The 1993 election was
annulled because a free and fair election in Nigeria is fundamentally
unacceptable to the powers-that-be in the North.
Exactly 25 years ago, a
landmark election was held in Nigeria after ten long years of military
rule. There were two main contestants: Moshood Abiola of the Social
Democratic Party and Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention.
Abiola was from the South-west: Tofa from the North-west.
Although the results of
the election have never been officially certified, nevertheless, they are well
known and readily-accessible. Abiola won with 8,243,209 votes; while Tofa
lost with 5,982,087 votes.
The election was
annulled by the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. The INEC of
the day was not allowed to declare the result officially. Abiola was
subsequently arrested by another usurper military ruler, Sani Abacha; and he
died mysteriously while still in government detention.
As a result, the country
was plunged into a political crisis that took another seven years to
resolve. But even that resolution failed to address the real reason why
it was felt necessary to annul the election. The issue was patched-up in
1999 by the agreement that the next president of Nigeria must come from
Abiola’s South-west.
Therefore, in the
election of that year, two sons of the South-west, Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu
Falae contested the presidency virtually exclusively, and Obasanjo was elected
president.
Fake redemption
The present government
of President Buhari has now decided to recognize the victory of M.K.O. Abiola
in the 1993 election. It has declared that henceforth Democracy Day will
no longer be celebrated as a public holiday on May 29 but on June 12, the day
of that 1993 election. M.K.O. Abiola has also been awarded illegally the
posthumous national honour of Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR);
the highest national honour in Nigeria.
However, what the
government has not done, and what it will not do, is to make official the
result of the 1993 election. The 1993 election was annulled because of
the results. It was annulled because it was free and fair. The
election was annulled because a free and fair election in Nigeria is
unacceptable to the powers-that-be in the North. You need to know the
reason behind this, and I will endeavor to tell you.
President Babangida and
his Northern cohorts had no problem with Abiola becoming the president of
Nigeria in 1993. They did not expect him to win and were surprised that
he won. But if they did not want him to be president, they would not have
allowed him to be on the ballot in the first place. What they found
unacceptable was what his victory revealed. It was in their interest to
ensure that this did not come to the general knowledge of Nigerians.
By still refusing to
certify the 1993 election results, while getting accolades in some quarters for
finally admitting officially that Abiola was the winner, the present Nigerian
government is still determined that the truth revealed by the election results
should not be known. In effect, the rehabilitation of the 1993 election
in Nigeria today is no more than a political gambit primarily designed to shore
up lagging support for the APC in the South-west in view of the looming 2019
elections.
Open secret
The 1993 election is
widely regarded as the only free and fair election that has ever taken place in
Nigeria. Since that is the case, consider the following truths that the
election results revealed.
In 1993, more people
voted in the South than they did in the North. We are told time and time
again that the political advantage of the North is that it is more populous
than the South, and that this gives the North a certain advantage during
elections. Given the fact that in nearly 60 years, we have yet to conduct
a credible census in Nigeria, there has been no way of verifying the validity
of this assumption that flies in the face of logic and geography.
However, the free and
fair presidential election of 1993 provides us with a solid answer. In
that election, (and I repeat for emphasis, the only free and fair election ever
conducted in Nigeria), with only two candidates on the ballot, one from the
North and the other from the South, only 5,962,085 people voted in the North
relative to 8,243,209 who voted in the South.
In effect, that
highly-contested election revealed what most of us always knew: there are more
people in the South than in the North. In 1993, the North only provided
roughly 40% of the electorate in Nigeria, while the South provided roughly
60%. IBB and his cohorts who decided to annul the election did not want
Nigerians to know this.
Implications
Since it is now
recognized officially by the present Nigerian government no less that the 1993
presidential election was free and fair, then it stands to reason to maintain
by the same token that the 2015 presidential election was a sham.
Observe the following for
example. We are meant to believe today that the most populous state in
the federation is Kano; thereby Kano delivers the largest number of votes in
elections in Nigeria. Against all reason and logic, it is said that Kano
even has a larger population than Lagos, even though in 1991, Jigawa State was
carved out of Kano. This is simply incredible!
However, in the 1993
presidential election, the only free and fair election in the history of
Nigeria now validated by the Buhari administration, and with a favourite son of
Kano on the ballot in the person of Bashir Tofa; Kano could only deliver
442,176 votes, less than half that of Lagos’ 1,033,397 votes.
