THE DAY TRUST DIED

THE DAY TRUST DIED

THE DAY TRUST DIED

June 12, 1993 – The Annulment That Began Nigeria’s Long Decadence

I was there. In Kano City, near Bashir Tofa’s house Gwandu Albasa where I lived then.

I was a strong participant in that election, not just a voter, but a believer and a party organizer.

I queued under the hot sun with millions of others who thought, finally, I thought Nigeria had gotten it right.

“Amukùn, ẹrù rẹ wó” – Knock-kneed fellow, your load is tilted.

The response is: “Òkè lẹ ń wò, ẹ wò ísàlẹ̀” – You are looking at the top, look below where the problem is.

This Yoruba proverb captures Nigeria’s tragedy with devastating precision.

We have spent decades blaming the load – corruption, insecurity, drug abuse, cybercrime, moral decay, without examining the legs that have been crooked from the start.

Those crooked legs were forged on December 31, 1983, when Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, and Sani Abacha, then the three pillars of military ambition staged a coup that overthrew the wasteful, squandermania civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari.

That single act was not merely a harbinger; it was the foundation upon which the senseless and criminal annulment of June 12, 1993, would later be built.

The evil that these men did did not end with their regimes; it metastasized into the decadence we now breathe daily.

As the Greek philosopher Plato observed, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

By that measure, these men have left a legacy of ruin.

On June 12, 1993, we Nigerians did something unprecedented, we voted across ethnic and religious lines, choosing competence over tribe, hope over fear.

I remember the faces in my polling booth, Yorùbá, Igbo, Hausa, all smiling, all believing.

Political scientists at the University of Calabar would later describe this election as a moment that “demonstrated the true essence of democracy because citizens freely expressed their choice, making it one of the most credible elections ever conducted in the country.”

That hope was buried the day General Ibrahim Babangida annulled the election, and General Sani Abacha completed the burial with brutal repression.

The Roman philosopher Seneca wisely cautioned, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

Babangida and Abacha craved power above all else, and in their craving, they impoverished an entire nation of its most precious resource: TRUST.

What died that day was not just a mandate; it was national TRUST.

I felt it die in my own chest.

In its grave grew the vices that now define our polity: a cynical electorate that believes “vote doesn’t count,” a political class that treats power as loot, and a youth population raised on the lie that lawful effort pays.

Today’s insecurity, systemic corruption, drug abuse, cybercrime, and transactional “hookup culture” – (Olósó) are not isolated moral failures, they are the grandchildren of that annulment.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.”

In their fight to retain power, our military rulers became the very monsters they claimed to protect us from.

Dr. Gabriel Abunbe, Acting Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Calabar, noted that “Nigerians voted across ethnic, religious and regional divides,” making it a watershed moment in the nation’s political history.

Voter turnout stood at 35% of registered voters, a figure that reflected genuine civic engagement.

The candidates, Chief MKO Abiọla and Bashir Tofa, offered Nigerians a choice between two credible platforms.

Abiọla, a Yorùbá Muslim from the South-West, had built a reputation as a successful businessman and philanthropist.

His appeal crossed regional lines.

The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared that “the general will is always right.”

On June 12, 1993, the general will of Nigerians spoke with remarkable clarity and it was brutally silenced.

Yet beneath the surface lurked darker forces.

Sule Lamido, then National Secretary of the SDP, would later reveal that the military annulled the election partly because the government owed Abiola approximately N45 billion for contracts executed by International Telephone and Telecommunication for the Ministry of Communications.

The military high command, Lamido claimed, feared that “if they made him President, he would take his money and the country will become bankrupt.”

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes described the life of man in a state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The military’s reasoning reduced the hopes of millions to a ledger sheet, a brutish calculus that would define Nigerian governance for decades.

On June 23, 1993, after election results had clearly shown Abiọla in the lead, Babangida’s administration announced the annulment.

The official reason cited “security reports” implicating both Abiọla and Tofa in electoral improprieties.

Governor John Odigie-Oyegun offered a vague assurance:

“At the end of the day, everybody may not get what he wants, but everybody will be reasonably happy.”

I was not happy.

None of us were.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume observed that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”

In that moment, reason was indeed enslaved to the passions of military ambition and political expediency.

The political class demonstrated its opportunism immediately.

Within the SDP, the PFN faction led by Shehu Yar’Adua, motivated by personal ambition and “retaliation” against Abiọla’s PSP wing, favoured a new election.

The NRC also calculated its position cynically, reasoning that another election might give them a chance to defeat the SDP.

As one observer noted, “personal ambitions took precedent over democratic virtues.”

The ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote, “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The Nigerian people-we-suffered what we must.

When protests erupted, they were largely confined to Yorùbá-speaking areas, a regionalization that played into the military’s hands.

Unemployed youths in Lagos, known as “Area Boys,” unleashed mayhem that claimed over 75 lives and “eroded support for June 12 amongst non-Yorùbás.”

