Saturday, June 12, 1993 is a date that will never be forgotten in the history of Nigeria and Nigerian politics. Together with the October 1, 1960, Independence Day if you’ve forgotten and May 29, 1999 when the military went back to the barracks, hopefully forever, it ranks among the most significant dates in our history.

If the elections adjudged to be the freest and fairest we’ve ever witnessed, had not been annulled, it would have been just another election. But instead, the military president at the time, General Ibrahim Babangida thought it ‘wise’ to annul the elections that were so free and fair that the presumed winner, M.K.O. Abiola won in the home state of his opponent, Bashir Tofa – Kano.

For a lot of people, especially in the South-West, it served as confirmation that Northern politicians were not willing to relinquish power at the centre.

The events of the 1979 elections when as Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo (in)famously declared that the best candidate might not win, an apparent reference to party favourite Obafemi Awolowo who eventually lost to Shehu Shagari was still fresh in their memories.

Predictably, the most vocal resistance to the annulment was in the South-West; starting with the riots in Lagos, and ending with providing the bulk of pro-democracy activists such as the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) which was a thorn in the side of military dictator, General Sani Abacha, until his death four days before the 5th anniversary of the annulment.

It was as a result of the annulment that for the first time in Nigeria’s history, the usually political North ceded the presidency to the South-West as ‘compensation’, to the extent that no Northerner contested in 1999 presidential election.

It was also the annulment of the election that led to the emergence of socio-political groups like Afenifere and their more militant variants such as the O’odua Peoples’ Congress. Afenifere was to later back the Alliance for Democracy political party which controlled all six states in the South-West from 1999 until 2003 when a PDP tsunami swept all but Lagos.

It was from the smouldering remains of the AD that former Lagos governor, Bola Tinubu built an immense political machine in the form of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that has since regained all the lost states of the AD (except the Labour Party-led Ondo State) and even added Edo to its war chest.

Without June 12, 1993, the political landscape would have continued to be dominated by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC), our own imitation of the American Democratic and Republican parties, strangely funded by the government and famously described by General Babangida as “one a little to the left, the other a little to the right.”

Without June 12, 1993, Abiola would be alive, Nigeria would have successfully elected a democratic government that paid no heed to religious affiliation – Abiola and his running mate Babagana Kingibe were Muslim – and the political landscape as we know it would have been totally unrecognisable. No one knows if it would have been for the better, but it would have been different.

But June 12 happened, and 20 years on, is fresh in all our memories, whether we saw or we were told. Continue to Pray for Nigeria.

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