As important as this story stands in the history of our nation’s struggle for democracy it is a shame that not many of our teenagers know much about it.
On 25th October 1993, four dissatisfied Nigerian teenagers hijacked a Nigerian Airways airbus A310 that was flying from Lagos to Abuja and diverted it to Niamey, Niger Republic.
They were dissatisfied by the annulment of 12th June elections by the military president, General Ibrahim Babangida. The young Nigerians – Richard Ogunderu, 19; Kabir Adenuga, 18; Benneth Oluwadaisi, 20; and Kenny Rasaq Lawal, 19. They were students of Federal University of Technology, Akure.
They all unassumingly boarded the flight at Murtala Muhammed International Airport alongside other passengers. About 16 minutes before landing, they waited until the pilot announced that passengers should fasten their seat belts and prepare for landing. Next thing the passengers heard was: “Ladies and gentlemen, this plane has been taken over by the Movement for the Advancement of Democracy. Remain calm, we will not harm you. You will be told where the plane will land you. You do not move or you die”.
The leader of the hijackers, Ogunderu, walked into the cockpit and seized the process, and then one other followed. Two remained to watch over the passengers. When he got to the cockpit, the pilot knew immediately this was an attack, so he had to obey instructions given to him.
Ogunderu then asked the pilot to divert the aircraft straight to Frankfurt, Germany. The pilot convinced him the plane did not carry sufficient fuel to crossover the Atlantic and then suggested they divert to a nearby country, Niger or they will crash and everybody dies.
The two hijackers told the pilot what they wanted was where they could give publicity to their reason for the hijack. They told him they wanted Germany, because they could have a good press coverage that would support their democratic cause for Nigeria. But that couldn’t happen because of the fuel shortage.
They agreed to land in Niamey, Niger Republic. Upon landing, the hijackers found themselves surrounded by hundreds of armed Nigeriène soldiers at the airport. They had earlier distributed their demands in a pamphlets among the passengers calling on the Nigerian government to overturn the annulment of the 12th June election. They gave the government 72 hours to meet their demands or else they would set the plane ablaze.
To show they were not ready to kill anyone so long government listen to them, they released 34 of the 193 passengers, among whom were top Nigerian government officials.
The leader of the hijackers spoke to a BBC correspondent. Asked what they were fighting for, he told the correspondent that they wanted to actualise the mandate given by the Nigerian people to Moshood Abiola.
Nigerian government sent 24 delegates to come and talk to the hijackers, but none of them entered the aircraft to talk to them, instead they were in the hotel, asking them to come down.
The Nigeriene soldiers did not storm the plane because the hijackers claimed to have rigged the plane with explosives. And so began negotiations, keeping the remaining passengers hostage. For three days, the hijackers and the passengers fed on coffee and biscuits.
At some point, they ran out of water for coffee, one passenger demanded for water. Under the guise of bringing them water and food, the Nigeriène soldiers eventually realised the hijackers were not armed, and under the cover of darkness, they stormed the plane.
The four teenagers were arrested, cuffed hands behind their backs and taken straight to a prison cell. The hijackers spoke neither Hausa nor French and nobody made any attempt to question them in English. They were denied food for days.
The hijackers were remanded in Niamey prison for nine years before they were released in 2001. The Nigerian government did not even brother requesting for them to be extradited. They wanted them away from the Nigerian soil, to prevent them becoming a symbol of resistance to Nigeria’s youths.
Take home: These teenagers representated the generation of Nigerian youths of 1993. Intelligent, bold, patriotic and courageous. They courageously believed they could save Nigeria from the tyrannical steel claws of the military Junta.
Even as teenagers, they placed their lives on the chopping plank to save Nigeria. They weren’t asking for what Nigeria could do for them, they thought of what they could do for Nigeria. They were only teenagers, yet they wore the chest of warriors.
