Today, we celebrate the June 12 election of 1993, an event of monumental historical importance, which was to usher a remarkable watershed in our journey to a virile and enduring democratic polity
This remarkably turbulent chapter, in the chequered annals of Nigerian political history stretches in retrospective time-frame,back to thirty-two years ago, precisely June 12 1993,as we explore a journey in memory.
That day, a great event blistered through the political space. Nigerians across the vast national space, unanimously pitched their electoral tent of preference with one man, handing him the popular mandate to preside at the apex of the nation’s political authority.
It was an event unprecedented in the annals of Nigerian political history;for the common runs of fellow Nigerian populace to have unanimously aligned in popular accord with one man,electing him to be their president in a remarkable symmetry that defied the notoriously primordial stereotype of ethno-tribal, multilingual and multi-religious diversities,amongst other sectarian differences of other shades.
The person in reference was no other than,Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola,the billionaire business mogul and philanthropic icon of collosal global stature
The ecstatic fit generated in the wake of the election was unprecedented in its electrifying grip and euphoria ;eliciting a delightsome ambience in a celebratory hysteria that enveloped the landscape,shaking it to its foundation.
Indeed looking back today,one is aptly inclined,with indisputable clarity, that the celebratory jollity elicited in the wake of that epic announcement admits only in credibly apt comparison with the uncontrollable mallemaroking that greeted the independence celebration of 1960.
Optimism ballooned to an hitherto unattained heights as Nigerians dreamt great dreams, inspired by visionary grandeur of an enviable Nigeria fated for a towering status in the global comity of nations, in accordance with its unique stature as embedding an agglomeration of the most populous concentration of blacks not only in Africa, but across the vast global diaspora.
But just at this momentous threshold to a progressive watershed in the chequered trajectory to democratic change,a moment when the contagious wave of joyous hope and optimism had spiralled to a towering peak;came a blow.A fatal one at that,which like a seismic fissure,rattled the ceremonial razzmatazz,with a terrimotive audacity that railroaded it with astounding finality,to irresistible grinding halt,as the presiding power-cabal in a funny mercurial fit, suddenly woke up one morning,to declare the transparently unimpeachable democratic election null,void and therefore cancelled.
A huge pall of darkness ensued as the restive binge of hilarious jubilation dramatically unfurled for the pervasive spell of tragedy hanging with magisterial authority on the horizon – now grimly locked in sepulchral crimson-red with the blood of the martyers who sacrificed their lives in their heroic efforts at upholding the libertarian banners of democracy.
Going down the lane of memory,one could not help but tremble;with a mournful sense of lament in the wake of the harrowing ordeal which the popularly acclaimed winner of this memorable election went through,coming on the heels of his arrest and subsequent imurement in the gulag of the prevailing power cabal
This was a man who had literally the whole world at his feet, at the zenith of his fame and glory. He was beyond a king in the making; but rather a king in his own right;a king commanding a compelling deference from other kings – which in logical consecution is to say that wielding the manorial presidency of political nationhood, was ordinarily not for him a do or die affair;yet,on,he proceeded,borne of sublime patriotic and humanitarian prodding to uplift the suffering lots of the down-trodden. For this he was arrested and hounded in penal imurement.
For a man of immensely idolized clout;an inspirational symbol and messianic beacon of redemption, earnestly looked up to, for a re-assuring succor of hope and comfort, Abiola criss-crossed a labyrinthine maze of tribulations in excruciating solitary confinement, cut off from the mainstream of humanity.
But along the line, just as the light of hope would seem to appear in the horizon, for a redeeming air of liberty and justice-able reclamation of his mandate;coming on the heels of the dramatic demise of Abacha; tragedy struck as the prevailing power cabal in a pre-meditated cannibalism of the most heinous description,despatched the billionaire business mogul and hero of the aborted June 12 election – an unprecedented democratic break-through – to premature journey to eternal heavenly.
A huge pall of darkness ensued as the restive binge of hilarious jubilation dramatically unfurled for the pervasive spell of tragedy hanging with magisterial authority on the horizon,now in sepulchral crimson-red with the blood of the martyrs who sacrificed their lives in their heroic efforts at upholding the libertarian banners of democracy.
“It is never over until it is over”. Assuming a hypothetical scenario in which this familiarly philosophical epigram was pleaded as an assuaging point of consolation,at this particularly sobering moment – of course,one would have laughed it to scorn, because that could only have been tenable as long as the man had a ray of life still clinging unto.
But with the physical liquidation of the legendary national icon, being the living physical embodiment of the struggle,the not-so-perceptive would dismiss this as bunkum,and rather tell you that the game was already over,and would therefore warrant that we bother not our head a jot, not even for the ghost of June 12 .
Initially though,this school of cynics might seem to be getting it right,in the light of successive regimes coming on the heels immediately after the annulment and particularly the demise of Abiola and the savage tyrant,Abacha – in the mould of the Goodluck Jonathans and Obasanjo and Co,which had avoided even the ghost of June 12 and would never dine with it, even with a ten-feet spoon, not withstanding the fact that they leveraged unto power via the enabling instrumentation of the annulled election, and the precious lives of the departed martyers whose blood was shed to water the tree of liberty.
But in an ironic fit of fate , later developments would confound these pessimistic school of reactionary cynics.
