June 12: a Presidential Election With Announcement of Results Coming Fifteen Years After

The June 12 presidential election Nigeria held in 1993 will precisely go down in the world as the election with results coming after 15 years going by the declaration of the umpire, Prof Humphrey Nwosu fifteen years after the presidential elections were held. The election would go down in history as that which one of the candidates also deemed the acclaimed winner lost his life fighting to claim his mandate even in a mysterious circumstance.  Not only that, the election also will be found on the pages of Guinness Book of Records as the election which saw a High Court located in the capital of the country sitting in the midnight just to see to the annulment of the election in yet a mysterious circumstance.

This particular election could also go down in the history of the country as the freest and fairest election ever held in Nigeria, and election that forced the then military president and Commander in Chief of Armed Forces to compulsorily step aside. This is June 12 election an election that observes a public holiday in Nigeria, which today is the most popular election in the country today.

In Nigeria, today “June 12” unarguably means, “that which is a forgotten issue” among the youths. “June 12” means different things to different people in this country but for Prof Humphrey Nwosu it meant a time to perhaps clear the name of his mentor, Ibrahim Babangida or saw I perceive it.

What is further surprising to all those who also took fifteen years to await the declaration of the winner of that presidential result is why it took the NEC chairman, Prof Humphrey Nwosu fifteen years to announce the winner of that election in the person of Chief M. K. O. Abiola (now Late) or can a dead man ever claim his mandate?  But of more astonishing is the exoneration of the then Military President 

Hear him:

“The greatest support and strength I received was from the President (Babangida). He exhibited the strongest political will and provided adequate financial and moral support that sustained me throughout my tenure as chairman of NEC,” With this development, one is bound to see some complicity in all of it.

How can Humphrey Nwosu convince a rationale human being that a president, like Ibrahim Babangida with complete maximum power allowed had all of these happen behind him? It is even more despicable to reason that a president who bore, owned and nurtured the then two political parties would go to sleep and allow the election to die, after instructing the same Humphrey Nwosu to stop announcing the results and who consequently go ahead to declare the annulment of the election, with fearful, and threatening attitude which denied the perceived winner the opportunity to claim his mandate. This is even worse when we remember that the same president was to hand over to another Yoruba man who was to step aside in yet another circumstances not known to Nigerians. We hope that the then interim president will one day come out to tell us how it happened maybe after writing his own book.

Humphrey Nwosu would heap all the blames on people of Northern extraction except perhaps Clement Akpamgbo. Is he telling us that no one Yoruba or people from other regions of the country were involved? Even a baby a child in 1993 would have patiently listened to unfortunate comments coming from people at that time. If this child were to gather these comments and conduct his research, such a child would positively arrive at a result better than what Nwosu has told us and expects us to believe. In Nwosu declaration of how everything went, nothing was heard of M. K. O. Abiola’s running mate who was to later accept a position in the new government, which replaced the said winner while he was languishing in jail.

In the ceremony to unveil the Book which he (Nwosu) published virtually all the key actors in the nations’s political scene during and after the annulled election were slated for one position or the position, including Ibrahim Babangida, the key player as the guest of honour; Chief Ernest Shonekan, slated to chair the event and Gen Theophilus Danjuma (Rtd) billed to be the Chief launcher. Only Babangida would send a representative in the person of Brig. Gen. Halilu Akilu (Rtd.) another key player fingered by Nwosu himself. One wonders what the Prof was seeking to achieve.

Two arrowheads named by Prof Humphrey Nwosu as those behind the infamous annulment have however defended themselves in separate reactions, exonerating themselves. I may however call on those who know to please come up with their accounts of what happened