Therefore, the 1993
presidential election results show conclusively that the large votes generally
attributed to Northern states and especially Kano in Nigerian elections are
fictitious. In 2015, the presidential election between Goodluck Jonathan
and Muhammadu Buhari was level-pegging until the bombshell of Kano’s result was
announced. While we were told 1,678,754 people voted in Lagos, an
incredible 2,364,434 people were said to have voted in Kano. On the basis
of the 1993 template, this just cannot be true.
But it did not stop
there. Another 1,153,428 votes came from Jigawa, which was carved out of
old Kano. In effect, these two states of old Kano had 3,517,862 votes,
nearly 2 million votes more than that of Lagos in 2015. And yet, Lagos is
clearly the most populous state in the federation; a fact attested to by the
1993 presidential election results. With Buhari said to have received
1,903,999 votes from Kano, more than the entire votes cast by everybody in
Lagos, and another 885,988 votes from Jigawa; making a total of 2,789,987, his
lead in the 2015 presidential election suddenly became unassailable.
Elder Godsday Orubebe
was so outraged by this disclosure, he disrupted the proceedings at the
national collation center, seized the microphone and accused the INEC chairman,
Attahitu Jega, of partiality to the APC. Although he was subsequently constrained
to apologise for this infraction, his outburst is understandable in light of
the outrageously padded votes awarded to the APC.
Loaded future elections
The problem here is that
this fiction of outrageous votes by the states of the North-west in particular
has now been locked in into the DNA of Nigerian elections. Elections can
now be won fictitiously in Nigeria by reliance on the outrageous votes of the
North-west based on the 2015 template. Jega’s gift to the North was that
he laid the foundation whereby all future elections in Nigeria will henceforth
be decided by inflated Northern votes; unless something drastic is done about
it.
When government
stalwarts keep insisting today that the APC cannot lose the election in 2019,
in spite of the dismal performance of the government over the last three years,
you can now see why they are so confident. Thanks to Jega, the dice has
been loaded since 2015 in APC’s favour.
So, when Babangida and
his Northern subalterns saw the 1993 presidential election result, they refused
to declare it. To declare it is to completely demystify the North and
expose the Northern population supremacy in Nigeria as fiction.
In 1993, the election
result showed Kano provided less than half the votes of Lagos, even with a Kano
candidate on the ballot. How then could Kano have so overtaken Lagos in
population as to provide more votes for the APC by a wide margin in 2015 than
the votes cast in Lagos? In 1993, the four largest states by vote in
Nigeria were all from the South. So where did all the Northern voting
juggernauts of later years, including 2015, come from?
In 1993, Kano did not
even provide the largest cache of votes from the North, given the fact that
Jigawa was carved out of it. Northern states like Plateau, Kebbi and
Niger provided more votes than Kano. Southern states like Rivers, Ogun,
Anambra and Oyo also provided more votes than Kano in 1993. Out of the
then 30 states of 1993, Kano provided only the 14th largest number of
votes. So what accounts for the subsequent transformation of Kano as the
great provider of votes for Northern candidates in Nigerian elections?
Catch 22
So, if the government is
genuine about accepting the verdict of the 1993 presidential election result,
let the government also accept the official figures of that election. Let
it reveal the results officially for the world to see. Otherwise, how
could it have reached the conclusion that Abiola won the election without the
election results?
The 1993 presidential
election was by all accounts the best free and fair election ever in the
history of Nigeria. Except for the South-west, which voted overwhelmingly
for Abiola, the election was keenly contested everywhere. In the North,
Abiola obtained 3,108,218 votes, while Tofa received 3,369,848 votes. In
the East, Abiola obtained 739,748 votes; while Tofa received 790,371. In the
South-South, Abiola received 1,299,352 votes; while Tofa received 1,252,340.
This shows Abiola was
not a regional candidate. He obtained a national mandate.
Significantly, he obtained more votes in Kano (169,619) than did Tofa
(154,809); despite the fact that Kano is Tofa’s home state. But the June
12 saga has now been politicised. Politicisation means it is now
presented as if the annulment was essentially an affront to the
South-west.
In actual fact, the
annulment was an affront to all Nigerians by a Northern cabal who persist in
the insistence that the will of the people of Nigeria should not be done at the
polls. The declaration of June 12 as a national public holiday and
glorification of Abiola is a political gift to the South-west in this election
season; otherwise the full results would also have been officially
certified. Failure to certify the 1993 result guarantees that the 2019
presidential election will also be a sham.
Femi Aribisala
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