by Akin Osuntokun

To recap — we are paying the price of the folly of the annulment of the 1993 presidential election. 

June 12, 1993 was the day military President Ibrahim Babangida and the Federal Republic of Nigeria snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and then the augury was reversed 11 days later on June 23rd when Babangida and Nigeria retrieved defeat from the jaws of victory. On account of his immense capacity for good public relations, political conspiracy and extensive networking it was long foretold that Babangida would one day emerge as the leader of a successful military putsch and the head of the resultant military government.
At the risk of repeating myself, I volunteer the appraisal that I could never reconcile his genial, somewhat shy personality with his adventurous military career. I think nature and providence had been very kind to him. He is the embodiment of the happy go lucky guy. One of his peculiarities is that he is not merely a veteran of the coup vocation, there is also the baffling observation that his victims knew well beforehand that he was going to strike yet they did nothing about it — resigning themselves to fate. It was so in July 1975, December 1983 and August 1985. The three successful coups were over before they were implemented.

The military president Nigerians knew, especially his characteristic charm offensive was an accurate reflection of his personality. What the late Chief Anthony Enahoro pejoratively referenced as ‘subversive generosity’ was second nature to him. Between 1985 and 1990, it would be difficult to persuade many Nigerians that Babangida could do any wrong. The infatuation of Nigerians with him started to wane after he began to shift the goal post on the vexed issue of military disengagement from government. He began to look like a taskmaster who has a vested interest in the failure of his labours and exertions.

Impervious to his perceived machinations to abort the military disengagement programme, the presidential elections of June 12, 1993 was almost flawless in execution. While Nigerians were joyously celebrating the occasion, Babangida became like a father who was mourning at the news of his wife’s safe delivery of a bouncing and most beautiful baby. Between June 12 and June 23, 1993, Nigeria experienced a sense of suspended animation akin to that of the lull preceding the thunderstorm. Under pressure from a powerful fifth columnist within the military hierarchy spearheaded by General Sani Abacha, Babangida committed infanticide on June 23 when he put his own baby to the sword. Thus began the era of the ill-wind that blows no one any good. This was when the Nigerian ruling class lost the plot from which it has not recovered.
In the victorious Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket of Chief Moshood Abiola and the defeat of his opponent, Bashir Tofa, in his home state of Kano, Nigerians demonstrated a kind of political innocence and childlike trust that was sundered by the annulment. In its place, the seeds of political paranoia, virulent ethno-regional irredentism and secessionist sentiments were replanted and meticulously nurtured by Abacha. The dominant issues of the 1993 presidential election were military disengagement and the clamour for power shift to the southern half of Nigeria. Both issues were emphatically answered by the outcome of the election with relative ease and no sense of imposition.

Not many Nigerians regarded late MKO Abiola as a southern candidate — if anything he was perceived as proxy for the military and Babangida. Given his predilection for the easy life and epicurean excesses there was a general low expectation of his performance potential as president. Nobody would have been surprised if he did not govern well. Meanwhile, Babangida would have left office as a hero and in all probability Nigerians would have been pining for his return as civilian president after his protégé might have disappointed. In the event that Abiola were to prove his mettle and got reelected for a second term, the prize would still be up for Babangida to grab-in person or proxy.
Being a Muslim, a significant proportion of Abiola’s personality profile would jell with the Muslim north. Nigeria would have been less prone to the instrumentality of religion as weapon in the expression of political opposition. Sharia would probably have remained barricaded inside the mosque. In complement, Abiola would not have provoked any anxiety from Nigerian Christians — in self recognition of his charitable and expansive personality which respects no religious boundaries.
It is difficult not to see the hand of providence in the election of Abiola. It was a presidential ticket that was not preplanned but wholesomely anticipated the cleavages and anxieties of Nigeria. There would have been no need for the institutionalisation of zoning. Were he to seek reelection it was possible to see a scenario where he may get more votes from the north than the south. Ditto for Babangida. Were he to stand election for president after Abiola, it was conceivable that he would win overwhelmingly in the south. This scenario would have started Nigeria on the road of ideal political evolution where the cleavages of ethnicity, religion and regionalism play minimal role in our national life. But what did we get instead?

