• Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi played a critical role in the struggle for the enthronment of democracy–which started with the June 12 struggle. He writes on the need to always remember the lessons of the struggle
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously declared December 7, 1941 – the day on which Japanese forces carried out their attack on Pearl Harbour – “a date that will live in infamy.” There are dates that stand out in the annals of time, often because they carry such import that they can simply not be forgotten. Every nation has those dates that live on, as it were, in perpetuity beyond their first appearance in a calendar year. For us in Nigeria, June 12 is one of those dates that refuse to go away quietly. It is a date that clings on stubbornly to our national memory resisting all attempts to usher it into irrelevance.
One of our great failings as Nigerians is that we do not remember enough; we do not rigorously fulfill the civic duty of memory, a duty of care that is incumbent upon us to guard our own history and keep alive through remembrance events of national importance as eternal flames of consciousness. Without a sense of history, not only shall we consistently prove prone to repeating the tragedies of the past; we will also be perennially incapable of seizing the future. A sense of history gives us a vital narrative context within which to situate our journey as a nation. It is through history that we find our bearings and navigate the terrain of national evolution, for within our history lies our hope.
One of the alarming developments of our time is that history is no longer rigorously taught in our schools, and a generation has arisen that knows next to nothing about June 12; of the great sacrifices that were invested to secure the freedoms that we are now enjoying. They have heard nothing of the perfidies and betrayals orchestrated by the highly placed at the time or the epic courage of ordinary people who voted in Nigeria’s freest and fairest election, and taking to the barricades when their votes were casually nullified. We have as a nation almost completely forgotten the atmosphere of terror that suffocated life under the darkest era of military dictatorship in Nigeria’s history; the crude totalitarian abbreviation of liberty and life by overzealous security agents and murderous death squads. The stories have all faded from our collective memory – of intrepid journalists who went underground to continue their calling to publish truth as guerilla journalists risking the harassment of the wives and children they left behind; of brave activists that fled into exile and those unfortunate ones that were abducted, disappeared into the regime’s dungeons or assassinated.
Yes, we commemorate certain days such as Independence Day or Democracy Day or May Day. But these commemorations have been reduced to empty rituals and shallow pageantry lacking contemplative depths. They do not inspire us to reflect on the sacrifices and toils of those whose courage and patriotic selflessness made these dates worthy of commemoration. Behind each of these national days, we will find stories of heroism, hope and faith starring Nigerians that gave their lives both figuratively and literally for a better future for their children. Sadly, the spiritual and ethical capital they stored up is inaccessible to much of the younger generation because they have not been taught.
Our national anthem proclaims that the labours of our heroes shall never be in vain yet an alarming number of young Nigerians have scant idea of who these heroes are or what their labours were. Thus, we cannot draw inspiration from the past with which to contemplate our future.
This devaluation of historical knowledge is worrisome if only because of the place of remembrance in the construction of a national ethos. The great nations of the world are distinguished by their assiduously maintained reservoir of national memory. The horrors of the holocaust are branded in the Israeli national consciousness. Americans look back at the words and deeds of the founding fathers in determining the contemporary essence of the American dream. South Africans can look back at a rich tapestry of suffering and struggle under apartheid that finally gave birth to a new democratic nation. Collective memory and a shared history is one of the pillars of nation-building.
Nation-building is the work
of generations each trans
mitting the wisdom and epiphany accumulated from their life downwards. With this bequest of inherited memory and wisdom, each generation is progressively wiser than its forebears because of the gift of hindsight. It means that we need not reinvent the wheel and that we can recognize pitfalls on our path and avoid them. A lack of regard for history breaks the continuum of collective wisdom, rendering us both blind to our past and to our future. A lack of historical awareness does not simply diminish the quality of education our children are receiving; it also impoverishes public discourse. Much of the tenor of public commentary and punditry on our shores these days is needlessly negative and pessimistic, largely because there is no larger contextual sense of where we are coming from.
