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This DAY IN History, Ahmadu Bello Way, Jos (2025)

12/05/2025

25th October

ON THIS DAY IN 1993, FOUR NIGERIAN TEENAGERS HIJACKED A PLANE WITH 193 PASSENGERS INCLUDING THE THEN VICE PRESIDENT OF CHINA ON BOARD AND GAVE THE GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA A 72-HOUR ULTIMATUM TO RESTORE MKO ABIOLA AS PRESIDENT OF THE COUNTRY OR THEY KILL ALL PASSENGERS ONBOARD

On this day in 1993, four Nigerian teenagers, between the ages of 16 and 19, frustrated and absolutely dissatisfied with the annulment of the June 12 1993 Presidential election by the Military Head of State, Gen Ibrahim Babangida, decided to take the laws into their hands by hijacking a passenger Airbus belonging to the national carrier, The Nigerian Airways in protest.

The Airbus was carrying 193 passengers on board including the then incumbent Vice-President of China Rong Yiren, other foreign nationals, and top Nigerian government officials who were travelling from Lagos to Abuja mostly for official functions.

The teenagers, who were all based in Lagos were led by 19-year-old Richard Ogunderu.

Others are Kabir Adenuga, Benneth Oluwadaisi and Kenny Rasaq-Lawal.

They boarded the flight initially planned to fly from Lagos to Abuja and used a toy pistol that looked like a real one to force the pilot to divert the aircraft to Frankfurt, Germany.

However, the plane needed to stop over for refueling in Niamey, Niger Republic.

When the flight landed at the Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, the hijackers announced that the flight had been taken over by a group known as the "Movement for the Advancement of Democracy in Nigeria".

The hijackers demanded that the Nigerian military-backed interim government of Chief Ernest Shonekan must resign and name Moshood Abiola as the President.

The four hijackers said they would set the Airbus 310 on fire in 72 hours unless Nigerian authorities agreed to their demands, which at first included the resignation of the military-backed government.

The leader of the hijackers, Ogunderu spoke to a BBC correspondent who was also on the plane.

The correspondent asked what they were fighting for, and he told him, they wanted to actualize the mandate given by the Nigerian people to M.K.O Abiola.

After 2 hours of negotiations, they freed 129 people, including Vice-President Rong Yiren, from the plane and held back the crew and Nigerian government officials.

Not knowing how sophisticated the hijackers were in skill and explosives, the police could not initially attack the plane.

Nigerian government sent 24 delegates to come and talk to the hijackers, but none of them entered the aircraft to talk to them, instead they were in the hotel, asking them to come down.

The Nigeriene soldiers did not storm the plane because the hijackers claimed to have rigged the plane with explosives, and so began negotiations, keeping the remaining passengers' hostage.

For three days, the hijackers and the passengers fed on coffee & biscuits.

At some point, they ran out of water for coffee, one passenger demanded for water and under the guise of bringing them water and food, the Nigeriène soldiers eventually realised the hijackers were not armed, and under the cover of darkness, they stormed the plane.

So, eventually, and after 4 days of stalemate in negotiation, the gendarmes invaded the plane and arrested the hijackers.

A crew member was killed in the process.

Following serious and concerted lobbying by the parents of the teenagers who believed if the boys were handed over to the Nigerian authorities they would be killed, they were remanded in a Niamey prison without trial for 9 years but were released in 2001 following the return of democracy in Nigeria.

The prior Nigerian military government didn’t even bother requesting for them to be extradited.

The military government were satisfied with their being kept away in Niger as they wanted the boys away from Nigerian soil, to prevent them from becoming a symbol of resistance to Nigerian youths.

The teenagers placed their lives on the chopping plank to save Nigeria as they believed at the time.

They were only teenagers, yet they wore the chest of warriors.

In 2019, a multiple award-winning Nigerian filmmaker, Charles Okpaleke, who is the CEO of Play Network Studios announced his initiative to create a film based on this true-life story of the hijack and everything surrounding it.

As seen on his social media, Okpaleke announced, ‘I’ve just approved the final draft of this exciting thriller, and my team and I are set to commence principal photography’.

