From Taiye Joseph
Accord Party presidential candidate, Dr Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has recounted his controversial confrontation with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at Lagos Airport in 1988, when he was a student activist at the University of Lagos.
An extract from his forthcoming autobiography, Sunrise At Midnight, recounts how Hashim and four fellow activists broke through a police cordon and advanced onto the airport tarmac during Thatcher’s visit to Nigeria, leading to their arrest.
The incident occurred on January 7, 1988, amid growing opposition to Thatcher’s position on economic sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government. Her visit triggered protests by Nigerian students, workers and anti-apartheid campaigners who believed Britain should exert stronger economic pressure to dismantle the racist system.
Thatcher opposed punitive economic measures, arguing that they could worsen the hardship of black South Africans and damage the economies of neighbouring African countries. In her address at an official dinner in Lagos that evening, she maintained that destroying South Africa’s economy would not provide the best route to ending apartheid.
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Nigerian activists, however, considered her position inadequate in the face of racial oppression and the denial of political rights to the black majority.
According to Hashim’s account, the protest began at the Nigeria Labour Congress secretariat on Olajuwon Street, Tejuosho, before demonstrators marched through Yaba and along Ikorodu Road towards Ikeja Airport.
The protesters carried placards and African National Congress flags produced by the Nigeria-ANC Friendship and Cultural Association. Hashim estimated the crowd at approximately 2,500, with the procession stretching across a substantial part of Lagos and causing traffic disruption.
Their destination was the airport’s Protocol Gate, where they hoped to make their opposition to Thatcher’s position impossible to ignore.
Authorities had anticipated the demonstration and deployed police officers along the route and around the airport. A mass rally at the airport had been prohibited, and security personnel cordoned off the perimeter ahead of the British Prime Minister’s arrival.
However, for Hashim and a small group of student activists, remaining behind the police line would have meant missing an opportunity to deliver their message directly to the visiting delegation.
When Thatcher’s aircraft landed at approximately 12:05 p.m., the confrontation entered its most dramatic phase.
Hashim’s account describes how five student activists decided to breach the security cordon and move onto the tarmac. Their aim was to bring their placards and anti-apartheid message as close as possible to the British Prime Minister and the Nigerian officials receiving her.
The activists broke through the police line and advanced towards the arriving delegation, led on the Nigerian side by Augustus Aikhomu, then Deputy Head of State and Chief of General Staff.
Their sudden appearance on the tarmac caused alarm among officials and security personnel.
According to Hashim’s recollection, Chief Press Secretary Duro Onabule, shouted, “See them!” An order followed: “Arrest them!” Within moments, the protest had turned into an arrest operation.
The five activists identified in the account were Odion Akhaine, Olaitan Oyerinde, Rotimi Ewebiyi, Chris Ayaeze and Hashim himself.
They were taken to the Lagos Airport Police Station and detained in a small cell.
Hashim has since recalled leading the student contingent that defied security restrictions during Thatcher’s visit.
Contemporary reporting also confirms that protesters challenged the British Prime Minister over her position on apartheid during her January 1988 visit, although not every detail of the activists’ encounter on the tarmac has been independently documented.
The confrontation did not end with the activists’ arrest. Inside the police station, the five young Nigerians faced the uncertainty and discomfort of detention.
For Hashim, the incident became part of a wider history of student activism, human rights advocacy and resistance to authoritarian rule in Nigeria.
The protest was more than a demonstration against a visiting foreign leader. It reflected the conviction among Nigerian anti-apartheid campaigners that the struggle against racial oppression in South Africa was a shared African responsibility and that international leaders should be held accountable for the policies they pursued.
The episode also illustrated the risks activists were prepared to take to challenge political authority and make their views heard, even when doing so brought them into direct conflict with security agencies.
In Sunrise At Midnight, Hashim revisits the incident as a defining episode in his early political life. His account offers a personal perspective on a period when Nigerian students and labour activists joined the international campaign against apartheid, confronting both foreign policy disagreements and domestic restrictions on protest.
Nearly four decades later, the story remains part of Hashim’s public record as an anti-apartheid activist. His recollection takes readers back to a tense day at Lagos Airport, when five young Nigerians crossed a police cordon to protest a British Prime Minister’s position on South Africa and paid for their decision with their freedom, at least temporarily.
