SUNDAY NOTEBOOK | JUNE 12 as IBB’s Achilles heel, Nigerian democracy’s imperiled path, by Felix Oguejiofor Abugu

The much-awaited former military president, Ibrahim Babamasi Babangida’s (IBB’s) autobiography was finally presented to the public in Abuja, the FCT, on Thursday, February 20, 2025. As expected, the obviously most important news out of that event was the open admission by IBB in the autobiography – ‘JOURNEY IN SERVICE’, that the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, the candidate of the defunct ‘a little-to-the-left’ Social Democratic Party (SDP), won the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

While IBB’s admission wasn’t exactly like belabouring the obvious, it came also as a confirmation of an open secret, going by the hints the late Professor Humphrey Nwosu, Chairman of the then National Electoral Commission (NEC, now Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC), which conducted that historic presidential election at the time, had given in an earlier press interview as to who won that historic election. Again, when in 2020 former President Buhari also declared June 12 as Nigeria’s new Democracy Day and apologized to Nigerians, and the late Abiola family in particular, for the annulment of the election, it came as another tacit admission that Abiola won ‘JUNE 12’. After all, as president, Buhari must have spoken and acted based on facts at his disposal. It means, essentially, that IBB’s came only as the denouement of all the Abiola-won-June-12 confessions.

“There was no doubt in my mind; MKO Abiola won the election. He satisfied all the requirements,” Babangida was quoted by former Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who reviewed ‘JOURNEY IN SERVICE’ at the Abuja event, as saying. And although Babangida claims that the annulment of the election was his toughest decision ever, he insists that as “I say in my book, in all matters, we acted in the supreme national interest so that Nigeria could survive.”

Now, the irony of that “supreme action taken in national interest so that Nigeria could survive” is that Babangida, in a fit of inexplicable spleen, annulled an election, which in its conduct and essence, came to be viewed by the entire world as charting a new path for democracy not only in Nigeria but also in Africa as a whole. A democratic Nigeria with a national buy-in would only promote national growth and integration.

On June 12, 1993, Nigerians voted as one country and people under the sun, demonstrating well before the 2023-to-date phenomenon of Peter Obi, that Nigeria is indeed possible. We ditched our ethnic and religious differences and voted for a country that promised a good future, anchored on equity, justice and inclusivity for all its citizens and residents alike. We voted for a country that was to be led by a man we knew and decided we could trust. The Muslim-Muslim ticket, which is now viewed with justifiable suspicion, especially because of the cavalier attitude of Tinubu and Co, who unapologetically foisted it upon the nation this time around, wasn’t much of an issue to Nigerians, who saw only competence and a sense of shared destiny in the duo of the late MKO and his running mate, Babagana Kingibe.

But as it eventually turned out, it was all an illusion, a pipe dream, indeed mere wishes that were rendered unattainable by IBB’s stroke of self-destruction, manifested in that very unforgivable act of annulling that epochal 1993 presidential election result.

Is it any wonder that there is practically nothing else to IBB’s political history beyond that irredeemable political faux pas, the harebrained annulment of an election adjudged by local and international observers as so far Nigeria’s freest and fairest in its tortuous political history? Today, it’s as if IBB didn’t build Abuja, wasn’t the architect of Nigeria’s modern banking industry, didn’t liberalize TV and radio ownership to allow private investors’ ownership of electronic media outfits. It’s as if IBB didn’t build the Third Mainland Bridge, Nigeria’s longest river bridge, experiment with diarchy, rescue Liberia from itself through the revolutionary ECOMOG.

It’s as if IBB never did anything good at all for Nigeria while serving as military president except annul the June 12, 1993 presidential election and, by doing so, stymie the nation’s march to a truly democratic, united and progressive country. What national interest was greater than upholding the result of a peaceful, free and fair national election?

Men write their own history by their actions and or words. Unfortunately, history’s verdict can be brutal on those who play with history. And a man’s history does not subsist in ‘many’ good or ‘bad’ things that he may have done in life. It requires only one big something, good or bad, to label a man as history’s hero or villain. That explains why philosophers usually urge caution in the way we carry on in this life. As the Good Book would say, “what is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.”

