|
June 12: How Can We Forget? (1) By Chido Onumah
“Reading about the June 12 period, for obvious reasons, is difficult for me, even now, 20 years after. It is difficult to think about all that we lost and all that we had stood to gain; to bear witness to how the main beneficiaries of so much sacrifice by so many were largely those who betrayed the cause; and to acknowledge the limits to the commitment espoused for democracy by its most vocal champions in the western world”. – Hafsat Abiola-Costello
“There was no annulment. You cannot annul an irregularity. The court stopped the election before it was held”. – Dr. Walter Ofonagoro, ex-Minister of Information
Many Americans like to boast that they remember where they were and what they were doing when the young and charismatic president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was shot on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. I am sure many Nigerians of my generation and older would remember where they were and what they were doing that balmy day, June 12, 1993.
The election that took place that day was the culmination of the political transition orchestrated by self-styled evil genius, Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB). Eleven days after, on June 23, after efforts to manipulate the results failed, IBB, through his goons, announced the annulment of the election won by Chief Moshood Abiola, who would later die in detention.
On August 27, 1993, exactly eight years after he seized power, IBB “stepped aside”, leaving the quivering head of the Interim National Government (ING), the not-so-earnest Ernest Shonekan, in charge. Shonekan’s makeshift government lasted until November 17, 1993, when he was supplanted by IBB’s evil alter ego, Gen Sani Abacha. The rest, as they say, is history.
June 12 this year marks the 20th anniversary of Babangida’s failed diabolical political experiment. The country has come full circle. Today, the remnants of that perfidious era, including David Mark who now holds court as the Senate President of the Federal Republic, call the shots in our so-called democratic order.
I remember June 12, 1993, vividly. The last time there was an election in Nigeria before that auspicious day in 1993 was ten years earlier in 1983. I had just left secondary school and seething with rage at the way politicians of the Second Republic had desecrated the nation. I was 17 years old and could not vote. There was a military coup that year – the fifth in the country’s tortuous political history.
By the late-80s, as a student at the University of Calabar, I found myself, like many students of that era, on the frontline of the quest to return the country to democratic rule. For me, and many of my generation, June 12, 1993, was the first opportunity to vote and perhaps have a say in the governance of the country. It wasn’t an easy decision. After a decade of military rule Nigerians had become bruised and battered, wary of a military government that couldn’t justify its messianic pretentions. I grew up under military rule. I had experienced enough of the military to distrust their role in government.
However, nobody wanted to give IBB any justification for remaining in office a day longer than expected. Nigerians put behind them the myth about ethnic and religious divide. One of the two parties that IBB created, the Social Democratic Party – SDP (the other being the National Republican Convention – NRC) had two Muslim candidates, Moshood Abiola (from Ogun State in the South-west) and his running mate, Babagana Kingibe (from Borno State in the North-east). It didn’t matter. Abiola defeated Bashir Tofa, the presidential candidate of the NRC, (a Muslim from Kano in the North-west) in his home constituency.
That was how sophisticated the electorate was twenty years ago. June 12, 1993 mattered because for the first time in the post-independence electoral history of Nigeria, there was no focus on religion or ethnicity. For the first and only time Nigerians were going to have a president they actually voted for. There were hardly any reports of electoral violence. Even the elements (no rainfall throughout the election in the rainy month of June) conspired to deny IBB a reason to stop the election.
Fayemi’s long walk to victory Exactly a week ago today, the Supreme Court threw out Mr. Segun Oni's petition seeking to unseat Dr. Kayode Fayemi as Governor of Ekiti State. The seven-man panel unanimously struck out Oni's suit, ending what is perhaps the nation’s longest election petition. The justices accused Oni of trying to get through the back door what he could not get through front door.
It is a fitting final victory coming, after seven years, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Dr. Fayemi is no stranger to political battles. He was a foot soldier in the struggle against military dictatorship and the quest to validate the result of the June 12 election.
However, beyond Dr. Fayemi’s sweet victory is something that goes to the very foundation of the survival of our democracy. Gov. Fayemi touched on it during his post victory interview when he said, “Oni engaged in judicial frivolity and unfortunately, in Nigeria, there is no punishment for electoral frivolity. This decision reinforces the need for the establishment of Election Offences Commission to handle people like Oni for committing electoral fraud and wasting the time of people elected to serve Ekiti State”.
Regrettably, Mr. Oni is still referred to as the former governor of Ekiti State. As a “fake” governor for almost three and half years, he earned salary and enjoyed the perks of the office at the expense of Ekiti taxpayers. It is not enough that the “former governor” has been asked to go home and sin no more. Electoral fraud is a crime and like other criminal activities, it deserves to be punished accordingly.
