30yrs after tragedy of June 12, 1993: INEC has afflicted us with another electoral savagery ~ by Rev. Fr. John Odey

On July 28, 1967, in the heat of the Civil Rights struggle in America coupled with America’s reckless involvement in the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Junior openly and vehemently condemned American militarism under which Vietnam was at the risk of total annihilation. He said: “This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.” This piercing criticism was not taken kindly by his detractors. Hence, he was asked during an interview to explain why he was spending more time speaking out against the war in Vietnam than in raising funds for job training and scholarships which the Black Americans so desperately needed. In reply to this question King made his famous statement about justice. He said: “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And wherever I see injustice, I am going to take a stand against it whether it is in Mississippi or whether it is in Vietnam.” I love Martin Luther King Junior and his ways. That is why I wrote my doctoral dissertation on him and his Civil Rights struggle in America 29 years ago. I therefore feel that people should not be surprised if they see me getting deeply involved in the battle against the injustice in our political system because it is a threat to our very existence. This preamble brings us to what is currently happening in our dear country.

Thirty years after June 12, 1993 annulment of the presidential election by Ibrahim Babangida, on March 1, 2023, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), dared Nigerians again by breaking all the electoral rules and imposing his preferred candidate, who lost the election, on them as their president elect. I was not in Nigeria in June 1993 when Babangida annulled the election. But the reverberations of that announcement touched every nook and cranny of the globe. I was on summer holiday in America, St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Newburgh, New York. There, something happened that made the annulment thorn in my psyche. During that holiday I had a singular opportunity to meet a section of the cream of black Americans. Those respectable men and women had decided to pump in some huge amount of money to Nigeria, precisely to the University of Ibadan. With that money, the university would build an Information and Communication Technology center and install many computers for computer science studies. From among them, they had selected some men and women who would visit Nigeria with their generous package to help the university. Before their departure to Nigeria, a farewell party was organized for them.

The party took place in a big municipal hall very close to the parish where I was staying. Out of their goodness, when they learnt that a Nigerian Catholic priest, Rev. Fr. John Odey was around, they invited me and made me a special guest of honour. Imagine that! When I entered that hall, every eye was on me. It was as if Nigeria was incarnated in me while everybody in the hall seemed to be saying: “This is our own brother. He has come.” It was very touching to see black Americans, particularly those who were to come to Nigeria, expressing their nostalgia for Africa, their place of origin. But unfortunately, my joy was short-lived. A few days before the team was due to leave America for Nigeria, the Nigerian factor played its ugly card. On June 23, 1993 General Ibrahim Babangida annulled the presidential election which took place on June 12, 1993. The devastating news of that annulment and the political mayhem that followed it put an end to their visit to Nigeria and to all that they had planned to do for the University of Ibadan. They cancelled the visit and carried their package to India.

I returned from my study leave in Rome in March 1994, laden with anger because of the retrogressive step that Babangida had compelled our country to take. By then, he had, in his own words, stepped aside, while General Sani Abacha had also removed Ernest Shonekan as the head of the ill-fated Interim National Government which was contrived by Babangida and Abacha as a stop-gap to conceal their hidden agenda and calm down people’s frayed nerves. To crown it all, Abacha had jailed Moshood Abiola who won the election. When I settled down, I availed myself of every opportunity I had to express my dismay over the injustice done to Abiola and to the Nigerian electorate. Hereunder, I will recount FOUR of such opportunities. It is hoped that after reading them the reader will be in a better position to appreciate my gut-feeling about Mahmood Yakubu’s electoral crime against Nigerians.

FIRST: On April 16, 1997 I was invited to present a Paper during a Seminar/Workshop organized by the National Episcopal Commission for Justice, Development and Peace, at the daughters of Divine Love Conference Centre (DRACC), Enugu. The title of my paper was, “Christian Action for Justice.” In that paper, I described the annulment of the June 12 election as a “political impasse that has constituted one of the greatest threats to democracy in Nigeria.” During the question-and-answer session, somebody wanted to know why I seemed to have been particularly disturbed about the June 12, 1993 issue as if to say that Abiola was the best man to rule Nigeria. In my reply, I told the person that I was not in Nigeria when Abiola was elected as the president of Nigeria. If I had been in the country, I assured him, I would not have voted for Abiola even if he had given me a million naira. Why? I explained:

