Why Babangida Annulled June 12 Election!

Sudan has been at war for 34 of its 45 years of independence. The conflict has been described a "perfect war " because it was cleverly engineered such that a few ruling elites prospered at the expense of the general population by dividing the nation along ethnic and religious lines.

In 1989, Babangida, the unrelenting dictator, had sponsored a conference where all the ideology and structure for his perpetual stay in office, under the guise of religion, was carved out.

A secret document from the conference, exposed to Againstbabangida.com by concerned sources and verified through a reliable source, shows how the Babangida regime allegedly gave $21billion to the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), with the intention of making Nigeria the "permanent headquarters of the Islam in Africa Organization (IAO)", which would comprise of Nigeria, Niger, The Gambia, Mauritania, Senegal, Libya, Tanzania, Sudan and Tunisia.

The Sudan experiment may have been instructive to Babangida in the early years of his regime as he looked for ways to stay in power for as long as possible. His endless political experimentation ended with the June 12 election when the NRC failed woefully at the polls. Frantic attempts to stop the election from taking place, when it became obvious the NRC was headed for a disastrous defeat, had failed.  Not even the victory of another Muslim, Mr. M.K.O. Abiola, would persuade Babangida to change his heart, as he was resolute on implementing his secret program that would turn Muslims against Christians and make Nigeria officially a closed Islamic state.

If hatched, the plan would have given Babangida a free hand to unleash terror upon Nigerians while acting under emergency powers to quell civil disobedience.

We have the communiqué of the conference, held in Abuja on November 28, 1989, and sponsored by Babangida's administration. The conference gave birth to an organization identified as Islam in Africa Organization (IAO). The communiqué has the seal of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on it.

It reads: "The Conference decided that the Steering Committee should also work out detailed plans for transforming a national party in each member nation into a National Islamic Party, and that the National Republican Convention, NRC of Nigeria should be made to serve this purpose in Nigeria as the only recognized National Islamic Party of Nigeria.

"These political parties so approved shall be the only ones to produce leading government (executive and legislative) functionaries. The NRC of Nigeria and other parties shall have their name changed to reflect Islamic nature of their purpose."

While acknowledging that the plan would be hard sell in Nigeria at the time, the brains behind it decided to use London as their operational base and fool Nigerians it had nothing to do with the OIC, which it noted: "has become too controversial in Nigeria."

All Western forms of legal and judicial systems would have been replaced with the Sharia, and there certainly would have been a direct confrontation with other religions and then, anarchy, just like it happened in Sudan.

References to the document were made in a book, "Miracles and Mosques," by Australian author, Dr. Stuart Robinson. When contacted by Againstbabangida.com, Dr. Robinson said the document in his possession was valid and that it was sealed with the stamp of the President of Nigeria. Perhaps, it has never been known to exist because the whole plot was meant to be secretly executed.

The sum of $21billion allegedly given to the OIC by Babangida to make Nigeria the 46th member of the organization is mind-boggling, almost unbelievable. But it is hard to doubt the facts in the document because almost every issue can be corroborated by events during the Babangida regime.

It is hardly contentious that IBB's plan was to give victory to the NRC in the state-sponsored two-party election of 1993, which presented a weak and relatively unknown presidential candidate, Bashir Tofa. Both the NRC and SDP were created by Babangida, who handed their constitutions to them and teleguided every detail from their birth to their death. 

When the Social Democratic Party of M.K.O. Abiola won the election, Babangida simply blew up, and scampered to quickly annul it without any real reason. Up till today, Babangida has not given Nigerians any direct reason for annulling the election, which is certainly the freest ever conducted. He has kept saying for 13 years his hands were tied, and that at a time in the future, he would provide the reason. IBB repeated that statement two weeks ago. The electoral commissioner at the time, Professor Humphrey Nwosu, was strangely quieted, and has not spoken publicly for 13 years.

The plan, if it had materialized before Babangida was forced out of power by mass protests, would have made Nigeria's name to be changed to the Federal Islamic Sultanate of Nigeria, with the Sultan of Sokoto enthroned as the spiritual head.

