President Muhammadu Buhari is confident that Nigeria’s South-West, or the Yoruba, are grateful to him for honouring Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola with the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic, albeit posthumously.
He knows also, that by declaring June 12, the date Bashorun Abiola won Nigeria’s freest and fairest presidential election, as Democracy Day, as well as a public holiday with effect from 2019, he more than made their day.
But he, and his political, and public relations handlers, are not naïve to think that this gesture would automatically translate to electoral votes for him in the forthcoming February 2019 presidential election. The move was a political masterstroke, no doubt, but it has also been interpreted as what it seems: A red herring, or Greek gift.
Yoruba Afenifere chieftain, Papa Ayo Adebanjo, told President Buhari in clear terms: “If he has now (conferred Bashorun Abiola with the GCFR and declared June 12 a public holiday) because the presidential election is coming…, he cannot bamboozle anybody (read, any Yoruba) with that.”
He adds: “He should restructure the country before the elections to show his genuineness, and not just be playing to the gallery… We are no fools in this country. He should know that many of us have not got cattle brain; we are well-educated, and we know what we want.”
The eldest son of Bashorun Abiola, Kola, avers: “Your Excellency, your decision to designate June 12 as Democracy Day (merely) rights the wrongs done to all the nation-builders, and heroes (and heroines) that produced the democratic credentials on which the Nigerian polity now thrives.”
It is surprising that an aide to Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, apparently shocked that the Yoruba appreciated President Buhari for doing the needful, lampooned the Yoruba on his Facebook page: “I used to think the South-West was very sophisticated. I was wrong. They are the most gullible. They fall for every poisoned carrot dangled before them.”
The Facebook poster is probably unschooled about the “omoluwabi” credo of the Yoruba that regards failure to appreciate a good turn as tantamount to being robbed. If a top newspaper columnist, indeed, responded to the post with the careless retort, “Sophisticated morons, more like,” he dropped himself a few notches on some people’s scale of esteem.
Only those who have listened to Hafsat Abiola-Costello, who bears the double burden as daughter of betrayed Bashorun Abiola, and his martyred wife, Kudirat, will understand her relief as she says, “There are no words that can capture the depth of my gratitude, nor the breadth of my joy.” Who feels it, knows it.
The dross from the above social media comments however reflects the kneejerk reaction of some Nigerians of other ethnic groups who deride the Yoruba for insisting on the actualisation of the presidential mandate freely given to Bashorun Abiola by about 58 per cent of 14 million Nigerian voters in 1993.
In their ethnic tunnel-vision, they fail to acknowledge the national import of the agitation by the National Democratic Coalition, understandably led mostly by elements from the old Western Nigeria, and the Middle Belt, the traditional bastions of progressive politics, civil society, media practice, and vigorous intellectual engagement in Nigeria.
Poet Odia Ofeimum however thinks that, with regard to demands for Bashorun Abiola’s mandate, the “Lagos-Ibadan press” may have projected the sentiments and voices of the Yoruba more than the other parts of Nigeria.
In an opinion essay in The Guardian newspaper in 1994, an Igbo businessman and latter-day politician insisted that the June 12 impasse was the concern of only the Yoruba. His name will be withheld because it is not in the character of the Yoruba to bash a man who can no longer defend himself. He died in London, on February 24, 2015.
Regardless of the slurs cast on an appreciative people, President Buhari must be reminded that he has not done more than render what is due unto the Yoruba Caesar, what his professional constituency, Nigeria’s military establishment, cruelly took away in the first place.
President Buhari has not even done all that is needed to be done. The Yoruba who always say, “Agba tan la ngb’ole,” mean that there can be no half-measures. The President needs to recall supremely patriotic Prof Humphrey Nwosu, Chairman of the National Electoral Commission, that conducted this watershed election.
Let him compile, collate and hand over the results to the current Independent National Electoral Commission chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, who should formally announce the results and hand over the Certificate of Return to Bashorun Abiola’s family, in a symbolic gesture. There is a need to go through this motion for total healing.
It’s okay if INEC, enabled by a National Assembly resolution, would announce that because Bashorun Abiola has died, and his four-year presidential mandate would have expired by October 1, 1997 anyway, he can only be regarded as a President-Elect of Nigeria.
Those who may think this suggestion is a tall order, unrealistic, and no longer constitutionally feasible because the regime of Gen Ibrahim Babangida had annulled Bashorun Abiola’s election, should be reminded of the saving grace that jurists and constitutional experts call “doctrine of necessity.”
Wikipedia says that “the doctrine of necessity is the basis on which extra-legal actions by state actors, which are designed to restore order, are found to be constitutional.” It is based on writings of a medieval jurist, Henry de Bracton.
This legal “tie-breaker” was used to resolve the constitutional snafu created by the silence of Nigeria’s Constitution on how to handle a situation where a President who died in office did not constitutionally transfer power to his deputy.
When he travelled to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment in November 2009, the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua had failed to invoke Section 145 of Nigeria’s Constitution, which required him to inform the National Assembly in writing that he was formally transferring presidential powers to his deputy.
Nigerians would recall the agony that then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan endured in the hands of some Northern Nigerian political hawks, who insisted that only another Northerner should complete the tenure of the late Yar‘Adua, who became President only in fulfilment of the internal zoning formula of then ruling Peoples Democratic Party.
President Buhari has kept one part of his resolve by conferring the GCFR honour on Bashorun Abiola, even if it came posthumously. But he, or whoever is sworn in as President of Nigeria, on May 29, 2019, must declare June 12, 2019 Democracy Day as a public holiday. After all, government is a continuous process.
The word for those who still think the President shouldn’t have posthumously conferred the GCFR on Bashorun Abiola, or the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger on gadfly Gani Fawehinmi, is embedded in attorney Femi Falana’s submission on the matter.
He had said, inter alia: “Paragraph 3 (of Nigeria’s Honours Act) has given the President the unqualified discretion to dispense with the requirements of Paragraph 2, (which requires the honour to be bestowed on the recipient in person at an investiture), in such a manner as may be specified in that direction.”
Anyway, those who still want to trivialise the Democracy Day victory must be told in no uncertain terms that on June 12 stand patriotic Nigerians.
Twitter @lekansote1
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