Justice Dahiru Saleh, June 12 and his ‘Special Order 191’
On the morning of September 13, 1862, two American Union soldiers, Sergeant John Bloss and Corporal Barton W. Mitchell, happened to be passing by a campsite that had, a few days before, hosted the rebellious Confederate troops. There, the two men found a piece of paper wrapped around three cigars containing the Confederate Army’s battle plan. They passed this on to their superiors, one of whom recognized the handwriting and knew the document, Special Order 191, was from the formidable Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. That piece of paper had the potential to change the cause of the war and of American history. Unfortunately, despite initial optimism, the Union generals were too cautious, failed to take decisive actions and the advantage gleaned from that intelligence was eventually lost in the Battle of Antietam.
History is replete with people, who in the course of their regular, unremarkable business, like Corporal Barton, are thrown a Special Order 191, and are given the chance to affect the narrative and history of an entire country. People like Edith Ike, who saved the life of a certain Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon on the night of January 13, 1966, hours after he had returned to country from the UK, and affected the history of a young country called Nigeria, who are barely recognized in the narration of the histories they influenced. It was principally thanks to providence and to her intervention that Gowon survived that January coup to lead the Nigerian civil war that kept the country united.
Justice Muhammad Dahiru Saleh, whose death, Thursday evening, was announced all over the media as that of the man “who annulled June 12 elections,” was leading the rather regular life of a Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, until, like Corporal Mitchell and Miss Ike, providence threw him a Special Order 191.
That he was born on August 22, 1939 and was husband to Maria and Zainab, and father to their children, that he was educated at the famous Barewa College, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and the Council of Legal Education, London, and had attended dozens of conferences across the world, and that he was, at his death, the Mattawalle of Katagum Emirate, have been subsumed into that singular decision he made that day in June of 1993.
His annulment of the June 12 elections, thought to have been the freest and fairest in
Nigeria’s history, earned him a controversial place on the pedestals of the country’s history.
Though much of the blame for the invalidation of those polls had been placed squarely on the broad shoulders of General Ibrahim Babangida, the military president who had in a televised broadcast announced the annulment, Justice Saleh was not at all shy to take responsibility for his role in the abortion of a national hope.
In a 2016 interview with The Interview Magazine, Justice Saleh, who was not even in charge of the case in 1993, had providence to thank for putting him at the crossroads of national history.
“There was the case against MKO Abiola and it was before one of my judges; she was Igbo but I can’t remember her name.
She started the case, then fell sick and was flown out of the country for treatment.
“Then there was another case against him (MKO Abiola) and I had to transfer the case from the other judge’s court to my court. During that time, it turned [out] that Abiola didn’t even finish the case before he disappeared. Later, I learnt he had been arrested by authorities,” he had said.
Whatever happened in that courtroom, and in the hours before his judgment, Justice Saleh insisted there was no contact, influence or pressure from the presidency. That he had no personal relationship with the general and his decision was not political but based purely on law.
Ironically, it wasn’t his name or face that adorned the front pages the next day.
‘Nigeria’s Military Rulers Annul Elections’ the New York Times headlines proclaimed. Most newspapers carried similar headlines, except for few like the June 11 edition of The Independent that said, “Court Stops the Election.”
Whatever the case, the narrative of that history had already escaped the grasp of Justice Saleh from the moment he made that pronouncement. People saw beyond and through him to Gen. Babangida, that ‘Evil Genius.’
The impression one gets from the Justice Saleh interview is that of a man – unlike Corporal Barton and Ms Ike who faded quietly into history – who was keen to take credit for his decision and his role in that 1993 debacle. His insistence that he had no regrets for his decision, despite the benefit of hindsight and the furore that has trailed it in the last 27 years, suggest a cavalier man who believed he was on the right and could not be bothered about what others thought.
If MKO Abiola and his team had decided to challenge Justice Saleh’s ruling at the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, perhaps the decision would have been reversed and his role in this infamous story would have amounted to only a footnote in history. It was clear he too had expected the decision to be challenged.
“If Abiola wasn’t happy with the case, he could have appealed to the Court of Appeal, to the Supreme Court. The judicial system was still open but he chose not to follow it. Why no one followed up the annulment of the elections in the higher courts is best known to members of Abiola’s party at that time. If he, as an individual, was not interested, there must have been other people who would be interested to see the end. . . And I have no regrets, none whatever. No regrets. I would repeat the same thing now,” he had said.
Whatever the case, Abiola and his team never challenged his decision and now history, and the newspapers and future generations, will remember Justice Saleh as the man “who annulled June 12.”
Very few outside his immediate personal circle would remember him as the man who when providence threw him a Special Order 191 acted upon it and owned up his decision and if fate deemed it fit to judge him on that, it was welcome to. And that was just fine with him.
Whatever the case, Abiola and his team never challenged his decision and now history, and the newspapers and future generations, will remember Justice Saleh as the man “who annulled June 12.”