General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida made the speech of his life on the day he killed the true foundations of Nigeria’s democracy as represented by the June 12th 1993 election. His speech I believe was telecast on the Nigeria Television Authority, NTA network, on the 23rd of the month of June that year.
In the speech, which sounded like he was giving the speech of his life, IBB uttered the following words in a very solemn but unconvincing manner: “Fellow Nigerians, the National Security and Defence Council have met several times since the June 12, 1993 election. The council has fully deliberated not only on our avowed commitment but also to bequeathing to posterity, a sound economic and political base in our country and we shall do so with honour. In our deliberations, we have also taken note of several extensive consultations with other members of this administration, with officers and men of the Armed Forces and will well-meaning Nigerian leaders of thought. We are committed to handing over power on 27th August 1993.”
“Accordingly,” he added, “the National Defence and Security Council has decided that by the end of July 1993 the two political parties, under the supervision of a recomposed National Electoral Commission, will put in place the necessary process for the emergence of two presidential candidates.”
As a resident of Sokoto at the time, sympathies conventionally lied with the National Republican Convention (NRC), which was the ruling party there, but to all well-meaning people, justice is just that, justice
In truth, most people on the northern side of the Niger thought less of the struggle, felt disregarded in it, because of the way it was being run or were even oblivious of the true essence of June 12th. The military on the other hand capitalised on the break in communication between the regions to launch another offensive against all agents of democracy and good government. But not minding the falsehood that the military Junta, led by Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, used and conjured, the election, to most people in other parts of the country who believed, drank and ate June 12, as if it was ordained by Allah, the election remained sacrosanct.Now, with the benefit of hindsight, one would think it probably was. June 12 has been fifteen years since but its legacy still lives on. Those who circumvented it have, for the past one and a half decades, been living with the shame of treachery while those who stood by it have been enjoying the limelight. It has become normal that people recall one’s position on June 12 and decided where one belonged on the political divide. That is what a watershed is all about.
Besides, to its credit, June 12th had empowered men who ordinarily were so afraid of armoured tanks that they would not touch it with a mile long pole to stand and face it with the belief that victory belongs to those who do right; it made groups too, who were at one point or another cells, albeit sleeping ones, of the opposition to arise and fight. The NADECO, for example, which stood firmly against the military armoured-tanks, was an offshoot of June 12th. So also was Radio Kudirat and many other amorphous organisations that operated from the underground; June 12th also gave teeth to the Yoruba socio-cultural group, otherwise known as “Afenifere,” which eventually metamorphosed into the Alliance for Democracy, AD as a political party that essentially lived on the wishes and aspirations of the people of South-western Nigeria.
But lately the relics of June 12th have been diminishing by the dozens. It is a tragedy that those who fought, and those who gave their lives, to see Nigeria prosper, or worked to see Nigeria’s democracy grow are being plucked, one after the other, by the cold hands of death. A shortlist of a few of them will suffice; Pa Solanke Onasanya, Pa Abraham Adesanya, Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu, Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin who, it is believed, was snatched by death through the clandestine connivance of government agents, Pa Alfred Rewane and Kudirat Abiola whose killers have since confessed their misdeeds, where their mandate was to protect Nigeria against a woman.
In the southeast, the likes of Ndubuisi Kanu and Ebitu Ukiwe struggled hard to see that June 12th saw the light of day but alas. The demise of these heroes and the hibernation of the others has effectively rendered the June 12 movement dormant, thus allowing this pseudo-democracy that Nigeria operates to continue to endure.
But the most dastardly of all was the assassination of Chief Bola Ige. Here is a man who is reputed to have drafted all the constitutions of the political parties and yet he was deprived of the right to live in Nigeria, by people who are still yet to be uncovered from under their mascots.
The above concludes that June 12 activists happened to be politicians who showed a grace, all too rare in modern Nigerian politics. They devoted time, energy and finances into ensuring that leadership goes to the right hands. These were people who have not had much practice in losing an argument but are losing their lives. The likes of Chief Anthony Enahoro may have been very vociferous in their pro-democracy activism, especially for the propagation of the June 12 issue but it is the Ebenezer Babatopes of this world that suffered under the June 12 debacle most because they shifted positions and were roundly castigated by their people for taking a stand.