Twenty-five years after, justice and truth eventually triumphed, as the Buhari civilian administration brought his official presidential clout to consign the annulment to the trash,ostensibly of course through the progressive influences of pro-democracy arrow-heads of the likes of Bola Tinubu .Indeed besides Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida the celebrated evil genius who broke the vitriolic missive of the annulment had just recently swallowed his vomit,in an instructively classic recant that Abiola indeed won the epoch-making election,just as Obasanjo who hitherto had tried by every imaginable art,to evade this issue of thematic topicality, even in his inaugural speech on assumption of power as Nigeria’s president was at last forced to describe the annulment,in the popular pidgin expression of “bad belle” at the inevitable moment when he was pushed to the wall and had no hiding place again.
To be sure,as could veritably be inferred from the fore-going, the wheel of justice might be slow in its momentum,but justice is sure to prevail to the ultimate harbor of destiny.
Of course as the popular Yoruba saying does aptly pontificates: Ti iro baa lo logun odun, ojo kan lotito maa de ba – literally translated to mean – “However much falsehood might have traveled ahead; even if for 20 years, the speed of truth is certain to catch up with it, just within a day”
This indeed is a moment of truth;the moment of history;the moment of victory;the moment of triumph;of good over evil;a moment poignantly holding aloft the inexorable certainty that truth and justice will ever prevail, no matter how long,tortuous and convoluted .It is a moment that inspires us to forge ahead and never look back,convinced of our subliminal pathway of truth.
To be sure, it is equally a moment that essentially inspires our progressive compatriots to forge ahead in the assurance that the baton of dominion remains theirs for for-ever,based on the re-assuring strength of their just cause; just as it also instructs the forces of anti-progress to desist in penitent repentance for good or else, contend with the dire consequences.
Above all,it is a moment that essentially inspires an implicit faith in the future greatness of Nigeria,our fatherland.
To fellow Nigerian compatriots,the need to be on the side of truth,and refrain from unconscionable mercantile discounting of our conscience, for sheer pot of porridge,but rather be guided by the” utilitarian doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number”,as posited by T.S.Mill and Jeremy Bentham,the two fore-most politicians of the utilitarian school of thought – can certainly not be too often emphasised.
Needless to emphasize for repeatedly umpteeneth times,the over-beaten cliche to always endeavor to look beyond our narrow selves and transcendentally imbibe the premium value of collective national interest.
This was the path spiritedly trodden by our illustrious patriots who had collectively put their lives on the line, inspired by the vision to make this day a reality.
Instructively illustrative in this regard of course,was the case of Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola,the pivotal dramatis personae on which this episodic occurrence of monumental political significance revolves – a man of sprawling paraphernalia of material wealth and comfort – who in a sacrificial fit of sublime self-immolation, transcendentally looked beyond himself, fired by a higher impulse for a foray into the turbulent political waters in the visionary drive to propel the ship of state from its labyrinthine miasma to hitherto unattained heights.
We would all remember that when he was offered a conditional bail as an alluring bait to renounce the June 12 mandate,he would rather choose to renounce the charade and rather insisted on his mandate – thus mortgaging his premium personal comfort and sybaritic appurtenances of wealth, and even putting the security and lives of his treasured family to precariously dangerous steep.
He would rather pitch his ideological tent on the enduring lane of democracy, fired by the conviction that it offered the most effective praxis for egalitarian transformation of immensely remarkable magnitude for the libertarian messianism of the down-trodden from the socio-economic shackledom of excruciating poverty, squalor and misery.
If at that time he had elected to capitulate to the titillating bait of the military tyrant then extant in power,he probably would have been living today; similarly,his mammoth corporate conglomerates would have increased in exponential quantum leaps, while his darling wife, Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, whose precious life,the June 12 cannibals sacrificially extorted in appeasement of their deistic vampires,would also most probably have still been living.But the opportunity cost of that tragic line of least resistance,in all its grimly severe consequences is that democracy woud have been in limbo, and the nation especially the hoi-polloi,ignoble flotsam and jetsams,hewers of woods and drawers of water,would have been the worse for it.
Of course, no narrative worth its salt on this explosive saga would ever be complete without even if a tacit mention of our incumbent leader and president, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In this regards, Colonel Tony Nyiam comes easily handy as he narrates: Tinubu started selling his properties and putting the proceeds at the disposal of the struggle to restore democracy in Nigeria, while several others were seeking accomodation with Abacha at home, to either secure their next meal ticket or for continued political relevance.”
Veteran journalist, Babafemi Ojudu related how Tinubu, despite the harrowing uncertainties of life in exile had expended his personal money to pay salaries of staff of their newspaper companies,comprising the PM NEWS and THE NEWS just as he also bank-rolled the daily running cost of the same newspapers.
Similarly Bayo Onanuga narrated how Tinubu was able to sustain him with regular weekly allowance, just as he did to a considerable number of financially disadvantaged exiles who otherwise were stranded abroad.
Of course Wole Soyinka did attest to how Tinubu embarked on mercantile dealership in rice trade, as an option for sufficient funding of the struggle.
His central role in the democracy struggle not only in exile,but even before his compelling abdication to exilic self-sentence, at a critical moment when the Peter Obis, the Atikus and co,were nowhere to be found,remain ever legendary and can only sufficiently be articulated in a voluminous disquitionary dissertation.
*Kola Johnson is a writer and journalist
