By Okey Ndiribe
The late elder statesman and Adolor of Uromi Chief Anthony Enahoro was the arrow-head of the agitation against military rule.

He frontally confronted the military junta of   former military President Gen. Ibrahim Babangida when the military leader  reneged on his pledge to hand over power to a democratically elected civilian government on two occasion between 1985 and 1992.

The junta had overthrown the regime of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari on August 27 1985 and pledged to Nigerians that it would initiate a transition to civil rule programme that would produce a democratic government by 1990. In 1990, IBB as the military ruler   was then widely called elongated his transition programme by another two years.

At the end of IBB”s first elongation of his transition programme in 1992,  he unilaterally announced the elongation of the programme for another one year. It was then clear that the military President could no longer be trusted to hand over power to a civilian government.   There was suppressed discontent throughout the country.

It was Chief Enahoro who took the bull by the horn sometime in 1992 when he called on Gen. Ibrahim Babangida to quit power in a world press conference he addressed at the Nigeria Union of Journalists Light House Press Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos. Enahoro’s call was re-echoed by several other human rights groups in the country.

These included the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) and the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR).  After Gen. Babangida’s long-winding transition programme crashed with the annulment of the June 12 1993 presidential election, which was widely believed to have been won by the late Bashorun MKO Abiola, Chief Enahoro was the first person in the country to immediately summon a meeting of all progressive groups and individuals at his GRA home in Benin City. His house located at 10 Aideyan Street, was a beehive of activities within the period as activists, labour and  student leaders from all parts of the country always visited him for one meeting or activity.

These meetings and others that were held in Lagos eventually  crystallised into the formation of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) in 1994. He emerged as the  effective operational head of the group but officially its  Vice- Chairman;  the late Chief Adekunle Ajasin was Chairman. As the name implied NADECO was a coalition of many groups from different parts of the country.

Some of the major affiliates of the coalition were Movement for National Reformation (MNR) led by Enahoro; Campaign for Democracy (CD) led by the late Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti; Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) led by Dr Kuti and later Barrister  Femi Falana; the Yoruba socio-polical group, Afenifere; and remnants of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to which the late Abiola had belonged.

Within a short while after its emergence, NADECO handed out a two-week  ultimatum to the regime of  Gen. Sani Abacha to quit power or face mass protests. Immediately the ultimatum was issued, the junta sent its goons after NADECO leaders who had to go underground. But when the manhunt for Enahoro and other leaders of the group became intense, he had to go into exile. Others who also went into exile were Senator Bola Tinubu, Prof. Wole Soyinka and several others.

But this did not stop the junta from assassinating one of the prominent leaders of the group Chief Alfred Rewane. Other Nigerians who were based abroad that joined the group at the time were Kayode Fayemi and Prof. Julius Ihonvbere. It was the exiled  NADECO members who mobilised the  international community against the Abacha junta. NADECO abroad, as the exiled activists were then called, established the Radio Kudirat which  became a thorn in the flesh of the Abacha junta; it was based broad and was widely used to disseminate information concerning the atrocities of the military junta.

The International Community responded to the activities of NADECO  and imposed many sanctions on the military regime. Indeed, the  junta was reduced to a pariah status in the comity of nations.
After Abacha died in 1998, Enahoro and other exiled NADECO men returned to the country.

However, the transition to civil  programme which was initiated by the regime of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar which  assumed power after Abacha’s death caused a split within the ranks of NADECO as a section of the group endorsed it while another section insisted that a Sovereign National Conference must be held first before election could be conducted.

The split was between the Afenifere group led by Chief Olu Falae which endorsed the transition programme and the Enahoro group which refused to participate in it.  The June 12 crisis which emanated from the annulment of the 1993 election- so far considered to be Nigeria’s best- lingered for about five years.