I met Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim today, and the encounter pulled me back into the deep corridors of memory, to the early days of my political awakening at the University of Lagos.
When we arrived at UNILAG as freshers, I was already gravitating toward the ideological side of student unionism. At Henry Carr Hall, I encountered an underground satellite comrade, Damian A Ugwu. He was quiet, almost taciturn, but he had a rare instinct for identifying and recruiting radical student activists. He did not speak much, but he observed everything.
One day, Damian A Ugwu showed up in my room, Room 109 at Henry Carr Hall. The room was directly beneath the building’s sewage effluent, an unglamorous space that nevertheless became a site of political incubation. He told me he had heard that a freshman, a “JAMBite” was determined to fight to the end.
He was impressed. Without ceremony, he took me to meet Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, who was then the Public Relations Officer of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).
Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim had already been arrested and detained for his role in the 1989 anti-SAP riots. After a brief meeting, he instructed that I be immersed in ideological training sessions held at Rasky Ojikutu’s underground room at Henry Carr Hall. There, we were introduced to the Thomas Sankara Movement (TSM). Those meetings altered the course of my political life. Not long after, I was made the Welfare Secretary of Henry Carr Hall.
One of my first acts in that role was to install a ceiling fan in Gbenga’s room. I did not know at the time that he had already graduated, but had been censured by the university for supporting Sylvester Odion Akhaine and Juliet Southey Cole, now known as Affiong Effiong. The repression did not stop there. Not long after, we too were expelled in 1992 (UNILAG 47)for insisting that Babangida must go.
Today, Gbenga told me something I had not known. After our encounters and shared struggles, the University of Lagos seized his BSc certificate in Mass Communication for five years. He later had a brief stint in the human rights movement, CDHR, before veering into business. He was, he said, shocked to realise that we had truly been partners in crime against injustice.
As we relived those experiences, the pattern became painfully clear. Nigeria has consistently punished the just and rewarded the unjust. His certificate was seized for five years. Mine was withheld for many years. When I eventually completed my National Youth Service, my discharge certificate was confiscated and remains so to this day. My international passport was seized again last January.
Wicked people continue to have their way in Nigeria, while those who dare to resist oppression are made to pay repeatedly. Yet, despite everything, the memories of those early struggles remain a reminder that conscience, once awakened, cannot be silenced.
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