Abiola: All The Way From June 12 to 2019
Nobody expected it. For the 19 years that the current republic has been running, the ghost of June 12 had never really threatened a political jolt, until last Wednesday when President Muhammadu Buhari pulled what everybody continues to applaud as his greatest political masterstroke.
Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, a chartered accountant and candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was heading for victory in the presidential election held on June 12, 1993 against Bashiru Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). But the then military president, Ibrahim Babangida, together with some other military chiefs, had their own idea about the outcome of that election and eventually annulled it before Humphrey Nwosu, who headed the Electoral Commission, could announce the final results.
Since then, politicians of the progressive hue and human rights activists have been keeping the June 12, 1993 date (famously tagged June 12) alive by celebrating it with conferences and lectures, and urging political leaders to officially recognise M.K.O. Abiola as the winner of that election, as well as declaring every June 12 as Democracy Day, rather than the May 29 date on which Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as President after he had emerged as winner of the presidential election in 1999 on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
In the Southwest, most of the states, bar the ones controlled by the PDP at one time or the other, have also been keeping the June 12 flame burning by declaring it a public holiday every year.
But these ceremonies had been a whimper as they lacked national flavour and, more importantly, official pronouncement of the Executive at the centre and support of the National Assembly. The PDP, which ruled at the centre for 16 years, would have none of that June 12 ceremony. Anyway, Chief Obasanjo, who could have laid the foundation for it, wasn’t, for inexplicable reasons only he can explain why he was not favourably disposed towards the idea. Throughout his eight years as President, he wouldn’t once mention the Abiola’s’s role in the build-up to Nigeria’s eventual return to democracy, in which he, Obasanjo, emerged the major beneficiary as President.
It can be recalled that Obasanjo was quick to describe Abiola as not the “messiah” Nigeria needed when it was obvious the SDP presidential candidate was coasting to victory.
Last week, politicians in the progressives camp, human rights activists and other Nigerians who still regarded Abiola as a political martyr had concluded preparations to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Chief Abiola’s death. Abiola had died on June 8, 1998, in incarceration in which Babangida’s successor, Gen Sani Abacha, had thrown him after he (Abiola) had refused to give up his mandate but had gone ahead to declare himself as President at Epetedo, Lagos.
Nobody expected last Wednesday’s remembrance ritual for Abiola as anything different from previous ceremonies: lectures, marches and solidarity songs. Of course, on June 12, APC states in the Southwest would follow all those up with a public holiday.
But came the bang. A terse but weighty statement emanated from the Presidency that President Buhari had decided to confer on Chief Abiola the highest national honour in the country, the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR). The President also awarded Abiola’s running mate in the June 12, 1993 election, Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe, the second highest honour, the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON). Equally awarded the GCON was the irrepressible lawyer and human rights fighter, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who had died of lung cancer on September 5, 2009, aged 71.
The politics, the intrigues
Not unexpectedly, comments from both divides of kudos and knocks have been raging since the Presidency’s bombshell. Many analysts, especially political opponents of the APC and their apologists, were quick to see in Buhari’s decision a political trick to massage the electoral ego of the Southwest as the 2019 general elections approach. President Buhari, backed by the hugely functional political machine of former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, had won mass favour in the Southwest in the 2015 presidential election. But he has since lost a lot of ground after his early rounds of appointment into his cabinet marginalised names from the Southwest.
Tinubu’s supporters were also piqued by Buhari’s seemingly friendly tilt towards those they argued didn’t really contribute financially and energetically towards the formation of the APC and in the mobilisation of voters to ensure Buhari emerge victorious. Their position was reinforced by no other than the President’s wife, Aisha, who declared in an interview that her husband had neglected those who helped him to power while hobnobbing with people who contributed virtually nothing to his success.
Moreover, Obasanjo, one of his major backers in the 2015 election, had not only withdrawn support for him, he has vowed to ensure that Buhari, who has already thrown his hat into the 2019 presidential ring, does not return for a second term. To be sure, Obasanjo possesses no real electoral value in the Southwest, where majority of the people don’t regard him as their leader. Actually, in the 1999 election that produced him as President, Obasanjo lost woefully in the entire region, including in his ward in Abeokuta, Ogun State, where he hails from. The method in Buhari’s award of the GCFR to Abiola and declaration of June 12 as Democracy Day, many political analysts have been postulating, was to further rub in Obasanjo’s perceived unfriendly disposition towards his own people. Obasanjo is the same Abeokuta indigene as Abiola, but besides the fact that Obasanjo publicly rubbished Abiola’s looming victory in the June 12, 1993 presidential election and was alleged to have been instrumental to the contrivance of the Interim National Government which Babangida picked another Abeokuta indigene, Ernest Shonekan, to head, Obasanjo had turned deaf ears to appeals from human rights activists who saw the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election as an injustice, and from the Abiola family to honour M.K.O. Abiola for whatever his contributions might be to the eventual realisation of the return to democracy in 1999.
As Obasanjo battles Buhari towards 2019, therefore, the June 12 debacle could just have come handy as one edge over the former President in the race for control of the Southwest and, indeed, across Nigeria among those who have always regarded the June 12 issue as one sore point that should be decisively addressed. Former president, Goodluck Jonathan, had also attempted to employ the Abiola name as a political tool in the build-up to the 2015 elections by renaming the University of Lagos after the late politician. But the trick exploded in his face when many alumni and current students of the institution kicked against it, resulting in a protest by the students in which one of them died. More significantly, the renaming couldn’t be done as such an action, it was found out, would require the consent of the National Assembly, UNILAG being a federal educational institution.
Even as many commentators agreed addressing the June 12 issue had become inevitable with a view to resting its ghost, many others have also emphasised what they maintained was the political motive. Former Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, told Daily Trust on Sunday, “This is the season of politics and that is why he did it. Not because he lovea the Abiola family, or all of a sudden he loves NADECO. He did it because this is the season of politics”, he said. To Prof Akinyemi, President Buhari was doing everything possible to assuage the Southwest over his “unseemly attitude to the region.”
A political scientist, Dr Emmanuel Ojo, argued that though the decision to honour Abiola could truly have been contrived as a deft political move to win the vote of the Southwest in 2019, the calculation may not be entirely potent because of what he saw as the high level of political consciousness in the region.
Ojo said, “Ordinarily, the recognition given to June 12 is a very good political calculation by Mr. President. The insinuation by opposition elements within and without that it must have been done to placate the Southwest is true. But again, it may not be true in the sense that the Southwest is politically sophisticated, and in terms of party affiliation, the Southwest don’t normally vote along party lines but on performance of the government.
“For instance, when Babangida hurriedly handed over to Chief Ernest Shonekan, who was from Ogun state where Abiola hailed from, the Southwest did not support the interim contraption headed by Shonekan.
“When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, also from Ogun State, was also picked as the PDP presidential candidate in 1999, Obasanjo did not win even in his ward. He did not win his local government and he did not win Ogun State. The reason was that Southwesterners didn’t believe in being placated without justice and equity. So what Buhari did recognizing June 12 is a very good development. But if it was done to catch the votes of the South-West, he may be shocked to the marrow.
“He could be hailed for doing the right thing. But when it is time to vote, people in the Southwest would vote according to their conscience and based on their perception of the government of whether that government has delivered or not. It is better Buhari thinks very well and rejig his economic team and his security team.”
Ojo, an Associate Professor of Political Science, backed the Senate that the full results of the June 12, 1993 election should be declared by INEC, saying the non-release of the result put a scar on the nation’s election history.”