We must seriously begin to remedy this deficit in how we raise our children and in how we frame public discourse. What the commemoration of June 12 does, therefore, is that it avails us of an opportunity to interrogate a seminal event in our history, to seek out new dimensions of wisdom that can be gleaned with the benefit of hindsight. It offers us an opportunity to reflect upon how far we have come and how far we have yet to cover on the road before us as a nation.
Beyond Abiola
In commemorating June 12, we are doing more than celebrating the life of Chief Moshood Abiola although his life is certainly worthy of celebration. It is impossible to discuss June 12 without dwelling however briefly on the man who was most closely connected to that date. Indeed, his personal odyssey helped imbue that date with its significance. Abiola was known as one of the wealthiest tycoons of his day, with friends and traditional chieftaincy titles from everywhere across the nation. His generosity was legendary as were his philanthropic exploits. Because his rise was a quintessential rag to riches story, it resonated with Nigerians who believe that no condition is permanent or that the circumstances of one’s birth need not necessarily dictate the opportunities of his life. Ever mindful of his beginnings, Abiola retained an earthy, empathic disposition towards the less endowed that made him accessible to the lower strata of society. His own life’s journey which had taken him from the clutches of poverty to the heights of wealth and fame also made him a complex public figure brimming with contradictions.
He was a capitalist as well as a populist, as adept at boardroom maneuvers as he was with engaging with market women. He was fluent in the corporate-speak of the rarefied heights of the business world, on good terms with the civilian and military elites and had friends in every corner of the globe. Yet, he had an admirable facility with proverbs that endeared him to the common people and made him an impressive communicator.
When he sought the highest office in the land in 1993, that pursuit put him on collision course with the forces of martial tyranny. The nullification of his victory and subsequent incarceration until his demise formed the final chapter of a full, eventful and accomplished life. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to see June 12 as being simply about Abiola’s politics. It is more than that. His pursuit of power intersected with the popular Nigerian yearning for democracy. He became the symbolic vessel of a popular discontent with the failed promises of military dictatorship. So for us today, remembering June 12 means more than reflecting on Abiola’s quest and his heroic adherence to principle even when all hope of regaining his mandate seemed to have been extinguished. It means contemplating the eruption of democratic energies that propelled Abiola to victory and sustained a pro-democracy movement for years until the end of military dictatorship.
Some observers have referred to June 12 in almost mystical terms. For example, my friend, the journalist Dapo Olorunyomi wrote in 1994:
It is unlikely if politics, ethno-national relations, and social discourse can be the same again after the events of 12 June. Here is an instance of what philosophers are wont to characterize as the sudden leap in history – the turning point of time. In comparative intensity only the anti-colonial struggle and later the Nigerian civil war threw up as much passion and emotion. If there was one idea therefore that could pave the path to a Nigerian nation and by consequence, its literature and culture, 12 June had the full potential.1
In a similar vein, the renowned essayist Adebayo Williams remarked:
“For Nigeria, then, 12 June is the equivalent of a midnight child, a monster infant. As we have seen, it is a date imbued with mystical portents. It is a destiny. How we handle it will surely determine Nigeria’s survival.”2
These turns of phrase towards the metaphysical and the spiritual were simply ways by which the writers sought to convey the transcendental significance of June 12 and the momentous events that followed in its wake.
In the months after the nullifi
cation of his victory, Abiola
himself came to realize that June 12 transcended his entirely legitimate and rightful claim to the presidency. The quest to actualize his mandate had morphed into a broader movement embodying larger questions such as where sovereignty resides. Indeed, in one sense the June 12 debacle can be summed up as a struggle over the true location of sovereignty in Nigeria – whether it was in the bowels of a bankrupt military establishment or whether it lay with the people. The coalescence of disparate civil society actors and political players of various shades under the umbrella of a broad pro-democracy movement sought to answer that question in favour of the people.
The unyielding message of the pro-democracy movement was that sovereignty belonged with the people not with a military cabal. Only the people – the authentic repository of popular will – could legitimize authority through the exercise of electoral choice and their democratic bequest of power to those they had anointed. These were some of the issues that were thrown up by the June 12 debacle. These issues transcended Abiola and account for why the pro-democracy movement did not wither away after his incarceration.
