Beware Of 'Emilokan' And Promise Of Continuity

 By Dele Sobowale

“Standing on the foundation emplaced by the current [Buhari] administration, we shall build a Nigeria…” – Renewed Hope 2023: Action Plan For A Better Nigeria, p 3.

Buhari and Tinubu

Whenever there is a document promising to make Nigeria a better place, I am ready to get it; read it; analyse it and publish my findings. I now have a copy of what might be regarded as the Tinubu/Shettima/APC Manifesto for the 2023 Presidential Election. The full analysis is almost finished; but, it is too long for this column. So, the reader should not expect the details here. I might add in passing that I also intend to obtain; read and analyse every manifesto published – providing the owners arrange for me to get them. “Men make history; but, not just as they please” – Karl Marx, 1818-1883.

That said; we now turn to the matter on hand. Let me start my stating that Asiwaju Tinubu has my sympathies. Those of us who were intimately involved in the struggle for the actualisation of the late Chief MKO Abiola’s mandate from 1993 till 1998, when the man died, can never forget his contributions. But, for his sagacity and street wisdom, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo deceived the leaders of Afenifere, and the Alliance for Democracy, AD, decided not to field a presidential candidate in 2003, the entire South-West would have been captured by the PDP.

Ekwueme: The Democrat Who Gave Abacha Red Card

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

The soft, gentlemanly features of Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme belie the heart of steel inside the late first ever Vice-President of Nigeria. Back in 1998, Nigeria’s Head of State, General Sani Abacha, had perfected plans of transmuting from a military leader to a civilian president. Abacha got all the five existing political parties to adopt him as the sole presidential candidate. 

*Dr. Alex Ekwueme

Ekwueme met with his fellow politicians, 17 from the North and 17 from the South, that became G-34. As the chairman of G-34, Ekwueme took charge of forwarding a letter to General Abacha, warning him not to ever dream of turning himself into a democratic president. It was akin to giving a red card to a murderous dictator by an unarmed civilian. 

Many Nigerians waited with bated breath, believing that there was no hiding place for Ekwueme and his group of crusading politicians. Then Abacha suddenly died. And soon after, the winner of the June 12 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola, whom Abacha had kept in captivity also died. General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who took over after Abacha’s death, announced a 9-month transition to civil rule programme. 

The Ekwueme-led G-34 decided to turn into a political party that became People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Alhaji Isa Kaita came forth with the suggestion that Ekwueme should be named as the presidential candidate of the party. Ekwueme said he would only accept the nomination if it came through an all-encompassing democratic process. That is the essence of Ekwueme – a democrat through and through. 

Babangida Should Just Apologise To Nigerians

 By Charles Okoh

For about two weeks, the nation has witnessed the activities around the 80th birthday of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. For some, especially those who have had direct dealings with him, it has been a flurry of praises for the man whom many have come to know as the Maradona and affectionately referred to also as IBB or the evil genius. 

Babangida has the unenviable record of aborting what everybody has come to accept as the best thing to happen to our electoral evolution as a nation. He scuttled the June 12, 1993, presidential election which he midwifed and for which he received accolades for organizing the best election ever held in the country. 

*Babangida 

First, it was Babangida in an interview with Arise TV, where he clearly spoke like the intelligent man that he is. He also showed that apart from the troublesome leg which has practically left him immobile, he did not disappoint with his intelligent responses to questions put before him. His ability to vividly recall all events around his life as a soldier and a military president even at age 80 stands him out as a brilliant officer. He clearly stands out among his peers and his understanding of issues within and outside the country you can hardly find that with many of our leaders today. 

June 12 Without Democratic Reforms

 By Dan Amor

Whatever one’s reservation about it, the recognition of June 12 as the authentic Democracy Day in Nigeria, and honour for Chief MKO Abiola with the title of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), specifically reserved for presidents and heads of State, is a most salutary development since 2018. For that singular act of magnanimity and statesmanship, President Muhammadu Buhari merits my commendation.

*Abiola 

 On June 12, 1993, Nigeria held a presidential election, which was annulled by the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. It was presumed to have been won by the late Chief MKO Abiola, who was the flag bearer of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), one of the two political parties decreed into existence by the military. Goaded by pro-democracy organizations and activists such as the National Democratic Coalition, Abiola went out of his way to challenge the annulment of the election considered to be the freest and fairest in the history of the country. 

Nigeria Must Atone For the Blood Of The Innocent

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

The recent revalidation and recognition by the federal government of late Chief MKO Abiola as the rightful winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria has generated intense debate in the country. This debate has further been exacerbated by the unilateral declaration of June 12 of every year as Nigeria’s democracy day instead of May 29. 

*Dr. Arthur Nwankwo 

While this move by the Buhari administration has been interpreted by his apologists as a political master stroke aimed at galvanizing support from the south-west, many others have interpreted it not only as a political mischief but also as the debauchery and selective treatment of issues that bear at the foundation of the country.

