THE CANONIZATION OF JUNE 12 BY TUNJI SULEIMAN

Sequel to PMB’s announcement to institute the date of the June 12, 1993 presidential election into our national annals as a public holiday, and to beatify MKO, its acclaimed winner, Gani and other heroes of that historic watershed of our democracy, Nigerians have been busy as always. Trust us. One of our talents is for opinion on any and everything. And we are never wanting in deploying it. Quite unlike that biblical servant that buried his talent. We are supremely opinionated and so must comment, for and/or against, depending on the political, religious, tribal and other prisms by which we view, all issues.

Those who hate the president, and perhaps also the late MKO, see no good in the action. To them June 12 means nothing. They say there’s nothing to celebrate.

Some political opponents call it a Trojan Horse, that deceptive Greek gift conjured in the cunning mind of Odysseus, ruler of Ithaca. Deceived by the high priest, who saw no clearer or farther than his contemporaries, but who nevertheless claimed divine inspiration, like ‘men of god’ and other pretenders to heavenly insight of today; the old Trojan king, Priam, declared the Greek martial trick, “A gift from the gods” and ordered it taken into the city. Before the cock crowed the next morning, prosperous and valiant Troy, that withstood 12 years of Greek siege, was vanquished, debauched and plundered. The city laid waste, in pillage, rapine and ashes. Ruined by the unwise acceptance and transport through the impregnable city walls of a wooden contraption in which Greek men at arms hid. By the next day, Troy was no more, for accepting a Greek gift.

Those of the school of partisan absolutism whose view of politics is one-way, to condemn any/every initiative of a political leader they oppose no matter how good and to commend any/all actions of the one they support no matter how bad will have us see the President’s gesture as that ominous Greek gift. Greek gifts are generally to be rejected. Curiously, however, some of these same ones want us to accept what they call a deceptive gift by a president they say is desperate for mileage towards 2019 after recording some negative points, yet reject the donor.

Some others have been crying more than the bereaved. These ones advised the families of the deceased honorees to reject the posthumous awards altogether. Someone went overboard on social media. In what appears to be the effusions of a disordered intellect, induced by hateful opposition, he took liberty for license. He proceeded on a phantasmagoric excursion into the afterlife, returning with specious messages purportedly from the deceased honorees. He claimed that MKO and Gani told him they would reject the honors if alive. According to him, they commanded him and his ilk, and the rest of us to reject same on the deceased’s behalf. What will we not hear in this country in the name of political opposition?

Yet others venture to speculate tangentially. Some went completely off-target. One such is Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy Senate President who read meaning not inherent in the presidential address on June 12. According to the lawmaker, “However, there are two legal issues involved. The provisions of Section 135(2)(b) of our Constitution on the tenure of the president, because they are now saying that June 12 is now the Democracy Day deposing that, that means that in 2019, the President will be sworn-in on the 12th of June.” And this is one of the points of this piece.

Who said the “President will be sworn-in on the 12th of June.”? PMB didn’t say May 29 is no longer regime change/handover date, or did he? Why by the way must swearing in date be moved from May 29 to June 12? Or how can it be logically inferred that the proclamation of June 12 as Democracy Day and National Holiday, implies a shift of the next swearing in or handover date from May 29? What in any event is the significance of May 29? That date has less import for the democratic struggle of Nigerians than June 12 as far as the quest of Nigerians for democratic governance goes. It is just a random date that General Abdulsalami Abubakar drew out of the military bag of tricks for handover to OBJ after inheriting federal power upon the death of tyrant Abacha who had violently suppressed all opposition and was set to transmute from military head of state to civilian president but suddenly expired on June 8, 1998 in mysterious circumstances (one report had it that he died in the bosom of imported Indian harlots). OBJ it was that capriciously named May 29 Democracy Day in celebration of his own ascension as first 4th Republic president and to herald his self-ascribed title of Father of Nigerian Democracy. May 29, Shmay 29. Democracy Day, Shmocracy Day!?Now PMB has declared June 12 Democracy Day as appropriate. What’s the adverse implication (if any) of regime change date remaining May 29 as constitutionally provided and June 12 Democracy Day as merited? Why can’t we have June 12 as annual National Holiday/Democracy Day and May 29 as regime change/swearing in day every election year? Does May 29 even need to be a public holiday?