In this regard, it is fascinating to observe the evolution in the way June 12 is commemorated. At first, any event marking June 12 was inevitably an event celebrating Abiola and placing his persona in entirely understandable focus. Yet as the years have gone by, June 12 commemorations have shifted from Abiola, becoming less about his struggle than about Nigeria’s quest for freedom.
June 12 Then and Now
There are those who still persist in asking why June 12 continues to endure in our collective memory. Why has it refused to go away? What is the fuss about this date? To begin with, the polls of June 12, 1993 were a seismic shift in the nation’s political consciousness. It will be recalled that the election was contested by Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention and Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party. Tofa picked as a running mate from the south east, an Igbo Christian in compliance with the unspoken rules of religious and ethno-regional balancing that formed the conventional wisdom of Nigerian politics. This wisdom held that for a party’s ticket to be electable it must offer an equilibrium of ethnic, regional and confessional identities that bridges our historic fault lines and offers an all-inclusive sense of belonging to all.
Hence, in the most simplistic rendering of this ethno-religious equation, Tofa as a Northern Muslim had expectedly picked a southern Christian. Abiola as a southern Muslim was largely expected to pick a northern Christian. Indeed there was no shortage of groups offering counsel on who Abiola should pick as a running mate. In the end, he boldly violated this supposedly sacred rule of Nigerian politics and chose the running mate that he felt would bring the most to his political campaign. He picked Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, a Northern Muslim. Pundits weighed the chances of an all-Muslim ticket in a climate of politicized sectarianism and concluded that Abiola had erred. But he gamely argued that his choice represented the most logical and rational option. Refusing to be swayed by sectarian and provincial sentiments, he had picked the man whose merits for the job were unimpeachable. It was a statement of intent and a demonstration of faith in the sort of Nigeria he believed was possible – a country where the best could lead regardless of their creed or ethnicity. It was a statement of faith in the Nigerian voter that with all of the facts before him, he would be able to scrutinize both tickets and make an intelligent choice. It was a daring, even radical gambit but it paid off.
On June 12, 1993, Nigerians voted in defiance of ethnic and religious dog-whistling and elected the two men they believed the most capable, disregarding the coincidence of their religious beliefs and other sectarian notions of equilibrium. They made a choice that was informed, intelligent and supremely rational. In this sense, the first remarkable thing about June 12 is how it inspired Nigerians to reach for the highest peak of their political consciousness and invest their aspirations in the ticket they believed represented their best chance of building a better country. Abiola’s campaign slogan was “Hope” and his was a simple message of populist hope that electrified many. It is no over estimation to say that since that time, no candidacy had been able to galvanize Nigerians in a similar fashion.
This is a point worth stress
ing because it is generally
believed that electoral choices are so distorted by the politics of identity as to be exercises in tribal selection or in-group solidarity affirmation. It is believed that ethnic and religious sentiments overwhelm all other instincts and calculations at the ballot and render political contest and discourse a bitter competition for primacy along lines of primordial identity rather than ideology. For the avoidance of doubt, no ethnically and religiously diverse nation can escape the dynamics of identity and provincial sympathies at the polls. Heterogeneous countries far older than our republic and far ahead of us in their practice of democracy continue to grapple with themes of diversity, tolerance and pluralism. It is fair to say that Nigeria’s challenges in the political management of diversity and plurality are not uniquely Nigerian.
In the United States, race is an inevitable factor in politics precisely because of that country’s racial diversity and its chequered history of race relations. In quite the same way, Nigeria’s history means that ethnicity and religion are political and electoral factors. But it is far from accurate to depict Nigerians as being so bound by provincialism that they cannot but vote along ethnic and confessional lines. This is simply false.
