BY DEBO ADENIRAN.
Come June 12, 2025, Nigerians will celebrate the 32nd anniversary of what has become the freest and fairest presidential election which took place on June 12, 1993.
That day, the red carpets will be rolled out at Eagle Square, Abuja, and the 36 state capitals to celebrate what has become the nation’s Democracy Day.
The uniformed forces will troop out in their colours, while military parades will be held across the nation and salutes taken by Mr. President and the State Governors. Even the school children and students from selected institutions will join in the March past.
A national holiday will also be declared. But, as Nigerians file out and millions glued to national televisions to watch the display, it is time to pause a bit to recall history. A Watershed? The election, the reason Nigerians will celebrate on June 12, won by the late billionaire mogul, Chief Moshood Abiola, was annulled by the Military dictator turned President, General Ibrahim Babangida, leading to protracted protests by the masses, led by pro-democracy activists.
As the nation prepare to once more celebrate this epochal event and the recognition of that date as the nation’s Democracy Day, a cross section of Nigerians including activists believes that June 12 represents that day in 1993, when a presidential election was held throughout Nigeria and the majority of the people of the country rose in one voice to give true meaning to democracy.
It would be recalled that Nigerians who voted that day, did so willingly, putting aside all the prejudices that had hitherto divided them as a people, be it ethnic, religion and culture.
At the end, Bashorun Kashimawo Moshood Olawale Abiola emerged as the undeclared President-elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Nigerians are in agreement that the election redefined the nation’s concept of unity and showed a people eager and willing to work together and make Nigeria a great country.
The elections broke all well-known myths woven around our country by ourselves and even by non-Nigerians. June 12 is a significant chapter in the history of Nigeria that one would declare as a watershed in democratic consciousness of the Nigerian people.
It may not pass the true test of being declared a watershed in the democratic development in Nigeria nonetheless. This was because of the fact that the flurry of events that characterized the preparations, conduct and aftermath of the election were emasculation of the people’s socio-political rights.
However, the outcome of the election sunk into the mind of the average Nigerian that their differences in tribes and culture were artificial after all; they were creations of desperate political power mongers.
Comedy of Errors June 12, 1993 was a day when an election that was adjudged to be acceptable to the majority of Nigerians was held and the beneficiary of that election was not allowed to enjoy the proceeds of his victory.
That was the main thing that made it significant; otherwise, June 12 election was one of the comedy of errors that governments in Nigeria had committed over the years.
It was not the election itself that was so fantastic; it was the circumstances that surrounded the election that were intriguing, especially the aftermath of the election.
The event leading to that election was peaceful, but not democratic. The election was, therefore, neither free, nor fair. If one builds an edifice on a false foundation, the outcome of such efforts will be a waste.
The Frenzy, The Disappointment At a stage, when the then military government of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) declared electioneering open, a lot of willing citizens went into a frenzy, putting associations together.
They were enthusiastic and wanted to be part of the expected new political dawn in the country. They gleefully and swiftly formed political associations.As at the last count, there were more than 30 of such political associations out of which about 26 showed significant interest in converting to political parties.
However, because of the vested interest of the military government of those days, they did not allow the dreams of ordinary citizens of this country to see the light of the day. The military oligarchy killed those dreams.
About 23 political parties were proscribed. Several politicians who showed interest in contesting elections were banned in favour of what the then military government of General Ibrahim Babangida called the ‘New Breed’.
But, despite the fact that the military pretended to encourage those who were earlier not in politics, the new breed politicians were not allowed to freely contest. Hitherto, the military penciled down a number of Nigerians they said should not contest elections without any just course.
They disqualified several willing politicians from contesting by banning their political associations. The Military did not allow them to transmute into full-fledged political parties.
Forced Marriages Instead of the politicians, and against all known democratic ethos, the government formed only two political parties for the people, the National Republican Convention (NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP), for the willing politicians.
The Military respectively described them as ‘A Little to the Right and A Little to the Left’. The formation of those political parties could be seen as a flagrant violation, or at least, devaluation of people’s right to association.
