In August 1985, the military regime of President Ibrahim Babangida IBB, appointed the then Major Abubakar Dangiwa Umar, the military governor of Kaduna State which at the timeincluded the present katsina State. Dangiwa – the more popular of his names was not only a relatively junior officer among top ranking military personnel who held critical key positions, he was just 36 years old. Many had thought that because of his youthfulness and slightlylow rank, it would be difficult for him to run a state which had the top decision-making elites generally referred to as the Kaduna mafia. It didn’t take the young governor more than a few weeks to establish himself as a fire brand and firm leader trained by the great Bala Usman. He consistently upturned traces of the obsolete statusquo of oligarchy.

Abubakar Umar was a thorn in the flesh of not only the exploiting class, even the government that appointed him governor did not find him easy to supervise. He began by opposing the plan to appoint a northerner to the position of second in command when IBB’s government was being formed. He argued strongly that since a Northerner was head of state, giving the next most senior position to another Northerner would negate national unity as it was in breach of the federal character principle. This position explains what brought in Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe as second in command. Those who had thought Umar was their ‘boy’ and who held a contrary view to his radicalism remained uncomfortable. Dangiwa was therefore a man who strongly believed in equity, an inevitable feature of democracy. 

What this suggests is that while last week’s decision by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to honour Umar as a pro-June 12 activist was in order, Umar’s democratic instincts preceded June 12. He was therefore not the same as some of the other activists who only fought for June 12 so as to be given a place in the new government if the struggle had culminated in the victory of Bashorun MKO Abiola who clearly won the June 12 1993 presidential election. Abubakar Umar remains the only known military officer who openly opposed the unfortunate annulment of an election recognized worldwide as the best in Nigeria’s electoral history. He did not only deprecate the idea;his opposition was visible enough for the military command to order his detention. 

One of the things which probably offended his senior colleagues was Umar’s open support for the performance of the late Professor Humphrey Nwosu who fought gallantly to persuade the military not to destabilize the polity through plans to put an end to the declaration of results of the June 12 election. On one occasion when Nwosu returned from his endless trips to the Villa to put the records straight, he narrated how he was verbally assaulted by top military officers led by two generals. While some accused him of refusing to obey the court order stopping the June 12 election, others called him fake professor and other unprintable comments. According to Nwosu’s account to us his staff, his only saviour was Abubakar Umar who courageously attacked Nwosu’s attackers while encouraging the electoral commission boss to remain his respected self. 

It is probably unfair to describe the entire military as anti-June 12 because media reports showed that MKO Abiola defeated his opponent in virtually all the polling booths in the military formations across Nigeria. What is however not difficult to prove is that top military officers in government at the time were not willing to leave office. In other words, the search for the exact person who annulled the June 12 election is superfluous. The highest law-making body at the time, the Armed Forces Ruling Council AFRC did not oppose the annulment. Our source was one of them who later became an elected state governor. While answering questions on ‘Point Blank’ – NTA’s fiery interview programme of old, his position on the annulment was that what mattered was not individual opinions but collective responsibility. 

The point to be made is that any military personnel claiming to have supported June 12 acted differently from the unambiguous stance of Abubakar Umar who all through his career demonstrated preference for democracy. In 1988, that is 3 years after his appointment as military governor,he resigned from office when he started feeling that the government was no longer different from the corrupt civilian leaders they toppled. This left him with the uncommon record of the only military governor to voluntarily quit office on principle. Again, he resigned from the miliary to protest the decision to rob Abiola of victory in the presidential election of that year. It is only a citizen with this mindset that deservesan award as hero of democracy. The posture of most other awardees on the other hand derogates substantially from democratic tenets.

In his commitment to the ideals of democracy, Umar continued to disagree with all forms of dictatorial tendencies. impunity and the failure to abide by the due process of law. Even while in service he rejected the viewpoint of IBB’s military government that Nigeria had no alternative but to embrace the Structural Adjustment Programme SAP. Apart from the late Gani Fawehinmi, Abubakar Umar was the only other Nigerian who publicly argued that SAP must have an alternative because death was the only thing that had no alternative. Umar also served as a fierce critic of other regimes. For example, at a time when our 5 political parties endorsed General Sani Abacha,Umar joined the G-18 group of politicians that opposed Abacha’s self-succession plan to transit from military to civilian president.

During President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, Dangiwa opposed him severally. First, in March 2004, he wrote a letter to Obasanjo to accuse him of being an accomplice in the annulment of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election. Second, he strongly opposed the proposal to let Obasanjo run for a third term. Umar’s position was different from those of many other Nigerians. He opposed the third term agenda only because it was a breach of the Nigerian constitution. Others who supposedly opposed the same plan were highly materially influenced toget Obasanjo out of office for their sponsors to take over. In August 2009, he accused President Umaru Yar’Adua of nepotism in his appointments while calling on the ailing President a few months later to resign on health grounds. In all, he spoke truth to power. 

We welcome the award of Commander of the Federal Republic CFR bestowed on Umar last Thursday in Kadunaby President Tinubu. The award drew attention once again to the fact that there are hidden true heroes of democracy who must be encouraged to keep the spirit on. The fact that Nigeria is no longer under military rule does not mean that she is now a democracy. Far from it, the nation is under civilian rule whose many leading actors love impunity and despise accountability. For the sake of many Nigerians who see little or no freedom in many spheres of life today, Abubakar Dangiwa Umar cannot afford to remain in splendid isolation. This is more obvious at a time like this when opposition politicians in search of stomach infrastructure have all virtually defected to the ruling party.

The voices of dissent in Nigeria today are exceedingly few. They need a credible statesman like Abubakar Dangiwa Umar to galvanize them  against negatives such as fake impeachments, illegal suspension of legislators and carpet crossing etc. so that our democracy can be meaningful.The Nigerian constitution provides for the legislature to remove from office an executive proven to havecommitted gross misconduct, that is, a grave violation or breach of the constitution. The same constitution believing that legislators shall be persons of integrity empowered them to determine what constitutes gross misconduct. Over the years the lawmakers have since turned the power to one of mere discretion which enables them to collect money from governors to impeach innocent deputy governors. 

Since 1999 when democracy was restored in Nigeria, the courts have severally ruled that legislators cannot suspend one of their own because it amounts to depriving affected constituencies from being represented. The legislators have repeatedly used impunity to disobey court order as is done only in a dictatorship. Again, although the law says that only political parties can win votes, powerful politicians especially governors have continued to use the votes of party A to defect to party B that was rejected by voters during elections. Abubakar Umar cannot afford to let Nigeria remain a democracy that is not anchored on majority rule. He needs to return to active civil engagements and remain himself for the benefit of Nigeria’s democracy.