This is the dynamic that made June 12 possible. It is the same dynamic that makes it possible to envisage a time when political discourse will be much more framed around ideology than identity, and candidates will be judged much more by how they intend to address the practical challenges of life. Politicians will have to run on the platform of practicalities not the theatrics or sentiments of feigning identification with the electorate at a primordial level. At that point, one’s tribal marks or facility in a local language will prove less important than a proven track record of performance and integrity. That time is not as far off as some people think. June 12 was remarkable because it was a game changer, a political paradigm shift that broke the mould clearly and decisively on such a scale that it became necessary to revise assumptions and stereotypes about the electorate.
The Legacy of the Annulment
June 12 did not just showcase the better angels of o ur nature; it exposed the ethical and ideological vulnerabilities of our institutions and politics. The annulment of the freest and fairest election in our history by the military, the cavalier disregard for the toil of Nigerians who had withstood difficulties to cast their votes patiently without any untoward incident and the callous disinterest in the nation’s future represented the high watermark of authoritarian impunity.
Historically, Nigerian military regimes seized power proclaiming their readiness to fix the ailing economy and bequeath a functional political order to civilians. By the early 1990s, there was a growing sense that the military were no experts on economic management. The economy was reeling from the adverse impact of Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and social institutions were in decay. But even at this point the military could still have salvaged some credibility by handing over to duly elected politicians. The annulment of the June 12 election represents the complete breakdown of trust between the military and the society, the highest point in alienation between both spheres and the military’s total loss of institutional integrity and legitimacy.
The infamous midnight court judgment of the late Justice Bassey Ikpeme suspending further release of the election results signified the subversion of the judiciary and the degradation of critical public institutions by the forces of tyranny. The June 12 debacle also revealed the crisis of conviction and principle among Nigeria’s political class with many elites choosing to go along with the military dictatorship effectively aiding and abetting a manifest injustice, instead of joining the pro-democracy movement. These elites saw the impasse as an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Isn’t it an irony that even Abiola’s running mate later accepted to serve as the Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Abacha military government?
Twenty years after the annulment, it is permissible to argue that the most grievous damage was done to the psyche of ordinary Nigerians. Those who witnessed the subversion of institutions by their custodians, for instance, the compromise of some traditional rulers, the supposed custodians of our traditional values, in favour of the annulment had our faith shattered.
In fact, the most destructive legacy of the annulment is a long term distrust of government. The Babangida regime annulled those elections after an already convoluted transition process characterized by broken pledges to hand over. Nigerians still preferred to give the state the benefit of the doubt but the annulment of June 12 proved to be the last straw. From that moment, Nigerians have approached their governments with a mixture of cynicism, pessimism and disbelief. The political class inherited these burdens and, given some of the tragic spectacles of our democracy, it is fair to say, that we have not done too much to dispel these attitudes. Public institutions require the life-blood of public trust to function.
The biggest challenge facing us as democrats is to rebuild trust between the state and society. The relationship between both spheres is often needlessly adversarial owing to a lack of trust. The fact that even in a climate of openness, the media still hues to the combative guerilla journalism of the 1990s is as a result of the fact the sense of broken trust that still pervades state-media relations. Simply put, Nigerians do not trust their governments and this has made it difficult, indeed in some cases, impossible, to build mass citizen movements for a fuller democratic engagement.
Residual distrust of power feeds apathy, disinterest and cynical disengagement. The people distrust their governments but not enough to actively check them and avert excesses of power. Rather, they distrust them so much that they desert the state and many simply do not care enough about the public realm. This indifference is dangerous for democracy. Democratic institutions cannot survive or be strengthened in a climate of antipathy nor can politicians long retain their legitimacy under such circumstances. If the price of a free society is eternal vigilance, then apathy will carry a severe penalty for our republic.
1999: False Dawn or Little
Beginnings
While the elections of 1999 were generally welcomed both in Nigeria and abroad as a crucial turning point, the optimism in some quarters was more cautious. Considering our long history of military tyranny, it seemed prudent to emphasize the distinction between holding elections and implementing genuine democratization of structures and systems that had been shaped by totalitarian instincts for almost two decades. At the time, I was personally of the view that real democratization would require more than voting; it would require a complete rethinking of how our society was organized.
