June 12 1993: A Historical Necessity For Nigeria..... By Joe Igbokwe....
Sahara Reporters
Lagos
June 10, 2013
Alhaji Bashir Tofa, the Presidential candidate for the National Republican Convention (NRC) in 1993 Presidential Election
who lost woefully and miserably to the late Chief MKO Abiola was in the news recently concerning that historic election.
Reading through Tofa’s scurrilous drivel and political dishonesty, my mind at once ran away with this thinking that Tofa cannot get it. The crushing, humiliating and debilitating defeat Alhaji Bashir Tofa suffered on June 12 1993 is still haunting the amateur politician the way that historic election is still haunting Nigeria 20 years after.
The June 12 1993 presidential elections may not mean anything to Bashiru Tofa because he has no sense of history, he remembers nothing and hears nothing, but the world knows about June 12 1993 presidential elections in Africa’s most populous country, the crisis, the pains, the agonies, the tears, the killings, the deaths, the chains of events that followed the annulments of that election, and the price Nigeria has paid for this mistake for 20 years.
“Only those who don’t have anything to offer to this country to move forward can still be talking about June 12 Presidential Elections….
I am not one of those people that celebrate fiction that is more reason I don’t like to be talking again on June 12 presidential elections.”
Tofa and his like may not know this but the trouble of June 12 will ever continue to haunt us until we come to terms with what transpired in those years of locusts. June 12 1993 will continue to remind us of how IBB and Abacha used the full weight of the Federal Military Government and the instrumentality of State power and machinery to destroy Chief Abiola, his wife, his business and nearly five thousand other Nigerians between 1993 and 1998.
20 years after the election and 14 years into our renascent democracy, Nigeria is getting into deeper troubles everyday. Militant organizations have been continuously putting knives on things that held us together and the center cannot hold. But of all these ethnic organizations: OPC, MASSOB, MEND, BOKO HARAM etc only OPC was historically thrown up by the forces of history to defend their people when IBB and Abacha decided to decimate Yoruba leaders for refusing to accept the annulment of June 12 Presidential elections won by their illustrious son Chief Moshood Abiola.
We may not remember this but IBB and Abacha descended on first class Yoruba leaders, sending some to their untimely graves, put some in jail and chased others to seek asylum abroad. At a time Abacha planted bombs in various locations in Lagos, had them exploded and many were killed and property destroyed. The ploy was to blame the Yoruba leaders for planting the bombs and then get them arrested. Abacha did it. It was in the peak of this intimidation and humiliation that OPC came on stage. Today we may never know the names of hundreds of South West youths killed on the streets of Lagos and Ibadan who fought Nigerian soldiers deployed by Abacha with bare hands. I saw many of them cut down in Mushin, Lagos. These were the real heroes of democracy some of us are bastardizing today.
For MASSOB, MEND, BOKO HARAM, these are cowards and lilly-livered opportunist who did not raise a voice during the reign of the maximum dictator, General Abacha. The moment Abacha died these opportunists rose up to distort history. Today others can take MEND, BOKO HARAM or MASSOB seriously, I do not. They are historical cowards and people looking for five minutes of fame.
Joe Igbokwe
Lagos
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