Likeable billionaire Aliko Dangote may crow about IBB’s private sector policies that revolutionized the Nigerian economy and put it on the path to becoming Africa’s biggest; billionaire Arthur Eze may dance to his heart’s content in celebration of IBB’s economic management wizardry that created him; Globacom’s billionaire Mike Adenuga may bow in salute to IBB’s private sector initiatives that also created business moguls like him; John Momoh, the Dokpesi family, among several others, may drink to IBB’s ingenuity in paving the way for private ownership of the electronic media, which they benefitted from. But we are never going to judge the wily, gap-tooted General by their testimonies. We may love them all as wealth creators, for ingeniously leveraging the economic opportunities that IBB provided them with to build business empires that have employed millions of citizens directly or indirectly; we may also love them for their philanthropy and with it the life chances they have created for millions of citizens who would ordinarily have been left in the doldrums. But, it’s unlikely that their kind words for IBB and his era will ever cancel out the harsh verdict of history on the Niger-born armoured corps General’s ill-defined, even self-destructive, political exertions while serving as military president of the Federal Republic.

General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) destroyed his own otherwise eventful career history. Simple. And he can’t just walk it all back rather so conveniently, no matter how much he may try. In fact, the more he tries to blame others for the annulment of that watershed of an election in a Nigeria where, no thanks to his wheeler-dealing, our democracy has all but become eternally imperiled, the more he comes across as a General without the courage of his convictions.

He may well not be as completely effete as Buhari, but we now know that the great IBB wasn’t such a courageous General after all. And yet, here was a man who once warned opponents, including, to be sure, members of his own constituency – the military – that he was not only in government but also in power. It would appear that Babangida was only in government actually.

After those long eight years of rigmarole called political transition, after the political control he perceivably exercised over the military through juicy appointments and other extensive favours (some would say bribes), is IBB saying that he didn’t have enough officers and men to enforce and defend his political decision, such as allowing Humphrey Nwosu to declare Chief Abiola winner of an election he now confesses the late MKO did, in fact, win?

While one would not have wished that IBB committed suicide in order to be counted as anyone’s hero, the point must also be made that Babangida should have made a dash for the nation’s democracy finish line at that time, by giving the late Professor Nwosu the go-ahead to declare the late Chief Abiola winner of that historic election. It is just possible that the heavens would not have fallen. But even if heavens were to have fallen, as a Muslim, it would have been taken that that had divinely been written in his destiny.

Nor would he have been the first leader in history to die in order that his country might live in peace with self and neighbours. Anwar Sadat died so Egypt would live in peace with Israel – Egypt is the better for it today. Yitzhak Rabin, as Israeli Prime Minister, died in the hands of a fellow Jew while striving for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. While the search for that peace may remain at the core of the continual Arab-Israeli flare-ups, note must be taken that Israel has, since Rabin’s Oslo Accords (which provided for the expansion of Palestinian self-rule throughout most of the West Bank) normalized relations with a few other Arab neighbours, besides Egypt and Jordan. History will ever remain kind to the dovish Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated in 1995.

That IBB refused to stick out his neck in defence of democracy. principle and nation, after wasting billions of naira on an eight-year transition programme, only to turn around 32 years later to blame others for his most infamous act of national betrayal, is to provide us with a character sketch of the average Nigerian General and his sense of patriotic duty to country and citizens.

And yet, we must praise IBB for writing his autobiography, never mind that it has come to be widely regarded as just his memoir on the June 12 1993 presidential election saga rather than an autobiography. At least, there is no longer the danger of a single narrative on the June 12 debacle (to paraphrase writer Chimamanda Adichie). Certainly, tons of texts on June 12 already exist, with many very critical of IBB’s roles in that political crisis that is at the heart of the conflagration that has remained with us till date. But now that the man in the eye of the storm has contributed his own volume, equation is finally balanced, so to say.

In point of fact, the equation on the tragic Nigerian story as a whole, especially in relation to the civil war, would have been more balanced had the main dramatis personae in the crisis, former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon (now 90 years old) and the late Biafran leader, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, written their memoirs. By writing his ‘JOURNEY IN SERVICE’, IBB stands commended, if not for anything else, at least for living true to his own personal philosophy, which goes thusly: “Never be afraid of taking a decision. History will forgive you for taking a wrong decision but will certainly not forgive you for not taking a decision at all.”

And he may well be right. But, I am just wondering how history will forgive the foxy General for the monumental June 12 mistake.