Frank Kokori, frontline labour leader, activist and politician dies at 80

The death on 7th December of Comrade Frank Ovie Kokori on his 80th birthday marked the exit of a labour leader and politician who was courage personified. A towering figure who never shied away from a fight in defence of social justice and the rights of oil workers, Kokori was a true leader as attested to by all who knew him. “Frank Kokori was a thoroughbred democrat and activist. He fought for democracy at a great personal cost. He surrendered his liberty to fight for truth and justice. He was the finest among reformers and champions of civil rights in Nigeria”, President Bola Tinubu said in his tribute. “He was a brother in the June 12 struggle. He was uncompromising, unbending, and irrepressible. He was an exemplary comrade.”

A native of Ovu, near Warri in Delta State, Kokori will be remembered for leading oil workers in a paralysing strike to fight for the revalidation of the 1993 presidential election, which was won by Bashorun Moshood Abiola. The military government of President Ibrahim Babangida annulled the election while the military regime of General Sani Abacha incarcerated Abiola for refusing to renounce his mandate. While many were hobnobbing with the military, Kokori challenged the Abacha junta which in 1994 arrested and put him in detention without trial. He only secured his freedom in 1998, following the sudden death of Abacha. Because of his struggle for democracy, Kokori suffered personal tragedies. His wife, Esther, who was in the thick of the national and international mobilisation for his freedom, suffered a stroke and never recovered till she died. Kokori himself came out of jail emaciated and had to battle ill-health until he died.

A rugged negotiator and a well-educated trade unionist, Kokori organised the National Union of Petroleum and Gas Workers (NUPENG), a formidable affiliate of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). Often distinguished from the labour crowd by his elitist mien, Kokori earned the respect of government and private employers alike. As NUPENG’s general secretary-general, he won a lot of benefits for workers using the instrumentality of collective bargaining. Incidentally, Kokori’s origin in the labour movement was the right-wing United Labour Congress, one of the rival labour centres before the restructuring of trade unions in 1978. He once said proudly that the flamboyant trade unionist and later businessman, Alhaji Babs Animashaun, was his role model. So, in a way he was an unlikely candidate for the role history beckoned on him to play in the June 12 crisis.

However, Kokori was immensely trusted by the oil workers who he served honestly and diligently. For instance, when the union got factionalised in 1987, the Kokori majority faction tested its popularity by calling an industrially crippling strike to resolve the intra-union dispute. The military government had to promulgate a decree to resolve the problem. Meanwhile, Kokori’s foray into politics started in 1988 under the Babangida transition to civil rule programme when he was nominated as a representative of the NLC to the Constituent Assembly headed by Justice Anthony Aniagolu. Kokori was also a member of the Patriotic Front, one of the political parties which the military government dissolved to pave way for the creation of the ‘little to the Left’ Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the ‘little to the Right” National Republican Convention (NRC). Kokori later emerged the financial secretary in the SDP national executive committee.

While we commiserate with the family he left behind, they can take solace in the fact that Kokori’s place in history is secure. He was a dynamo in the struggle for democracy and social justice in Nigeria. May his soul rest in peace.

Update news