WEDNESDAY this week the 20th edition of June 12 will be commemorated. June 12 was hope. It was everybody’s dream. Everybody believed that the outcome of its interaction within the political space would usher in a new Nigeria. Indeed, it did, but for only 11 days. And then came June 23, 1993. It wiped off all about June 12.
Via a military fiat, June 23 turned June 12 ‘visual agnosia’ and redrew Nigeria’s political landscape, making it a ravenous dinosaur that eats up new ideas.
In sum, June 12 became the celebratory epitaph of a lost heritage — A somewhat painful, empty past. A once upon an election.
Twenty years after, as it was in that beginning is now — stalemate. Things have still not changed and the country still looks like a terrible battlefield. The landscape cratered by skirmishes and vituperations.
However, victory for actualisation of the dreams of June 12 has never seemed more distant after two decades. Except for civil society and some progressives, the call for immortalisation of June 12 and its winner has remained evanescent storm. Like the Tornado that scours one block, but skips the next until it dissolves, the call seem to have become nothing, but instant wish.
It was assumed after May 29, 1999, with the emergence of democratic rule, political forces would coalesce in the spirit to honour the symbol of June 12 — Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola.
While waiting for the conservatives, who have continued to ghost in the shadows, Alliance for Democracy (AD) governors in South West began to immortalise the winner of the undeclared June 12, 1993 election result.
Not done with naming some structures in their domain after Abiola and other victims of the June 12 election, they declared the day a public holiday.
The assumption also was that government, in a matter of time, would recognise June 12. And the winner, though dead, be accorded due rights. However, June 12 begs serious questions: What really does the day stand for? Is it still relevant even after Abiola?
Political and social commentators point out that beyond Abiola, the day stands for certain basic principles of governance: justice, equity and fair play.
They note that without all these, democracy in Nigeria, for all its forces, will continue to rage. Its currents will continue to have weaknesses and vulnerabilities that becloud vision. That’s the burden here.
They harp on the fact that there’s deep social dislocation, distortion of history, corruption in every aspect of the country and endless experimentation with policies, both local and national, that are not in tune with immediate reality because of poor understanding of variables that are essential for social re-engineering.
Many analysts say that failure of succeeding governments to address the principles on which the day stands for has not only undermined competitiveness in the political space, but brought an incoherent, myopic vision.
They note that the large chunk of present political elite of today did not make any sacrifice and were never involved in the struggle for the enthronement of true democracy. Hence, they are abusing the power.
June 12 also created the opportunity for Nigerians to think about the past, the present and their yearnings for the future in order to get the country of their dream, some day.
Only last year, members of the immediate family of the late Abiola insisted that the best way to immortalise their late breadwinner, who died in the cause of claiming his mandate is for him to be declared an ex-president of Nigeria.
The National President of the Campaign for Democracy, Dr. (Mrs.) Joe Okei-Odumakin, also advocated a post-humous declaration of Abiola as an ex-president of Nigeria.
The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) also said that the only honour worthy of the late Abiola is to officially declare him the winner of the June 12 1993 election, being the only free and fair election ever conducted in this country.
The executive chairman of CACOL, Comrade Debo Adeniran, said such an official declaration was the only suitable honour the federal government could bestow on the memory of the late hero, which would lead to Abiola receiving the honour and entitlements due past Heads of State.
President Goodluck Jonathan last year re-named University of Lagos after Abiola. A decision not wholly accepted.
Beyond naming Abiola ex-president, proponents of June 12 sentiments have continued to canvass for a national holiday to immortalise Abiola. They note that if a black man —Martin Luther-King — has his birthday as a public holiday in the US because of the supreme sacrifice he made in growing the nation, why can’t the same be done to Abiola?