Then, there were all kinds of
hopeful analogies being
drawn between the democratic transition that had occurred in South Africa and the one emerging in Nigeria. Some observers expected that just as the African National Congress, the hub of the liberation movement had rightly assumed the reins of power in South Africa after the collapse of apartheid; a similar transference would occur following the end of military dictatorship and see the pro-democracy movement morph into a ruling party. This fantasy failed to materialize for a number of reasons. Firstly, the analogy was imprecise. While the ANC was a movement that was several decades old, with an ideological fervour and coherence sharpened on the front lines of suffering and struggle, the pro-democracy movement was younger, far more disparate and far from ideologically coherent.
The pro-democracy movement’s assortment of activists and politicians mainly wanted the military out of power. The politics of taking over power was a secondary consideration. As such, the pro-democracy movement was in no shape to comply with the organizational demands of a nationwide campaign for power. There were also genuine disagreements over the way forward by key elements of the movement. Some favoured entry into field to contest for power in the post-military era. Others wanted a continued struggle to realize far-reaching constitutional reforms. While some opted out entirely, preferring to boycott the transition process until their demands for deeper constitutional and structural changes were implemented. Thus divided by significant disagreements on tactics and strategy, the movement could not reconstitute itself into an effective political actor. Moreover, at the end of military dictatorship, the movement was too weak, exhausted by the stress of confrontation and the enormous toll that the struggle had taken, to really mount a realistic political challenge.
For these reasons, when the shape of the 4th Republic emerged, it seemed that those who had worked the most to enthrone democracy were sidelined while those that had been beneficiaries of and collaborators with military regimes took center stage. On hindsight, it may be said that the pro-democracy movement suffered from a lack of strategic definition in terms of articulating the next phase of the struggle. We were so pre-occupied with getting the military out of power that we did not have the time to devise appropriate tactical and strategic responses to that very eventuality.
In the event, the all-consuming haste to get the military out of power also framed some of the troubling birth defects of the 4th Republic, chief among them being the fact that the constitution – the guiding document of the republic was not generated through a popular democratic process but by a conclave that edited past constitutions. Indeed, the 4th Republic commenced before anyone actually saw the constitution. But at the time, the overriding imperative was to get the military out of power. Concerns about the provenance of the constitution were deemed nitpicky or churlish worries that could prolong military rule. No one wanted to give the military an excuse to stay a day longer especially when the regime at the time was minded to make a swift exit.
The late Chief Bola Ige once observed that what occurred in 1999 was not a transition from military dictatorship to democracy but from military rule to civilian rule. By this he meant that 1999 had not ushered in democratization in one blow but rather a phase of demilitarization that would ultimately lead to democracy. My own sense of the transition in 1999 was that it had been shaped significantly by the manner of Abacha’s exit and the arrival of General Abdulsalam Abubakar who eventually handed over to the elected civilian government. The dominance of the ruling party’s hierarchy by retired army generals and civilians with close links to military elites set the tone for party formation and resulted in an authoritarian presidential leadership rather than authentic democratic governance.
I have once argued that, in essence, the nature of the transition did not ensure a transformation of the political culture that would have led to a complete overhaul of our systems and structures; it merely effected a re-arrangement of the political space. The politico-cultural fundamentals that inform the conduct of elites remained the same. The widespread euphoria that accompanied the exit of the military and the entry of a civilian government prevented a sober appreciation of how entrenched the military had become in all aspects of Nigerian life. Apart from their obvious prominence in politics, it was the case that almost every financial institution was headed by, or had a board director with a military background. Serving and retired military officers owned factories, breweries and farms. Under these circumstances, what emerged in 1999 was not civilian rule but a new militarism. It was, in effect, a transition without transformation.
True enough, the Obasanjo
era bore the imprint of
military era impunity and manifested the discredited authoritarian habits of the past. Executive lawlessness was very much in fashion with the administration selectively obeying court judgments against it. Elections were characterized by chicanery and fraud often officially sanctioned at the highest levels. These symptoms were crowned by the ultimately abortive effort to amend the constitution to enable President Obasanjo run for a third term in office. The defeat of that proposal on the floor of the legislature was a necessary victory for democratic forces.
