EX-PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo had all his eight years in office to come to terms with the matter of June 12, a label that has come to signify the annulment of the 1993 presidential election won handsomely by the late Moshood kashimawo Olawale Abiola, more endearingly known as MKO. Dr Obasanjo spurned the opportunity, indeed treated it with all the disdain he could muster in words and body language. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan also had the chance to revisit that historic wrong and cause a redress of cathartic proportions to be made. He half-heartedly made an effort that rubbed the Southwest the wrong way when he tried to rename the University of Lagos in honour of the symbol of June 12. Sensibly, even though some critics still think it was prompted by ethnic politics, the Southwest looked his gift horse in the mouth and denounced him for lacking historical insight.
It has taken President Muhammadu Buhari, probably the most unlikely person ever, to acknowledge the sacrifices made by MKO, and, encapsulating the yearnings of Nigerians, to order a national restitution. In a press statement unprecedentedly signed by him in a manner reminiscent of American presidents signing executive orders and executive actions, President Buhari spoke directly about the June 12, 1993 presidential poll, acknowledged it as the freest and fairest, embraced its symbolism for Democracy Day celebration instead of the arbitrary May 29, and awarded the highest national honour of GCFR to MKO.
Since the announcement last Wednesday, the country has been in a lather. Even though it has come a little belatedly, and is hedged by a number of unwritten and unspoken caveats, the country has unreservedly embraced the gesture, seeing that it comes from a president ill at ease with democratic principles. The move has been acknowledged as a masterstroke in an election year, a sop to the critical and insatiable Southwest which was poised to jump APC ship, and a sensible and indisputable righting of a historic wrong. Indeed, no one, not even this column, can grumble against President Buhari for addressing a major injustice all his three predecessors had either ignored or handled with open or subtle mischief. The president must be cautiously commended for deeming it fit to do what he has done even against the run of his personal democratic play.
Of President Buhari’s three predecessors in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, Dr Jonathan probably meant well the most in attempting to redress the wrong of more than two decades. In his customary circumvention of rules and laws, he had ordered the renaming of the University of Lagos in honour of MKO. He did not take account of the fact that south-westerners are a people besotted to a deep sense of history, who recognise institutions, symbols, places and meanings. They wondered why Dr Jonathan would omit the National Stadium in Abuja, for instance, and come down to the Southwest to look for something to honour MKO. They proudly looked Dr Jonathan’s gift horse in the mouth, fearing that the university renaming was more like a grudging local measure to placate a quarrelsome and complaining people. The attempt thus failed.
But Dr Obasanjo never attempted anything. He neither situated his election within the context and purview of the June 12, 1993 presidential poll senselessly annulled by Gen Ibrahim Babangida nor recognised that had MKO not sacrificed his life, and had the late politician traded his mandate in the crass mercantilist style Dr Obasanjo himself is accustomed to, the Fourth Republic would probably not have materialised, and certainly the country would not have felt obligated in 1999 to cede the highest office in the land to a Yoruba politician. Worse, in words and deeds, Dr Obasanjo did his utmost to belittle the contributions MKO made directly and indirectly to the restoration of civil rule. If the ex-president attempts to criticise President Buhari’s restitution, whether inspired by 2019 election politics or not, the country will laugh him to scorn.
While President Buhari deserves praise for recognising MKO’s sacrifices and honouring the late politician, it is not out of place to examine his method and rationalisation. Was it done to position the president and his party for the 2019 polls? Probably. But even if that was the purpose, and there is reasonable suspicion that he intended that outcome, it is neither illegal nor illogical. Every politician reserves the right to scheme within the ambit of the law to win elections. However, the president’s press statement leaves too many gaps that cast doubt on his intentions. He may have partly addressed the grave injustice of 1993, but he does not do it with the conviction, character and judgement of a democrat, or of someone who truly understands the concepts of democracy and justice, two virtues involved in and assailed by the annulment.
The president anchored the press statement awkwardly on which date best approximates the symbol of democracy, May 29 or June 12, rather than on the historical significance of the 1993 annulment viz-a-viz the concept of justice and the huge sacrifices the winner of that election made to entrench democracy. And while the president acknowledged that “millions expressed their democratic will” in an election he described as “the freest, fairest and most peaceful since independence”, it is still shocking that he spoke of MKO as the “presumed winner” of that election using the lexical gymnastic beloved of Nigerian leaders too fearful to come to terms with their obnoxious past. The president may have decided to honour MKO, but there is doubt that he fully comprehends the nitty-gritty of that annulment, what it means for Nigeria as a country, the concept of justice with which he has wrestled since assuming office, and the future of democracy itself.
Everything in the president’s statement points to its peremptoriness, regardless of its laudable objective, as if by some undisclosed epiphany he suddenly realised that such a decision would put him in good political standing both with south-westerners and the rest of the country. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in the statement that exhibits a deep conviction about anything, including the elementary fact of which date best symbolises Democracy Day in Nigeria. It was necessary to revisit the election, examine why and how the country’s leaders, including those not in government at the time, abetted that injustice, get the results officially released and published, declare the winner as winner not the presumed winner, and announce measures as far as is humanly possible to ensure that such subversion of popular will never occurs again. It is only after these have been done that the president’s statement would have acquired inspiring meaning far beyond the symbolisms he seeks to enunciate and promote.
