Category: Sunday

• June 12: the good, the bad and the ugly

It is incredible that it is already 30 years since the June 12, 1993 presidential election that the then self-styled President, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled. It is incredible. Whenever I remember the June 12 struggle, it is as if I am watching a movie. It is incredible that what transpired in Nigeria that culminated in the crisis could ever have happened in a country that was supposed to be the ‘Giant of Africa’. And only 30 years before. While the script was playing out, I kept asking myself if this was for real because it is the kind of thing that happens when a country has leaders who, like the proverbial greedy fly, would always follow dead bodies to the grave. Africa has a surfeit of such flies that eventually get interred with the bones.

Thirty years since June 12, 1993, we need to tell and retell the story of that unforgettable experience, especially as most of our children did not have the benefit of the study of History between 2007 and 2019. We must keep stressing the importance of History because even the developed nations don’t joke with the subject. You must know where you are coming from so as to be able to chart the appropriate way to where you are going. Although the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari reversed the ban in 2019 and restored History as a stand-alone subject in our schools, enough harm had been done. I felt sufficiently embarrassed when some years ago, a student in Ikenne, Ogun State, the home town of the Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was asked whether he knew Chief Awolowo. He said no; that the only Obafemi he knew was Obafemi Martins! This is how potentially damaging the deleting of History from our curriculum could be.

Babangida began the June 12 shenanigans. When he came to power on August 27, 1985, he came with infectious smiles that swept Nigerians off their feet. The Buhari/Idiagbon regime that he overthrew had started to show traces of intolerance and dictatorship. It introduced some draconian measures, including the infamous Decree 4 of 1984 which punished journalists for non-patronising reports, and another decree which took effect retroactively, leading to the execution for drug trafficking, of three Nigerians, Bernard Ogedengbe (29), Bartholomew Azubike Owoh (26) and Lawal Ojuolape (30).

So, when Babangida and Co. came, they were well received by Nigerians who heaved a sigh of relief that an end had finally come to the Buhari/Idiagbon dictatorship which itself sacked the Second Republic administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari on December 31, 1983.

Babangida legalised the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC) in 1989 and asked Nigerians to queue behind either. Parliamentary election went ahead as planned in 1992 with Option A4 voting process. SDP won majorities in both houses of the National Assembly. It was the presidential election that later became problematic, thus fuelling speculation that what IBB, as Babangida is popularly called, wanted if he must leave power was at worst dyarchical system of government that he would head. It was in the process of arriving at ‘wuruwuru’ to this answer that Babangida kept on banning and unbanning politicians until the June 12, 1993 election was held.

The election, won by the Late Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola of the SDP went peacefully contrary to the expectation of Babangida and some of his fellow sit-tight officers. Like the 2023 presidential election, the election was won on a Muslim-Muslim ticket. Abiola and his vice presidential candidate, Babagana Kingibe, defeated Alhaji Bashir Tofa and his vice, Sylvester Ugoh of the NRC with about 2.3million votes even though the results had not been formally declared when Babangida came on national television bouncing like someone possessed and high on something, to confirm that he had annulled the election.

This was an election which both local and foreign observers had declared the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s history. It was peaceful too because the politicians and Nigerians generally had started seeing the handwriting on the wall that Babangida was not prepared to go. So they comported themselves so as not to give the dictator an opportunity to stay beyond his self-appointed August 26, 1993 exit date.

That was the beginning of the June 12 crisis that shook the country to its very foundation.

What gladdens my heart however was the fact that Nigerians gave it to the military adventurists. Even when they gave themselves exit dates that they thought would never come, they were not honourable enough to honour their own words when the self-imposed dates came. They wanted to sit tight like their counterparts in other parts of Africa and the rest of the Third World. But, trust Nigerians, they gave them a good fight for their bullets.

When the heat became too much for the gap-toothed General, he hurriedly ‘stepped aside’, as he called it, despite his initial grandstanding that he would not be stampeded out of power. Anyone who saw his confused state on August 26, 1993 would know that he left in a hurry, unprepared. We all saw on television how he was prevented from returning to his seat as president immediately after he had told the world that he was ‘stepping aside’.

