I just posted the English translations of Agbessi’s recent posts. These are honest accounts of the brutal reality of life under the boots of the Eyadema regime. I focused on leaving Agbessi’s voice intact in the translations.
Don’t miss his perspective of the torching of the Goethe Institute in Lomé (in French).
Jürgen
Eyadema was always interested in presenting himself as the master of reconciliation. So at one point he wanted to honor us with a visit on campus, which, in fact is just outside his private residence in Lomé 2. While I was visiting my uncle, who lives in the outskirts of Lomé (on the Lomé – Kpalimé road), Eyadema himself came to visit his student neighbors on the university campus in Lomé. The following is the story as my comrades told it to me. As odd as it may seem, the students appeared in great numbers to see Gnassingbé Eyadema arrive, surrounded by his eager ministers.
Initially the Minister of the Interior at the time, the fierce Szing Walla, spoke, reporting that his sources (I seriously doubt they knew anything) had told him that the students had purchased gasoline, crowbars, lighters and other material for vandalizing the university and the city of Lomé. As his intentions to paint the students as vandals became clear, (when in fact all they wanted was some improvements to the conditions on campus) a student from the back of the audience yelled “Liar!” At this point all the others started to grumble, and then the entire crowd of students started booing at him. Thinking that the students would listen to him, the Premier Minister at the time, Messan AgbeYome Kodzo (who theses days is rotting in a slammer (prison) in Kara) took the microphone to calm down the students. It did not help. All the students wanted to hear at that point was a promise that they would receive their scholarship money soon. Then Eyadema himself took the microphone and promised to pay just a small portion of the scholarships and in a timeframe that was not acceptable to the students. So he started talking about the Viet Nam war, where he fought for the French. He never forgot to talk about the war in Viet Nam (actually he was in Laos an Cambodia, as well, I think). He always talked about that, and so the students had heard it all before. Someone in the crowd yelled “So what?” and the students started booing him as well. That made Eyadema so furious that he left the university campus like a rocket, trailed by his yes-men ministers.
The fruit of Gnassingbé Eyadema’s fury was a tuition hike for the university campus in Lomé from 5,500 CFA to 50,000 CFA [a nice dinner in Lomé cost 500 CFA at the time - ed] and other retaliatory harassment for the students later. So much for the democracy in Togo! God bless Togo!
[Translated by Jürgen - Original post]
At one time we met in front of the dining hall for a student body meeting and we were waiting for Lamboni, our new president of the CEUB, whose life had been threatened by the soldiers. When he arrived with his collaborators, the meeting started. At that moment I noticed suspicious movements to the right of the dining hall and people started running away. It was the government militia. (They were not students, just some criminals recruited from the Adewui neighborhood.) They used this militia to disperse our group, which was perceived as a student mob. We took our legs in our hands and ran. Suddenly someone yelled:”We have to counter attack! We can’t let them get away with it this time!” So we turned around and began to chase the militia. We vastly outnumbered the militia, and I was at the tail-end of the mass of people that chased the militia. They fled toward the wall at the southern end of campus. After a short chase across some Manioc fields on campus, I arrived behind a crowd of fellow students. They were yelling that they had one of them. I arrived with a rock in my right hand, but when I saw the state of this big guy on the ground, I could not throw a rock at him. So I just let that rock drop on the ground, as this “militiaman,” as the comrades called him had already been seriously wounded by several rocks. From the comrades I heard that another student comrade had caught him as he returned to campus and saw the wave of fleeing militiamen. Just as this guy had climbed up the wall to join his “fellow militiamen”(he was probably the strongest of them) , the student pulled his foot and dragged him back down, just as the wave of students arrived in hot pursuit.
I hurried to leave campus, as I knew that any moment soldiers would arrive, and we would face retaliation for what was like an act of revenge of the students for the continuous harassment the students had to suffer on campus.
Later, I found out that the “militiaman” had lost his life after the students had left. The state television, which is a true propaganda instrument of the government, to our surprise reported that “students killed a passer-by on campus.” Ridicule does not kill.
