Since General Ibrahim Babangida began his campaign to run for the presidency in 2011, the self-styled evil genius and his handlers have been weaving some conspiracy theories around the annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. Now, a new twist has been added to the drama. Seventeen years after committing the infamy, the man who wants to be president again at all costs, said it was a good thing that somebody was trying to acknowledge the efforts of Chief Abiola, the presumed winner of the election.
As reported, IBB was reacting to President Goodluck Jonathan's acknowledgement of Abiola's contributions to the enthronement of civil rule in the country. Though IBB, in his usual blabbering, spoke on a number of issues, his new crusade to get Abiola "immortalised as a person who fought for democracy", sounds suspicious and should be taken with a pinch of salt.
It is not as if Abiola does not deserve the honour IBB is calling for. In fact, it is tempting to compare Abiola to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the man who, within the space of his 39 years on earth, managed to change the face of American civil rights movement and indeed, its politics for ever.
Yet, like King, Abiola is already immortalised in the minds of the people. As much as some unworthy beneficiaries of June 12 struggle would want us to forget Abiola and the phenomenon he represents in our consciousness, the memories will just not peter out. Worse still, in order to blot out his memory, they have used the ethnic blackmail and failed. They have employed conspiracy theories and failed. Now, they think political rhetoric may help.
This is not surprising. In the last 17 years, IBB and his camp have been attempting to stand the June 12 event on its head. In his broadcast to the nation on June 26, 1993, IBB had given us the reasons why the election was cancelled. Among all the fabrications in that speech, one was particularly nauseating: "There were cases of documented and confirmed conflict of interest between the government and both presidential aspirants", he said, "which would compromise their positions and responsibilities were they to become president". Since then, because of one man's rabid ambition for political power and influence, there has been a systematic distortion of the historical record of June 12 and who Abiola was. As Christians would say, "the devil is a liar."
Though the denial game is endless, here are just three examples. In June, 2008, Professor Humphrey Nwosu, who suddenly found his lost voice after 17 years' mum, blamed the late General Sani Abacha and one-time Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Clement Akpamgbo, as the principal actors in the nullification of the election. In his controversial book, Nwosu said that Babangida "allowed the election to be conducted against the wishes of most of his military colleagues". Again, the devil is a liar.
Even some judicial officers do not want to be left out of the denial mania. For Justice Dahiru Saleh, the judge that assigned the dirty job of stopping the poll to the late Justice Bassey Ikpeme and who later rounded off the plot nicely by stopping the release of the result, "If anybody caused that, it wasn't Justice Ikpeme. It was the executive, which could have gone to the Court of Appeal to get the order reversed before the election."
Read more: IBB, June 12 and a history of denials (http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201006024152556)