Truths, as the Austrian-born philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once pointed out, are facts that have no spatial locations”. That perhaps explains why after 25 years of false narrative, June 12, 1993 came back in 2018 to haunt Babangida, Obasanjo, Abacha, Nzeribe, Uche Chukwumerije and Walter Ofonagoro. The recent celebration of June 12 as ‘Democracy Day”, once again provides an opportunity to reflect on irrational behaviour of some June 1993 actors to see if anything has changed.
But first, for the sake of our youths who were not born 30 years ago and who have been so far denied an opportunity to learn history, let us take a brief journey through memory.
Ibrahim Babangida, the self-styled ‘evil genius’, in 1985 toppled Buhari in a palace coup, destroyed our political parties and political socialisation process by proscribing political parties and banning old politicians thereby cutting off the umbilical cord between mother and baby. Humouring himself by pretending he had something on party formation to offer Nigerians that first formed political party in 1923, he decreed his own two parties, the National Republican Council (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
After banning and unbanning of old politicians and experimenting with his ‘new breed politicians’ during his eight years transition without end, he fixed June12, 1993 for a presidential election.
On June 11, Arthur Nzeribe and his proscribed Association for Better Nigeria, (ABN), which had earlier unsuccessfully campaigned for “four more years for Babangida” as military president, secured a 4pm interlocutory injunction from Justice Bassey Ikpeme’s Abuja High Court to stop the election.
Of course, Humphrey Nwosu, chairman of National Electoral Commission, NEC, backed by Decree 13 of 1993 that established the electoral commission which stated very clearly in 19 (1) that “no court of law had the power to dictate to NEC as to date or time of election” went ahead with the exercise.
Babangida promulgated another decree on June 23, annulling the election and fixing August 12 as new date for a new election in which MKO Abiola and his counterpart Bashir Tofa would be free to participate. He then foisted on the country, an illegal contraption called Interim National Government which was dismissed by Abacha on November 19, 1993.
Following Abiola’s June 11, 1994 Epetedo self-declaration as president-elect, Abacha clamped him into prison, declared war on his supporters, assassinated Alfred Rewane, Kudirat Abiola, among many others, and hounded NADECO opposition members into exile.
But before Babangida was disgraced out of office and Abacha died a miserable death inside Aso Rock seat of power he immorally usurped, one man that fought their battle like a slave was Walter Ofonagoro.
He was “one of those men who would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven and was prepared to rewrite history, turn facts on their head and make untruth and propaganda something close to a direct principle of state policy”. Louisa Ayonote: “There was never June 12” (Tell, August19, 1996)
Intoxicated by power like Abacha his new master, Ofonagoro as Director General Nigerian Television Authority, (NTA), became a terror and a threat to all. “All the media houses under his supervision – NTA, Daily Times, New Nigerian and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria” came to grief while privately-owned media houses with Ofonagoro’s draconian newspaper registration decree were in ruins. He saw nothing wrong with disappearances of journalists from the streets, their persecution and imprisonment.
For Ofonagoro, “there was never June 12”. If ever there was a June 12, it was just another day in the calendar or “a day the nation held an illegal election”.
Despite Babangida’s public admission that he annulled the election for reasons ranging from restiveness in the military, to alleged rejection of Abiola by northern hegemonic power, Ofonagoro insisted Babangida annulled only “cases pending in court” because of his concern for the health of our judiciary”.
To Ofonagoro, Abiola’s outright rejection of Babangida’s proposed new election on the ground that “a man does not re-sit an examination he had already passed”, was an art of ingratitude to a benevolent leader; those sanctioning Nigeria without condemning Abiola’s self-declaration at Epetedo, “are enthroning lawlessness in Nigeria” while NADECO which eventually saw the end of Abacha did not exist because police had issued statement saying ‘that “anything called NADECO, is an illegal body”.
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No one escaped Ofonagoro’s caustic tongue. Wole Soyinka, generally regarded as the conscience of the nation, “was being used by Western world who know he is out of his limits beyond his turf.” He took solace in the fact that “Soyinka, by training, is a dramatist and he is doing an excellent job of dramatizing falsehood abroad”.
For joining NADECO’s struggle against military dictatorship and going abroad to campaign against Abacha’s war against the nation, Chief Enahoro one of the heroes of Nigerian independence struggle, “was at 72 causing trouble for his grandchildren”. Ofonagoro’s consolation however was that “each time he causes trouble here and runs to England, he is often extradited by the white man”. And throwing the final jibe, he declared: “Irresponsible politics is not the hallmark of a statesman”
Even as Abacha‘s goons killed protesting youths on the streets of Lagos and NADECO members in their homes, Ofonagoro dared America and Canada saying: “Nigeria is a respecter of rule of law” and “in case the western world has forgotten the rule of law, Nigeria was prepared to teach them”.
Irrational behaviour is often the result of complex social and political issues man has had to cope with. Ofonagoro revealed the demon tormenting him towards the end of the Louisa Ayonote’s interview when he declared he was “not afraid to take a stand and say what we are fighting is tribal hegemonism”.
This is a demon in man that social theorists from Plato Rousseau and Sigmund Freud have discovered could not be tamed even with education. As if to validate their thesis, Ofonagoro’s “I left Canada in 1966 with BA first class. I am a minister with a Ph.D. I am a former professor from Columbia and a former member of Academic staff of University of Lagos” could not tame his irrational, aggressive and destructive tendencies because they are facts of human relation.
To tame man’s hegemonic struggle, the western world realised after two devastating tribal wars, called ‘world wars’, that man’s love is first to his family, his group, society and finally the state. They therefore came up with a federal arrangement where groups that share identical values, cultures and worldview within multi-ethnic societies come together in pursuit of common goal. Empirical studies have shown that while this may not totally eliminate irrational, aggressive and destructive facts of human relations, it has the tendency of promoting national cohesion.
The Middle Belt region of Nigeria in spite of intra and inter- ethnic rivalries that have come to define the area can become the food basket of Nigeria if the people are allowed to manage their own affairs through local and state policing. Similarly, without the tyranny of the state, the Southeast can become the industrial hub of Nigerian manufacturing.
From Sigmund Fraud’s ‘Civilization and its discontents”, we now know that subconsciously, we all harbour Ofonagoro’s demon, which finds expression in the struggle for cultural predominance of one group over the other.
Today, the evidence of Ofonagoro’s absence was the presence of a new set of ethnic irredentists ready to continue from where he stopped 1993.
I think it is time to stop playing the ostrich and restructure the country if only to liberate groups and individuals from the tyranny of the state.