And, as if to bring his ‘prophecy’ of ‘stepping aside’ to come to pass, IBB attempted to return to power twice, in 2006 and 2010 when he collected the presidential nomination forms of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) but saw his chances were low on both occasions and withdrew.

But Babangida did not leave without putting in place a contraption that he called Interim National Government (ING) headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, an Egba man from Abeokuta, Abiola’s home town, to pacify the Yoruba that at least one of their own had been given power. But the Yoruba did not see Shonekan as Abiola; so, it was like; if it was not Abiola, it cannot be the same as Abiola. Shonekan did not enjoy the office one bit as protests resumed, especially in the southwest, with people insisting that the June 12, 1993 election results be validated.

By November 17, 1993, barely three months after the ING was inaugurated, General Sani Abacha who had been waiting in the wings shoved it aside and assumed power  as head of state.  Still, this did not stop the June 12 protests. People, including policemen were killed, major markets, shops, banks and other businesses were shut while looters broke into several shops. June 12 it was that made Nigerians know how powerful the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) was, with its then leader, Frank Kokori, calling the shots and shutting down the country several times in its show of solidarity with the June 12 cause.

This was the situation in the country, particularly in the southwest, for months. Nigeria was literally grounded.

Abacha was eventually taken out of the equation by death, the ultimate leveller, on June 8, 1998, and buried same day according to Muslim tradition. The fact that no autopsy was performed on him as well as the fact that Abiola himself died about a month later, precisely on July 7, 1998, fuelled speculation that they may both have been assassinated as a way out of the June 12 logjam. Other prominent Nigerians, including Kudirat Abiola, Abiola’s wife; Pa Alfred Rewane, a major financier of the struggle, were killed by agents of the Abacha government.

Students in tertiary institutions, workers, despite the betrayal by the then leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), and virtually every segment of the society participated in the struggle. Prominent individuals, including military generals who believed in the cause of the June 12 struggle joined forces with civilians to push the military out of power. Some of these, including Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka, the incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the late Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Gen. Alani Akinrinade, Kokori, the Late Pa Rewane, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Ayo Opadokun, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, Dr Kayode Fayemi, among others, came together to form the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which became a thorn in the flesh of the military. Some members of the coalition were arrested; others fled into exile. A guerilla radio station, Radio Kudirat, came handy for the project.

The media also stood behind the people but paid a huge price for their stance. Babangida banned The Punch, National Concord and The Guardian for over one year, over the struggle. Other vocal media outfits suffered a similar fate. When Abacha came, he, in his desperate move to legitimise his government de-proscribed them only to ban them again when he saw they were not ready to renounce their position on June 12.

The military taught the Nigerian press underground journalism as they banned and unbanned the critical private newspapers and chased the vibrant magazines out of town. I remember how we suddenly metamorphosed from being publisher of The Punch to publisher of an emergency magazine, and later producer of ‘Write-On’ exercise books in order to stay afloat.  I had told the story of my little contribution to the struggle last Sunday on this page and I feel privileged to have been part of that struggle. It was indeed an experience.

Sadly, no government listened to Nigerians’ cries for recognition of June 12 as a watershed in the country’s history, at least not until the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari did in 2018. Buhari it was, who in that year said from 2019, Democracy Day should be marked on June 12 every year in honour of Abiola, instead of May 29 that the military finally handed over. He awarded the business mogul the highest national honour, the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) and Kingibe, as well as the late human rights activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the second highest national honour, the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON). He also declared the day work-free.

Unfortunately, the way things are in the country today, we can only mark, not celebrate the 30th anniversary of June 12 tomorrow. It is an occasion for sober reflections, especially on the part of those of us who witnessed or participated in the watershed one way or the other. Those who read me last Sunday must have understood the reason I expressed regret that majorly, it is those with little or no value to our democratic struggle that hijacked the democratic space as soon as we drove away the soldiers.

They would also understand why I referred to President Tinubu as ‘omo oninkan’ (the child of the owner). He was a dogged NADECO fighter. He knew we had to send the military away from government houses so we can have a better Nigeria. Having paid such a huge price that he and other patriotic Nigerians paid for this democracy, he cannot afford to fail. Ceteris paribus.

