Premium News
I’D SHOOT CHIEF ABIOLA THE DAY NEC PRONOUNCES HIM THE ELECTED PRESIDENT – BRIGADIER DAVID MARK
Extract from: The TALE of JUNE 12 – The Betrayal of the Democratic Rights of Nigerians (1993)
Author: Prof. Omo Omoruyi
The venue was the Presidential Villa (Residence and Office) and the subject was to explore options in the face of annulment of the election that was in the offing; the main actors were General Babangida, General Dogonyaro and myself.
This was not the first time General Babangida and I met like this. We met in Minna in early August 1985 to review how he was to proceed with a transition programme should the coup contemplated in August succeed; we met in Lagos in August/September 1985 after he had succeeded and had become the President over the steps he should take to evolve a transition programme; we met in Lagos over the Political Bureau Report and worked out what to do with the Report; we met in Lagos over the steps he should take to get a transition programme put together from the Report of the Political Bureau and the Report from the White Paper Committee.
General Babangida and I met at other times over the following issues: the evolution of the two-party system and the creation of the Centre for Democratic Studies; the setting up of the Constitution Review Committee; the composition of and charge to the Constituent Assembly; the production of the White paper on the Report of the Constituent Assembly; the drafting of the arguments for the Creation of States; the Banning or Disqualification of Persons; the Inauguration of the National Assembly; the Setting up of the National Defense and Security Council and the Transitional Council among other major policy issues in 1993 concerning the Presidential Election. In all these issues, our meetings and the papers produced formed the basis of the policies of his government.
It was not therefore unusual for the President to invite me to think with him in how to get out of the dilemma in which he found himself after the suspension of the election process and the injunctions on the NEC by various courts in the Southwest and Abuja and the decision of NEC to appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal.
I also thought that he wanted to discuss the diplomatic impasse he might have created by not seeing the British High Commissioner to accept the letter from Mr. John Major, the British Prime Minister. I could not think of the US reacting to the impasse because the US seemed to have faded away after the incident of June 11. My mind also went to the possibility nevertheless of a fresh, threatening message from the US. I could not rule out the US.
My mind went to the memorandum of June 20 (See Chapter Four) in which I raised many issues bordering on the President’s inability to assume moral leadership in the face of the apparent derailment of the transition programme and the sliding of the country into chaos. This turned out to be the subject of the meeting.
It was clear when I entered his office that he had lost command/control of the situation. He, in fact, confessed this to me, the first time he was making such a confession since I knew him. He pleaded that he needed help to find a solution to a complex problem which he did not quite understand. It was also clear to me but, unfortunately, not to my fellow Nigerians that the country was without a President that had authority either over the military (nor) over the civilians. One wondered, what would have happened if the political class had been united and pressed for the conclusion of the transition programme. But the political class was part of the problem. It was also not clear to the international community that Nigeria had no effective government at this time.
Why did the international community not issue statements supporting the June 12 elections even though they had the results? …