The bottom line is that June 12 polarised the country but united the nation. Its latest casualty is Lamidi Adedibu, the custodian of Ibadan politics, who departed this world yesterday, the eve of June 12, 2008. He, it was that tried to get MKO Abiola out of the political logjam that eventually snuffed life out of the assumed winner of the election.
I recall all these because June 12 has dealt a serious blow on the political history of Nigeria. To the people that I know and relate with, June 12 has been blown beyond its rational proportion for change. Not that it could not change the nation and the world but that it was misappropriated by those who had little or no belief whatsoever in the process that brought it. It was a classic broad-based issue that was unnecessarily trivialised and mishandled, even misapplied by people who had little or no stake in its initial actualisation. In history, June 12 had the honour to be the only national event with a first and second actualisation and gestation period.
The way the election was conducted was proof that Nigeria can take centre-stage in world affairs if allowed to grow and determine its course without intervention or interference. But the movement divided the country along primordial lines that those who stewed together politically eventually became arch enemies. Some people, who took wild-card-decisions, to accept appointments in successive governments, for whatever reason, incurred the wrath of their kinsmen for alleged treachery.
But the beef of the cancellation remains not only unexplained but also unexplored. The resilience of Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, had nothing to do with the crises when it almost forced Nigeria to its knees. It also had little to do with proving to the world that Nigerians have what it takes to lead the world. But, once the nation got mired in the euphoria of the annulment, or the cancellation, of the election that was widely acclaimed, by many, to be the freest and fairest in the history of the world’s most populous black nation, people were ready to fight and die for what they believed to be right. Others were, very conversely, in the mood to slip through the crack and be merry.
But let us return to the time preceding the mood swings; the time when Nigerians, young and old, rich and poor, dropped their personal, familial, tribal, and religious and other primordial idiosyncrasies to file out en masse to vote for candidates of their choice, on that fateful, rainy, June 12 day, of 1993, when the whole gamut of political honesty came to a complete halt and allowed itself to be overtaken by political chicanery.
That day, even though many of the voters knew that their effort in electing the National Republican Convention, NRC or the Social Democratic Party, SDP, was an exercise in futility, because of the obvious mischief in the contrivance of the election, they filed out and voted anyway. The two parties, the NRC and SDP were created by Babangida, who handed them their constitutions and tele-guided every detail from their birth to their death.
The man on the mantle of leadership, the self-styled military president, had derailed many a transition train by turning them into personal strains for several politicians. The long- winding transition program had earned Babangida the “Maradona” moniker that by the time the June 12th election came, the people through a certain amoebic conviction, set everything they were doing aside, for once, to ensure that Babangida retired home to Minna. With June 12th 1993, Nigerians insisted that democracy must once again come alive, it being the only way for the country to prosper. This seemed to be a tall ambition in a now decrepit nation that could not even find its way in an empty room, having endured almost two decades of military dictatorships.
The expectations from the elections were so high. The considerations by all and sundry were beyond belief. Imagine the events, fifteen years ago, which cannot even be contemplated, or replicated in present day Nigeria, being a given years before. Then, Nigeria shed its religious-intolerance toga to not only allow a “Muslim-Muslim” ticket but also to support it to victory. Similarly, conservative northern Muslims, who would give a limb to cut a southern Muslim down, also disregarded the backbench and threw their weight in support of a non-Hausa Muslim candidate from the southwest region of the country to coast to victory over. What is more, that politics was monetised, because the winner was a free-willing spendthrift, did not matter to anyone at all.
But there were setbacks for some in the struggle, the first of those being former military president Ibrahim Badamasi babngida himself, who left Abuja unceremoniously due to the pressure from pro-democracy groups who decisively would not let the military junta spend a day longer than necessary in office. The manner in which he left showed that IBB did not as promised leave power on August 27th with honour as he promised and when he said that he believed “too that history, with the passage of time, would certainly score the administration high in its governance of our country,” he goofed because history still does not judge IBB favourably, making his entire existence a polished relic of the June 12th struggle. What this means is that until a free and fair election is held in the future, June 12 will continue to be remembered by Nigerians, like it or not.
