He understood the consequences, but he was too patriotic to chicken out. Chief Frank Kokori was the General Secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers of Nigeria (NUPENG) during the Sani Abacha era.
After the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election and Abacha’s taking over, Kokori joined the masses who wanted the military out of government. There was the strategy of using the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), then led by Pascal Bayfau, to embark on strike, but the NLC betrayed.
Taking advantage of the trust that NUPENG members had in Kokori, he mobilised the union and other related bodies and they paralysed the country’s economy. The strike lasted from July to September 1994.
“Though I was a leader in the Nigeria Labour Congress then, the NLC betrayed us. So I had to use my industrial union, NUPENG, which trusted me, and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria… We had to mobilise because we controlled the whole system…So, we shut down the country,” Kokori said in his book
A report puts it this way: “This was the first time NUPENG would be realising the awesome power in its hands to singlehandedly paralyse the country’s economy. Kokori weaponised this by instigating workers to embark on a strike that caused total paralysis that grounded Nigeria’s economy. Thus, on 5 July 1994, NUPENG and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN) struck, throwing Nigeria into the longest strike in its history, as protest against the annulled presidential election raged in Nigeria.
“A number of other events followed. On 8 July 1994, an orgy of riots broke out in the Southwestern states, especially Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, and Ogun, as well as Edo State, and on 3 August 1994, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), in solidarity with the oil workers’ strike, also called for a general strike. This led to the crackdown by Abacha, who sacked the Executive Councils of NUPENG, PENGASSAN and NLC, shut down three newspapers, The Punch, Concord group and The Guardian.”
Abacha was said to have baited Kokori with a mouth-watering appointment and cash, but he rejected the offers and went into hiding. He was, however, betrayed by someone close to him and on 18 August 1994, he was arrested. He was in detention till 1998 when Abacha suddenly died.
When he was finally released, he was emaciated and in poor health. His wife, Esther, who was in the thick of the national and international mobilisation for the freedom of her husband, suffered a stroke and never recovered till she died years after the husband had regained freedom.
Kokori was abandoned by subsequent governments after democracy was installed. He died in Warri, Nigeria, on his 80th birthday on 7 December 2023, from kidney-related diseases.
