Flash Back: The Four Nigerian Plane Hijackers
On the 25th
of October, 1993, there was a fantastic drama high up in the skies of
Nigeria. 30,000 feet above sea level, a commotion was in play. Four
young Nigerian men (one of whom was a teenager) hijacked an aircraft
belonging to the Nigerian Airways with a toy gun,
four litres of petrol and knives. The nation was spellbound and the
entire world shifted its focus on the West African behemoth in a matter
of minutes. The New York Times ran away with the news spreading the buzz
of the four men while the Nigerian press went
gaga.
Rumour
mongers had a field day spinning all sorts of tales. Coming at a time
when there was
a lot of political tension and social chaos in the land, many Nigerians
were simply stunned while others stayed glued to their black-and-white
TV sets, staring in disbelief. In no time, the hijackers had taken
control of the aircraft, contacted the control
tower, made confidently grand demands, held every single passenger on
board hostage and threatened to set the aircraft on fire. This was no
Childs Play! But what actually happened on that Monday and what led to
it? Let’s go there…terror in the Nigerian skies,
the scintillating story of the four hijackers.
THE AIRCRAFT
It was a big bird -an Airbus A310-200, a twin-engined widebody jet airliner
THE FLIGHT AND PASSENGERS
The
exact number of the passengers varies slightly. But according to the
New York Times, there
were 159 passengers on board. Some other records indicated there were
between 135-137 passengers inside the plane. The plane’s flight was
supposed to be from Lagos to Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, a
distance of about 509 kilometres. Inside the plane
were top Nigerian government functionaries and businessmen off to Abuja
for very important deals.
THE HIJACKERS
-RICHARD ‘Richie’ AJIBOLA OGUNDERU
Richard Ogunderu, the leader of the hijack gang.
Ogunderu was the one in charge of the coordination of the hijack and was responsible for delegating
to each of the hijackers, their duties and the steps to be taken during the hijack.
In
an interview with the Nation newspaper, Ogunderu revealed the intent
behind their action
and narrated their experience. He stated that the boys were
‘meaningfully desperate’ and they were truly frustrated by the annulment
of the June 12 elections. He said that it seemed the nation was
drifting towards the cliff of another civil war and he and his
group had to do something to ‘send jitters down the spine of those in
power.’ to show that ‘Nigerians were not everlasting dummies’. Hear
Ogunderu:
‘We
wanted
change. Our action confirmed that when a system is inhuman, it could
produce the extreme in all of us. A system that cares not, a system that
does not listen to our cries and our woes, a system that wants to
exterminate us does not deserve a day of existence’.
He also stated that he was not afraid when the commandoes stormed the
aircraft: We were on a mission, we wanted to show the evil regime that
young people were prepared to go the extra length to free Nigerians from
the yoke of military dictatorship. We were
not afraid, at that moment, death meant nothing to us. They stormed the
place and we were alarmed, we didn’t shoot, we tried to perfect our
safety and the safety of the passenger.’ He said: ‘We wanted freedom,
freedom to choose our leaders. We were pushed to
the extreme and we reacted in an extreme manner.’
Richard
who as at that time just finished high school from Ondo State ,was the
one who got up
first as the plane climbed and he approached the cockpit where he gave
orders to the pilot and the co-pilot. His father was arrested and
detained by Abacha after the hijack and interrogated. Interestingly,
Ogunderu was the youngest then, he was just 19.
-KABIR ADENUGA
The
second of the hijackers, Adenuga said they carried out the hijack ‘to
show
the resentment against annulment of the June 12 election.’ He is still
sad that today, the system has not changed. Were their actions in vain?
He was 22 years old.
-BENNETH OLUWADAISI OSOSANYA
He was 24 years of age at that time.
-KENNY RASAQ-LAWAL
He was 23 at that time.
For the four hijackers, they were obviously inexperienced with the dangerous art
of hijacking and for some of them, that was the first time they would fly in a plane.
THE HIJACK
Just
as the Aircraft was up in the sky, settling for the cruise phase, the
pilot
announced that passengers could unlatch their seatbelts. At that moment,
the four young men gave signals to each other by blinking and in a
flash, they took over the craft. They were armed with guns and knives.
Ogunderu led the hijack team and he recalled:
: ‘I walked into the cockpit and seized the process, and then the others
followed me. Two of us stood in the plane to intimidate the passengers.
