The ritual has made another full calendar move, and here we’re again. To mark June 12 – the day in 1993 when Nigeria held a presidential election that the democratic world believed was the cleanest and fairest since 1960. MKO Abiola was coasting to the sun sure victory when Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, the military leader at the time, stopped the announcement of the outcome. Abiola went ahead and declared himself winner. But Gen. Sani Abacha, who had become the head of state, flung Abiola in jail where he died in mysterious circumstances on 7 July 1998. Ever since June 12 has remained the darkest day in Nigeria’s political history and had been marked as Democracy Day until 2024 when President Ahmed Bola Tinubu made it a national public holiday.
The national mood last Thursday was anything but celebratory. It was sombre, subdued and frighteningly like the silence of the graveyard. Of course, Tinubu made a televised speech behind the security bulwarks of the National Assembly. State governors did the same from their government houses. No march-pasts by security forces or school children. The majority of Nigerians ‘celebrated’ the day in homes denied electricity and water. Many didn’t eat breakfast, not that it was too early to eat but the dining table was empty. A holiday? There could be no putting off work if you were barely eking out a living. So on this day, Nigerians in the informal sector refused to stay at home and trolled to places they could make some naira for the night’s dinner.
No, I’m partly wrong. There actually was a public show in Lagos, not unexpectedly. Political stirrings of any significance usually originate here. Because Lagos is a miniature Nigeria, accommodating nearly every segment of the national population.The youth, frustrated and nauseated by the fast disappearance of “dividends of democracy”, came together to tell Tinubu that two years of his government have left Nigerians no better off than in the dark days of military dictatorship. They ignored Tinubu’s pardon of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 of the Ogoni 9, convicted of murder and secretly executed by Gen. Abacha in 1995 and the post-humus honouring of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. This is an honourable thing to do, surely. But what is honour to people whose ears are ringing from hunger pangs? They hear nothing else but the rumbles their stomachs make. This deep sense of disappointment is more keenly felt by the young I call June 12vers who are 32 years old today.
In 2023, my column on that year’s June 12 anniversary was entitled “June 12vers, are you there?”. I discovered, yes, they were there but disconnected politically. Many didn’t remember what June 12 was all about and didn’t want to know. They refused vote in the presidential poll that year. Let me quote a good portion of that piece: “This cloud of apathy hasn’t yet lifted many years after the symbol of June 12 faded out. Thousands of twelvers who said they registered to vote in the 2023 elections failed to pick up their voter’s cards. Some said they couldn’t trust politicians to deliver what they promised. This mirrors the thought of Tony Wilson of the “Cool and the Gang” fame. He labelled politicians as liars in a popular song of his, “The Politician”. He described him (the politician) as “a man of many words, tells many lies, what he says today he’ll never do.” A politician, running for an elective office, in Nigeria for example, will promise to build an airport if he gets elected. If you are a voter you should know right away that he is either lying or doesn’t know your priority isn’t an airport which you may never use. George Orwell, author of the Nobel Prize winning political satire “Animal Farm”, said in one of his essays “Politics and the English Language” that “politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia”.
“Should we stay out of or walk away from politics because the practice of it is not right? No. Politics will always be there, run away or not. What to do is to get involved in order to alter or change the rules of the game. Who are the worthier change agents than our June twelvers who see the progenitor of June 12 as “our hero past”?”
I see a sign of a new beginning though. A reawakening of political consciousness in our young men and women – a consciousness long fossilized under the cold ice of bad governance. Today, social media platforms are buzzing with memes that say “We must act because we’re involved”. But this emerging “stream of consciousness” must keep running, not dry up. Then the number of posts need to be turned into votes that will really count. If they do, the bright future they are after won’t be too far off.