The military dictators, therefore, forced the willing politicians into associations they did not willingly establish by themselves.
What that meant was that the course of justice had been turned upside down, because it was like-minded people that should form political parties of their own, based on their own convictions, agenda, their choice of ideology, their beliefs and their aspirations.
A National Figure Vs A Dark Horse It was instructive that the military chose only those they wanted to contest even primary elections. Against this backdrop, the political parties Chief MKO Abiola and Bashir Tofa contested on their platform, Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC), created by the military government, cast a dent on the credibility of the contestants. It smacked of pre-arranged contrivance of whom the Military wanted to win the elections.
From the standard practice, it is the party that should create the government, not the government creating the party. The fact was that the government formed political parties and gave them what they consider their names and ideologies, the ideologies that were not clear-cut, ‘A Little To The Right, A Little To The Left’; those are contrived ideologies that one cannot equate within any particular governance principle and practice. Lack of Clear-Cut Ideology One cannot hold any government down to any ideological principle.
How would one consider a political party to be ‘a little conservative, and a little progressive’? A party can choose to be welfarist, socialist or anything else; it must have a clear cut explicable ideological leaning but cannot be half way through.
That was where the military government of those days got it wrong. The people that jumped on the fray were those who had been waiting in the wings for the opportunity to come up. One of them was the celebrated M.K.O Abiola.
It should be necessary to stress that since those political parties upon which Chief M.K.O Abiola and Bashir Tofa contested were not a true choice of the people.
So, those who contested too could not, in all sincerity, be said to be true representatives of the people. This was because parties were supposed to be established by people of like minds, not that somebody would impose his own party on the people.
Also, the imposed strange ideological practice of ‘A Little To The Right And To The Left’ was fraudulent in form, function and orientation. It meant that all those processes had been corrupted by the system that wanted to remain in power in perpetuity.
The Annulment The body language of the Military then implied that election would become inconclusive; the Head of State would then have the opportunity of continuing in government.
The Military authorities conducted the June12 elections reluctantly because they were at their wits end on what reasons to give for further postponement of the transition programme.
It was no wonder then that they resorted to the use of the Judiciary that was initially ignored, to stop the announcement of the results of the election when the results announced then far showed that Abiola was in clear lead.
The Military contracted an irredentist politician, Chief Arthur Nzeribe, who with his amorphous organisation, Association for Better Nigeria (ABN), had earlier approached the court to stop the conduct of the election. Nzeribe found a willing ally in the late Justice Bassey Ikpeme, who ruled a night to the election that it should not hold as one of the reasons for the stopping the announcement of the electoral results.
The ruling was described as a ‘black market injunction’ by the late legal icon, Chief Gani Fawehinmi. Presumably, due to the realization that Abiola would not voluntarily hand over his electoral victory to IBB that informed its annulment on June 23, two weeks after the election.
This was despite the fact that a preponderance of Nigerians voted for Chief MKO Abiola and the complete results had circulated among the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), media and the people since results were announced at each polling station and collation centres.
Thus, it could be seen that the foundation upon which the June 12,1993 election was built was anything, but neither fair, nor democratic.
This was because it was fraught with several manipulations, irregularities and outright violations of people’s right to associate, contest election and to elect their own leaders.
The Realities It should be emphasized, however, that the creation by former Military President Ibrahim Babangida of SDP and NRC was dictatorial, self-serving, hypocritical, myopic, against the dictates of democratic norm.
Political parties should create the government and not the other way round. It should be pointed out that there was a wide-spread apathy against that election.
A lot of eligible people did not vote in that election. This was due to the deep-rooted distrust in the then military regime as personified by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.
General Babangida, popularly called IBB or Maradona, would swear to uphold his promise to transfer power to the civil authority, but kept shifting his own proposed and designed transition programme.
The serial postponements of the transition programme led the former NBA President, who was also the then Chairman of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), the late Mr Alao Aka-Bashorun, to accuse Babangida of nursing a ‘hidden agenda’.
