“The truth”, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote “is rarely pure and never simple”. But as the Austrian-born philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein however pointed out, “truths are facts that have no spatial locations”. They remain the same. President Buhari’s statesmanship and courage in the historic institutionalization of June 12 as against Nigeria’s forces of evil’s June 29, as democracy day in honour of MKO Abiola’s heroic sacrifice that democracy may thrive in Nigeria, confirms a similar Yoruba saying that “Bi iro ba lo logun odun, ojo kan lotito yoo baa (No matter the quality of an untrue account, the truth shall always prevail”. All those that have tried to replace the truth of June 12 with falsehood have either ended up in grief or have continued to be haunted by their inglorious past.
But first, for the sake of our youths who were not born 26 years ago, the diary of the debacles: (apology to Olatunji Dare). Babangida, the self-styled ‘evil genius’, after toppling Buhari in a palace coup, set up in January 1986 a Political Bureau of 17 accomplished Nigerians to ‘search for a viable political future and provide guidelines for attainment of this objective’. At the completion of their work after 15 months, he, in July 1987, inaugurated his transition programme. He first decreed two parties, National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Although the two parties conducted their primaries on February 6, 1992, it was not until November 18, 1992, few months to the end of his “transition without end” that Babangida cancelled the results claiming ‘stability of the nation cannot be sacrificed on the altar of time’.
Following pressure from respected Nigerians including chief Anthony Enahoro and Obasanjo who warned that “any attempt to prolong military rule will not only bring the armed forces into disrepute but will be a declaration of war against the sovereign right of the people of Nigeria to choose their own leaders and conduct their own affairs in accordance with the constitution”, Babangida, from his bag of tricks, brought out option A4 which against all expectations, produced two of his friends Bashir Othman Tofa and Moshood Kashimawo Abiola as presidential candidates.
Two days to June 12, 1993, the rescheduled date of the election, Arthur Nzeribe and his ABN, which had earlier unsuccessfully campaigned for “four more years for Babangida” as military president, secured a midnight interlocutory injunction from Justice Bassey Ikpeme’s Abuja High Court, to stop the election despite Decree 52 of 1993 that protected the election against court injunctions.
Humphrey Nwosu, on the strength of the said Decree 52, went on with the election as scheduled. But less than 12 hours after the election, Nduka Obaigbena, the publisher of defunct This Week magazine and a failed NRC Senate candidate from Delta State was on CNN, calling for the cancelation of the election because MKO Abiola, contrary to the provision of the electoral act, wore a dress with party logo to the polling booth on election day. In less than 24 hours and with the announcement of results in 14 states, Dahiru Saleh, Chief Judge of Abuja (FCT) in response to Arthur Nzeribe’s new prayers, stopped further announcement – an illegal order Attorney-General Akpamgbo ordered NEC, the electoral umpire to obey.
On June 23, the forces of evil prevailed with the federal government’s cancellation of the presidential election, suspension of NEC and repealing of the laws on which the eight years transition was anchored through an undated and unsigned statement read by Nduka Irabor, press secretary to Vice President Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, claiming the decision was to “ensure that a judiciary that had been built on a sound and solid foundation was not tarnished by the insatiable political desire of a few persons”.
Obasanjo who had during an earlier Council of State’s meeting informed Nigerians that “under Babangida, all the values we hold dear are under assault; the nation is racked by tension and despair; hope has become a scarce commodity and fear a constant companion”, made a 360 degree U-turn to join him in imposing an illegal Interim National Government, to be headed by Ernest Shonekan, Abiola’s fellow Egba compatriots. And wearing the borrowed robes of John the Baptist, he announced self-conceitedly that ‘Abiola was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for’.
The Guardian, in an editorial, posited that the “interim national government was an aberration, entirely without legitimacy and therefore lacked the authority with which to govern”. Justice Dolapo Akinsanya of Lagos High Court lent credence to the paper’s claim when she, shortly afterwards, declared the ING contraption illegal.
Abacha seized power on November 17, 1993. He clamped MKO Abiola into prison on June 11, 1994 following his self-declaration as president at the famous Epetedo declaration. He went on to declare war on Nigerians with state sponsored assassination of Alfred Rewane, Kudirat Abiola among many others and the chasing of NADECO opposition members into exile. He then designed his own four-year transition programme to terminate in October 1998.
He registered five political parties, described by Bola Ige as ‘the five fingers of a leprous hand’ viz Democratic Party of Nigeria,( DPN); Committee for National Consensus, (CNC); Grassroots Democratic Movement, (GDM); United Nigeria Congress Party, (UNCP) and National Centre Party of Nigeria( NCPN), with all of them adopting Abacha as their sole presidential candidate. Amidst sycophants’ songs such as “Abacha today, Abacha tomorrow and Abacha forever’, and Daniel Kanu-led one million Abuja match christened ‘Nigerian Youths Earnestly Yearn for Abacha”, the man died a miserable death allegedly eating apples with Indian prostitutes inside the presidential palace he illegally seized and immorally occupied.
General Abdulsalami Abubakar succeeded Abacha. Abiola who was said to have collapsed and died on June 7, 1998, in the presence of Thomas Pickering, visiting United State under-secretary for foreign affairs, died under his nose. Haunted by MKO Abiola’s ghost, as against Babangida’s eight years transition and Abacha’s five years’, Abubakar packed his own transition into a tight eight months, September 24, 1998 and May 25, 1999 at the end of which he and his distrusted ‘army of anything is possible” released Obasanjo from prison and imposed him on Nigeria to operate a military-midwifed constitution neither he nor Nigerians had seen. Obasanjo, the major beneficiary of Abiola’s tragedy spent eight years in office dancing on his grave. His fellow PDP members betrayed the spirit of June 12 by stealing the country blind in the name of democracy for another eight years.
Yesterday’s final triumph of truth is but a confirmation of time tested aphorism of Uthman Dan Fodio, the late spiritual leader of the 19th century Fulani Jihad, (1754-1816) that ‘conscience is an open wound that only the truth can heal. As it was in the first republic, all those who elevated falsehood above truth, dead or alive, have all come to grief. Babangida the evil genius who tried to set the country ablaze by fraudulently claiming he annulled June 12 to please northern political elite opposed to Yoruba presidency is today a shadow of himself. Abacha died a cheap miserable death inside Aso Rock Presidential palace he immorally occupied. With anarchy let loose on the land, Obasanjo is today a witness to the ruins of the ‘mainstreaming’ efforts he first embarked upon in 1976, all through second and fourth republics when he tried hard to obliterate the legacies of his more illustrious Yoruba compatriots in order to please those he today accuses of planning to ‘Fulanise’ and ‘Islamise Nigeria. Danjuma, David Mark and their fellow Christians without the spirit of Christ who ran and ruined the country for 15 years in denial of what June 12 represents are in the United Nations accusing those on whose back they rode to into prominence of ethnic cleansing.
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