In a paper presented in honour of Moshood Abiola, organised by the African Studies Association at the Hyatt Hotel, Chicago, on October 31, 1998, titled, Moshood Abiola and the Unintended Consequences Of June 12, Prof. Ebere Onwudiwe of the Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, said that Abiola’s courageous insistence on the mandate given to him by Nigerian voters would ultimately benefit Nigeria’s political development.
Onwudiwe remarked this quality is important because changes do not occur in countries where courage is in short supply.
“He saw himself as a custodian of a sacred mandate that was freely given to him by Nigerians and one which “I cannot surrender unless the people so demand’.
That he never betrayed this promise is a tribute to more than his courage. It also points to many other admirable qualities that are in short supply among our ruling elite today: consistency, perseverance, honesty, sincerity of purpose and bravery,” he had noted.
For the academic, “Abiola’s exemplary courage to die for something is a lasting contribution to the future of one Nigeria. What he died for is more than the chance to become the president of Nigeria. He died for the voice of the ordinary Nigerian voter. In this sense, his struggle and death, symbolically shot the first bullet for Nigeria’s second struggle for independence and self determination from internal colonialism. Nigeria can only truly be one great country when this war for the right of individuals is permanently won.”
For Dr. Ore Falomo, personal physician to the late Moshood Abiola, “it is going to be difficult to replicate June 12: The conduct of June 12, how it became so free, even the two opposing sides were talking to one another when everybody lined up to vote. There was no rain on the day, no rigging; the election was open and transparent.”
Falomo said, “it could not have been a Southwest thing because it was not only the Southwest that voted. The celebration will be on forever. It is an issue that could not go away. It is only that the Southwest has been stable to accord its due.”
According to the physician, “the people who took over from then have not practiced the philosophies of June 12. And who are the people to emulate Abiola, they are the presidents we had, General Abdulsalam Abubakar came in to fulfill a mission and he said he was not going to do anything new. The things he did to fulfill some of the philosophies of June 12 was that the rumples in the country, between Abiola and the army, was resolved. They brought in two Yoruba to contest and they thought Obasanjo was the better person because he is their senior in the army.”
In the words of former Secretary General of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and promoter of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms (CODER), Chief Ayo Opadokun, “the fact that the Nigeria military decided to ignore and undermine the collective will and aspirations of the people when they voted for Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola and Babagana Kingibe constitute a testimony that we are not ready to run a modern state.”
He said, “Next only to the military government that annulled the freest and fairest election in Nigeria, which the late Abiola won; and next only to the other Military Junta that incarcerated, tortured and killed the late June 12 icon, was the unforgivable dragging of the late icon’s name right in the mud of political-seeking by the present administration when it unilaterally renamed University of Lagos as Moshood Abiola University.”
Opadokun continued, “the Nigerian state, which is an offshoot of the military oligarchy, is busy using central authority in every phase of our activities and yet call itself a federation. I think June 12 had been rubbished.”
Former Lagos State Deputy governor, Senator Louisa Kofoworola Bucknor-Akerele, a former NADECO chieftain, is not satisfied with the efforts made so far on immortalisation of June 12.
She noted, “this is because June 12 struggle was an epic one, which gave us the democracy we have today and I do not believe that the government has done enough to immortalise those participants in the June 12 struggle, particularly Chief MKO Abiola.”
To the former National Chairman of the Alliance for Democracy, Malam Mamman Yusufu, the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election represents just one of the episodic events in the annals of the country’s history.
“As a nation, we have passed through vicious milestones and these vicious milestones are indeed numerous. For example, we don’t celebrate the end of the civil war, the assassination of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa and so on. These are some milestones. The annulment of the June 12, 1993 has come and gone and later events have come to justify the basis of the struggle itself. June 12 is just one aspect of our national struggles. Attentions it has attracted, in my opinion, are okay. It is just a reminder of what we have been as a nation, so that we don’t forget our past as we move ahead in nation-building,” he said.
Fourteen years on, and the country has already performed the third of its four-year ritual of electing a president but there is nothing to show that the politicians have learnt anything good from June 12.
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