselves up for the journey. Some had purchased their own cut-price tickets, nonrefundable. We could not change the dates. I turned to Norway for help, specifically to Jan Egeland, the secretary for foreign affairs, with whom I was already acquainted. The spontaneous response of the Norwegian government easily counted as one of the very high moments of our embattled existence. Visas were issued in record time, a number of flight tickets donated to the effort. Our friends in South Africa would not accept a shift of venue, however, refusing to accept a surrender of their democratic rights to the political whims of their government. It was a matter of principle, they said, and insisted that the conference be held as planned.
South African visas being already in the possession of half the delegates, there was only one solution: we ended up holding the conference simultaneously at two venues. I presided over the South African group in Johannesburg on the first day, while a colleague, Professor Ropo Sekoni, held the fort in Oslo. I then flew overnight to Norway and chaired the final session. A two-way flow of faxes and telephone lines united the two groups, making it possible to make joint decisions. When it was all over, I was left wondering whether it had all been a merely imagined event or one that had actually taken place. The minutes, resolutions, plan of action, and lists of participants, fortunately, testified that it had. Over and above mere records, however, was the testimony of the human body in silent protest—on the flight back to the United States, I remained without recollection of time passing, without any awareness of the plane taking off or landing.
I HAD HARDLY recovered from that exercise when, thanks to a meeting with the South African poet Breyten Breytenbach, a former prisoner of apartheid, we found an opening through which we could advance the newly unified organization from the beginnings made at the Johannesburg/Oslo meetings. The George Soros–sponsored Goree Institute in Dakar, of which Breyten was a board member, agreed to facilitate the second meeting of the umbrella group, now going by the name of the United Democratic Front of Nigeria (UDFN). That gathering took place over strong diplomatic representations by the Abacha regime. The Senegalese government replied that it did not make a habit of intervening in “cultural” meetings, which, to the best of its knowledge, this was meant to be, since it was sponsored by the Goree Institute.
It was a moment to be savored, the solidarity of the Senegalese government with the democratic cause and the coming together of twenty-seven organizations spread all over the globe, from Australia to Canada. Alas, the affliction I sought to escape in NADECO traveled with the luggage of a handful—a mere quartet, American-based—of the delegates. It served to increase my bewilderment at the craving for position and power in human disposition, one that seems especially absurd when an intervention in the fate of millions is initiated from the position of a weak challenger. It proved to be a near death at nativity; a movement that had been formed to liberate a nation from the very bane of power found itself enmeshed in a tawdry tussle for position.
I had declined any formal position within the new body. This, however, signaled a contest for what the ambitious quartet read as an opportunity for self-promotion into a vacuum and the complete takeover of the organization. The plot had been hatched well in advance. It began from the moment that the liaison officer for Boston discerned, with absolute certainty, that I would not run for office and would remain content with my functions as an informal ambassador to the movement. The irony of such jostling was totally lost on the conspirators. One was a self-hating Igbira, a minority tribe from the Nigerian hinterland, whose yearning to be mistaken for a Fulani aristocratic scion had resulted in his changing his name from Daniyan to Dan’Iyan. Partnering him was an ambitious youth from Swarthmore College, Jude Uzowanne. The third member was a labor unionist from Edo in southern Nigeria, Tunde Okorodudu, an activist in his own right who fell under the spell of the fourth member and center of intrigue, the liaison officer for the U.S. Boston chapter, Maureen Idehen, a pharmacist who had worked closely with me and was central to the coordination of activities for much of the United States. Together, this Gang of Four—the accolade was spontaneously bestowed—succeeded in serving a timely lesson on the power lust even among a yet inchoate formation that sought to curb power at its most virulent and malignant.
It was a low point in the career of the anti-Abacha movement, suddenly compelled to confront the banal distractions of trite intrigues and personal ambitions. Expelling the miscreants took its toll. The liaison officer, the Boston-based Maureen Idehen, made off with our scant funds, leaving behind a trail of bad checks. I should have been warned by the extralong talons, garishly decorated, that she affected in place of fingernails, but this highly efficient intriguer was the daughter of an old schoolfriend and classmate. His visits to his daughter in Boston had even served as an updating source for much of what was happening on the ground at home, and his support of the cause was quite vocal. As it turned out, he had also immersed himself in position grabbing on behalf of his daughter, even to the extent of poring through the minutes of the Dakar meeting and placing transatlantic calls to argue with my son—elected secretary-general of the UDFN—to assert the position of his daughter in the movement. To say that the entire episode constituted a personal embarrassment would be understating an experience of intense chagrin. I had the unpleasant duty of reminding the doting father that he was not a member of the movement and would he kindly keep sons and daughters outside an already draining undertaking.
Ironically, it was the “vengeance” of one of the subversives that raised the profile of
the opposition in the mind of the Abacha regime, far above its own ambitions or capabilities. A “confession” appeared in a Northern-based newspaper run by the brother of the inspector general of police, Alhaji Ibrahim Commassie, contributed by Jude Uzowanne. In it the writer claimed that he had been involved in the recruitment and training of a secret army, that he was in fact chief of staff of this force under my military command. In the meantime, naturally, he had had second thoughts, was now opposed to violence, had voluntarily quit the organization for this reason, and was doing his patriotic duty by revealing these terrorist plans.
Of all the fabrications put out by Abacha’s men about our activities, this was by no means the wildest. In any case, armed struggle, even from the start, was a subject that was openly introduced into discussions. This young man’s claims, self-ingratiating concoctions though they were, did have one decidedly negative effect. They had, after all, emerged from one whose earlier membership could not be denied, albeit that he was now expelled and had turned into a born-again pacifist. He had come into the UDFN through an affiliating group and been assigned the role of mobilizing the youth wing of the movement. If young Uzowanne’s claim had been true, it would have been his second conversion within a year. Revelations came tumbling in, confirming earlier rumors of his instability. He was confronted with a position paper he had sent to Sani Abacha, outlining how the dictator could turn himself into the Pinochet of Nigeria. His intellectual prowess, of which he had no modest estimation, was humbly offered to Abacha for the historic transformation. A small, ambitious Walter Mitty character, emotionally unstable, Uzowanne would indeed have been a most unusual choice for a military assignment, additionally being shortsighted, virtually blind, behind his inch-thick lenses and of such physical insubstantiality that the slightest wind from the heat of New York streets threatened to blow him right off the sidewalk and on to summary execution by the traffic.