Regardless, it is important not to understate or devalue what occurred in 1999. A transition did happen. However lofty the expectations of the citizenry may have been regarding the advent of democracy, no realistic student of power dynamics could have imagined that democracy would flower so quickly in Nigeria given the long decades of military rule which had warped public consciousness and institutional instincts. It is, therefore, far more useful to see the 1999 transition as a case of humble beginnings and baby steps on the way to democratic maturity rather than a false dawn.
The Struggle Must Continue
It would be grossly inaccurate to say that Nigeria has not made progress since 1999. We live in a far greater conducive climate of freedom than those of us who came of age during military rule can recall. There is generally more respect for civil liberties and human rights. The demilitarization of politics has widened the space within which democratic reforms are occurring. Those who are profoundly pessimistic about the Nigerian enterprise continually cite the absence of economic dividends which might serve to “validate” democracy in the eyes of ordinary Nigerians as a major risk to the sustainability of democracy. In times past, the mismanagement of the economy by democratic regimes was cited by military adventurers who seized power from civilian governments. Arguably, the period between 1983 and 1999 served to dispel the myth that military dictatorships were better economic managers than democratic governments.
More importantly, the cure for a retarded democracy is yet more democracy. Proper economic policy which embodies the hopes and aspirations of the people can only be forged in the furnace of a widening democratic space and a revival of the lost democratic art of public conversation. Perhaps the major problem with 1999 and the disenchantment with the pace of change since then is perceptual. From the onset, the exaggerated expectations of the citizenry, which was encouraged by cheap populism on the part of politicians, was primed to disappointment. The scale of decadence was enormous; the range of structural deficiency and institutional dysfunction, too vast to be remedied by the magical appearance of elected officials. Indeed, many of those elected at the time gravely underestimated the scale of the problem and overestimated their own curative powers. Democracy is a journey and not a destination. We need a shift in consciousness from the inflated and fantastic expectations of a democratic destination to a wayfaring mindset that interprets our condition at any point in time in evolutionary terms as a continuing struggle.
We have to reject the agonizing generalizations of Nigerian life that casts a blanket of stagnation over every sector. The notion that nothing has changed since 1999 and that things have in fact grown worse is cynical, misleading and self-defeating. They are also discouraging to many conscientious and patriotic Nigerians in the public service who have committed themselves to rebuilding this nation. From the tone of negative reportage about Nigeria, one would think that such Nigerians do not exist, but they do! The fact is that there are pockets of progress all over this country where change-minded Nigerians have opted to light candles instead of merely cursing the darkness. Over the past decade, the quality of those at the forefront of politics has improved. There are more progressive-minded actors in the field. That quality and quantity can be expected to rise in the coming years. There are places where transformations in the way we live and govern ourselves are proceeding quietly, slowly and steadily despite the odds. It does no justice to the patriotic men and women who have chosen this path, for the rest of the country to continue the popular and simplistic vilification of everyone in government as corrupt.
What these negative com
mentaries do is rein
force the notion that we have reached the democratic destination and discovered it as a mirage. They stem from the idea that May 29, 1999 marked the end of the struggle when in fact it marked the end of one phase of the struggle and the beginning of another. If there is a slogan that summarizes the imperatives of our time it is the popular rallying call of student and trade union activism – “Aluta Continua” i.e. “the Struggle continues.”
My own personal odyssey that led me from the place of activism to the place of public service informs my sense of our democracy as a journey and a struggle. I had returned from exile in 1999 discerning that a new phase of activism required a more direct engagement at home with the new dispensation. My work focused on building bridges between the government and civil society that would enable the national leadership benefit from the talents and ideas of citizens within and outside the country.
In time, however, I became convinced that the efforts required to reform the system are not necessarily the same as the efforts necessary to transform it. I faced two choices. I could remain on the sidelines as it were with my engagement restricted to a theoretical and low-risk involvement in the unfolding dynamics of power and politics in my country. Or I could become an actor in the political system, attaining a more practical understanding of what it would take to effect transformation, and thereby function as an agent of change from within the system. I opted for the latter as I had no intention of remaining on the sidelines as an eternal critic of the system.