On June 12 1993, only 14 million people came out to vote out of the population of about 84 million eligible voters. So, the apathy itself showed that whatever the outcome of that election was, would be that the wish of the minority being foisted on the majority of people.
Therefore, if the June 12 election was free, credible, peaceful, it is not fair. Nonetheless, most Nigerians, especially the activist communities decided to accept the results on principle; even if it was only one person that came out to vote, even if it is a goat or a jackal that became the winner of that election, such deserved to be conferred with the ‘laurel’ that he has won.
Protests It was the view of the majority of Nigerians that the winner of the June 12 election should have the right to enjoy the benefits of winning. That was where the people came in: Abiola should not be cheated out of his winning.
The civil society then mobilized the citizenry to speak in unison against the annulment of that election. Nigerians protested that the election should be revalidated.
The citizens questioned why the then chairman of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Professor Humphrey Nwosu, waited for so long before he concluded the announcement of the election result; or, why should the Military president impose his will on the then NEC vis-a-vis the Nigerian people.
Those were some of the questions that the political activists raised. That was why the winner of the election, MKO Abiola, enjoyed the support of a wide variety of the people led by activists to the extent that many people lost their lives.
The series of mass protests that followed forced IBB, the then military president, to ‘step aside’. The ING Option, Abacha’s Full Blown Dictatorship Babangida replaced himself with an Interim National Government (ING) led by a business mogul, late Chief Earnest Shonekan.
The ING itself was taken before Justice Dolapo Akinsanya of the Federal High Court in Lagos, who declared it illegal. The late General Sani Abacha cashed on the ruling to ease Shonekan out in a bloodless coup to establish his own Military jackboot hegemony till 1998 when he suddenly died and General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who handed over power to civilian administration in 1999, took over.
A Democracy Day? It was really not because of Abiola, it was because political activists believed that if they needed to fight Abiola, he had to be fought legitimately.
Thus, several activists cannot be persuaded that June 12 should be made Democracy Day because what happened on that date was the mockery of democracy.
It should be noted that even the ‘Option A4’, Open-secret ballot system was a violation of voters’ right to privacy. The exercise led to all the regrettable outcomes and the aftermath of which is not something anyone can call democratic.
Our Demands: Make June 12 “M.K.O Abiola Day”, instead of “Democracy Day”. It is a known fact that it is not only those already recognized as Heroes of June 12 struggle or those at the top that made the struggle against the annulment to succeed to the extent that the Federal government had to recognize it.
There were several unsung men and women who served as foot soldiers during the struggle. Some of them lost their lives, some became disabled forever and a lot of them didn’t stay alive to tell their stories.
The foot soldiers should be recognized and honoured too. A lot of them were murdered; some didn’t recover their economic or business activities as a result of their involvement in the agitation for the validation of the June 12 election.
A panel could be setup to ascertain who the foot soldiers were and the roles they played during the struggle in order to compensate them or their families if they are no more alive.
Now that Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (Rtd.) has confessed that he has no reason to annul the June 12 election and was aware that late M.K.O Abiola won the election, that means that he was aware that the agitation for the validation of June 12 election was legitimate, valid and lawful, why did he resort to killing innocent people? Why did he punish people and slam them into jail for an offence they did not commit?
Instead of recognizing or crediting Babangida with a free, fair and peaceful election, he should be tried for crimes against humanity that he committed because the annulment of the election itself should be treated as treason and he should be made to pay for the lives and properties that were damaged or lost during the agitation.
It doesn’t matter the condition he is presently, no criminal is too old or disabled to pay for the crimes that he has committed along the provisions of the extant laws. Now that he has confessed his sins there’s no point in wasting time, he should be promptly bundled to a court of competent jurisdiction to ascertain the extent of his culpability and punish him accordingly.
We would like to recommend that since he also carried out several capital punishment on people whose treasonable offences were not confirmed and meted out capital punishment on them by snubbing out their lives including his friends especially Mamman Vasta and a few others, he should face the same treason charges and be dealt with even if he is already on his death bed, he should be executed judicially.