His comments were met with responses filled with excitement and encouragement from friends, acquaintances and well-wishers, far and wide, locally and internationally.

The film “The Hijack 93” according to him, is an unequalled creative mission by two of the most prolific film production companies in Nigeria, Play Network Studios and Native Media TV, in collaboration with UK-based filmmaker, Femi Oyeniran.

The co-production, largely supported by the UK Government Department of International Trade (DIT), which has been actively seeking and facilitating UK-Nigeria co-productions in the film & TV space, and the British Film Institute, BFI, aims to tell this legendary African story through the prism of motion pictures.

The co-collaborators find this project most expedient for encouragement because they acknowledge that what happens to us is our story, and the stories we tell become our history. The story of the African person must be told and defined by Africans.

The film was eventually produced and became a blockbuster on Netfix.

The 1993 Nigerian teenage hijackers, Richard Ogunderu, Kabir Adenuga, Benneth Oluwadaisi and Kenny Rasaq Lawal are all still alive.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

12/05/2025

11th May

ON THIS DAY IN 1988, THE STEPFATHER OF FUTURE RAP ARTISTE, TUPAC AMARU SHAKUR, MUTULU SHAKUR WAS CONVICTED FOR HIS INVOLVEMENT IN THE 1981 ROBBERY OF AN ARMORED VAN WHICH RESULTED IN THE DEATH OF A GUARD, TWO POLICE OFFICERS AND LEAVING A THIRD PERSON FATALLY WOUNDED

He was one of six Black Liberation Army members to carry out the robbery.

They stole $1.6 million in cash from the Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York.

Joseph Trombino was the fatally wounded guard but eventually survived.

Two Nyack police officers, Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, who was at the time the first black member of the Nyack, New York Police department were the slain Officers.

Trombino who recovered well from his wounds was later killed in the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Shakur, who was the alleged ringleader of the group, evaded capture for six years and thus was the last one to go on trial on charges related to the robbery.

In the 1980s, Shakur and Marilyn Buck were indicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) charges.

While at large, on July 23, 1982, he became the 380th person added by the FBI to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

He was arrested on February 12, 1986, in California by the FBI.

Shakur and Buck were tried in 1987 and convicted on May 11, 1988.

Although federal parole was abolished pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Shakur's convictions were exempt because the Act's provisions didn't take effect until 1987.

Thus, under the rules in effect at the time of his conviction, he was due for a mandatory parole determination after serving thirty of his original sixty-year sentence, which came in 2016.

However, the United States Parole Commission denied his release in 2016 and 2018.

In 2022 Mutulu Shakur was eventually released from Prison following his parole hearing on health grounds as he was suffering from cancer.

The Black liberation activist died of cancer seven months after his release in July of 2023.

He was 72 years old.
Mutulu Shakur died on Friday, 6th July 2023 surrounded by family members in Los Angeles.

Jomo Muhammad, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement that advocated for Shakur’s freedom broke the news of his death to NBC.

The death came six months after Shakur was released on parole from a 60-year prison sentence, during which he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that can affect the bones and kidneys.
For years, advocates, organizers and supporters urged the U.S. Parole Commission to free Shakur so he could spend his final days with his family.

Muhammad said that while Shakur’s supporters are overcome with grief over his death, they are glad he was able to die outside of prison.
Shakur was released from federal prison on Dec. 16 2022 after more than 35 years behind bars on racketeering, armed robbery and murder charges.

His supporters ramped up efforts to free him in recent years as he endured several health issues.

Shakur experienced drastic weight loss as a result of his illnesses and treatments, contracted Covid twice, and relied on IV feeding tubes on and off in the months leading up to his release, his attorney, Brad Thomson, previously said.

Thomson said doctors with the Federal Bureau of Prisons gave Shakur less than six months to live in May 2022, noting that his cancer treatment had stopped working.

Authorities denied requests to release Shakur several times over the years, insisting that his crimes were too serious and his health had not deteriorated enough to warrant his release.