President Muhammadu Buhari’s recognition of June 12 is no Greek gift. June 12, 1993 is the real Democracy Day. It is a watershed date in our nation’s history. It’s unprecedented and has never been replicated. It is the date we held the freest and fairest election ever in our nation’s politics. Where election officials came late, we patiently waited for them. Where materials were short, we filled the gap. Where the organizer, the military government, and its collaborators, Francis Arthur Nzeribe and his co-idiot savants of the unpatriotic Arthur Eze-led Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) wanted and worked for it to fail, we ensured it succeeded. Nigerians of all extractions defied rain and sunshine to cast their votes. Results were known instantly at the polling unit. We defied political, religious, tribal and other divisions to democratically elect a president, MKO Abiola, who offered us hope across all divides. Nigerians believed so much in MKO’s Hope 93 message that they voted for him and against his opponent, Bashir Tofa, even at the latter’s polling unit. It was the day we freely chose to unite in our diversity.

One recalls the day with nostalgia. We recall our own personal sacrifices for June 12 as undergrads. We registered to vote. We stood in line. We voted for the man of the people who promised us life abundant. We voted for his Hope 93. We were glad at the results announced that indicated he was coasting home to victory.

Then the announcement of results was suspended in the tyrannical response of a conscienceless, kleptocratic, brutal and unrepentant military dictator who had programmed the elections to fail but was disappointed. And then “The soldier-politicians introduced into our body politic, a concept hitherto unknown to our political lexicography, something strangely called the “annulment” of an election perceived by all to have been the fairest, cleanest and most peaceful ever held in our nation”; said MKO in his Epetedo declaration in description of the heinous crime against Nigerians by Ibrahim Babangida, then military dictator and self-styled evil genius (now a vegetable in a wheelchair) and his gang of military jackboots that included a soldier of fortune and latter day ‘democrat’ who rode on the skulls of our departed martyrs to the headship of a democratic legislature. They forced their way on us at gun point against our will. They stole a mandate we freely gave MKO. That fateful speech a year after the election at Epetefo would be MKO’s last as a free man. He was subsequently hounded into the gulag of the usurper, General Abacha.

We protested. We did ‘aluta’, believing that victory was ‘ascerta’. They opened fire and rained bullets. Some of us lost limbs. Some lost lives. My dear friend Williams ‘Willie’ Uzoma, a talented and promising Nigerian with who I share hopes for a glorious future, paid the supreme price, just for protesting June 12 annulment, shot from the back whilst running away from his murderers, members of a military killing machine commanded by the evil despot Abacha. We lost time, more than a session for some, when our schools were closed indefinitely. All for June 12.

The canonization of June 12 is well-deserved. It is long overdue. It is just. And it is patriotic. The recognition and award honors are not for MKO and his family alone. Neither is it for our beloved Gani or his heirs only. It is for every democrat. It is for all of us who believed in and have in one way or the other contributed to the struggle for June 12 and for democracy in our nation. We owe thanks to PMB for doing the right thing.

To those who justify their opposition to the honors with claims that PMB lacks the moral standing and democratic credentials for such action having himself overthrown Shagari’s civilian rule in 1983, having supported Abacha who imprisoned June 12 and its spirit, MKO, and having never spoken for it before now; we say it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who does good. To those who say Abiola was himself part of the bad people that worked against the interests of Nigerians and that he got his just due in the unjust denial of his mandate, we offer the same answer. If their claims are true, the fact that Nigerians voted for him in their majority is indicative that they didn’t see him as their problem and freely elected to take their chances with him. To those who say the timing is wrong, we say there’s no better time to do needful good than now. To those who say it is politically motivated and calculated to win southwest and civil society votes in 2019, we say it if bad intent births good outcome, we will take the good and celebrate. We won’t throw away the baby with the birth water. “Actions shall be judged according to intentions”, says Hadith 1, but how does a man authoritatively judge another’s intention suspected to be contrary to his profession? We refuse to play God and/or foray into conjecture and/or metaphysics over the President’s motivation.

To those who argue that the late MKO is not a Nigerian and so undeserving of the posthumous national honor, we say we have heard nothing more puerile. To the legal pundits and others, including a former CJN who called it illegal, we are satisfied with the explanation of Femi Falana, SAN, constitutional lawyer and another leading light of the pro-democracy struggle that:?“National Honours Act has not prohibited or restricted the powers of the President to confer national honours on deserving Nigerian citizens, dead or alive. No doubt, Paragraph 2 of the Honours Warrant made pursuant to the National Honours Act provides that ‘a person shall be appointed to a particular rank of an Order when he receives from the President in person, at an investiture held for the purpose…’ But Paragraph 3 thereof has given the President the unqualified discretion ‘to dispense with the requirement of paragraph 2 in such manner as may be specified in the direction.’ Therefore, since the national awards conferred on Chief Abiola and Chief Fawehinmi cannot be received by them in person, the President may permit their family members to receive same on their behalf.”