In 2005, I decided to run for public office and announced my candidacy for the governorship of Ekiti State, Nigeria. My journey to that office, beginning with my being at the receiving end of chicanery unprecedented even by Nigerian standards in the 2007 elections, through a protracted legal battle to reclaim my mandate and an election rerun which I won, were an invaluable education in the byzantine ways and means of Nigerian politics. It took three and a half years of legal proceedings before my electoral mandate was restored by the courts. It however did not end there; the electoral robbers and their collaborators had the effrontery to institute a most ridiculous case at the Supreme Court challenging my governorship. This case was only just decided in my favour on Friday May 31, 2013, over 6 years after the substantive election was held! Such impunity as I have argued is due to the gaps in our judicial system that makes no provisions for the punishment of those that subvert the people’s sacred mandate.
Despite the onerous difficulties involved in my epic struggle for justice, I am resolute in my conviction that Nigeria belongs to those who are prepared to stand up, stand firm and take control of their destinies. Our young democracy can only be enhanced by testing our institutions to their limits. In my case, my successful recourse to the judiciary, protracted though it was, suggested that there are embers of hope for our democracy that have to be stoked by the discipline of committed and focused engagement.
It needs to be added that there have been several other instances in which activist judges reversed ill-gotten electoral gains and undid injustices wrought on Election Day by political gangsters. Mine is not an isolated case. The presence of such spirits on the bench is another harbinger of hope for our country and is one of the reasons why it is simply not right or fair to say that public service remains the province of brigands. If part of the tragedy of the annulment of June 12 was the subornment of the judiciary as an instrument to negate the will of the people, then it is fair to say that conscientious judges have gone some way towards redeeming the honour and integrity of the judiciary. Such spirits are fellow wayfarers in the quest for a just and prosperous nation; their presence in various sectors of our national life recommends a more positive appraisal of our country’s prospects.
Conclusion
What we established in 1999 is the right to choose our leaders via the ballot. The current phase of the struggle is about maintaining the sanctity of the ballot, holding those elected accountable and stimulating civic engagement in the public realm, in a way that democratizes ownership of this democracy. We must banish the idea that governance is something performed by a team of gifted performers or strong men, while the rest of the citizens are spectators or complainers. During the days of military rule, some soldiers declared with more than a touch of hubris that politics is much too important to be left to politicians. By this they meant that the military had the right to be political players since politicians had generally proven inept. Ultimately, the military proved to be no better at politics and governance themselves.
But there is a fundamental truth to the saying that politics is too important to be left to politicians. It is about redefining politics itself, transforming it from a rarefied craft reserved for a select few professional politicians, to the protocols and relationships that undergird personal, communal and social wellbeing. In other words, politics is the management of human relationships, interactions and aspirations in the service of the common good. It is not something mysterious that only “politicians” do; it is how citizens operate. Politics is a civic responsibility. It is how we engage with each other. The pursuit of good governance means that politicians can no longer be left to their own devices.
Seen in this light, the mutual estrangement of government and civil society will end. The civil society will continue to express the communal instinct to regulate power but the chronic antagonism that poisons relations between the state and civil society will be replaced by mutual respect and positive tension. Civic engagement means that the state can access a much larger pool of wisdom and knowledge made available by a new rapport with civil society. In return, participatory governance will become much more practicable across all levels of governance.
Looking back on this occasion of the 20th anniversary of June 12, it is instructive to note that only civic movements mobilized in the context of larger patriotic interests can overwhelm the forces of impunity. It is the discipline of civic engagement that will keep at bay those who wish to turn back the hands of the clock and return us to the dark days of totalitarian rule. The struggle we are engaged in is dedicated to making this democracy truly a government of the people, for the people and by the people, and by so doing honour the memory of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola and all those who paid the supreme sacrifice pursuant of our common aspirations for the good society.
