When I decided to carry out this experiment, I imagined myself a time traveller going back to the past with answers to questions like when the military would finally hand power over to a democratic government or information on the best investments to make—put everything in Apple and Microsoft. I knew I would be encountering issues like corruption, government ineptitude, and tribalism, that continue to plague Nigeria in 2024; but I did not anticipate the extent of it.

My reason for choosing dates in 1996 was simple. That was the year I became an avid newspaper reader. We had moved to Warri from Lagos three years prior and my mother had set up a shop selling household items and toys along NNPC Housing Complex Road. The owner of the shop next to ours was an Igbo trader of building materials who bought papers—The Guardian and Vanguard—from Mondays to Saturdays. His youngest sons; with whom I had a temperamental relationship, would pass me the papers after their father was done reading them on the days we were at peace. They sometimes withheld them as revenge for some slight but for the most part, they sustained my interest in newspapers for six or so years. And I got pretty good at grovelling.

I was too broke as a university student to buy myself newspapers or pay at cybercafes to read them online. By the time I started making my own money after graduation, I could access most of the news on my phone. They didn’t always upload the good stuff back then, like the Agony Aunt columns and op-eds, so I bought the occasional Saturday or Sunday paper for those. Then it became too taxing to sift truth from propaganda, so I stopped reading newspapers, except when my work required me to.

The biggest challenge of writing this piece was the question of what to focus on. My first approach was to diarise but with the way it was going, I would have hit four thousand words in no time. There were so many stories that including them would have resulted in a mere recounting of events. So, I chose to highlight stories that jumped at me along my travels, offering new or curious information.

Kudirat Abiola’s Assassination

I found out that Kudirat Abiola had been assassinated from the hush-hush conversations of the adults as they discussed it in a knowing but “no be my mouth you go take hear” manner. Funny enough I cannot remember seeing the story in a newspaper. Maybe I blocked the memory out or maybe being only ten years old, I filed it where all the “scary” things I could not completely make sense of went.

Reading the story twenty-eight years later, splashed across the June 4, 1996 front page of P.M. News resurrected all the uncertainty and anxiety of the 1990s. People disappearing or being arrested was commonplace. “Going into exile” was a part of everyday parlance. And, even though you knew there was no reason for your family to be affected, General Sani Abacha had such an overwhelming presence that even children knew you did not say his name or criticise the government anyhow. Even as an adult, there exists a part of me that still shies away from directly and openly speaking on matters related to the Nigerian government.

The first story I read in which Kudirat Abiola was mentioned was the front page story on May 28 with the headline “Abiola’s Wife: Police Slam Fresh Criminal Charges”. According to the charge brought against Kudirat Abiola in court, she had conspired with Idowu Ajiserere, an activist, to “commit misdemeanour by publishing false information in an unnamed newspaper/magazine.” The duo was granted bail and the case adjourned until July 17, 1996. She would never make it to the next hearing as she was shot exactly a week after the court hearing at 7-UP Junction along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. She died at The Eko Hospital, Lagos despite concerted efforts to save her life.

Although the last newspaper in my two-week journey was from June 5, 1996, I took a peek at the newspapers for the following week and every headline was about Kudirat Abiola. I remember that off newspaper pages, she dominated the conversation as well. For three years her name had been on everyone’s lips as she went head to head with the Nigerian government trying to secure the release of her husband, Moshood Abiola, arrested after the then military head of state, Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election which Abiola had won. Her activism had kept some hope alive that maybe Abiola would be released and Nigerians would have the democratic president they voted for. Her death for many, at least for the adults around me at the time, felt like the death of that hope.

In 2001, at the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, also known as the Oputa Panel,  Barnabas Jabila aka Sergeant Rogers testified that he had assassinated Kudirat on orders from General Sani Abacha’s former Chief Security Officer, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha. Al-Mustapha was sentenced to death in 2012 but his conviction was overturned in 2013 for a lack of sufficient evidence. Al-Mustapha was the presidential candidate of the Action Alliance in the 2023 general election. Rogers allegedly returned to the army and was attached to the State Security Service (SSS) Headquarters in Abuja until an accident left him paralysed in 2009. To date, no one has been conclusively held accountable for Kudirat Abiola’s murder.

Nnamdi Azikiwe Centre

I was surprised at first to see an Nnamdi Azikiwe Centre, in Niger State, on the front page of a newspaper published 28 years ago. As far as I knew, the centre had only been commissioned in 2022 by the former governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi. A little digging showed that while the centre in Enugu is the former residence of Nigeria’s first president, which has been converted into a national monument, the centre in the newspaper was first conceived in 1991 by prominent Nigerians to honour Zik at his birthplace, Zungeru in Niger. It became news again after Zik’s death in May 1996. I would not be surprised if it has come up in the news annually on the anniversary of Zik’s passing.

As a country, we struggle with a culture of leaving projects unfinished, a pattern that affects everything from monumental buildings to critical infrastructure. We do like a party though, and so the projects are announced with fanfare—extensively sensationalised ribbon-cutting and foundation-laying ceremonies that cost a pretty penny, but many either stall midway or are abandoned entirely. To date, The Nnamdi Azikiwe Centre in Zungeru remains uncompleted.

