JUNE 12 DECLARATION AND BUHARI’S POLITICAL MANOUVERING by SHABA Mafu

He was the least expected to have done the most expected, any longer,   especially as the history of June 12 has been overtaken by many socio-political events in the country for close to three decades. The most peaceful presidential election was conducted on June 12, 1993, in Nigeria. That election produced Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olayiwola Abiola popularly known as MKO, as the presumed winner of the election. But in the conventional brutal manner known of the military in doing most of their things, this time around with added senselessness and numbness to public feelings, annulled the elections which pegged Abiola’s indisputable victory against his beaten opponent, Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the defunct National Republican Convention (NRC). The annulment was announced by the then self-acclaimed military President, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) on the 26^th of June, 1993.

The mass demonstrations that greeted the thoughtless decision was catastrophic, bewildering and overwhelming. To affirm his hardness, deliberateness of his decision and narrowed wisdom, General Babangida rolled out military tanks and killed as many Nigerians whose blood he thought could perfectly seal the ‘doom’ that June 12 stood for in Nigeria, in his own estimation. Satisfied with his carnage, he wittingly bowed out of office on the 27^th August 1993. Unfortunately for the country and democracy, in particular, the dark-goggled General Sani Abacha, who removed Ernest Shonekan on the 17^th November, 1993, in his characteristic ruthless manner, flung the acclaimed winner into prison, charging him with treason for declaring himself the president of Nigeria. A treasonable felony reasonably and constitutionally predicated upon people’s voluntary popular mandate! Abiola’s incarceration wore him off until he was quietly led into his death in controversial circumstances on the 7^th of July, 2008. General Abacha himself who died on the 8^th of June 2008 in questionable circumstances, as if he travelled first to ascertain that Abiola never got his mandate accomplished.

Years of Abacha’s rule witnessed great political turmoil especially as some prominent Nigerians vowed in confrontation to his government to ensure the installation of Chief MKO as the elected President of the country. The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) led by late Anthony Enahoro, with others like Professor Wole Soyinka, Ayo Opadokun, Polycarp Nwite, Odigie Oyegun just to mention a few, became thorns on the government of General Abacha. To further this civil confrontation, Radio Kudirat was established to give more vents to the fight. Kudirat Abiola, the wife of Chief Abiola was allegedly murdered by the hit-men of General Abacha on the 4^th of June, 1994. All these were efforts made to stabilize the polity, and install the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections. But the efforts were resolutely frustrated by the mighty rod and the unbridled carnage of the vicious military regime of the late General Abacha.

Democracy was ‘finally’ entrenched into the Nigerian polity in 1999, when in May 29 of that year, Chief Olushegun Obasanjo (of the Yoruba extraction) was ‘voted’ into power as the executive President, all in the bid to placate the Yoruba race, where Abiola came from, of the injustice done to that section of the country. As the years rolled by, the memory of June 12 was only placed on the sand of history while only some few states which are die-hard believers of June 12 saga, namely Lagos, Ogun (where Abiola came from), Osun, Ekiti and Oyo States marked its anniversary. Some of the mentioned States had even ceased to mark the anniversary of the day because of change of various State governments on different political parties.

But like thunderbolt from the blues, President Muhammadu Buhari announced some days after the May 29, 2018 Democracy Day celebrations, which previous democratic governments commemorates as Democracy Day (29^th May 1999 - when General Abdulsalam Abubakar handed over power from military rule to civilian government) that subsequently, June 12 every year shall now be observed and celebrated as the nation’s democracy day, and no longer May 29 of every year as had been previously observed. This decision was taken as recognition of the fact that June 12, 1993, was the actual day democracy was born in Nigeria; the day that remotely occasioned the mass shedding of innocent blood for the upholding of democracy in Nigeria. It was the day that Nigerians put aside religious, ethnic and tribal sentiments to vote for candidates under same political platform producing Chief MKO Abiola (Southern Moslem) as the acclaimed winner of that election and Ambassador Babagana Kingibe ( a Moslem from the North) as the Vice President-elect of the 1993 elections.

This declaration and honouring Abiola posthumously with the highest national award with the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), with Kingibe and Gani Fawehinmi with Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON), many political analysts and the opposition political parties have viewed this action of President Buhari as a political maneuvering to win the minds of the South-Westerners for the coming 2019 general elections, since the President was contesting for a second term. Some Nigerians, on the other hand, have commended the president for his bold step for such declaration. It was seen as reparation sort of because the president publicly apologized to the families of the late Abiola for the injustice done to them in particular, and to all Nigerians in general. He specifically mentioned that his move was not to reopen the old wounds of the annulment, but to correct the wrongs perpetrated by the military government headed then by the Evil Genius, General Ibrahim Babangida.

The declaration, to me, has many fronts. Lately, General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd) former president of Nigeria had fallen out with the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari. Obasanjo was obviously irked by Buhari’s intention to run for the second term having described the incumbent as a failure. Chief Obasanjo has written at least two open letters demonizing Buhari and puncturing with all nurtured brutality of the failed government of the incumbent. Obasanjo chronicled Buhari’s failures which qualified the latter to be flogged in a national theatre, not as a dramatis personae but as a concrete failure who deserved public embarrassment. But to close the seemingly unrestrained mouth of our academician Baba, Buhari dared to do what Obasanjo could not do or did not want to do as a Yoruba man by recognizing the winner of the June 12, 1993, presidential elections. This declaration to some extent has brought some credibility to the government of Buhari and had dimmed the ferocious aggression of Obasanjo on Buhari and his government.

Secondly, the allegedly fast-eroding goodwill enjoyed by the Buhari government was given some light-up as the declaration has shifted attention, at least even if temporarily from the unrepentant marauding of the Fulani herdsmen who have killed many Nigerians, engaging particularly the people of Benue state as their specimen for case study of the killings in cold blood.

The declaration was aimed at securing the sympathy of the South-west in particular and a tactical way of asking for votes in the 2019 elections since the Yoruba’s are the most enlightened and most politically conscious and active people among all the tribes in Nigeria. Within the lines, the June 12 issue has surreptitiously exonerated or at least signified Buhari’s repentance from his political iniquities of the past as the person who led the overthrow of the second democratic experiment in Nigeria on December 31, 1983.

Whatever views anyone holds, it stands to be known that there was an election which results were unreasonably cancelled. There was an election whose winner was unjustifiably denied his victory and died in the process. There was an election where more people died after the elections for fighting for their rights of votes. There was an election whose results were cancelled that brought Nigeria into the dark days of the venomous reign of the military.

If a president could be humble and bold enough to apologise for the wrongs done in the past and then do his best to correct the ills, he should, first of all, be appreciated and commended for that, before hiring the ‘hangsman’ to knot the noose against his neck. And if the declaration was seen as completely political, then don’t you think that the political wits of the present administration on this, is worth emulating particularly as it came on the verge of 2019 general elections?