June 12: In praise of President Buhari

Of my written interventions and reflections on topical national and international issues in the past 30 years, a significant lot of the word counts had appeared in Daily Trust newspaper. At 20th anniversary this year, yours comradely was humbled to be so appreciated among other members of the “commentariat” by Trust management. Indeed I think it’s me that is indebted to the great working men and women of Daily Trust, (the newspaper we can all trust!) for the encouragement and indulgence to “let off the steam” almost unedited weekly in the past years.

Daily Trust debuts in 1998, some five odd years after the unacceptable annulment of the results of 1993 June 12th presidential election “without apology”. Military President Ibrahim Babangida on that day with some ingenious 3000 plus boring/ verbose academic (certainly nonpresidential) word counts/wrestled endlessly with the historic truth. He feverishly invented varying reasons to justify a clearly anti-democratic annulment of an adjudged free and fair presidential election. IBB went further to cheekily promise another presidential election with some scandalous new rules of exclusion; the candidates must: “Not be less than 50 years old!”

So much for the confusion and fatigue of the man who invented the concept of “new breed politicians”! By the way, it will be nice to know IBB’s view on the “Not Too Young To Run” bill recently commendably signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari in light of his record of altering rules of engagement. Back to June 12! Interestingly, checking the archives (thanks to Daily Trust), I had kept faith with June 12 anniversary in the past years with serial annual anniversary reflection entitled, “June 12: Recurring Spectre”. Not surprising that I instantly joined millions of jubilant progressive and democratic forces globally in saluting the courage and sensitivity of President Muhammadu Buhari for ensuring democratic consolidation by posthumously honouring Chief MKO Abiola, acclaimed winner of June 12 1993 Presidential election and others.

As Nelson Mandela once observed, “It always seems impossible until it’s done!” The singular act of conferment of the highest national honour, Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) on Chief MKO Abiola, and the shifting of Democracy Day to June 12 had commendably rekindled faith in sustainability of democracy in Africa’s largest democracy. It gave the correct signal that never again would any group of people violate the mandate of Nigerian people through mandate annulment.

At 2015 anniversary, yours comradely had called on President Muhammadu Buhari to “offer leadership and build a groundswell of national consensus to posthumously accord acceptable deserved national and global Honour to the winner of the June 12th 1993 presidential election, Chief Moshood Abiola and hundreds of other victims of that era of impunity.” June 12 spectre repeatedly hunts Nigeria’s democratic process. It was time we exorcised it. Given the free and fair election that led to his emergence in March in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari more than OBJ (with ever controversial disputed mandates in 1999 and 2003) was the best positioned elected Nigerian president to rightly name, shame and damn the criminal annulment of the 1993 presidential election results adjudged to be the most free and fair.

It is commendable that President Buhari lived to the expectation by making a difference with history. The point cannot be overstated. The distortion of Nigeria’s democratic aspiration started with the singular annulment of 1993 June 12 free and fair elections. Since the shameful events of 1993, election riggers had perfected the art of violations of peoples’ mandates through varying subterfuges that included ballot snatching, alteration of electoral rules, falsifications of election results as we witnessed in particular in 2003 and 2007 elections. The same impunity sadly snowballed to civil society and trade union organizations in which electoral rules are whimsically altered to achieve preferred outcomes. Does anybody remember the characteristics of the presidential Abiola-Kingibe ticket, namely; Muslim-Muslim, civilian-civilian, nation-wide mass votes, issue-driven campaign? We today lament the intolerance and the impunity of politicians but this malaise assumed notoriety only after the criminal annulment of June 12 election. Annulment disorganized and factionalized the political class and divided the country dysfunctionally. We today lament politically motivated killings, but the criminality only assumed notoriety from 1993. From Moshood Abiola, late Shehu Yar’Adua to the judicial murder of Ken Saro Wiwa to Bola Ige, the victims are the products of the age of impunity with the origin in the annulment of June 12 elections.

President Buhari has rightly closed the chapter of June 12th saga by dignifying its victims as a matter of legitimate right not favour. Godliness is in the details on who and how to honor the victims of June, but honour nonetheless for a nation that had once witnessed a total collapse of dignity due to annulment of an election. The Elder statesman Edwin Clark representing the elder statesmen at the 2014 confab argued (and I agreed with him), that for the “small mindedness” (his words) “of someone”, June 12 should have been the day the country should be observing as democracy day and not May 29! Witness him: “May 29 is because somebody came into office and decided to make it as democracy day in this country. June 12 is democracy day in Nigeria.”