What June 12 Reveals About Nigerian Democracy

By Femi Aribisala

Exactly 25 years ago, a landmark election was held in Nigeria after ten long years of military rule. There were two main contestants: Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party and Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention.  Abiola was from the South-west: Tofa from the North-west.

*Gen Abacha, MKO Abiola, Bola Tinubu (behind Abacha)

 Although the results of the election have never been officially certified, nevertheless, they are well known and readily-accessible.  Abiola won with 8,243,209 votes; while Tofa lost with 5,982,087 votes. 

Again, Where Is Nnamdi Kanu?

By Obi Nwakanma

Last week, I felt nauseous just watching “our own WS” stand at a podium talking-up the Buhari gesture of naming June 12 “Democracy Day” and awarding the GCFR to the late Moshood Abiola. It was a dog-shit fare clothed in damask. I half hoped that Soyinka would not be part of this hollow ritual; but in the end Soyinka’s presence there served to remind us all that Nigeria is a circus; and the relationship between circus masters, puppeteers, and the circus animals is that they are all there to entertain us. 

*Nnamdi Kanu 

And Nigerians were properly entertained in what I still regard as the hollow ritual of forgetting. Every time, this government and its mind-warpers try to turn us all into amnesiacs, so that we will forget for instance, that Muhammadu Buhari himself was not only a key beneficiary and supporter of the abrogation of June 12, he himself led a military coup that overthrew a properly elected civilian government on the last day of 1983.  Nigeria began to slide radically down the order of things from that very coup. 

MKO Abiola Deserves Apology, Not Humour

By Afam Nkemdiche

When I first heard about President Muhammadu Buhari’s surprise posthumous honour to Chief M. K. O. Abiola, the widely acknowledged winner of the 1993 presidential election, my instinctive thought was, “My God! How could he nerve his conscience to do that – he was a principal confidant of the maximum ruler who denied MKO his well deserved mandate, until the mysterious death-in-detention???”

*Abiola 

It cannot be gainsaid, even in fiction, that Buhari was the closest public figure to the Kano-born general in Nigeria’s darkest years. Soon after Abacha sacked Ibrahim Babangida’s contraption (Shonekan’s Interim Government), he decreed that all monies that accrued from petroleum be pooled into a Fund, the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF. The humongous size of the envisaged pool qualified the PTF to be immediately referred to as a “parallel government”; even the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, had to look to it for funding. Buhari was the first and only executive chairman of the PTF. This was a measure of the unique camaraderie that the duo enjoyed when Nigeria teetered on the brink of disintegration from November 1993 until June 1998 when Abacha suddenly succumbed to death ahead of his detainee. 

Nigeria: President Buhari’s Greek Gifts

By Sunny Awhefeada

June 12th 1993 was a Saturday and it met me in Ughelli.

June is a month of unpredictable rain, but that day was bright; bright and fair.

We trooped out to vote for a new dawn. 

 I was then an impressionable undergraduate of the University of Benin possessed by ideals instilled by youth.

*President Buhari 

The buildup to that day was momentous and exciting. The military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida had embarked on the rigmarole it called transition to civil rule programme.

In the course of that tortuous experience, political parties were formed and disbanded.

Politicians were classified as new breed and old breed and they were banned and unbanned.

Nigeria: June 12: Every Life Matters

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

After the elaborate ceremony of apology and award of honours, it is now time to come to terms with the fact that the greatest tribute has not been paid to the victims of the truncation of the nation’s democratic watershed on June 12, 1993.

*Abiola 

Clearly, there has been in the past 25 years a persistent clamour for restitution for the victims. Every June 12 has witnessed calls for the closure of the sad political trajectory in the nation’s life. President Muhammadu Buhari has apparently heeded these calls. But sadly, Buhari’s action has rather shown the poor premium we place on life in the country. 

Tribute To Ekwueme: A Dream Embraces The Ages

By Pat Utomi

Hypocrisy may be the hallmark of political culture in Nigeria. It was evident when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was called to Higher Realm, as we lamented the “greatest President we never had.” With Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme, gentleman, intellectual and great champion of fairness and balance in public life, it is even more sad watching the rush to praise on his demise. The rush of words of praise, plenty by those who toiled to prevent Nigeria from profiting from his leadership skills and installation of decency in public life, makes those not challenged with memory loss wonder about the essence of character in Nigeria. Do we truly look at ourselves?

*Dr. Alex Ekwueme 

I had the privilege of knowing the great man fairly well in good and in challenged times and learnt to gauge his stoic but sanguine personal disposition. His place as boss, mentor in my own run tells the story of who he was. As many very powerful engaged in frenzied lobbying for position when he was Vice President he asked I be invited to his home. A group of young Ph.Ds were being evidently pooled for his office but he wanted my position to come from the President. He had made the recommendation to President Shehu Shagari without my having any clue such a thing was in the offing.