Past June made it 29 years since June 12, 1993, Nigeria's presidential election was annulled. However anyone wants to veil June 12 as one of the political inconsequential events in the annals of Nigeria's political landscape, it would amount to denying the obvious. June 12 was a watershed in the country’s democratic terrain.
A presidential election adjudged the freest
and fairest election by national and international observers in the country
to date. Against the May 29, celebration of Democracy
Day in Nigeria, many people believe that June 12 is apt.
The election was a catalyst for the current
political dispensation in the country. No election in the history of the
country has the majority of the people so much believed in the unity of the
country, despite its heterogeneous ethnicities and religious dichotomy. To many
Nigerians, true democracy was in the womb of June 12.
To the Igbo extraction, it portends the
beauty of democracy; though the president and the vice president, even the
third in command; in the order of leadership in the country, the senate
president might not have come from their region; it foretells a sense of
belonging and equity that is unfolding after years of holding political power
by the northerners.
The election was a battle between two
political parties; Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican
Convention (NRC) with manifestos formulated by the military junta led by
General Ibrahim Babangida. Riding on his popular ‘HOPE 93’ campaign slogan,
Moshood Abiola, the presidential candidate of the SDP, the presumed winner was
cruising home to an overwhelming victory over his NRC candidate, Bashir Tofa when
the ruling military junta annulled the election.
Gen. Babangida annulled the election on the
ground of alleged evidence that they were corrupt and unfair, later declaring
that his hands were tied, in other words, some powerful people were behind the
reason for the annulment.
Declaring Abiola winner would mean shifting
power from the North to the Southern part of the country. As divisive as
religion is in the country, Abiola rode on a Muslim-Muslim ticket, with the
Bashir Tofa having his running mate in Sylvester Ugoh, an Igbo man, shows
Abiola’s acceptance and popularity. The Christians and particularly the Igbo,
who felt alienated from the schemes of things in the country, had a renewed
hope of being properly integrated into the country.
In Abiola’s electoral victory, the Igbo
people saw a united Nigeria. Had the election stood with Abiola as the
democratically elected president, it would properly usher in the aborted Third
Republic; its annulment brought momentous change to Nigeria’s politics. The
political turmoil the annulment created led to General Sani Abacha seizing
power after Gen. stepped aside.
To claim his mandate Abiola declared himself
the lawful president of Nigeria in the Epetedo area of Lagos Island, in Lagos
State in 1994. The General Abacha regime accused him of treason and ordered his
arrest by sending 200 police vehicles to that effect. Abiola was incarcerated
for four years in solitary confinement and died on July 7, 1998, the day he was
due to be released from custody under controversial circumstances.
For the Igbo, their awakened hope in the
entity called Nigeria the annulment dashed. The annulment debacle created socio-economic
problems in the country. The country earned a pariah status in the comity of
nations.
As the tension of the annulment mounted, the
Igbo to avoid being caught in the crossfire between the West and North, many of
them in the North had to temporarily relocate to the East to avoid reliving the
painful experience of the Nigerian Civil War. The Igbo people perceive
themselves as the first target anytime political crises in the country
arise.
The June 12 exodus of the Igbo people from the Northern part of the country to the East also referred to as 'Oso Abiola’ in
Igbo parlance saw the death of many people on the roads and some lost their
investments and never recovered from that.
To right the injustice of June 12, political
power shifted from the North to the West, with Olusegun Obasanjo, an Egba
Yoruba, from Ogun State, just as Moshood Abiola, got the platform to become the
president of Nigeria. Obasanjo's presidency did little to embrace the
aspirations of the Igbo people, as the region became a non-factor in the
political equation of the country.
The wave of marginalization enlarged and the absence of federal government infrastructures in the region increased, after
Obasanjo's tenure it twisted to an alarming proportion in the present
administration, the dream of June 12, slowly ebbing away.
A former presidential aspirant under the Social
Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, who lost at the SDP primary alongside
Babagingibe Gingibe to Abiola, said of the annulled election, “On June 12,
1993, Nigeria was united in one cause, to defeat tyranny through democracy. We
all believed that June 12 remains a shining reminder of what is possible – a
united Nigeria. The integrity of the June 12 electoral process also shows that
we can achieve great things if we are united. For many of us who worked with
Chief MKO Abiola, his death was painful, but it paved the way for enduring
democracy today, is MKO Abiola’s legacy.”
The picture of true democracy is becoming
blurred and dissatisfaction growing among the Igbo people. Never in the
history of the country has the average Igbo person been politically conscious
that a group such as the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of
Biafra (MASSOB), and now Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), gains ground every
day.
Under the current political dispensation,
there is an increased feeling that the people of the Igbo race are more Biafrans (the
name of the proposed country of the people of the Eastern part of the country)
than Nigerians they are today than the years the country was under military
tyranny. It was no surprise that the last stay-at-home order conveyed by
members of the IPOB for the cause of the state of Biafra State was a huge
success.
The order shut down economic activities in the eastern part of the country, in some parts of the South-South region with an extension to the northern parts of the country.
The success of the stay-at-home order angered
some northern youths that on June 6, gave Igbo people in the region three
months to quit the North, after addressing a press conference at Arewa House in
Kaduna. Unsurprisingly, some elders in the region backed the youth’s action.
The beauty of democracy is that it allows for freedom of expression.
The Catalonia Region in Spain for years has
been clamouring for the independence of the region, yet no Catalonian received
quit notice to leave Spain. Catalonia is in northeastern Spain and comprises
the provinces of Barcelona, Girona,
Lleida, and Tarragona. When Scotland wanted to leave the United Kingdom,
though there was no perceived marginalization as in the case of the people of
the Igbo race in Nigeria, no Scot was asked to leave England, the referendum
settled it. The majority of the Scots for now felt they were satisfied with their
stay in Great Britain.
The leaders of the Arewa Youth
Consultative Forum (AYCF) arising from a meeting at Arewa House, Kaduna, asked
the Igbo residing in the region to make plans to leave. They alleged the Igbo
have consistently shown that they don’t believe in Nigeria. They premised their
order on the May 30, Stay-at-home, order.
Their communiqué reads, “The Igbo have
consistently insisted that they don’t want to be in Nigeria, let them, therefore, go back to their places. They don’t believe in Nigeria, so we also don’t
believe in them.” They promised dire consequences for any Igbo that ignored
their directive. Northern Elders Forum (NEF) backs the call by the Northern youth
group for Igbo people to leave the region within three months.
The answer is that the Igbo are
increasingly feeling alienated in Nigeria. Democracy, order than unite the
country is nudging it to the brink of break up.
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