Another take on June 12 – By Dr. Jideofor Adibe

Posted by admin Articles, Columnists, Jideofor Adibe, PhD, NNP Columnists Monday, June 27th, 2011

By Dr. Jideofor Adibe, London, UK – June 27, 2011 – June 12 has come to mean different things to different Nigerians. For some, it is a celebration of a triumphal moment in our history while for those on the other side of the story at that time, it is a date they would rather blot out from the country’s history. What is clear however is that the chain of events unleashed by that annulment coupled with an external environment that was moving towards the globalisation of democracy helped to pave way for the country’s Fourth Republic, which was inaugurated on May 29 1999.

Like every triumphal moment in history, several myths compete with realities in the June 12 narrative:

There is often a tendency to present June 12 as the greatest political wrong in our political history. This is wrong. While the annulment was wrong and condemnable, the truth is that it was only one of several wrong things that happened under the military. For instance both the First and Second Republics were terminated by military coups and people who won elections under those dispensations were wrongfully denied the opportunity to serve out their tenures – just as Abiola was denied his mandate. Even during Babangida’s ‘transitions to nowhere’, people won primaries only to be disqualified from running for offices. That too was political wrong. This therefore raises the question of why the annulment of June 12 was resisted while other political wrongs were largely ignored. My personal opinion is that a faction of the Yoruba elite who were Conscious, Cohesive and Conspiratorial interpreted the annulment as an ‘ethnic insult’ and to their credit, had the courage to mobilise a resistance. It is instructive that before Abiola’s presidential candidacy many of those who led the struggle for the reclamation of his mandate did not think very highly of him, given his open quarrel with the late Chief Awolowo, who was/is seen as a sort of deity by many Yorubas.

Another tendency in the June 12 narrative is to project Abiola as the symbol of Nigeria’s democracy. I do not buy this. I respect the late M.K.O. Abiola as a highly de-ethnicised philanthropist. But there was nothing in his pedigree that shows he was an activist for democracy. On the contrary, there had been rumours that he funded military coups and had a very chummy personal and business relationship with many military generals. It was even said he supported Abacha’s coup on an understanding that the dark-goggled General would hand over power to him – hardly the move of a democrat. Even when the election he won was annulled, he initially did not offer any resistance, preferring to travel overseas. It was nearly a year after the election was annulled that he came back to ‘claim’ his mandate.

The above is not to diminish the significance of June 12 but to peel off myths from facts. I believe that Abiola should be immortalised – not because he was the symbol of our democracy but because the annulment of an election he won provided the subtext for some activists to wage a struggle that unleashed a chain of events, which culminated in the inauguration of our Fourth Republic. The greatest honour from June 12 should therefore go to those who waged the struggle that helped to usher in our current democracy project, especially NADECO – before the man on whose behalf the struggle was waged.

There aretwo other myths that are often woven around June 12. One is the tendency to describe the election as the ‘freest and fairest’ in our political history. This is clearly arguable because all elections conducted by the military in the country were fairly ‘free and fair’ (perhaps because the politicians and their thugs feared the military boys). The other myth is that June 12 showed that a Muslim-Muslim (or Christian-Christian) ticket could work in the country because Nigerians did not mind that both Abiola and his running mate Babagana Kingibe were Muslims when they voted for them. I beg to disagree. My opinion is that the Muslim-Muslim angle of the presidential ticket would have been a very vulnerable point of the regime had the election not been annulled. In fact, the only Muslim-Muslim ticket we ever had in this country was when Buhari chose Tunde Idiagbon as his second in command in 1984. But that decision (coupled with his naivety in composing the Supreme Military Council) was a major reason why he became unfairly labelled as a ‘Muslim bigot’ by a group of ‘ethnic watchers’. In fact the legitimacy crisis subsequently engineered and orchestrated by this group paved the way for the overthrow of the Buhari regime by Babangida.

Whatever may by the real motive of those who championed the June 12 struggle, the truth is that the country owes them a lot of gratitude. For instance by upping the heat on Babangida, he was forced to step aside from what could well have been a life military presidency. Babangida’s attempt to pacify these elites by appointing Ernest Shonekan, a Yoruba, failed to fly. Even Abacha’s horrible dictatorship failed to deter them. My opinion is that the way the June 12 was fought helped to make military coups unattractive to the soldiers thereby helping to secure our democracy.

But there is a flipside to that struggle too. When the Fourth Republic was inaugurated, the presidency was essentially conceded to the Yorubas in order to mollify them for the June 12 annulment. In essence the presidency was conceded to them because they had staked such an overwhelming claim to the Abiola mandate that the country became virtually ungovernable. It could be argued that some Niger Delta activists mimicked the strategy of the June 12 activists by militarising their struggle. They too were placated with the selection of someone from the Niger Delta (Goodluck Jonathan) to be the running mate to the late Umaru Yaradua, then the PDP presidential candidate. Even when Jonathan became the President after the death of Umaru Yaradua, one of the powerful arguments supporting his presidential candidacy in the 2011 elections was that it would help to pacify the Niger Delta militants. Therefore while June 12 struggle helped to usher in the Fourth Republic it also raised the risk of a competitive deployment of violence by groups who now believe that making the country or a part of it ungovernable is the surest way to get the attention of the federal government to address their concerns.

June 12 also raises questions about why Babangida, a veteran of several coups, remained rather tepid, if not cowardly, in articulating his reasons for annulling the elections – and vigorously defending it if he believed he did the right thing.

Dr Ojo Onukaba, former media adviser to Vice President Atiku Abubakar gave an insight into a possible reason for the annulment. In his biography of his principal, Atiku: The Story of Atiku Abubakar (2006) Dr Onukaba claimed that after Abiola emerged the Presidential candidate of the SDP, a list of possible running mates, including two Northern Christians, was drawn up which Abiola took to his friend Babangida, then the military president, for advice. Babangida reportedly advised against a Muslim-Muslim ticket, and in particular against choosing Babagana Kingibe (he thought Babagana Kingibe would undermine Abiola to become President). Dr Onukaba wrote that after Abiola ignored the advice and announced Babagana Kingibe as his running mate, all the efforts Abiola subsequently made to reach Babangida were rebuffed, with his notes to Babangida often returned unopened. “From then, Abiola realised that he had lost the support of the President and that the ticket was in danger”, Dr Onukaba wrote. If indeed this was a possible reason for the annulment, there is a feeling that Nigerians would have been more understanding of the annulment if Babangida had articulated this and stoutly defended his decision. After all, Obasanjo as Head of State was critical of Awolowo’s ill-advised choice of Philip Umeadi, an Igbo and fellow Christian, as his running mate in the 1979 presidential elections.wp_posts