As a Christian, I know the type of aggressive propaganda Abiola has used his money to carry out against Christianity and Christians in this country. If he is given the opportunity to rule the country, he may be strongly tempted to use his money and position to embark on a fanatical crusade to Islamize the country. On this account, I would not have voted for him. But this is only one side of the coin. The other side is that I am not the only person in Nigeria. Under normal circumstances, the rule of democracy is that the majority carries the vote. When Nigerians went out to elect their president through the ballot box on June 12, 1993, they were trying to practice democracy. And in that experiment, Abiola had a clear majority and so was due to become Nigeria’s president at that time. Under any sane political dispensation, only he and nobody else had the right to rule Nigeria until his tenure was over. In view of this, I would insist that Abiola be released from detention and allowed to rule Nigeria even if a gun is stuck into my head. My fears and misgivings about Abiola’s bid to turn Nigeria into an Islamic country has nothing to do with the issue at stake: a flagrant subversion of the people’s democratic will and an unjustifiable denial of Abiola’s mandate to rule those who preferred him to any other Nigerian at that particular time in the political history of Nigeria. In other words, while I would not have voted for Abiola, I will be most delighted should God give me the courage to stake my life in defence of justice any day and any time irrespective of whether Abiola or my mother is being denied his/her right. Our problem in this country is that we try to reduce justice and injustice to mere relative moral norms, with the result that we often fail to judge people by their deeds but on the basis of which part of the country they come from or which religion they profess. Nigeria can neither sleep in peace nor wake up in peace until we find a solution to the June 12 stalemate.

SECOND: On July 14-15, 1997, the Catholic Diocese of Nsukka invited me to present a paper during a seminar/workshop organized for priests on “Justice, Development and Peace.” I gave my paper the title: “The Nigerian Church and Social Justice: The Role of the Catholic Clergy.” In the paper I denounced the injustice of the June 12 under a subtitle: “The June 12, 1993 Enigma.” Hereunder is what I said about the matter:

“The annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election, the subsequent detention of Moshood Abiola, the winner of the election, and the refusal of the Nigerian army to leave politics for those who are trained to rule are, in my humble conviction, some of the major factors which have constituted the greatest perversion of justice in Nigeria. The worst thing that has happened to Nigeria in this regard is that many people no longer wish to see the grave injustice being done to the person who won the election and to those who democratically gave him the electoral mandate to rule. The issue has been tribalized. It is now a Yoruba affair. Some even go as far as trimming it down to the Abiola affair. That was exactly how the pogrom which eventually led to the regrettable Nigerian civil war was regarded as an Igbo affair. Under the ill-defined umbrella of tribe, we have planted and continued to nurture a vicious circle of injustice. No amount of propaganda and repression will obliterate the reality of June 12, 1993. In fact, any iota of attempt meant to erase it from the minds of Nigerians only succeeds in reminding us of its stark reality. To think that June 12, 1993 will easily be forgotten in Nigeria unless the damage is repaired makes our leaders very myopic. It shows they have deliberately refused to read and interpret history correctly.

“We all, including General Sani Abacha, know that Abiola committed no crime to warrant the entire ordeal he is currently going through. What they allege as his offence is none under any sane definition anywhere in the world – that he wants to rule Nigeria because he was democratically elected by the people of Nigeria to rule Nigeria. The worst treason anybody can commit is to destroy the democratic right of the people and take over the governance of the country without being asked by the people to do so. It truly boggles the mind to think that a government which came to power through treason is now charging someone who was duly elected by the people with treason! Abiola’s detention should offend every sane person’s sense of justice in this country and make him ask “why?” irrespective of whatever part of the country he comes from and/or whatever creed he professes. Abiola’s detention is an atrocity. It is a threat to justice in Nigeria. Until he is set free or duly tried in the courts of law, we have to accept the bitter fact that justice has become the most vulnerable casualty in our land. Anybody who thinks he can put the issue of June 12, 1993 under the carpet and trample on it must be sleeping through a revolution. It is a disastrous political impasse which must either be resolved to let Nigeria march forward or treated with levity to our collective discomfort. It cannot be reduced to a tribal affair and then be sacrificed on the altar of personal sentiments and prejudices without doing an incalculable harm to the unity of Nigeria.”