We took over the plane and asked the pilot to head for another
country.’
From the microphone, the leader of the strike team thundered:
‘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.’
According
to Ogunderu, one of the four hijackers, the air hostesses were visibly
frozen with fear and the terror in the faces was clearly palpable. They
were threatened and told not to move if they do not want to be killed.
One of the passengers who was inside the aircraft lavatory decided to
stay locked inside until Ogunderu went inside
and pulled him out of the toilet !
While inside the plane, the hijackers had their prepared statements distributed
to the wearied passengers.
LANDING IN NIGER REPUBLIC AND DEMANDS
Before
landing in Niger, the aircraft made attempts to land in Ndjamena, the
capital of Chad,
and then head for Germany but were unsuccessful. Upon being diverted to
Diori Hamani International Airport, Niamey, Niger Republic where they
arrived in less than two hours later for refueling. As they were landing
in Niamey, Nigerien commandoes armed to the
teeth were already on ground waiting for them and they could see them
from the aircraft windows.
It
is amazing to know that some of those released were the Vice President
of China, Rong Yiren.
Then the hijackers dropped the bombshell: they would burn down the
aircraft within 72 hours should the Nigerian authorities refuse to
accede to their demands.
But what were their demand(s)?
-That
the Interim National Government (which they termed ‘illegal’) of Chief
Ernest Shonekan
should be dissolved with the abrogation of the Decree 61 that formed it
and Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola be declared the President
of Nigeria. They called for the ‘the trial of all those who collaborated
with the military regime‘ and the dissolution
of the present government.”
-They also demanded that press freedom in Nigeria be guaranteed and that General Ibrahim Babangida
be prosecuted on corruption charges.
-That ‘looters’ of the economy which “included 3,000 government officials who stashed away $33
billion in Swiss accounts” be fished out and all prosecuted.
In
Niger Republic, the hostages then demanded that they be given enough
fuel with which the
aircraft be flown to Frankfurt, Germany. But why Germany? No one knows…!
After their release, Ogunderu later revealed that they intended to also
achieve the following goals with their action:
-The probe of the September 26, 1992 mysterious crash of the Nigerian Air Force C-130 Hercules
transport plane in Ejigbo, Lagos where an entire batch of some of Nigeria’s most intelligent military officers perished.
-Full probe into the death of Dele Giwa, Nigeria’s foremost journalist who was blown to smithereens
in October 1986 in Nigeria’s first parcel bomb attack.
You know the most interesting thing? The questions remain unanswered even decades after the
events.
HOSTAGES
Kept inside the aircraft to witness all the horror as it played out were six officials of the
Nigerian government and the six terrified crew members.
After
days of negotiation, the gunmen freed all the passengers -except 39 who
were kept as hostages
after two hours of negotiating with government officials. The government
of Niger Republic had to take it slow and steady as they were not too
sure of how well-armed the hijackers were, whether they had explosives
on board and the rest. They baited the hijackers
promising them freedom if they do not harm any of the passengers but at
the same time, secret meetings were being held by Niger’s security
chiefs on how to storm the aircraft and even kill the hijackers if need
be.
STORMING THE AIRCRAFT
On the 27th
of October, the National Assembly called an emergency meeting and on the 28th,
the Nigerian government gave orders
for the aircraft to be stormed. In the dead of the night, Nigerien
commandoes, assuming the hijackers would be asleep stormed the Nigerian
Airways aircraft. It was not funny. They bombarded the plane, fired at
the hijackers and successfully captured the four
of them, their arms were flung to their backs, shiny handcuffs were
produced and they would start their long journey into captivity. But it
would not come cheap. In the ensuing fracas, one person died (the
co-pilot was killed during the operation), a member
of the crew, five other passengers and one of the hijackers were all
injured. At the end of the operation, all the four hijackers were
captured. Later on, the hijackers would say that they were not afraid
when forces stormed the aircraft.
ABOUT MAD
MAD
was formed in 1992 and the hijackers refused to name their sponsors (if
any) or reveal the
exact details of the hijack or their modus operandi. But they all
claimed to have been motivated by the events of June 12. MAD was led by
Mallam Jerry Yusuf from Offa, Kwara State. He was 42 at that time but
today, he seems to have disappeared from the radar.
