by Alexander O. Onukwue

MKO Abiola

The adjudged winner of the June 12, 1993, Presidential elections, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola was a businessman, philanthropist and a personal friend of the Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida. MKO ran on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with a campaign slogan of ‘Hope 93: Farewell to Poverty’. After the frustrations of not being declared the winner, MKO had considered not pushing the campaign further, but with the support of his senior wife Kudirat and pro-democracy groups like the Campaign for Democracy, MKO would be re-energised, going on to make the June 11, 1994, statement that he was President. Abacha would never let Abiola become President.

MKO ran on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with a campaign slogan of ‘Hope 93: Farewell to Poverty’. After the frustrations of not being declared the winner, MKO had considered not pushing the campaign further, but with the support of his senior wife Kudirat and pro-democracy groups like the Campaign for Democracy, MKO would be re-energised, going on to make the June 11, 1994, statement that he was President. Abacha would never let Abiola become President.

Ibrahim Babangida

General Babangida, after three previous postponements, finally settled on June of 1993 as the date to handover Government to a civilian administration. However, a re-trace to events leading up to that time may have indicated that any elections would have been fraught with clashes of interests, especially from within the divided camps of the military and of the political class. He would eventually yield to them, annulling the elections, and yield to an Interim Government. If June 12 is, to use the words of FDR, a day which will live in infamy, then surely the man at the helm of affairs will also share in the eternal shame and infamy of the day.

Sani Abacha

That a fiercely ambitious Sani Abacha was the head of Defence during a potential democratic handover should have rung bells. In 1990, he had addressed the nation after the failed coup attempt, pledging loyalty to his boss Babangida. He had not made any remarks about the annulment, as it obviously worked within the schedule of his desire to rule Nigeria. The eventual interim Government was his opportunity to strike, and strike he did.

Olusegun Obasanjo

Olusegun Obasanjo hailed from the same town as MKO Abiola but never supported his presidential bid. They were classmates in school; Abiola was the editor of the school magazine, while OBJ was the deputy. According to OBJ, he did not think MKO was suited to lead Nigeria, from his assessment of how he had led the magazine team. Addressing a Nigerian audience after the annulment, OBJ denounced any messianic adulation towards Abiola, claiming to know him better than anyone else. Accounts have it that the Interim Government of Ernest Shonekan had been his idea. Add to that, the insinuation that the designation of May 29 as ‘Democracy Day’ was a purposive craft to erase June 12.

Shehu Musa Yar’Adua

Before the emergence of Abiola as the Presidential candidate of the SDP, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua had booked his place on the ballot. Babangida cancelled those primaries, not without the help of elements within the SDP. Further humiliation came when that element, Baba Gana Kingibe, was chosen to tag alongside MKO on the party’s ticket. Though he was present at consultative meetings on addressing the annulment, SMY was not fussed much about it, as these January 1994 remarks to THE NEWS show: “What did those who insisted on June 12 do? I didn’t have to insist. And don’t forget, we’re talking about an election. Let us say I did not insist, all those who insisted, what did they do?”

Baba Gana Kingibe

If Babangida is the Maradona, Kingibe has to be the Mario Kempes of Nigerian Politics. Gaining accent to the SDP Chairmanship with the help of Shehu Musa Yar’Adua allowed him to establish himself as a vital cog in the Nigerian polity, ditching his master’s sweater and assuming his own fur. He would become the Vice Presidential candidate for the SDP ticket. When their mandate was foiled and Abacha took stranglehold, he was offered the position of Foreign Minister; he took it.

Twenty years after, he would become the Secretary to the Federal Government in the administration of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, younger brother to his political father of the 1990s. He only lasted a year, before being asked to leave for allegedly nursing a political ambition to take advantage of the President’s health condition. Now 71, he has hung his boots. (Has he?)

Ernest Shonekan

Harvard-trained Shonekan found his unprepared self ruling a nation on the brink, strategically chosen to represent the ethnic nationality of the denied president but given a mandate not to reopen the issue of handing over power to him. As recounted by Prof Omo Omoruyi, political advisor to Babangida, “First, he gave the assurance and undertaking to the outgoing President that under no circumstance would he reopen the June 12 matter. Second was that he would do everything to divide the Yoruba on the matter of June 12”.

Joshua Dogonyaro

He was the head of the ‘Abuja Boys’ who ran things at the Aso Rock and did not want Abiola to become President. Babangida admitted this to Prof Omoruyi on June 20, 1993, and that they made sure the elections were going to be annulled.

Kudirat Abiola

Senior wife of the MKO Abiola, Kudirat was as much a champion of the movement to respect the mandate of June 12, as her husband or any other politician at the time. She would not be deterred by the threats of the Abacha regime to ostracise and silence her. She would give her life eventually for the cause, but the persistence of the June 12 reflections is an echo of her un-withered voice of challenge.

Humphrey Nwosu

The University of Nigeria Nsukka Professor of Political Science was heaved with the daunting duty of managing the free and fair process to return Nigeria to democratic rule. After the success of Election Day, he must have been looking forward to the honour of issuing one of the candidates with the Certificate of Return, before being asked to not release any further results on June 12 by Attorney-General Clement Akpamgbo.

Arthur Nzeribe

And why did the Attorney-General make that order? Because the pressure group Association for Better Nigeria (ABN), led by Arthur Nzeribe, had the armoury of two court orders which prevented NEC from holding the elections in the first place and voided any eventual results as illegal. Nzeribe, whose group was allegedly funded by IBB, would later become a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the fourth republic.

Nduka Irabor

Neither a politician nor military official, Mr Irabor’s role was no more than circulating the press release on the annulment, on the morning of June 23, 2017. According to Abraham Oshoko’s illustration in ‘June 12 1993: Annulment’ (Farafina), the journalist who was the Press Secretary to Vice President Augustus Aikhomu was called into the office of one of the aides to General Babangida (who had been at Katsina that morning), and handed the unsigned and undated statement. After his queries about the authenticity of the grave words, the Military officer threatened him with the security of his job and other possible consequences.

Even in hindsight, it would have been too much to ask that Mr Irabor – with little influence in the scheme of things at the time – refused to forward the statement to the Press, but would Babangida had summoned courage to fight the will of his boys if Nduka had read something else?