It is not clear whether Babangida was acting alone or with a group. There was a solid bond between Babangida and the then Sultan of Sokoto, Ibrahim Dasuki, who was later deposed by the paranoid successor to Babangida, General Sani Abacha. Apparently, Abacha did no feel safe around Dasuki, and he suddenly banished him from the throne and rendered the former Sultan powerless.

In fact, both Babangida and Dasuki were implicated in the BCCI banking scandal, which they allegedly jointly owned. BCCI's activities in Nigeria were so profoundly, overwhelmingly corrupt as to suggest a very significant level of corruption in Nigerian officialdom generally. Whereas BCCI's activities in most countries merely involved corrupting a few, key people, in Nigeria the corruption was systemic and endemic, and touched nearly every operation of the bank in Nigeria. When the bank ran into problem worldwide and was closed everywhere else, it only metamorphosed into African International Bank in Nigeria. It is the revelation of the dealing behind the BCCI bank that caused Babangida to close the African Concord, coincidentally owned by M.K.O. Abiola. Read More About the BCCI scandal

Unfortunately for Babangida, Abiola was himself a Muslim known for his support of Islam all over Nigeria. He was voted for by both Muslims and Christians, which poetically ran against the seemingly diabolic plan by Babangida to selfishly turn religions against each other so that he could perpetuate his power. The June 12 election cut across religious divides, and showed that Nigerians wanted their country to remain secular without any religion ruling over another. Before that election, one of the cross-wedge issues used by detractors was that Abiola was a Muslim, and would not be voted for by Christians. It became a non-issue after that election.

The constitution of 1979, under which Babangida operated, and every other law in the country from independence till now, have based the rule of law on secularity. Both Christians and Muslims have ruled at various times, and religion had never been a dividing factor as such. Most of the problems have mainly been political and economic.

Babangida was the first to introduce the religious dimension to Nigeria's problems. In 1986, it caused the ouster of his second-in-commander, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, who first saw a movement to making Nigeria a wholly theocratic state. His objections quickly led to his removal and replacement by a more accommodating and less principled successor, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu.

Even IBB's ardent follower, Professor Omo Omoruyi, was disgusted by the direction Babangida was going on secularity when he wrote: "Babangida without the approval of the governing organs of the Federal Military Government organized a mission led by a non-member of the Government, the Sultan of Sokoto, to formally admit Nigeria into the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). When the Chief of General Staff, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe complained that he knew nothing about it and definitely said that he could not remember the matter coming to the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), he was shown his way out."

The OIC issue immediately stirred opposition to the IBB regime, and he quickly pushed under the rug openly. Facts now show he did not end the plan, but pushed forward vigorously with the highest level of secrecy, intending to unfold his plan only after the NRC must have won the election, and probably invited him to be the leader.

The NRC was always a phony party, no wonder it could not even win sufficient votes in the core north, where it was expected to.

With two million fatalities, the war in Sudan has produced more casualties than those in Angola, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Liberia, the Persian Gulf, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Rwanda put together. No fewer than four million Sudanese have been made homeless. With Sudan's 29 million people being just about 20 per cent of Nigeria's population, the Sudanese crisis would have been a child's play compared to what would have happened in Nigeria if the Babangida plan had succeeded.

Efforts to reach the Islam in Africa Organization before we published failed. It has no phone number or street address. The only method of contact was through their web site, http://www.islaminafrica.org/ There was no response to our web inquiry.

However, IAO confirmed the holding of the said 1989 conference in Abuja on its web site. It claimed Africa is wholly Islamic without any blend of religion. "And this in turn led to the organisation and convening of the Islam in Africa Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, in November 1989. ...A steering committee to draw up the charter of the organisation was set up. It met in Libya and the charter it produced was ratified at the July 1991 meeting in Abuja when the Islam in Africa Organisation (IAO) was formally born."
 
Although we could not reach officials of IAO, in deciding to use the document, we decided that the public need to know far outweighs any other considerations. We welcome a response from General Ibrahim Babangida and his followers.