Before the hijack in 1993, MAD was already organizing protests against
the brutal regime of Nigeria’s military president, General Ibrahim
Badamasi Babangida. They organized seminars and conferences at the
National Theater, Iganmu, Lagos where they lashed out
against the IBB regime. After the hijack, Mallam Yusuf, the leader of
MAD said that they did so to ‘terrorize the few people who have
terrorized us politically and economically, to recover the money stolen
from us.’ Yusuf was born in Offa, Kwara State in 1952
and lived in Germany between 1973 and 1977, during which he was believed
to have learnt German. He studied fundamental Islam and was also a
businessman dealing in the sale of cocoa. After the hijack, he was
picked up on the streets of Ilorin by secret operatives
on his trail and handed over secretly to the Nigerien authorities even
without any extradition request. Then, he was clamped into jail and
throughout 1995, he was in Kollo with the four hijackers, his followers.
Yusuf once stated that he had the ‘antidote to
coups’. He embarked on hunger strike to protest his ‘arbitary detention’
in Niger. Now, that’s some mad stuff!
LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS
Although
the hijackers were acting to restore MKO’s mandate, Abiola condemned
the action. Abiola
described their action as being barbaric, he said: We should do nothing
that will be interpreted as a resort to the law of the jungle. I appeal
to them (the hijackers) to end the hijacking.” Trust the United States ,
they banned all flights between Nigeria
and the US.
PREVIOUS HIJACKS AND RELATED INCIDENTS IN NIGERIA
This was not the first hijack or a dramatic event involving an aircraft in my dear nation or
a Nigerian citizen. The following events will stoke the fire of interest in you:
-The first time was on the 23rd
of April1967 shortly before the Nigerian Civil War broke out. It was a
Nigerian Airways Fokker Friendship F-27 (marked 5N-AAV) plane heading to
Lagos, it was hijacked from Benin and diverted to Enugu by Sam Inyang
and Onuorah Nwaya, both of the ‘Special Task
Force’, a militant group that later metamorphosed into the Directorate
of Military Intelligence for the defunct Republic of Biafra. The
hijacked plane was later equipped as a makeshift bomber and used by the
Biafran Air Force.
On the 15th
of June, another aircraft, a DC-3 (9G-AAD) of Ghana Airways was also
hijacked by Biafran forces in Port Harcourt, also added to the Biafran
Air Force.
-Another
incidence was a time when Nigerian soldiers of northern extraction
hijacked a British
VC10 plane which was supposed to fly to London. The soldiers desperately
wanted the North to break away from Nigeria . The event was in the
1960s but the exact date could not be established. Also in 1985, the
Egypt Air Flight 648 (Boeing 737-266) was hijacked
in flight by Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), classified as a terrorist
organization. Egyptian troops stormed the plane but 60 people were
killed in the process, making it one of the deadliest in history. The
only surviving hijacker and team leader (with the other
two killed) was Omar Mohammed Ali Rezaq, a Palestinian who later managed
to sneak into Lagos, Nigeria where he was arrested in July 1993. The
FBI applied for an extraordinary rendition and he was extra judicially
transferred and flown to the United States.
He is still in prison -a life sentence was slammed on him.
-On the 17th
of January, 1996, a presidential jet ferrying the son of the late
maximum ruler, Ibrahim Abacha crashed at the Mallam Aminu Kano
International Airport, just minutes before landing. He perished
alongside Funmi, his Yoruba girlfriend, Aliko Dangote’s younger
brother and eight other friends. They were coming from Lagos. Although
some fingers were pointed at the late Head of State, the United Front
for the Liberation of Nigeria (UFLN, formed in 1996 and classified as a
terrorist group, now believed to be inactive)
claimed responsibility for blowing up the aircraft.
-On the 17th
of October 1996, four officers of the EKO Cobra (Einsatzkommando Cobra),
Austria’s
counterterrorism special operations tactical unit were on board an
Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 which was escorting deported prisoners back to
Lagos, Nigeria. Suddenly, a Nigerian man rushed to the cockpit and
threatened the crew with a knife, demanding that the
plane be diverted to Germany or South Africa. Unfortunately for him, the
four EKO Cobra members noticed the commotion inside the cockpit,
pounced on him, overpowered him with pepper spray and handed him over to
Nigerian authorities after landing. That incident
meant that EKO Cobra is the only counter-terrorism unit to have ended a
hijacking while the plane was still in the air.
