Comparisons, it has been said, are odious.
No two situations are ever exactly alike. Even where that improbable symmetry obtains, symmetrical outcomes are far from guaranteed.
Still, the parallels between the build-up to June 12, 1993 presidential election and the build-up to presidential election scheduled for February 14 are troubling.
In the weeks leading up to June 12, 1993, orchestrated demands for the scrubbing of the projected poll filled the air, promoted for the most part by proxies of Military President Ibrahim Babangida.
The country was not ready, they said; the political class had learned no lessons. Babangida was the only person who could keep the system going, and if he was allowed to vacate power, it would end in violent dissolution. He must be persuaded to hold on to power.
Days to the election, Arthur Nzeribe – he who has never embraced a cause without bringing it into disrepute – secured a court ruling in the dead of night restraining Humphrey Nwosu’s National Electoral Commission from conducting the poll.
Demonstrations were staged in many cities to demand the continuation of military rule. Nor was the military spared. Ballots were circulated in the barracks, urging enlisted men and women to demand that Babangida continue in office. Advertisements to the same effect, placed by unidentified sponsors, filled the newspapers.
The culmination of the transition to democratic rule, eight years in the making, became in the hands of the regime and its propagandists, aided by the coercive power of the state, a subject of fear and loathing
Now, fast forward to the presidential election scheduled for February 14, 2015.
An aggrieved lawyer, doing a variation on the Nzeribe gambit, has gone to court to seek to disqualify the main challenger, General Muhammadu Buhari, on the grounds that he lacks the basic educational qualification specified in the Constitution.
The challenger has since shown beyond all reasonable doubt that he meets and even exceeds the required West African School Certificate. Disdaining the rules of evidence and lacking the confidence to pivot on the incumbent’s vaunted record of “transformation,” his opponents have now framed that academic requirement as the central issue in the contest.
Their chief spokesperson Femi Fani-Kayode, who is fast gaining Nzeribe’s reputation for bringing into disrepute every cause he has ever embraced, thinks he has found a chink in Buhari’s amour and he is tearing away furiously.
A suborned national army now sits as the final authority on academic certification in general and the West African School Certificate in particular.
Rented crowds are poised to stage protests all over the country calling for a postponement of the presidential election, or for the setting up of an “interim government, to be headed no doubt by the incumbent, because the Independent National Electoral Commission is not ready, or because it would be imprudent to deflect the country from its present glorious course of prosperity and transformation.
The similarities between June 12, 1993 and February 13, 2015, it is necessary to insist, are sobering, troubling even.
But there has also been some innovation.
The leading opposition party says it will form a parallel government if it is persuaded that it was cheated out of victory. Armed militants beholden to the incumbent and warn darkly that it would be the end of Nigeria as we know it if their candidate is not re-elected.
Unlike 1993, what is shaping up now as Election Day draws closer and closer is the prospect of a grand collision of an immovable object and an irresistible force.
New girl on the block
In the vast literature on “June 12”, the epic struggle of Nigerians to reclaim their sovereign right to determine who will govern them, it was perhaps inevitable that some individuals and groups who played pivotal roles have passed largely unacknowledged.
Some of those key figures may well have chosen to remain unsung out of a sound instinct for self preservation. Others may take the view that the chronicle is necessarily a work in progress, and that they will be accorded their proper due in the fullness of time. Yet others may have chosen out of modesty to keep in the background; they had done what duty and circumstance required, which was what really counted.
To this latter group belongs Dr Hamidat Doyinsola Abiola, who turned 70 last Sunday.
In the Abiola household, Kudirat, of revered memory, was the NADECO face of the struggle. Doyin Abiola, operating on a different but complementary plane, was the strategic thinker and discreet mobiliser.
She saw beyond the crowds and the bombast of the earlier phase and realised, as few did, that the struggle was going to be long and bitter, and that it could not be won on the streets.
Appeasement was of course out of the question, and surrender was unthinkable. A way had to be found to keep the struggle alive, not merely on the streets, but in the hearts and minds of influential actors spanning the political spectrum in Nigeria, well as in the international community. That was the task Doyin Abiola set herself.
To its pursuit she deployed many formidable assets: a sharp, analytic mind emblematized by a doctorate in communication research – the first Nigerian woman to acquire that distinction; three decades in journalism from the rank of reporter to managing director, a voracious appetite for reading, versatility in using new communication technology, courage, tenacity, and a considerable portion of her endowment from her husband’s fortune.
She also applied to it a quality so sadly lacking in public life in Nigeria: judgment, a capacity for comparing and deciding, which was enhanced by her instinctive sense of right and wrong, of what is possible, merely probable, or outright impossible.
And so, while Kudirat kept alive the support and loyalty of the “June 12” faithful, on the home front, Doyin Abiola reached out discreetly to those who had abandoned the camp, those who were sitting on the fence, and those who were viscerally opposed to the project. I can bear witness because I accompanied her on some of the missions.
To reach the attentive and influential audience abroad, Doyin Abiola hit upon the idea of a monthly newsletter that would provide analysis and perspective on the struggle for democracy in Nigeria, and a status report on the central figure in that struggle, her husband Bashorun Abiola.
It had to be scrupulously factual, from cover to cover. It had to reflect accurately and in proportion the acts and utterances of the major factions, their motivations as well as their fears. It must contain no hint of self-pity or bitterness. It must foist no judgments or conclusions on the recipients.
I was privileged to assist her in preparing the newsletter until I left Nigeria late in 1996. Its recipients included key leaders of the Commonwealth, the Organisation of African Unity, the United Nations, the European Community, senior officials of the Clinton White House, and leaders of influential NGOs.
If the effort did not produce dramatic results, the feedback indicated that it certainly provided a sober and credible counterpoint to Sani Abacha’s lying propaganda. And it helped generate empathy for the struggle, and for Bashorun Abiola.
Nothing, not even serious illness, could move Doyin Abiola to seek rest and respite abroad. She learned to live with danger and continued quietly and tirelessly to mobilise support for “June 12”.
In the fullness of time, Dr Hamidat Doyin Abiola will get her proper due as a pivotal figure in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria. For now, I am sure she will be content to be celebrated as the new girl on the block.
Welcome to the Club, and to the neighbourhood, HDA.