However, in the Parole Commission’s October decision to finally grant the release, officials told Shakur, “We now find your medical condition renders you so infirm of mind and body that you are no longer physically capable of committing any Federal, State, or local crime.”

Things began to look up for Shakur after he was released and reunited with his six living children and three grandchildren. “I think being free does a lot for the spirit,” his son Mopreme Shakur told NBC News in January of 2023. “He gained like nine pounds in the first 10 days he was home.”

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

12/05/2025

11th May

ON THIS DAY IN 1981, ONE OF WORLD'S MOST LYRICALLY GIFTED ENTERTAINERS OF ALL TIMES, ROBERT NESTA MARLEY DIED OF AILMENT AT THE CEDARS OF LEBANON SPECIALIST HOSPITAL IN MIAMI, FLORIDA, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. HE WAS 36 YEARS OLD

The spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death.

His final words to his son Ziggy were "Money can't buy life."

Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian

Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition.

He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace.
Earlier in July 1977, Marley was found to have a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of a toe, which was a symptom of an already-existing cancer.

Marley turned down his doctors' advice to have his toe amputated, citing his religious beliefs.

Despite his illness, he continued touring and was in the process of scheduling a world tour in 1980.

The album Uprising was released in May 1980.

The band completed a major tour of Europe, where it played its biggest concert to 100,000 people in Milan.

After the tour Marley went to America, where he performed two shows at the Madison Square Garden in New York City as part of the Uprising Tour.

Marley's last concert occurred at the Stanley Theater, now called The Benedum Center For The Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the 23rd of September 1980.

Shortly afterwards, Marley's health deteriorated as the cancer had spread throughout his body.

The rest of the tour was cancelled and Marley sought treatment at the Bavarian clinic of Josef Issels, where he received an alternative cancer treatment called Issels treatment partly based on avoidance of certain foods, drinks, and other substances.

After fighting the cancer without success for eight months Marley boarded a plane for his home in Jamaica.

While Marley was flying home from Germany to Jamaica, his vital functions worsened.

After landing in Miami, Florida, he was taken to the hospital for immediate medical attention and died afterwards.

Bob Marley was born on 6th February, 1945 in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica.

Marley started his musical career in 1958 and his first song was “Judge Not”.

Marley later joined up with Neville Livingston who became known later as Bunny Wailer and they both formed the Trenchtown Warriors.

Following their relocation from Kingston to Trenchtown, But Marley soon later found himself in a vocal group with Bunny Wailer, Peter Mackintosh, Beverley Kelso, Junior Braithwaite, and Cherry Smith and they together formed the Wailing Rudeboys, which later metamorphosed into the Wailing Wailers in 1963.

Their biggest hit as a group was “simmer down” which was released in 1964 and which became a hit in Jamaica.

The group later broke up and Marley struggled to form his own band.

He later approached his wife Rita Marley, who had her own musical group, the I-Threes.

The I-Threes comprised of Rita Marley, Juddy Mowat and Marcia Grifith.

Their lead vocalist, Marcia Grifith was the best female musician in Jamaica in the 1970s.

After negotiations had been completed, The I-Threes teamed up with Bob Marley to form Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1972 and the group continued working with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records.

Marley went on to record worldwide success with the label.

Their first album for Island Records, Catch a Fire, was released worldwide in April of 1973, which was followed later that year by the album Burnin' which included the song "I Shot the Sheriff.

Marley is regarded as one of the most influential black men that ever lived, using his music as a symbol of Black Nationalism and a platform for revolutionary struggle for the black race.

His voice was an omnipresent cry in our electronic world.
His sharp features, majestic looks, and prancing style a vivid etching on the landscape of our minds.