-Also, on the 13th
of October, 2000, Flight 689 taking off from the Brussels-Zaventem
Airport in Belgium to the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Airport (now Port
Bouet) in Abidjan was hijacked by a Nigerian citizen who was due to be
deported from Belgium. The aircraft, an Airbus A330-200
had 146 other passengers and 11 crew members. When he was released from
his restraints, he rushed to the cockpit and the plane was forced to
land at Malaga Airport where Spanish police forces stormed the aircraft
and overpowered him.
AFTERMATH
After the four hijackers were arrested, they were taken to the Kollo-Zarma Prison, 30 kilometres
south of Niamey. In a desert nation like Niger, daytime temperature was unbearable as searing heat could reach 55oC.
Ogunderu
recalled their nasty experience: ‘We were poorly fed. We could neither
speak Hausa nor French and nobody spoke English to us.’ Mahamane
Ousmane, then the President of Niger had to go on TV to announce to his
flabbergasted citizens that the situation
was under control. Then Abacha took over and just three days after he
came to office, the hunt started for the leader of MAD, Mallam Jerry
Yusuff, the mastermind of the whole hijacking operation. Secret security
agencies and outfits across Nigeria were tipped.
Not long after, he was abducted on the streets of Ilorin and whisked
away. He was told that he would be bundled to Abuja for interrogation,
only for him to open his eyes and meet himself in Niamey ! His abduction
was a clandestine operation planned and executed
by the governments of Nigeria and Niger. In Niger Republic, the
President slipped while meeting with Association Nigerienne Por La
Defense Des Droits Dehomme, a human rights group that had visited the
Nigerien President on behalf of the hijackers and mistakenly
revealed that Yusuff was already detained in Niamey, thus causing a
major legal tussle in the arid West African nation. Some argued that
Yusuff committed no crime in Niger and should be held in the territory.
As the legal fireworks continued, Yusuff and his
cohorts languished in jail.
While
in prison, they had to contend with hunger atimes, heat, death threats,
total lack of
communication with their relatives and a culture that is totally alien
to theirs. For nine long years and four months. But you know the
interesting part? They never gave up.
In
May 2000, a suit was filed by Festus Keyamo before a Lagos Federal High
Court, asking for
an order of mandamus (judicial remedy) which would compel the
Attorney-General of the Federation and the Foreign Affairs Minister to
call for the extradition of Mallam Jerry Yusuf and others held in
Nigerien prison. After their release and finally landing in
Nigeria, just a handful of family relatives and friends were on hand at
the airport to receive them. No high-sounding celebrations. No trumpets
were blown. No bugle was sounded. Many did not even notice their return
despite the fact that they had wasted away
in a desert jail for almost 10 years…
….
Adenuga on his own part, sharpened his artistic skills of drawing while
in prison while Rasaq-Lawal,
a talented fashion designer kept on practicing. For Adenuga and
Rasaq-Lawal, they had to return to Niamey since they could not find a
job in Nigeria but Rasaq-Lawal later came back home. In Niamey, they
found some jobs with some fair income, at least something
to hold body and soul together.
As
for Richard, he still remains hopeful and undaunted. He even attended
Alliance Francaise
where he perfected his French and even bagged a diploma. But he still
hopes that one day, he will get a decent job, and wait for this: his
dreams of becoming Nigeria’s President remains intact even if he has
accepted that he cannot be a pilot again. Of late,
he has been as a social worker with the Pro-National Conference
Organizations (PRONACO). But there are times when he ironically misses
the country where he was jailed. Richard said: “I’m already missing
Niger Republic. During our stay, there was no light-out,
water ran for 24 hours. We had a good diet while in prison. We also
studied French while in jail”.
During an anniversary to celebrate the founding of MAD, the hijackers apologised to all Nigerians.
Ogunderu, leader of the hijackers said before an international press conference in Lagos: Our
intention
was not to harm anybody and that they were not terrorist neither were
they sponsored by any foreign body, but were energetic young men, full
of ideas and burning with the desire to save millions of Nigerians from
the trauma that the annulment of June
12 election had foist, a decision to decisively intervene with the view
to bringing the crisis to an end.” During
the event, he also blasted the Nigerian airport security
officials who did not detect a thing while they all boarded like
innocent passengers with all their weapons. He stated that they never
made any material demands from the passengers. They were released from
prison in Niamey on the 2nd
of January, 2002.
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