OpEd: June 12: Dream That Never Berthed By Tony Ademiluyi | Sahara Reporters I use this day to make the clarion call for restructuring and the strengthening of the states in a similar manner to how it was in the pre-independence era under... READ MORE:
I remember in 1993 when as an eight-year-old starry-eyed lad, I was introduced to partisan politics. My father belonged to the then National Republican Convention and he never told me to go and play outside when his political associates sauntered into our house for meetings.
June 12, 1993 came and the nation went to the polls to elect a leader that will lead them to the proverbial Promised Land. For the first time in the country’s electoral history, the nation voted for a Muslim-Muslim ticket as we were fed up of the ruinous military rule especially with the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida which greatly pauperized Nigerians. For the first time we were united not minding our religious differences as our collective resolve was the common good.
Many politicians as time went on betrayed the June 12 cause as they convinced Abiola to renounce his mandate in preference for the New Sheriff in town – General Sani Abacha.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo who angered the Yoruba community by saying that ‘Abiola was not the messiah that the nation needed’ later emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the June 12 struggle. He literarily walked through the valley of the shadow of death as he was also jailed by Abacha for treason. But for fate, he may have died in detention like his erstwhile deputy, General Shehu Musa Yar’adua who was injected to death allegedly by the dreaded Dr. Tanko Yakassai.
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