Babangida departed as anti-hero two months after he committed political hara-kiri and left Abacha to keep the flag of the annulment flying. Abiola was hounded into captivity and martyrdom. No matter the legitimacy of his pursuit, any Yoruba who journeys to Abuja thereafter immediately arouses the suspicion of his wounded and embittered fellow nationals. Nigeria was deliberately overdosed on the poison of divide and rule. The late Emeka Ojukwu rediscovered his role as Biafra warlord and taunted it was payback time for those who did not solidarise with the Igbos in their moment of need.

For our monumental act of disobedience to his will, God ordained Abacha as punishment for Nigerians. How else do we explain the needless perversions, cruelty and sadism of the Abacha dictatorship? To further prove his omnipotence, did God not reenact the downfall of man in the Garden of Eden archetype when Abacha was made to eat the apple handed to him by the Indian consorts?

The subsequent return to civil democratic rule came with the baggage of the residue of the poison that had been infused into the body politic of Nigeria since the annulment. Precious lives including especially that of Abiola and his wife, Kudirat, had been wasted; Nigeria had been beaten black and blue by economic retrogression and tainted as international outlaw and rogue nation. The logic of right and wrong had been stood on its head by the engineered reciprocal deaths of villain and victim.
Compensation is mitigation and can never be a replacement for what was lost. This was no less the inadequacy of the compensatory logic of conceding the presidency to the Yoruba as facility for national reconciliation. Sooner than later, the superficiality, the make-believe contrivance will reveal itself for what it is. And so it came that the Fourth Republic was ushered in with the rumour of a pact to commit the compensatory presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo to the protection of the so called northern interest. Less than a year into his tenure and in apparent disavowal of any pact, there arose a clamorous agitation for the introduction and institutionalisation of the Sharia fundamentalist jurisprudence; and the more this clamour demonstrated the capacity to inflame passion and incite violence, the greater the commitment of leading opinion leaders in the Muslim north to its propagation.

The sub regional political dimension of the Sharia crisis eventually crystallised in the surprise resolve of General Mohammadu Buhari to contest against Obasanjo in the 2003 presidential election. Given his well-known distaste for politics and the politically insensitive and polarising statements he had made, it is counter intuitive to believe that Buhari ever intended to throw his hat in the political ring. Anybody who has the presidency of Nigeria in view does not make the kind of sectarian commitments he made. In tandem came the premature presidential ambition of Obasanjo’s deputy, Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, which precipitated the recourse to the zoning principle as a safety valve for Obasanjo’s aspiration for second term tenure.

After Obasanjo’s two-term tenure, it was always going to be an impossible proposition to argue against the utility of zoning-which is the equalisation of two-term tenure for all the six zones. To further complicate a complex situation was the totally unexpected assault on the logic of zoning by the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. But we cannot approbate and reprobate in the same breadth.

The better and more practical argument is for the presidency to remain in the South-south zone, which is not synonymous with one individual. If we are talking about fairness and equity, there are two additional factors that tilt the balance in its favour. One is the fact that nobody from the Niger Delta region has ever attained the Presidency of Nigeria before Jonathan. And the other is that the zone is synonymous with the economy of Nigeria and has suffered debilitating socio economic degradation in consequence.

Personally I’m inclined to believe that a greater part of the crisis and turmoil we currently experience is rooted in the struggle for political succession in 2015. The likelihood is that we are headed for a stalemate which will predispose Nigeria to the intervention of the dictatorship of the balance of terror. Nonetheless I’m open to superior argument on how we can better secure a retreat from this tipping point. Nigeria has become quite tiresome and burdensome and the temptation is to suggest that everybody should answer to his father’s name. We seem to be too far gone in mutual antipathy.
To recap — we are paying the price of the folly of the annulment of the 1993 presidential election. What is common to all the political responses we have since fashioned is that we sow the seeds of future failures in the womb of present palliatives. Ultimately there is really no alternative to the devolution and decentralisation of power from the centre to the constituent units. Unfortunately, the vibes we are getting from the National Conference is that hopes of its instrumentality in working towards this end are misplaced. It has emerged that rather than serve as avenue for seeking solutions to our problems, it is shaping to become a massive roadblock.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.