It is difficult to dispute the fact that the story of the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election has become jaded. It has been told over and over again so much so that it has become boring. Not even the latest interjection from the man at the centre of the storm, General Ibrahim Babangida, has added anything new or refreshing to the tale. The various accounts from the key players in the annulment remain a boring rehash of what improper reflection can do to an individual, group or institution. The military of the Babangida era bit more than it could chew. The result was the cataclysm that was June 12. Those who plotted and executed the annulment were short-sighted. They could not see beyond their immediate environment and the false reality it presented.
Whatever may be the case, the story of the debacle would have remained an open enterprise if Babangida did not tell his own story. But will his tale bring closure to to the conspiratorial injustice? Only time will tell.
As earlier noted, Babangida’s account said nothing new except that the annulment was not his brainchild. It was forced on him by powerful elements within the military top brass. But if you are going to blame him for creating loopholes that the likes of Sani Abacha cashed in on, you will quickly forgive him for accepting full responsibility for the annulment. He was the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief. And so, the buck stopped at his table. No excuses can do and Babangida did not make one for himself.
In fact, nobody can blame Babangida for telling his own side of the story, whatever it is worth. How could the headman under whose regime an election was annulled take refuge in anonymity? It would have been a grave disservice to history and institutional memory if Babangida had toed the path of studied silence. Even though his tale conveys the impression that powerful elements in the military carried out the annulment without his authorization, he has rescued himself from being charged or dismissed as a weakling by accepting responsibility for the annulment.
In telling his story, Babangida noted that it was an irony of history that the regime that brought about remarkable electoral reforms and conducted a presidential election adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the history of the country could not complete the process. I agree with the former military president. But what he lost sight of in reaching his conclusions is that his transition to civil rule programme was too ornamented to be real. It was too padded to stand the test of time.
The false trappings of his military presidency and the transition programme it ran started with his decision to take on the title of president in a military regime. That was novel. It was never done before. But Babangida did it. And that, somehow, affected his disposition to the office he occupied. He romanced a lot with politicians and technocrats even as military head of state. Too soon, the technocrats around him infiltrated his administration. He enjoyed their companionship. It was they who, less than one year after Babangida assumed office, sold the idea of a Political Bureau otherwise known as Politburo to him. With the bureau in place, Nigerians went to work. They debated to no end. The idea behind the bureau was to, through inputs from Nigerians, fashion out a workable political arrangement that would guarantee a seamless transition from military to civil rule. As this arrangement was being experimented upon, Babangida decreed two political parties into existence, namely, the Social Democratic Party and the National Republican Convention. He then set 1990 as the terminal date of his administration. But it failed. The goal post was shifted to 1993. The shift in the transition time table, naturally, engendered a feeling of suspicion and distrust in the people. Even the military establishment was not too sure anymore of where the transition was headed.
But Babangida, it would appear, misread the mood of the country over his transition programme. As a military man, he was hardly interested in public opinion. And so his transition train fired on. The next stage was for him to demonstrate fully that he was military president with a civilian touch. This disposition gave birth to the Babangida diarchy. The military and the civilian population were to rule side by side. Thus, by 1991, civilian governors were elected across the country to take over from military administrators. State and National Assembly elections were also held. With this arrangement in place, we had full civil administration across the states. But the national was diluted. We had Babangida, the military president with a National Assembly in place. That was vintage Babangida. He had a style that was yet unknown on our shores.
These strange political arrangements were bound to throw a spinner in the works of the Babangida transition programme. But it was hardly known to him. In the course of his transition programme, Babangida did not quite show good faith. The impression his actions created all along was that he was not going to hand over to a civilian administration. This suspicion must have been responsible for the rise of the likes of Sani Abacha who were waiting in the wings to see what the president was up to. He must have dribbled the entire military establishment to the point that he was no longer trusted. That lack of trust must have affected the divergent positions that existed in the military about the June 12 election.
But if Babangida was seeking to redeem his image over the disrepute that the annulment of the June 12 election brought to him, he missed the point when he said that Abacha annulled the election. How could Abacha who was supposed to be an appointee of the President be more powerful than the president? If Abacha and his goons in the military announced an annulment, couldn’t the president have overruled them? The annulment of the election was a serious action. It was not something a president who is in charge of his administration could overlook if he did not approve of it. If, indeed, Babangida had no hand in the annulment, then he should not have allowed it to stand. Unless he is saying that he was, at the time of the annulment, no longer in charge of his administration.
The Babangida transition programme failed not because anybody arm-twisted him. It failed because he did know where he was headed. He was merely experimenting until the programme slipped off his hands. He ended up installing an illegitimate Interim National Government. Like its architect, the interim government was a wingless bee. That was why it collapsed like a pack of cards within 82 days.