By Dan Amor
Friday
this week indubitably marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of General
Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most treacherous tyrant and who ranked with Agathocles
and Dionysus I of Sicily, as the most notorious dictators, not only of the age
of antiquity but of all times. He died in Abuja
on June 8, 1998 as a sitting military dictator. It is true that the degree of
cruelty and loathsome human vulgarity that the Abacha era epitomized is already
fading into the background due largely to the mundane and short character of
the human memory. But his timely exit ought to have been marked by Nigerians
just as the United Nations marks the end of the Second World War not only for
posterity but also as a thanksgiving to God for extricating mankind from such
epoch of human misery.
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| *Gen Abacha |
Abacha emerged as head of state from the ashes of the June 12
crisis. The General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida military administration had
annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election with a clear winner. It was
the most placid election ever conducted in the annals of our country. The
contest was between Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention
(NRC) and the billionaire business mogul, Chief MKO Abiola of the Social
Democratic Party (SDP). Abiola was coasting to victory when the Babangida
military regime halted the announcement of the election result superintended by
the Professor Humfrey Nwosu-led National Electoral Commission. The Federal
Government eventually announced the annulment of the result on June 23, 1993.
This action triggered a violent protest especially in the South West which led
to Babangida stepping aside.