THIRD: On April 24, 1998, I was invited to Port Harcourt by the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (IHRHL), to deliver a Paper, during a Lecture organized in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. My paper was given the title: “Build Peace on a Solid Foundation.” Under a subtitle, “June 12: A Recurring Decimal in a Potential Holocaust”, I said the following in that paper:

“In spite of many differences – differences in tribe, in language, in ethnicity, in statism, in religion, coupled with the palpable damage done by the Nigerian civil war and the spurious marginalization of the minority groups which has reduced a large section of the people in the country to the status of second-class citizens, Nigerians have managed to live in peace and harmony until June 12, 1993 when General Ibrahim Babangida annulled a fair and free election won by Moshood Abiola. As far as I can recollect, things have since then fallen too far apart in the country and the Centre can no longer hold. In an effort to save the nation from terminal catastrophe, many well-meaning Nigerians, at home and abroad, have at different times embarked on different strategies and measures including protests, appeals, persuasions, symposia, lectures and workshops. This gathering is one such attempt.

“To say the least, Nigeria has many problems. But at this moment the detention of Moshood Abiola and Abacha’s morbid ambition to succeed himself, irrespective of his promise to hand-over power to a democratically elected government by October 1998 are the most urgent, the most disturbing and the greatest threat to peace and the corporate existence of our dear nation. When a person is dying all other considerations, except an effort to revive his life, are suspended. When a person who is elected to rule a country is detained for four years by another person who never had anybody’s mandate to rule and on top of that, insists that he must continue to rule an unwilling people for as long as he lives, all other considerations, including a bogus transition programme, should be suspended except the moral pressure to resist such a person’s morbid ambition. It will be both naive and preposterous to talk about laying a solid foundation for peace in a country where an elected president has been languishing in detention for many years for no other reason except that he expressed his wish to rule the people who elected him.

“Honesty impels us to admit the fact that until this potential holocaust is laid to rest, it may put an end to Nigeria as a corporate nation. This is not a wish. It is a statement of fact and a warning. How do you proceed to elect a president of a country when the man who was elected four years ago has since then been detained by another man who was never elected and who is now calling for another election? How do you guarantee that the next person to be elected will not end up in detention like Abiola? Granted that you have all the arsenals of torture, destruction and murder with which to impose your own choice on the people, how do you guarantee that such a horrendous and most undemocratic process will make room for peace and stability? If Babangida and Abacha did not accept Abiola, who had the people’s mandate simply because they did not want him and had the power to stop him, what right have they to compel those who voted for Abiola to accept whomever they will manufacture as the next president, given the illegality of their action and the fraudulent nature of the current transition programme?”

FOURTH: On April 15, 2000, I was invited to deliver a paper during a Symposium organized by the Justice and Peace Association of St. Joseph’s Major Seminary, Ikot Ekpene. I spoke on the theme: “Violation of Human Rights in Nigeria: An Urgent Concern for the Nigerian Church.” By then, all the major actors, Babangida, Abacha and Abiola had died. But the dust raised by the June 12 annulment had not fully settled. In the paper I said:

“In spite of the many differences – differences in tribe, in language, in ethnicity, in statism, in religion, coupled with the palpable damage done by the Nigerian civil war and the spurious marginalization of the minority groups which has reduced a large section of the people in our country to the status of second-class citizens, Nigerians managed to live in relative peace and harmony until June 12, 1993 when Ibrahim Babangida annulled a fair and free election after he had toyed with our collective destiny for eight years. From Babangida to Sani Abacha, Nigerians fell from the proverbial frying pan into fire as military might became right to the utter detriment of people’s civil and fundamental human rights. As far as Nigeria is concerned, it will ever remain one of the saddest twists of history that Abiola was released from the prison in a coffin after four years of incarceration. As far as the chord of human endurance can go, and as far as the human mind can compute the virtues of justice and equity, based on the universally accepted norm of human rights, the Yorubas have irrefutable evidence to prove that they were unfairly treated and badly marginalized by Sani Abacha. Consequently, there was a felt need to resist the type of selective tyranny unleashed on them during the dictator’s regime.”