Continuing, Falana argued, “Furthermore, Section 2 (1) of the Public Holidays Act stipulates that in addition to the holidays mentioned in the Schedule to the Act, the President may appoint a special day to be kept as a public holiday either throughout Nigeria or in any part thereof. It is crystal clear that the President is not required by law to seek and obtain the approval of the National Assembly before declaring a public holiday in the country.

“In view of the combined effect of the National Honours Act and the Public Holidays Act, the legal validity of the well-deserved awards and the historic holiday has not been impugned in any manner whatsoever”, he concluded.

Who was Abiola? What did he do? What did he stand for? What made him different from the average politician we see all over Nigeria today? And why did Nigerians love him so much and vote for him in 1993? I was asked by my 23-year old niece today. I answered as follows:

The late MKO Abiola is that one person whose martyrdom undeniably facilitated the return from military rule to the democracy we are now enjoying. All presidents and indeed politicians of the Fourth Republic are beneficiaries of his supreme sacrifice. Abiola’s was a rags to riches tale of a brilliant Nigerian accountant turned arguably one of the richest businessmen of his time. He was not a local champion like many of our politicians today, but a philanthropist who deployed his immense wealth to touch diverse people from nearly every community in Nigeria and to lift many out of poverty. With his generosity in projects and donations to worthy causes, he endeared himself to the people’s hearts. He was a patron of the arts. He donated to all religions. He was the Pillar of Sports in Africa. He was the most vocal African advocate for Western nations to make reparations for the dislocation and retrogression that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade of nearly 400 years caused Africans and for the deliberate oppression and exploitation of Africa and Africans for resources evacuation under colonialism. Since Abiola’s death, no other African has had the courage to champion reparations or redress the economic inequality and injustice that Africans still endure today through unfavorable multilateral trade relations.

He hinged his Hope 93 program on his recognition of the oppressive impact of the Naira exchange rate on our economy and the mass poverty that derives from it. He promised to institute an economic framework that would strengthen the Naira so that more Nigerians will exit grinding poverty. He had been there. And he had made good. So his Farewell to Poverty message reflected his personal credo and experience and resonated with the people.

To millennial Nigerians, those born after 1993 and those still in diapers in the early 1990s, particularly after the relegation of civics and history in school curriculum, benefit yourself by this brief recapitulation on June 12 and the man MKO Abiola and use as pointers to further research; not as basis for ignorant arguments and postulations propelled by revisionism and tribalism and people who today wish to detract from June 12 and reduce it to ethnic pedestals for political, tribal, religious and other grouses, against the President or his party, and/or against the Yoruba and Nigeria. June 12 was beyond that. It wan a national affair.

Today, we celebrate MKO, Gani, Kudirat, Rewane, Enahoro, my friend Willie, and countless others who lost their lives directly to the protests against annulment and/or subsequent struggle to actualize June 12. We celebrate Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, the retired Nigerian Army colonel who resigned his commission in protest against the military’s perversion of the people’s will. We celebrate the late Alao Aka-Bashorun, formal chairman of the NBA, who saw through Babangida’s ruse and circuitous Political Transition Program that ended up in the June 12 fiasco. We celebrate the late Dipo Fashina (Jingo), Beko Ransome-Kuti, Frederick Fasheun, Alani Akinrinade, Chima Ubani, Frank Kokori and countless others living or dead. We celebrate Humphrey Nwosu who conducted the election and his colleagues in the then NEC. Today’s gratification lies in the perception that our part of the sacrifices and that of our not-so-lucky compatriots in the struggle against military rule and for democracy are acknowledged. We savor the victory. That we won it at the hands of a former military ruler doesn’t sour the taste.

?Today, we also recall the ignominious roles of all who in one way or the other worked openly or covertly against June 12. IBB, Shonekan, Abacha, Arthur Nzeribe, Eze. We recall Justice Bassey Ikpeme, who issued a judgment in the dead of night to stop the election. In the fullness of time, everyone will get just recompense in this or the afterlife.

What is left is to officially announce the results of that historic election and move it from the realm of acclaim and/or presumption to that of officialdom and to consecrate it into our national annals. In addition, a national monument should be commissioned or designated to signify the importance of that day in our national history.

This writer delights in the knowledge that one of the calls in his ‘Argument for National Apology’ of May 29, 2018 has been addressed. The proceedings at the event in Abuja today are gratifying. This canonization of June 12 should be just the beginning in a long list of initiatives by which the Nigerian state embarks upon restitution for its historical crimes against some of it citizens and groups of citizens/sections of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari should please not stop at June 12. He should address all other issues that continue to militate against our journey to united, equitable, peaceful and progressive nationhood.

Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.