NURTW vs RTEAN

I have known of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) since Social Studies classes in primary school, where we were made to cram a bunch of acronyms and initialisms. I only became aware of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) after a violent clash between the two unions in Mile 2 Lagos in 2021 led to the death of three people. NURTW and RTEAN are rivals, competing for legal control of thousands of motor parks all over Nigeria from as far back as 1987.

An interview with the then secretary of the Lagos State NURTW, Dr John Olaoye, in the May 23, 1996 newspaper was instructional in providing some background to the continued rivalry between the two unions, both established in the same year with overlapping roles—transportation management, revenue collection, union representation, mediation, and government collaboration. The structure and mandate of both organisations within the same sector make competition for dominance, including through violent conflicts, virtually inevitable.

However, the major issue of contention is revenue control. A 2021 report by The International Centre for Investigative Reporting shows that in Lagos state alone, agberos controlled by NURTW and RTEAN collect upwards of N123 billion annually in transport taxes from commercial buses, tricycles, and motorcycles. None of this money makes it into the government coffers.

It might be stating the obvious to say that the NURTW vs RTEAN struggle reflects a deeper systemic failure. This rivalry is not just about two unions clashing; it has consequences for everyday people—drivers and passengers—caught in a cycle of conflict and corruption that sees them parting with more and more money to satisfy both sides.

Mother Angelica

My brain’s first read of this name was “Mother Evangelista” and, for a quick second, I wondered why a Pose character was named after a Catholic nun. The headline “Mission to Save Catholics” also stumped me because as far as I know, the Catholic Church in Nigeria in 1996 was experiencing significant growth, with an increasing number of parishes, schools, and health institutions. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) was vocal in addressing issues related to governance, human rights, and social justice.

It turned out that the story was about Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) expanding to Britain. I have to assume the newspaper needed to fill a page last minute and took the story from a British paper (I searched but could not find the source) as it felt like the only plausible explanation for why this story was published and took up an entire page in an eight-page newspaper.

Heavenly Body Sent Back to Heaven

There is this story that a driver once ran over an egungun with his car and killed it. The case was taken to a law court and the accused pleaded not guilty. His lawyer told the court his client had killed a celestial being and not a human being. The accused maintained on cross-examination, "I have not killed a man but a heavenly being." The court discharged and acquitted the accused for want of evidence. The court also contended that the veil on its face might have blurred its vision. This writer did not witness the case but that is how it was handed down to him. Somebody described the incident as a case of a heavenly body sent back to heaven.

I took this excerpt from a story titled "Egungun Is Not For Thuggery". My interest stemmed from how what is likely an urban legend (I could not find concrete reference to it anywhere) was used in an otherwise serious piece to make the point about the spirit nature of the egungun.

I also wondered if this story had in any way inspired Obesere's "Egungun be careful, na express you dey go." This, in turn, led me to a video summary of an academic paper published in the Journal of the Institute of Cultural Studies Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife—“Egungun be Careful: Reconciling Yoruba Culture and Contemporary Nigerian Law on the Status, Powers and Immunity of the Masquerade” which addresses the question of whether the indulgences, immunity and related exceptions availed the masquerade under indigenous systems are still operative under contemporary Nigerian legal system.

More importantly, though, this story made me consider how folklore and urban legend are accepted in mainstream media and reflect a culture that encourages flexible interpretations of reality. In recent years, newspapers, especially online, have increasingly turned to social media for news sourcing, often embracing sensational stories that blur the lines between fact and fiction. Some of these stories circulate widely when proper interrogation would likely reveal that they are unfounded. Yet newspapers run them anyway because such stories resonate with readers.

This leads to a question about the balance of media outlets’ responsibilities of curating content as well as staying commercially viable. In a world where sensationalism often trumps accuracy, discerning the truth becomes a complex task for the audience. I guess the warning to egungun to be careful also applies to consumers of media as well.

Where Does This Leave Us?

I have been with the Archivi.ng storytelling team for a few months and one of our concerns during content meetings is that a lot of what we share just seems to highlight how bad things were or how bad they have become. I began this journey as a curious and enthusiastic time traveller determined to find and focus on good news. But after reading one hundred and twelve newspaper pages over two weeks, and knowing I could return to the present with the close of a screen, I still felt trapped. Femi Falana is still fighting the same battles from more than thirty years ago. Demolitions are still being carried out in the most inhumane ways possible. Allocation of resources is still heavily politicised and the same people who were active figures of previous despotic governments are still revered and involved in the running of today’s government.

I realised that wherever I went in time between 1996 and today, Nigeria was in the same familiarly nervewracking, despondent place. The truth is that it cannot be helped. We are coming from a flawed history that not only keeps repeating but escalating at every turn. I stopped actively reading and watching the news six years ago because of how depressing it all is. But perhaps there is power in reading and having access to these stories—if nothing else, they serve as a mirror, forcing us to confront our reality and, hopefully, inspiring us to break the cycle.

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