[Translated by Jürgen - Original post]
This is just another episode of my experiences on the university campus in Lomé. In 2001 we were exasperated by the continuous problems on campus. In addition, there were occasional strikes of the teachers, demanding the payment of salaries. At that point the Togolese authorities were also meddling with the election of delegates of the faculty and of the members of our student organization CEUB. When the very popular president of the CEUB Alphonse Hellu Lawson graduated and left, most students were eager to replace him with Lamboni, who was in his fourth year of studying law. We admired Lamboni for his courage and determination. But we had not anticipated the tricky schemes of the Togolese regime. One of the faculty delegates by the name of Abente, who allegedly had received government money, tried everything to get elected as CEUB president, despite our objections. To enable him to take over the presidency of the CEUB, the government gave him a militia, armed with machetes and clubs. At first, he succeeded at corrupting several faculty delegates, who met and elected him as president of the CEUB in violation of the rules of our organization. But Lawson Hellu, who was still president, wanted to proceed with a vote at a student body meeting, which were usually held on the grounds in front of the dining hall.
The organizers had received word that there might be trouble, so they moved the meeting to a different location, near the social sciences building. When we got there, Lawson wanted to proceed with the vote. Suddenly we heard whistles everywhere, and when I turned around I saw that Abente’s supporters had infiltrated our meeting. They all had brand-new whistles, which they used to produce a noisy racket, in order to prevent the vote. Lawson recognized the difficult situation and quickly turned around and yelled:”Lamboni is president of the CEUB – do you agree?” we all yelled:”AAAAye!!!!” Then he yelled “Agboka is his vice president – do you agree?” We yelled:”AAAAyyyye!!!!” At that moment some other of Abente’s men had climbed onto the walkway, where Lawson was, and tried to stab him. His collaborators defended him and he was able to get away. After that, we fled toward North campus, while Abente’s supporters were pelting us with rocks. Then some of our comrades yelled:”Why are we running away. They only have rocks. Let’s get them back!” So we turned around and started throwing rocks back, using our book bags as shields. As we began to gain ground on them, we cheered. We managed to push our adversaries back toward the area of the central campus, when suddenly army jeeps with heavily armed soldiers appeared from behind the buildings and behind Abente’s supporters. I turned around and fled. I could barely run, I was so tired from throwing rocks, and my right arm hurt from throwing.
I had run with the last energy left in me, because I knew what awaited me if those soldiers arrested me while chasing some of the regulars on the Lomé campus.
Lucky for me, the soldiers went to a different direction from where I had fled, otherwise, I bet they would have caught me. “Thanks God. I was lucky on that one.” So I was able to get home quickly, since subsequently, the soldiers followed some comrades into the campus building next door where they wanted to hide. That’s what Togo is like under the boots of the soldier rabble!!!!!
[Translated by Jürgen - original post.]
From 1999 to 2001, I had my first experience as a student at the university campus in Lomé. Most of the students on campus had come from the interior of the country and so their parents were mostly farmers, which meant they had to take care of themselves while in Lomé. The government stipends most of us received helped us buy books and survive in Lomé. But it was a constant struggle to get these payments. The Student Council of the Université du Benin (CEUB) was led successively by the very popular Alphonse Hellu Lawson and then by Lamboni and we felt we were the core of an organization that represented our struggle as students. This struggle was not just about the stipends, but also about an improvement in the political situation, since it all came down to politics in the end. Holding our meetings was a constant struggle with the security forces, who were all over the campus to prevent even the smallest gatherings of any kind. The announcements of the Student Council (CEUB), often in the form of posted notices, always ended with the words: ” UNITED FOR THE SAME CAUSE – THE STRUGLE CONTINUES.”
I remember March 1, 2001 very well. We had held a protest march from the university campus on Boulevard Eyadema to the Tokoin High School, where the office of the Dean of the university was. When we were told that the Dean was not present, we decided to have a sit-in at the Peace Column [monument], until we could see the Vice-Dean, who refused to talk to us. Our sit-in at the Peace Column had lasted for more than an hour, watched by heavily armed security forces on the other side. The soldiers clearly were not ready to cooperate, and eventually they started to march and to trample all over us, and to throw tear gas to spread panic. Some people were beaten really badly. For my part, I had to clamber up the huge wall of the Tokin High School and jump down the other side, so I could get away. After this, we realized that many of our comrades had been surrounded and some injured. Some student’s motorcycles had been stolen and many had been beaten.
If you’ve survived the beatings of the soldiers and put up with the spite of a dictatorship that began before you were born, and with which you had to put up with for more than 26 years of our life, you view what is currently going on in Togo with revulsion.
(translated by Jürgen – original post)