June 12: How Can We Forget? (2) By Chido Onumah
“I betrayed my very genuine friend for 25 years. From the day we met, there was rapport. I had my friend there waiting to take over. Truly, it would have been a great destiny”. – Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.
“There were other generals, including Sani Abacha, who said if power was ceded to a southerner like Chief Abiola, the North will have nothing left. They then put my father in a corner, they threatened him”. – Mohammed Babangida
June 12, 1993 was a golden opportunity to set the country on the path of genuine democratic reconstruction, but IBB squandered it. Expectedly, our politicians moved on. They were co-opted into Abacha’s transition and for them June 12 became history. Abacha’s Minister of Information, Prof. Jerry Gana was one of earliest people to sing the dirge of June 12.
In May 1994, as Nigerians prepared to mark the first anniversary of the June 12, 1993 election, Gana reminded us that, “The (Abacha) military administration did not actualize the June 12 election in spite of its opposition to the annulment for fear that certain sections of the country could rise against it. If they actualized June 12 when they came in, another section would rise".
Gana admitted that the annulment was a terrible error, but that Nigeria’s corporate existence could not be sacrificed for it. According to him, "The annulment is a painful one, but we cannot because of it allow the people of Nigeria to be destroyed. Somebody has made a mistake like somebody made in 1966, like somebody made in 1984, like somebody made a mistake by stopping Jerry Gana in becoming a president by annulling my own primaries”.
Of course, it was a costly mistake that cost lives and threatened the very existence of the country. On 11 June 1994, president-elect Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, declared himself president. The Abacha administration hunted Abiola down, arrested him and imprisoned him. Abiola would die in prison on July 7, 1998, a month after Abacha expired.
While I was working on this book, I had a phone conversation with Odia Ofeimun, the famed poet and former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), who informed me that he was working on a book on June 12. He said it was important that Nigerians did not forget; that for too long progressives had yielded the political stage to recidivist politicians to the detriment of the country. I couldn’t agree more.
How can we forget that there was an election on June 12, 1993; that the election was annulled; that some of those who oversaw the annulment and their collaborators still call the shots in the country? How can we forget the ignoble roles of the likes of Arthur Nzeribe and Abimbola Davies of the infamous Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) who put themselves and their organisation at the service of the military junta?
Any nation that lacks memory is doomed. How can we forget Kudirat Abiola, wife and mother, who was gunned down in broad day light in a Lagos street because she dared to question the rationale for her husband’s detention; Pa Alfred Rewane who was brutally murdered in his bedroom for supporting pro-democracy activists as well as many unsung heroes and heroines of the June 12 struggle?
Six years after he “stepped aside”, IBB was on hand to help install Olusegun Obasanjo, Abiola’s kinsman, as president of the 4th Republic, perhaps as part of efforts to “compensate” the South-west for the loss of Abiola. In retrospect, twenty years after he caused the June 12 debacle, this is how IBB explained his treachery: “The emergence of Obasanjo came about as a result of what happened in the country; the country was in a very serious crisis and we had to find the solution to these problems and therefore we needed a leader known in the country.
“We did not believe in foisting somebody who is not known; so, we looked for a man who has been involved in the affairs of this country, who held positions either in the military or in the cabinet and who has certain beliefs about Nigeria. Now, all of us that were trained as armed forces, there is one belief that you cannot take away from us; we believe in this country because this is part of our training. We fought for this country, so when you have a situation like that, you need a leader that has all these attributes and quite frankly, he quickly came to mind”.
IBB actually used the word “foisting”. We all remember how Obasanjo – the pseudo-democrat who told us that Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 election, was not the “messiah” – foisted an ailing Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on the nation in 2007 after eight years of misrule.
The “Abiola is not the messiah” mantra was Obasanjo’s simple way of dismissing Abiola’s victory on June 12, 1993, and upholding the subsequent annulment of the election. Obasanjo may have believed that Alhaji Shehu Shagari was the real messiah. That was why he handed power over to him in 1979 even though it was clear he (Shagari) did not win the presidential election of that year.
Thanks to the likes of IBB, Obasanjo and their “politics of settlement”, today we are saddled with President Goodluck Jonathan, one of the greatest beneficiaries of our “negotiated existence”. Unfortunately, Nigeria was first negotiated on the terms of a marauding band of merchants and empire builders; and subsequently by a military cabal and its civilian collaborators. Now is the time to negotiate it on the terms of the mass of our people who bear the brunt of its lopsided and unjust features.
As part of the process of reconciliation, President Jonathan can honour Abiola as the second democratically elected president of Nigeria. If he can pardon convicted serial treasury looters and grant amnesty to militants and terrorists, he certainly can honour Abiola.
That should kick start the much needed national dialogue on the future of Nigeria.
This piece is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Nigeria is Negotiable. |