CONCLUSION: I hope that anybody who reads this article objectively will understand that all I have done here is to show how I have consistently called injustice by its ugly name and adorned it with the garb of its disruptive consequences in Nigerian politics irrespective of who is winning or losing. On Saturday, July 18, 2009, I celebrated the 25th anniversary of my priestly ordination. Among the goodwill messages sent to me on that occasion, Col. Abubakar Umar’s own message, published on pages 44-45 of the jubilee brochure, bears a profound witness to my outcry against the injustice of June 12, 1993 electoral annulment. He said:

“The relationship between Reverend Father John Okwoeze Odey and I go deep and intense, indeed so deep it often leaves many of our associates wondering whether we were born of the same womb. This is strange considering that we met physically only once – at a protest rally in January of 2006 against Obasanjo’s Third Term threat. I cannot now recall exactly who between us made the first contact, but we have, through the mass media, long established a robust intellectual engagement. It began at the height of the June 12th election debacle, soon after Abacha had seized power and I was forced to retire prematurely from the service of the Nigerian Army in protest against the annulment of the results of that election – adjudged as the freest and fairest ever held in Nigeria. It was one election that promised, if it was allowed to stand, to permanently unite all sections of the country. When I appeared to be a lone voice in the wilderness, and seemed to be weeping louder than the bereaved, came, from Abakaliki, this strong and loud voice of reason. In a landmark article that provided me with sorely needed support and which did much to soothe my tormented soul, Rev. Father John Odey condemned what he termed a dastardly act against the people of Nigeria and humanity in general. He was unambiguous in his support and praises of what he said was a principled stand taken by me.”

There is no normal human being who does not know that without justice there will be no peace or who does not know that all the laws are summed up in the golden rule. Nobody should treat anybody the way he would not like to be treated. Every Nigerian has the right to vote for his preferred candidate while any candidate who scores the majority votes as stipulated by the electoral law has the right to claim his mandate. By definition, a person’s right to anything means his moral authority to lay claims on that thing and to make a legitimate demand that no one should take it from him. There is a difference between power and right. Power belongs to the authority of the physical order, while right belongs to the authority of the moral order. When and where physical power prevails and tends to confer legitimacy on a wrongful dispossession of another person’s property, we talk of might being right. And when it might become right it thrives on injustice which in turn breeds anarchy. If an armed robber snatches somebody’s car at gun-point and runs away with it, he is in possession of it and so has physical power over the car. But that does not confer on him the right of ownership. He is a thief. The right of ownership belongs to the person from whom he snatched the car no matter how powerful the thief might be. By means of legal travesty, the thief may be declared the owner of the car which he stole. But he knows that he remains a thief. The person who sets him free also knows that he is a thief. The general public knows that he stole the car and that there has been a miscarriage of justice.

Prof Mahmood Yakubu had tried to set Nigeria ablaze by heedlessly declaring Ahmed Bola Tinubu the winner of the February 25 presidential election against an overwhelming global outcry. But Nigerians whose votes and mandates he gave to Tinubu proved to him that they love Nigeria more than he does by refusing to toe the path of violence. It is therefore good to remind the judiciary that it is still the last hope of the common man. The evidence of the electoral frauds that took place during the presidential election are of public knowledge. Since justice is presently on the scaffold in Nigeria, famished, limping and vanishing, we pray that the evidences will not become victims of legal technicalities. Our hearts are therefore palpitating with anxiety as we look forward to the judiciary to dispense justice in order to save Nigeria from the locusts that have been eating it up and from the cabals that have appropriated it as their personal property. Young Nigerians and generations after them deserve a better Nigeria, the Nigeria of their beautiful dreams, to enable them pursue their greater dreams.

Lastly, I wonder how the politicians responsible for the recurring electoral tragedies in Nigeria feel when they stay in a quiet place to themselves and watch through the social, electronic and print media the harm they are doing to themselves, to the younger generation and the generation yet to be born, to their nation and to the reputation of the entire black race. If the electoral savagery of February 25, 2023 is allowed to stand, it may well signal the beginning of the end of the “mere geographical expression” called Nigeria. The audacity with which MC Oluomo threatened people who would dare vote for any other party except APC in Lagos, and the freedom and impunity that the security agents implicitly granted him to execute his threat with precision in Lagos on Saturday, March 18, 2023, during the Governorship and House of Assembly elections, reminded me of the genocidal conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda. Could that be a premonition that Nigeria might somehow be on the way to Kigali or Afghanistan? God forbids!

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