Today he is celebrated all over the world and May 11 every year is marked as Marley day.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

12/05/2025

10th May

ON THIS DAY IN 1783, "WILLIAM PIT THE YOUNGER" BECAME THE YOUNGEST MAN TO RULE A WORLD SUPER-POWER NATION AFTER HE WAS APPOINTED PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AT THE TENDER AGE OF 24

Pit the Younger was a prominent British statesman of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806.
He is known as "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father, William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, called William Pitt the Elder who also had previously served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The younger Pitt's prime ministerial tenure, which came during the reign of King George III, was dominated by major events in Europe, including the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
His appointment as Prime Minister by the King met with stiff opposition particularly from within the house of Commons and the house of Lords.
The members of Parliament saw his appointment as a huge joke and a mockery to the political process due to his young age.
They later concluded the pressure of leadership will make him abandon the office.
But they were all wrong as Pitt the Younger went on to lead Great Britain in the great wars against France and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Pitt the Younger became an outstanding administrator who worked for efficiency and reforms, bringing in a new generation of outstanding administrators.
He raised taxes to pay for the great war against France and cracked down on radicalism.
To meet the threat of Irish support for France, he engineered the Acts of Union 1800 and tried to get Catholic emancipation as part of the Union.
His integrity and industry and his role as defender of the threatened nations allowed him to inspire and access all the national reserves of strength.
William Wilberforce once said that, "For personal purity, disinterestedness and love of this country, I have never known his equal."
Historian Charles Petrie concludes that Pit the Younger was one of the greatest prime ministers "if on no other ground than that he enabled the country to pass from the old order to the new without any violent upheaval ... He understood the new Britain." For this he is ranked highly amongst British Prime Ministers.
He is one of the longest serving Prime Ministers in the history of Great Britain, ruling for close to 19 years.
To date he remain the youngest man ever to be British Prime Minister at 24 and still is the youngest man ever to rule over a world super-power nation.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

01/04/2025

1st April

ON THIS DAY IN 1924, ADOLF HI**ER WAS SENTENCED TO FIVE YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT FOR HIS PARTICIPATION IN A COUP TO OVERTHROW THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT

On this day in 1924, Adolf Hi**er was sentenced to five years imprisonment for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch" but spent only nine months in jail.

The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, and, in German, as the Hi**erputsch, was a failed coup d'état by the N**i Party leader Adolf Hi**er—along with Erich Ludendorff and other N**i leaders to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, which took place on 8–9 November 1923.

Approximately two thousand N**is were marching to the city centre, when they were confronted by a police cordon, which resulted in the deaths of 14 N**is and four police officers.

Hi**er, who was wounded during the clash, escaped immediate arrest and was spirited off to safety in the countryside.

After two days, he was arrested and charged with treason.

The putsch brought Hi**er to the attention of the German nation and generated front-page headlines in newspapers around the world.

His arrest was followed by a 24-day trial, which was widely publicised and gave him a platform to express his nationalist sentiments to the nation.

Hi**er was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison, where he dictated Mein Kampf to his fellow prisoners Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess.

On 20 December 1924, having served only nine months, Hi**er was released.

Once released, Hi**er redirected his focus towards obtaining power through legal means rather than revolution or force, and accordingly changed his tactics, further developing N**i propaganda.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

22/03/2025

21st March

ON THIS DAY IN 2006, THE SOCIAL MEDIA SITE TWITTER WAS FOUNDED

Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets".

Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them.

Users access Twitter through its website interface or its mobile-device application software ("app"), though the service could also be accessed via SMS before April 2020.

The service is provided by Twitter, Inc., a corporation based in San Francisco, California, and has more than 25 offices around the world.

Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but the limit was doubled to 280 for non-CJK languages in November 2017.

Audio and video tweets remain limited to 140 seconds for most accounts.

Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year.

By 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day.

In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet".

As of Q1 2019, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.

Twitter is a some-to-many microblogging service, given that the vast majority of tweets are written by a small minority of users.

Twitter has been sold to a new owner now and renamed X.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

22/03/2025

21 March

ON THIS DAY IN 1965, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. LEADS 3,200 PEOPLE ON THE START OF THE THIRD AND FINALLY SUCCESSFUL CIVIL RIGHTS MARCH FROM SELMA TO MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA.

The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery.
The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South.

By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement.
Southern state legislatures had passed and maintained a series of discriminatory requirements and practices that had disenfranchised most of the millions of African Americans across the South throughout the 20th century.
The African-American group known as the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) launched a voter registration campaign in Selma in 1963.

