Seventeen years and six days ago today, on August 19, 1993, as military president Ibrahim Babangida was flailing and threshing for a formula that would seal his annulment of the 1993 presidential election and keep him in office and in power, a frontline member of the Nigerian Senate made the following remarks in the course of a debate.
“I quote:
‘Distinguished Senators, we have a situation today that suggests that the abortion of June 12 election is another coup d’état. My question is, when are we going to stop tolerating injustices, coups, and abuse by people on whom we have invested much resources – the public funds of this country?
‘The highest portion of Nigeria’s budgets since independence is being invested on the military, from their barracks to the ammunition provided for them and up to their uniforms. The oath of office taken by the military is to protect the citizens and the sovereignty of this country.
‘Should we therefore continue to tolerate the situation where the military turn that investment against us, to abuse and restrict and to prevent justice taking place?
‘Yes, it is true that we have a crisis but, to every action, there is a reaction. This is a self-inflicted crisis because, without the abortion or annulment of the June 12 election, there would be no crisis like this.
‘We have a government that made laws and abused its own laws. Therefore, the present military administration by virtue of the abrogation and violation of its own decree has committed a crime . . .’
End of quote.
“The Senator who uttered these historic and courageous words, who insisted on justice and refused to take refuge in opportunist compromise, the Senator who defended the sovereign right of the Nigerian peoples to elect their own rulers, is our Chief Presenter, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Emeritus Governor of Lagos State, and a pillar of the coalition of democrats and progressives.
“The book is dedicated to the memory of Bashorun Moshood Abiola, winner of the historic June 12 1993 presidential election, who would have been 73 years old today, August 24, 2010, and to “The Spirit of June 12.”
“What do I mean by “the Spirit of June 12?”
“As I see it, the Spirit of June 12 is the spirit of service and sacrifice. It exalts keeping faith with the sovereign electorate over and above considerations of personal gain and comfort, over self-preservation even.
“That was the spirit that impelled Bashorun Abiola to hold fast to his historic mandate even when the cost of doing so was nothing less than his freedom and possibly his life, to reject compromises that would have made a mockery of the right of the people to elect their own rulers.
“It was the spirit that moved Kudirat Abiola to carry on the struggle long after Bashorun Abiola had been taken into captivity, and for which she paid the ultimate price.
“It is the spirit that has sustained the discreetly but deeply engaged members of the Abiola household – Dr Doyin Abiola and Hajiya Bisi Abiola. That same spirit animates Hafsat Abiola, who lost her mother to Abacha’s assassins when she was still in her teens, and her father to the machinations of the “international community” and their local proxies well before she could settle into a life of her own.
“Dr Doyin Abiola is here, but Hafsat could not be with us today. Please join me in saluting their inspiring example.
“The Spirit of June 12 is the spirit of firm resolve, of never counting the cost, of going the distance, the spirit of resistance to, and defiance of, arbitrary power.
“It was the spirit that sustained many in our midst today and thousands across the country even as they were jailed, tortured, dispossessed, and subjected to all manner of privations, just because they stood up for justice, for democracy, and for the rule of law.
“It was the spirit that impelled hundreds of our politically engaged compatriots to abandon kith and kin and home and hearth to move to distant, not always welcoming lands, there to continue the struggle for justice in their homeland.
“The June 12 Spirit reaches out and is not opposed to compromise. But it insists that compromise for the sake of compromise is barren, and that fundamental principles must not be sacrificed at the altar of compromise.
“The June 12 Spirit holds that fundamental rights belong to all; that they cannot be saved for some and denied to others. Thus, it defends those rights without equivocation wherever it finds them assaulted, even if, or rather, especially when the victims are sworn enemies of the June 12 Spirit.
“It is the Spirit of June 12 that has kept alive, against formidable odds, the long, dogged struggle to reclaim the stolen mandate of the people in Osun, and Ekiti; it contributed significantly to the restoration of the popular mandate in Edo and Ondo.
“The Spirit of June 12 is not merely about the struggle for democracy and justice, however. In a practical sense, it is also about the delivery of goods and services to the public. It is about improving the human condition. In this practical dimension of the June 12 Spirit, our Chief Host, Governor Babatunde Fashola, SAN, stands out as an exemplar.
“The June 12 Spirit enjoins us to build bridges of understanding across Nigeria; it transcends the divisions of tribe and tongue and creed and class; it enjoins us to forgive and summons us to find in ourselves that charity which is the surest foundation for a just society.
“But the Spirit of June 12 does not enjoin us to forget; indeed, it cannot enjoin us to forget. Individuals and political communities and indeed nations put their very existence at risk when they forget. This fundamental truth is embedded in the names that many communities across Nigeria bestow on infants – names that translate into “forgetting is dangerous.”
“Bashorun Abiola breathed and lived the Spirit of June 12 in his private and public life.
“Today, that Spirit finds probably its most robust expression in the tireless exertions, at home and abroad, of our Chief Presenter, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
“Finally, a few words about the book. And here, I would like to return to the subject of forgetting, or rather, not forgetting.
“Every society cherishes its stories. All of us – adults, no less than children, enjoy listening to those stories. The story is our vehicle for conducting surveillance of the environment, transmitting the cultural heritage, and entertaining ourselves.
“It is the story that helps us locate where we came from when we have strayed.
Through the story, we draw inspiration from the past to prepare for the struggles ahead. From it, we learn of the blunders of bygone years, even if we are sometimes doomed to repeat them.
“That is the reason for this book – to awaken memory, to restore that which
has been forgotten, in the hope of perhaps helping to stave off a debacle even more tragic than the one I have tried to chronicle within its covers.”
The foregoing comprised my remarks at the public presentation of my book Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition (1989-1994), at the MUSON Centre, Lagos, on August 24, 2010.
What a delicious irony that Nigerians now celebrate June 12 as Democracy Day, some three decades after Clement Akpamgbo, the attorney-general and backroom legal fixer in Babangida’s lawless military regime, warned darkly that invoking it for any reason and in any context would be construed as a treasonable felony.
And how fitting that on the 30th anniversary of the capricious annulment of the 1993 presidential election, the person who most emblematizes the Spirit of June 12, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is the President of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
For the first time in Nigeria’s history, an authentic progressive and a “June Twelver” is at the helm. May the Spirit of June 12, the Spirit that animated the formation of the ruling All Progressives Congress and pervaded Tinubu’s presidential campaign – may the Spirit of June 12 at its fullest be his guide and his anchor.