• Thou shalt not fail

Despite all odds, despite almost insurmountable hurdles, even despite negative prophecies and predictions, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in as the 16th President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on May 29. The occasion, since 1999, usually reminds me of May 29, 1999, when Nigeria returned to civil rule after 16 years of military interregnum. I remember the high hopes we had as Nigerians on that day when General Olusegun Obasanjo was handed the baton of leadership by General Abdulsalami Abubakar.

I remember how I celebrated the occasion in one of the canteens somewhere, I think, at Ola Ayinde Street in Ikeja, Lagos, where I had gone for a sumptuous meal that I washed down with a cold bottle of Big Stout, my favourite drink then. Thank God, today, I have left that ‘Egypt’! On my way to Canaan. I had thought the occasion called for celebration.

But that is not where I am going.

If anyone had told me then that where we are today is where we would be 24 years after, I would tell the person that he did not know what he was saying. For years, I had continued to wonder how before our elders’ very eyes the country has been moving from grace to grass since independence. But no more, especially as before my own very eyes too, I have seen how dearth of good leadership has progressively deprived us of the dividend of democracy that we fought hard to get.

It is sad that this is where we are 24 years after returning our soldiers to their barracks. The price we paid for this democracy. Tinubu, the price! The price!!

Is it newspaper houses that were shut down as part of the fallout of the June 12 protests that we want to talk about? In some cases for over one year with the then military authorities not having any feeling for how the affected journalists and other workers in those organisations would eat and take care of their other obligations? Many were imprisoned without trial and some of them never came out as they went in. I guess those of us who served at the top editorial positions of The Punch were lucky, despite the fact that we were unarguably one of the most vociferous critics of military rule and whatever they stood for during the June 12 struggle.

Bola Bolawole that I succeeded as editor of The Punch was locked up in his office for three days while I spent a night at the Shangisha office of the secret police, plus a weekend (three nights actually)somewhere in the Ikeja Police Command where the then commissioner of police (COP Legal) ensured I had the best care pending the time I was granted bail by a court in Ikeja where the COP (Legal) took me to, knowing full well that I would eventually be granted bail because, as he told me, there was no charge that could stand against me. But he had to take me to court to convince his bosses that he had taken some action against me.

If Bolawole and I were so lucky, not so Chris Mammah, deputy editor of The Punch then. Mammah was detained for weeks. Those who knew the role of The Punch then would agree that what Bolawole and I underwent was a mere slap on the wrist considering what the military junta considered as our crime (I mean the paper’s crime) and also what befell some of our other colleagues who had more terrible experiences. Some did not live to tell the story.

The struggle consumed many people, prominent and not so prominent. It consumed many businesses, including Concord Group of Newspapers and other companies owned by the man at the centre of the June 12 protests, Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.

However, it is unfortunate that many of those who fought for democracy in Nigeria beat a retreat after returning to civil rule in 1999, leaving those who do not know the tribal marks of democracy to be enjoying what former governor of Oyo State, the Late Abiola Ajimobi described as the ‘mudun mudun’. What, for instance did a man like David Mark contribute to democracy to make him senator from 1999 to 2019 (20 years) out of which he was senate president for eight years (2007 to 2015)? What were Bukola Saraki’s contributions to the democratic struggle that made him governor for eight years, senator for eight years and senate president four years? It is high time people who know the value of democracy beyond coming to ‘chop’ began to take more interest in politics in this country. Gold ought to be sold only to those who know its value.

Part of the reason we are in deep shit today is because many of those who have found themselves in strategic political positions since 1999 cannot appreciate what those who fought for democracy went through. The fact of the matter is that what came up as a Third Force in the last general elections, the Labour Party that is; was able to make significant incursion despite being a new comer in the country’s political process because of serial bad governance that seems to have led the country to its present sorry pass. This is the exact reason the party has been able to find favour among the youths, home and abroad. Many of our youths who are outside the country found themselves wherever they are not because they like it but because they have lost hope that anything good can come out of the present political class.

Read Also: Tinubu’s emergence, will of God – APC Chieftain

And they have their reason, especially when we compare the economic indices where Nigeria was even in 1999 when we resumed civil rule, to what they are today. Where do we start to talk about the degeneracy? From basic foodstuffs to simple electronics, fuel price, electricity tariff, automobiles, unemployment, insecurity, name it. We have lost a lot of ground. We now wear the crown of poverty capital of the world. In this kind of situation, it is difficult to blame the youths for seeking an alternative to the political parties and politicians that they see as being responsible for their hopelessness.