Joined by organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), they began working that year in a renewed effort to register black voters.
Finding resistance by white officials to be intractable, even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal segregation, the DCVL invited Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the activists of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to join them.

SCLC brought many prominent civil rights and civic leaders to Selma in January 1965. Local and regional protests began, with 3,000 people arrested by the end of February. According to Joseph A. Califano Jr., who served as head of domestic affairs for U.S. President Lyndon Johnson between the years 1965 and 1969, the President viewed King as an essential partner in getting the Voting Rights Act enacted.

Califano, whom the President also assigned to monitor the final march to Montgomery, said that Johnson and King talked by telephone on January 15 to plan a strategy for drawing attention to the injustice of using literacy tests and other barriers to stop black Southerners from voting, and that King later informed the President on February 9 of his decision to use Selma to achieve this objective.

On February 26, 1965, activist and deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being shot several days earlier by state trooper James Bonard Fowler, during a peaceful march in nearby Marion, Alabama.

To defuse and refocus the community's outrage, James Bevel, who was directing SCLC's Selma voting rights movement, called for a march of dramatic length, from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery.

Bevel had been working on his Alabama Project for voting rights since late 1963.

The first march took place on March 7, 1965, organized locally by Bevel, Amelia Boynton, and others.

State troopers and county possemen attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas after they passed over the county line, and the event became known as Bloody Sunday.

Law enforcement beat Boynton unconscious, and the media publicized worldwide a picture of her lying wounded on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The second march took place March 9. Troopers, police, and marchers confronted each other at the county end of the bridge, but when the troopers stepped aside to let them pass, King led the marchers back to the church.

He was obeying a federal injunction while seeking protection from federal court for the march.

That night, a white group beat and murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who had come to Selma to march with the second group.

Many other clergy and sympathizers from across the country also gathered for the second march.
The violence of "Bloody Sunday" and Reeb's murder resulted in a national outcry and some acts of civil disobedience, targeting both the Alabama and federal governments.

The protesters demanded protection for the Selma marchers and a new federal voting rights law to enable African Americans to register and vote without harassment.

President Lyndon Johnson, whose administration had been working on a voting rights law, held a historic, nationally televised joint session of Congress on March 15 to ask for the bill's introduction and passage.

With Governor Wallace refusing to protect the marchers, President Johnson committed to do so.

The third march started on March 21. Protected by 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under federal command, and many FBI agents and federal marshals, the marchers averaged 10 miles (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80, known in Alabama as the "Jefferson Davis Highway". The marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 24 and at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25.

With thousands having joined the campaign, 25,000 people entered the capital city that day in support of voting rights.
The route is memorialized as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, a designated National Historic Trail. The Voting Rights Act became law on August 6, 1965.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY IS A HISTORYDESK TV PRODUCTION

19/03/2025

18th March…

ON THIS DAY IN 1990, THE LARGEST ART THEFT IN UNITED STATES HISTORY OCCURRED FOLLOWING THE STEALING OF 12 PAINTINGS WITH THE COLLECTIVE WORTH OF OVER 600 MILLION U.S DOLLARS…

19/03/2025

18th March…

ON THIS DAY IN 1937, THE NEW LONDON SCHOOL EXPLOSION IN NEW LONDON, TEXAS, KILLED OVER 300 PERSONS MOSTLY CHILDREN…

19/03/2025

17th March…

ON THIS DAY IN YEAR 2000, FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY MEMBERS OF THE UGANDAN CULT MOVEMENT FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENT OF GOD DIED IN A FIRE CONSIDERED TO BE A MASS MURDER ORCHESTRATED BY LEADERS OF THE CULT…

19/03/2025

17th March…

ON THIS DAY IN 1842, THE RELIEF SOCIETY OF THE CHURCH OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS WAS FORMED…

16/03/2025

16th March...

ISRAEL HANDED OVER THE CITY OF JERICHO TO THE PALESTINE ON THIS DAY IN 2005...

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