It was on this day 24 years ago that four Nigerian teenagers, irked by the illegal and unjust annulment of the June 12, 1993 general election by the Ibrahim Babangida administration, hijacked a Nigeria Airways aircraft flying from Lagos to Abuja and diverted it to Niamey, Niger Republic.

The incident took place on a Monday, October 25, 1993, at a time Ernest Shonekan, then Interim President, was struggling to hold a chaotic country together.

HOW IT HAPPENED

The young men — Richard Ogunderu, Kabir Adenuga, Benneth Oluwadaisi and Kenny Rasaq-Lawal — boarded the flight quite gently and waited till the pilot announced that passengers could unfasten their seat belts.

According to an account of the incident, as was later relayed by Ogunderu himself, the boys signaled to one another and seized the plane.

Passengers aboard the aircraft, including top businessmen and senior government officials, were bewildered to hear a voice, different from that of the pilot, addressing them in the moments that followed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this plane has been taken over by the Movement for the Advancement of Democracy,” the rather tiny voice said. “Remain calm, we will not harm you. You will be told where the plane will land you.”

Ogunderu recalled that “the air hostesses were almost stone-dead, gripped by fear. They must not move else they would ‘be dead.'”

A passenger who was in the toilet was said to have remained indoors until one of the hijackers came to pull him out.

“We wanted change. Our action confirmed that when a system is inhumane, it could produce the extreme in all of us,” Ogunderu said in an interview in 2009.

“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.”

Ogunderu was the leader of the pack and he narrated how he kick-started the hijack.

“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.”

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/flashback-how-four-teenagers-hijacked-a-nigeria-airways-plane-for-mko-abiola/

Pure men! Omoluabi

No be all the internet gangsters...

Action no be talk.

Before I read am at all

Where they charge with terrorism by the military junta like our democracy junta lead by BuBu is doing to #ENDSARS protesters

I remember those real men.......not all this children according to lesmond Idiot that are scared of joining others to protest for their right

Real men.

I hope those chest beaters will learn from them

Where are they now

this generation of chioma and davido no get that liver!!