By Ochereome Nnanna
ALHAJI Bashir Othman Tofa, remember him? How can you forget? He was the presidential candidate of the National Republican Convention, NRC, who lost the June 12, 1993 presidential election to the candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Chief Moshood Abiola. He was the first Northerner to lose a presidential election to a Southerner, even though the election was not a regional battle.

It was on June 12, 1993 that the Nigerian electorate made it clear that they would never again give the presidency to any candidate based on regional sentiments alone. The ruling class had hoped that the combination of Tofa’s Muslim North and Dr Sylvester Ugoh’s Christian Igbo was a winning formula.

On the other hand, Abiola had as his running mate another Muslim, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe. Nigerians gave victory to the more popular pair without minding ethnic, religious and regional considerations. Unfortunately, those who base their calculations on these ancient factors have not yet realised the enormity of this paradigm readjustment. This is why the likes of Alhaji Abubakar Atiku and Muhammadu Buhari have kept losing their presidential bids.

Tofa recently granted an interview in which he pronounced June 12 “dead”. He made it sound like victory at last for the election annullers and their supporters, such as himself. He probably seeks to prove a point to those who keep on saying that June 12 will never die.

Well, this is the way I see this issue: June 12 died but power shifted. Abiola was never allowed to assume power. He was poisoned to death in government custody, and only the military regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar and their foreign co-conspirators have the inside story. The annullers stopped June 12, but lost heavily, their monopolistic grip on political power. The regional arrogance and oppression of the rest of Nigeria, which led to that brazen, malignant annulment, blew up in their faces.

Today, they are the ones baying and struggling in vain to “have their power back”. It has been 14 years since General Abubakar handed over power to elected civilians, and there is clear evidence that power has shifted. Of those 14 years the North has only occupied the presidency for about three years. The chances are very good that the earliest they may make a credible and viable bid for it is 2019. That would be 21 years after! Incredible, isn’t it? And it will be subject to prevailing terms and conditions. That singular act of annulling Abiola’s election through military fiat turned the wheel of fortune against a section of the country that for nearly 40 years took political power – whether under civilian or military orders – for granted.

One of the great miracles of June 12 is that, for the first time in the history of Nigeria, a Southern Minority indigene, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, is the elected president of Nigeria. Before June 12, this was simply inconceivable. It was so out of the question during the NRC primaries which produced Tofa as the presidential candidate in April 1993. That event took place in Port Harcourt. Among those who contested against Tofa was Chief Pere Ajuwa, a tribal kinsman of President Jonathan. Once Tofa spoke the convention was brought to an end in an obviously preconceived manner because he was generally seen as the anointed candidate of the ruling class.

I do not think that Tofa or any of his political type should be celebrating the “death” of June 12. Apart from the two presidential candidates and their party platforms squaring up to each other, June 12 was a historic fight between two political forces. The first was the ruling establishment seeking to extend their reign through Tofa. The second was the group seeking to bring sectional dominance and monopoly of power to an end. When Abiola won and the military annulled the election, this second group ranged solidly behind Abiola. It was a rainbow coalition known initially as the Council for Unity and Understanding, CUU.

It consisted of the Eastern flank led by retired Commodore Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe, Nigeria’s first Chief of General Staff; the People’s Consultative Forum (later Afenifere) led by Chief Michael Ajasin and the Middle Belt Forum with General Theophilus Danjuma as leader. When the CUU was joined by Chief Anthony Enahoro’s Movement for National Reformation, MNR, in April 1995, it transformed into the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO.

These groups were instrumental in persuading Abiola to return from his brief self-exile and fight for the de-annulment of his mandate. They made it clear that Abiola was only a symbol of the struggle for the end of sectional dominance through “power shift”. “Power shift” was not necessarily the movement of power from North to South, or the enthronement of Southern dominance in place of that of the North. It simply meant de-monopolisation: power can go to any part of Nigeria in accordance to the wishes of the generality of the Nigerian electorate.

When Abiola was murdered in detention, Northern political elite, frightened that the deeply injured Yoruba political establishment was set to commence secession, panicked and gave up power to General Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo, an old, trusted and faithful lackey of the North, was supposed to hold power at their pleasure for one term of office and give it back to them.

But Obasanjo, having suffered great humiliation at the hands of his Northern friends after the 1995 “phantom coup” against General Sani Abacha, neutralised the North-dominated military and rid it of its propensity to intervene in the political process. With the military defanged the civilian wing also wilted.

So, agreed, June 12 is dead. But the political class that annulled June 12 is deader. Out of the ashes of June 12 germinated a new plumule of political reality where the Northern Oligarchy is no longer able to dominate the political space.

They killed June 12. But they also died with it, while the spirit of June 12 sits majestically on the throne.