I was resident at Adanla Close, just down the road from Cassidy Bus Stop at Okokomaiko. IBB had exhausted the patience of myself and everyone else in my immediate world, we just wanted him gone, tired of his ceaseless schemes and experiments.
He had banned and disqualified all the usual suspects, and up until Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola joined the race, the race had become tedious, repetitive, and generally boring. MKO’s entry into the race changed all that. He electrified the race, captured the imagination of my generation, and unleashed the latent energy of a people long held bound by a leadership devoid of imagination.
MKO fired our imagination with his common touch, his grass to grace story, his immense capacity for visioning, his unbridled enthusiasm, and his empathy for the common men and women of Nigeria. He lived without limits, and we were enthralled by the strength of his vision. He made us believe that a better Nigeria wasn’t a mirage, his personal story was evidence of what could be. Abiola made believers of us, and we believed.
Abiola was courageous. We were not unaware of his limitations as a man, we knew he was a beneficiary of the same system that had kept the country hobbled, but unlike his friends, he retained his common touch, and whilst his Alli Baba befriended all the thieves, he had also been the Robin Hood that gave unsparingly to the people. We loved him warts and all, and when the day came, we were ready to live the dream that he promised.
On June 12 1993, we awoke to a beautiful sunny day, and I together with other inmates of Adanla Hostel, went out to cast our votes. Option A4, was the adopted system. We queued behind our choices, were counted, handed our ballot papers, and I along with a lot of my friends, voted for the very first time in our lifetime. The day was a beautiful one, it was peaceful all over the country, and we felt like we were attendants at the birth of a nation
I will not rehash the shenanigans that followed the epochal events of that day. I have dealt at length with the aftermath in my memoirs, and I am also aware that the bulk of what really happened remains shrouded in the many lies that the Nigerian state has spawned to cover the truth. But IBB and his compadres did more than annul an election, they killed a nation.
In the battle to enforce the freely expressed will of the hapless inmates of the Nigerian state, I wasn’t an onlooker. We were the foot soldiers of the ragtag army of romantics, we were the ones killed in our hundreds by the Nigerian state, it was my generation that the state used as canon fodders. Abacha was the fall guy for a generation of visionless idiots that yes, began with IBB, but that numbers the OBJs of this world in its ranks. Uche Chukwumerije must not be forgotten, we must remember the Earnest Shonekans, the list is long, but our stories must be told.
Buhari had his eyes on 2019 when proclaiming June 12 as the true Democracy Day, that is the undeniable fact. That he celebrated the Obasanjo foisted May 29 Democracy Day, this year, before being persuaded to make his proclamation confirms the veracity of this position. That he has also failed to follow up with the public holiday, further confirms his opportunistic view of the occasion, but government is a continuum, and whatever he has omitted to do, future governments will eventually perfect.
Some have stood on June 12, others have eaten on June 12, the demagogue of Owu has wiped his dirty yansh on June 12, saints have been canonized on June 12, political empires have been built on June 12, and a people have been held captive by June 12. May the spirit of June 12, continue to haunt the killers of June 12, and may Obasanjo, the one who knows who is and who isn’t the messiah, become the sacrificial lamb to cleanse the injustices of June 12, and may its ghost never cease to haunt him until his dying day. Amen.
June 12 is not about a holiday, it is about the birth of a nation, out of the hotchpotch of the people held bound by the Nigerian state. We remain in limbo because we continue to deny the truth of our reality. Nigeria is a state that has denied citizenship to her inmates, a denial predicated on a refusal to be just and equitable to all, regardless of ethnicity and or religious affiliations. This is why snakes may dance in Igboland, but the same state will tolerate the pogrom and genocide in the Benue trough and Southern Kaduna. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than the others.
No Nigerian head of state, has done more to undermine the ideals of June 12, better than Buhari, and whilst I thank him for his farcical declaration of the holiday, I assure him that we are not fooled. MKO wasn’t elected to rule the Yoruba nation, he remains the only president to have been elected with a national mandate, and the chances of nationhood, might very well have been interred with his remains.
I honor the memory of those who died in the struggles to revive the aborted vision, I salute the spirit of “Emuke Moshudi” and the many buried in unmarked graves, victims of a most wicked and vile state, and I ask the living to spare thoughts for the families who lost sons and daughters in the struggle, but whose losses remains unacknowledged even now. They can take solace in the knowledge that Nigeria will not achieve nationhood without acknowledging their sacrifices.
On June 12, I remain standing…..
First published June 12, 2018.
DF
Suck Them Dry…