This is one strong reason Tinubu must be ready to roll up his sleeves. There is a lot to do to fix Nigeria that is in a shambles right now.

The president must realise that he is probably the second president since 1999 (after Chief Olusegun Obasanjo) that participated somewhat in the democratic struggles that saw the military eventually retreating to their barracks. (Not a few would argue though, that Obasanjo’s contribution to the struggle had ‘K-leg’ because while he wanted the military to go, he was not interested in Abiola being given his mandate). The rest, from former President Umaru Yar’Adua, to Goodluck Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari, only came to ‘chop’ after the table had been set. So, they could not have understood what it meant to be in the trenches in the country during the struggle, or what it meant to be hounded into exile because of one’s role in the democratic struggle. By extension, therefore, they may not understand why democracy must deliver dividend to Nigerians.

But those who participated actively in the struggle knew it was not just about returning the military to the barracks, but to entrench a democratic culture in the country to accelerate growth and development. To give Nigerians value for their votes.

It would be disastrous if Tinubu fails, especially coming immediately after the Buhari disappointment. I remember the high hopes Nigerians had on Buhari in 2014/2015 which popularised slogans like ‘sai Baba’  and ‘Changi’ that eventually brought about the inglorious end of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). By 2019 when Buhari was seeking reelection, the stridency of both slogans had started diminishing. As a matter of fact, none of the political parties talked about or wanted to be identified with the word change in the last general elections because the word had been abused by the Buhari team. Tempting as it is, the word ‘change’ was avoided like the plague during the political campaign because no one wanted to be identified with a jaded word or slogan.

Rather than take heed of the early warning signals, Buhari’s handlers started attacking those calling their attention to the fact that their government rating in the eye of the public had started declining; they continued to bask in the old glory. They charged at genuine critics like hungry lions. By the time they realised their mistake, it was too late. It was no use sending clothes to Omoye because Omoye had already walked to the market naked. The belief in Yoruba land is that once a mad person gets to the market, his madness becomes irreversible.

That the All Progressives Congress (APC) still won the 2023 presidential election was in spite of Buhari because in the 2015 election, it was not just about the then President Jonathan leaving, it was a case of Nigerians throwing away the baby with the bath water. Meaning the PDP must go down with him. But the scenario was different in 2023 election because Nigerians were still able to reason that the APC presidential candidate in the election was a man with pedigree. They were still able to retain their faculty and bring into remembrance the good things that Tinubu did as governor of Lagos State between 1999 and 2007. They continue to see his imprints on the pace of development that has continued in Lagos unabated, especially since 1999, making Lagos the state to beat in the country.

This and a host of other factors made the APC governors stood with Tinubu, particularly those from the north, through thick and thin, and in spite of the numerous land mines placed on his way to power, until victory was assured.

The truth is; Nigeria is hungry for development. This country is hungry for transformation. Nigerians who stood by Tinubu and handed him victory at the polls want him to come and replicate what he did in Lagos (that is still manifesting) at the national level.

So, you can see what I mean when I said Tinubu has no option than to succeed. He seems to me the last of the old breed politicians that Nigerians, particularly the youths are likely to be prepared to tolerate. If he gets it right, then there is hope that something good can still come out of their Nazareth. Then there is hope that those waiting in the wings to sneak into the seat of power will know without being told, that there is no vacancy in Aso Rock. But if he doesn’t, then the vestiges of the old breed must get ready to retire from the political scene. But he has to be tactical in his reaction to the fallout of the subsidy removal.

With Tinubu now in power, it is like ‘omo oninkan de’ (the son of the owner has arrived) which should translate into public good because, as a true child of the owner, he should understand the intricacies and nuisances of the democracy that he symbolises. He has the experience, the exposure, the academic qualification, the street wisdom and all, to see him through. No rational person would ever have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that he now has that would fritter it.

For Bola Ahmed Tinubu, there is an 11th commandment: thou shalt not fail. There is no other option, but this. So help him God.