The president may have partially redressed a terrible wrong; he, however, did not sound convincing. By not revisiting the polling results upon which he apparently predicated his decision and the honours, it is not surprising that he stopped short of declaring MKO president. Someone else will have to do that sometime in the future. But stopping halfway lends credence to those who suspect that his decision on the June 12 affair was essentially triggered by political motives. For, other than the honours, every other thing was about June 12 as a day, Democracy Day, not MKO Day. Furthermore, there is really no leg upon which his decision on MKO stands, which perhaps explains why he said nothing about the concepts of democracy and justice. But perhaps the little said, the better for the president, so that he is not entrapped by his own words.
Yet, the MKO affair is both about Chief Abiola himself and the country that voted overwhelmingly for him. Both he and the country need justice today as much as they demonstrated their love for democracy in 1993. The president should have acknowledged those needs in his statement. Yet, had he done that, had he meant the decision far more significantly than its political connotations, he would have faced the puzzle of fighting to right a moral wrong done in 1993 when he is busy, by his approach to the Dasuki and Shiite affairs, perpetrating other egregious wrongs. No, there is absolutely no conviction and no depth in the decisions the president indicated in his press statement on the MKO affair. The decisions hang in the air, when they need to be anchored on the weightier issues of justice and democracy, and the lessons of history.
The idea of the honours and holiday is good, but it is vitiated by its lack of substance, by its affectations, by the reluctance of the president to go far back and much deeper into the substantial issues that created the crisis. The result is that these issues have still not been addressed, despite the honours, and the country cannot claim to have come to terms with its sordid electoral past, a past which led to the death of the winner of that election, and a death neither acknowledged for the immensity of the personal sacrifice MKO made, nor memorialised by a grateful nation newly sworn to uphold the ideals that undergird June 12. June 12, 1993 was not just about MKO, it was also about voting across party, religious and ethnic lines and divisions, which few Nigerians ever thought possible. By singling out MKO and his running mate for honours, and expediently throwing in the legal titan and human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi, President Buhari not only glossed over the real essence of June 12, he also underscored the hastiness, if not emptiness, with which his presidency approached the matter.
No one is sure whether Chief Fawehinmi would have accepted the honour. His family seems to think he would have. Perhaps there is no need to encourage the argument, since, in any case, it is posthumous. Like the late sage Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Fawehinmi was one of a kind: finicky about the law, ethical in his doings, humanistic as a person, and to a great extent also political and judgemental. People like that are a rare gift to their generations, and it is pointless second-guessing them in their absence. Babagana Kingibe is thrilled by the president’s gesture despite not emerging from the annulment crisis in those giddy early 1990s smelling of roses. He had been less principled and sturdy in fighting for the June 12 mandate, of which he was an integral and victorious part; indeed, he had been reticent about it not only then, but even now.
There is also doubt about how the Southwest will react to the president’s immortalisation of June 12, especially in terms of the 2019 elections. The Southwest had felt alienated by the president’s and his party’s reluctance to embark on the restructuring so crucial to the sustenance of the country’s unity, development and democracy. Worse, by its slowness in reacting to the killings in the Middle Belt, the federal government gave the impression to many in the Southwest that it nursed some hidden sectional agenda. Shocked and angry, and seeing the president ensnare himself in many unsavoury Freudian slips, some voices in the Southwest had begun agitating for a different, more responsive leadership wherever it could be found.
The Obasanjo/Buhari war is still burning fiercely, threatening to make the ship of state keel over. The former president has spoken of threats to his life, and warned darkly of the Buhari presidency’s hidden dictatorial bent. If the disagreement and disaffection become exacerbated, if the rogue security elements in the Buhari presidency continue their predatory actions against the liberties and wellbeing of the people, if the attrition triggered by herdsmen in the Middle Belt is not curbed, and if the animosities of those who have taken exception to the Buhari government’s abrasive and sectional policies are not mollified, it is doubtful whether the liberal Southwest will get carried away by the morsel of June 12 honours.
President Buhari’s June 12 pronouncement, as reassuring as it is, is a bolt from the blue, a silhouette of what June 12 activists had campaigned and hoped for. It, however, marks at least some tentative steps in the direction of fully coming to terms with the injustices promoted by that gruesome past. Nevertheless, it falls far short of acknowledging, let alone resolving, the most fundamental issues raised by the annulment and the turbulent political evolution that has put Nigeria at sixes and sevens. President Buhari may have wrong-footed his opponents, as he has done in the past two years or so, including Afenifere which has damned the recognition of June 12 and awards with faint praise, but it is doubtful whether in the march towards 2019, the June 12 pronouncement and honours are enough to influence and alter perspectives, electoral potentials and outcomes in the coming months.