Abiọla refused to surrender his mandate, declaring:

“I am the custodian of a sacred mandate, freely given which I cannot surrender unless the people so demand.”

His defiance cost him his freedom and ultimately his life.

The German philosopher Hegel argued that “the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”

On June 12, Nigeria’s consciousness of freedom took a mortal blow.

After Babangida “stepped aside,” General Sani Abacha seized power in November 1993.

What followed was one of the most brutal periods of repression in Nigeria’s history.

The assassination of Kudirat Abiọla in 1996 sent a chilling message: no one was safe.

Machiavelli advised that “it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

Abacha embraced this principle with terrifying consistency, institutionalizing fear as a governing philosophy.

I remember the fear, the way we whispered, the way we looked over our shoulders.

A study at the University of Ibadan examining speeches made by Babangida, Abacha, and Abiọla found that “the discourse dwells largely on the tacit trading on ideology as each of the speakers strives to justify his own cause while to criminalize his opponents.”

The study warned that such “double-speak” sacrifices “truth and undermines mutual responsibility, the spirit of nation-building, and national reconciliation.”

The French philosopher Michel Foucault observed that “power is exercised through the production of truth.”

In Nigeria, power produced its own truth, a truth in which the military was always right, and the people were always wrong.

Abiọla died in captivity in 1998, on the eve of his expected release.

I wept when I heard.

We all did.

The annulment fundamentally altered Nigeria’s political psychology.

Before June 12, we believed our votes could effect change.

After June 12, a new mantra was born: “Vote doesn’t count.”

Voter turnout, which stood at 52.3% in 1999, peaked at 69.1% in 2003, then declined steadily: 57.5% in 2007, 53.7% in 2011, 43.7% in 2015, 34.7% in 2019, and a historic low of 27.1% in 2023.

This steady erosion is the direct legacy of June 12.

The American philosopher William James wrote, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”

By altering the attitude of Nigerians toward their own democracy, the annulment ensured that an entire generation would see the ballot box as a theatre of futility.

Today, over 104 million Nigerians live below the poverty line, with youth unemployment at 42.5%.

An Oxfam report revealed that “0.003 percent of Nigerians hold more wealth than 107 million of their compatriots combined.”

The NDLEA has reported that over 14 million Nigerians have either used or are addicted to drugs.

In Anambra State alone, the NDLEA arrested 360 suspects and seized 2.8557 tonnes of drugs in one year.

These figures reflect a society in crisis, young people turning to substances, cybercrime, and transactional sex to escape the despair of unemployment and hopelessness.

The German philosopher Schopenhauer wrote, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”

The young Nigerian who turns to drugs or crime does so not because he wills his own destruction, but because the conditions of his existence have made that choice tragically intelligible.

The unity of June 12 has been replaced by deepening ethnic polarization.

As the University of Calabar dons observed, “the June 12 election reflected a level of national unity rarely seen in Nigeria’s political history.”

That unity remains unrealized today.

Dr. Gabriel Abunbe has cautioned that “democracy should not be reduced to the conduct of periodic elections,” arguing that “political pluralism, freedom of expression, rule of law and credible electoral processes are essential pillars of any democratic system.”

Associate Professor John Adams has warned that efforts to “emasculate opposition parties ahead of the 2027 general elections could pave the way for authoritarian tendencies.”

The American founding father James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

But men are not angels, and the absence of angelic virtue in Nigeria’s political class has made good government nearly impossible.

The annulment of June 12, 1993, did not just steal an election – it stole Nigeria’s future.

Before that day, we believed in the ballot; after, we believed only in survival.

The corruption, banditry, drug abuse, cybercrime, and moral decay we see today are not accidents.

They are the evil legacy of Babangida and Abacha – men whose actions taught a generation that justice is optional and power is everything.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that “justice is the bond of men in states.”

When that bond is broken, the state itself becomes a fiction.

Nigeria’s bond was broken on December 31, 1983, and shattered on June 12, 1993.

We are still searching for the pieces.

I am still searching.

But the past cannot be undone; the future can be reclaimed.

This requires electoral reform, youth reorientation, accountability, civic education, anti-corruption measures, and investment in security.

June 12 also showed us that we could unite – that capacity still exists.

The question is not whether Nigeria can recover.

The question is whether we have the will to bury what they buried in us first: our belief in ourselves.

The existentialist philosopher Albert Camus wrote, “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Nigeria’s summer is not lost.

It has been buried, but it has not died.

Babangida and Abacha are gone, yes, you read me right, in that state IBB is now, he is in the departure hall.

Their evil lives on – but only if we let it.

Register to vote and vote – always.

Mentor one young person.

Speak out against corruption, even in small ways.

Reject ethnic and religious stereotyping.

Demand accountability from elected officials.

For as Camus reminds us, within each of us lies an invincible summer.

The choice is ours: to keep blaming the load, or to finally look beneath the surface and straighten what has been bent for forty-three years.

I was there in 1983.

I was there in 1993.

I was there in 2023.

I have lived every day since watching the decay.

But I still believe.

And that is why I wrote this.

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