Nigeria: June 12: I Still Remember

By Ikechukwu Amaechi
June 12, 2018, was the 25^th anniversary of Nigeria’s historic election, which outcome held out so much promise. How time flies! Who will believe that 25 years have rolled by and yet the June 12, 1993 poll, which by the sheer magic of one man’s transcendental personality almost obliterated the country’s primordial fault lines of religion, ethnicity and prependalism, remains on the front burner. 

Generals Abacha and Babangida 

While some claimed to have stood on June 12 in the days the locusts ate under military jackboots, many dismounted the high horse at the return of civilian rule on May 29, 1999, partly because the primary beneficiary, President Olusegun Obasanjo, worked so hard to ensure that the date and what it represented were consigned to the dustbin of Nigeria’s history. The winner of the election, Bashorun MKO Abiola, had died almost a year before the 1999 polls and most stakeholders had been sucked into the new political tendency.
Yet, there were a few Nigerians who found it difficult to dismount the June 12 horse because to them, even with Abiola’s death, the treachery of the political elite and the perceived compensation of the Southwest with the Obasanjo presidency, June 12 remained an unfinished business. The mandate was pan-Nigerian and the only way to bring closure was to sincerely untie the Gordian knot by comprehensively resolving the “Abiola Conundrum.”

Nigerians related to the phenomenon in varying ways. For me, it was personal. That was the first time I voted. I had just been employed at the Rutam House (Guardian Newspapers Limited), and was enthralled by Abiola’s exploits, despite his alleged crimes that included iniquitous liaison with the same military cabal that threw him under the bus.

But Abiola’s philanthropy, his large-heartedness and legendary humanity awed me. His campaign theme, Hope ‘93” resonated well and loudly. I craved for an Abiola presidency even before he won the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries. I remember the presidential debate between the National Republican Convention (NRC) candidate, Alhaji Bashir Tofa and Abiola.

I remember the election proper on June 12, 1993, conducted by the Professor Humphrey Nwosu-led National Electoral Commission (NEC). I still remember Justice Bassey Ikpeme of the Abuja High Court, issuing an order on June 10 restraining NEC from conducting the election following a suit by the Arthur Nzeribe-led Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) and how we laughed it off, despite the fact that the U.S. took the development so serious that it issued a statement through Michael O’Brien of its Information Agency in Lagos, warning that a postponement of the elections was unacceptable.

I still remember NEC publishing results from 15 states on its billboard outside its headquarters in Abuja on June 14, 1993, showing that Abiola was leading in all regions of the country including Tofa’s home state of Kano. I was elated. My friends called me naïve. Dr. Sylvester Ugoh, Tofa’s running-mate, is my maternal uncle. In a country where access to power, no-matter how perfunctory, is everything, I was crooning over the imminent electoral victory of a man that didn’t know I existed over a ticket that had the name of my mother’s elder brother. It sounded illogical. But that was the magic of June 12 and the magnetic pull of Abiola.

And then, the bombshell. I still remember that fateful day, June 23, 1993, when Babangida most brusquely annulled the election results and suspended the umpire through an unsigned statement. I remember the Interim National Government (ING), Chief Ernest Shonekan and the ensuing game of musical chairs that saw General Sani Abacha seizing power on November 17, 1993.

I remember coming to work on Monday, August 15, 1994 to  discover we had been locked out. About 20 armed policemen stormed the Rutam House along Oshodi-Apapa Expressway at midnight on Sunday, August 14, and shut down Nigeria’s most prestigious newspaper then, apparently because the Sunday Guardian edited by Kingsley Osadalor, had carried an article suggesting that the military regime was divided over whether or not to release Abiola.

The Guardian was the third newspaper to be closed. The Punch newspaper andConcord publishing house owned by Abiola, were closed earlier. I still remember the trauma of being out of job for almost a year. While at home, we were initially placed on half salary, then quarter salary and then nothing.

But even after The Guardian was re-opened in July 1995, it took three months before it could hit the streets because of the damage the 12-month closure wrought on its machines and loss of almost half of its staff. And when the newspaper hit the newsstands, it did so without the African Guardian edited by Prince Debo Adesina, and the evening newspaper, Guardian Express, edited by Gbenga Omotosho.

But before then, I had picked up a job with the Independent Communications Network (ICN), publishers of The News/Tempo magazines.

And I remember June 4, 1996. That was the day Abiola’s wife, Kudirat, a fierce campaigner for the validation of the mandate, was murdered in Lagos. I had just arrived at the office of a chieftain of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the pro-democracy coalition that dared Abacha, Chief Abraham Adesanya, at No 12 Simpson Street, Lafiaji, Lagos Island, when the news broke. The distraught Afenifere leader told me what happened. Abiola’s wife had been attacked, he said. I hope she is alive, I quipped. He didn’t know. But that was the end of the interview. I headed back to the office in Ogba.

I remember December 12, 1997, a day the government announced a coup plot involving Generals Oladipo Diya, Abacha’s deputy, Abdulkareem Adisa and Olanrewaju, former ministers of works and housing and communications respectively, among others. As editor of the Sunday Diet newspaper, published by Chief James Ibori, who later became governor of Delta State, my newspaper’s magazine story for the week had the headline, “A Coup With Tribal Marks.”

On the Sunday the newspaper hit the newsstands, security operatives swooped on its 61 Queens Street, Sabo Yaba office in the night and whisked away the editor of the daily paper, Mr. Niran Malaolu, brandishing copies of the newspaper. He was later roped into the “Coup With Tribal Marks,” and jailed.

I still remember June 8, 1998, the day General Sani Abacha died, and the spontaneous jubilation. I remember travelling to Kano, his home state, on June 9, straight to the family house on Gidado Street, GRA, Kano. With the help of my Kano State correspondent, Mallam Ibrahim Aliyu, I gained entry into the compound. Security was still tight, though many of the top military personnel and other dignitaries, including royalty, that came for the burial the previous day had left. Muslim faithful were coming intermittently to the grave to offer prayers. I had series of interviews with family members and got a good photograph of the grave before leaving for Lagos.

Expectations were high that Abiola would be set free particularly after the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, visited on July 2, 1998 and reported that Abiola longed for freedom and may have agreed to forgo his mandate. 

Then July 7, 1998. That was actually the day it was rumoured that Abiola would regain his freedom. I was in my office assembling materials for a historic edition when Ibori walked in. He had barely sat down when the news broke on television (one of the foreign cable network channels) that Abiola, who was meeting with some U.S. officials that included Thomas Pickering, the then U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, and Susan Rice, the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, was dead. I remember my publisher sadly shaking his head and muttering the country’s name endlessly.

And I cried.

I had, ever since, looked forward to the day this injustice would be redressed. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the primary beneficiary from Abiola’s supreme sacrifice, was in a pole position to do just that but his small-mindedness wouldn’t let him.

If President Umaru Yar’Adua had lived, I have the hunch he may have laid the June 12 ghost to rest. I didn’t expect former President Goodluck Jonathan with his politics of appeasement to muster the political will to do so because of fear of backlash from the north.Thus, they all left the low hanging political fruit for President Muhammadu Buhari to pluck. And pluck, he did with a bang on Wednesday, June 6, honouring Abiola with Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), Nigeria’s highest award, and declaring June 12 Democracy Day.

Some have queried the president’s motive. My answer is simple. Whatever informed the decision, it was the right thing to do. And if in doing what is right, he is reaping some political capital, so be it.

*Ikechukwu Amaechi is the Publisher of TheNiche newspaper