The story of June 12 presidential election its unfortunate annulment and the events that followed it have been narrated from different perspectives. In this interview with ONWUKA NZESHI, Col Tony Nyiam (rtd), speaks on how he and others participated in the struggle while in exile, among other issues
What’s your reaction to the recent comments of Alhaji Sule Lamido, a former Governor of Jigawa State on President Bola Tinubu and his role on June 12, 1993 presidential election?
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu may have his faults as we all have, but Lamido’s attack that Tinubu was part of the June 12 annulment was not correct; it is not true.
Why do I say so? I was really involved. I never knew Tinubu; I only heard of Tinubu while I was still in service and working with our former Military President, General Ibrahim Babangida, on the political transition programme.
When Babangida was planning ahead, he wanted us to reach out to some key officials, personalities, including technocrats and politicians across the country.
Now, that was when we recruited the likes of Prof. Claude Ake; Dr Chu Okongwu, the economist who later became the Minister of Finance and many other scholars. One of the people he wanted us to reach out to was the Publisher of The Guardian, Alex Ibru. Among the people they mentioned then was Tinubu, who was then a young senator in the National Assembly.
But I never met him. So, after our action, our attempt to change the system in 1990 (coup d’etat), I escaped to the United Kingdom. One of the first media organisations that gave us a voice was the National Concord Newspaper, published by Chief MKO Abiola, whom I had known before I went on exile.
The opportunity Concord Newspaper gave us was even against the wish of one of his sons, Deji Abiola, who was in the United Kingdom at that time. He didn’t want his father to be linked to our action but Abiola insisted that we should be given a voice even though he was close to President Ibrahim Babangida. The person who reached out to us was one Doyin Iyiola, a veteran journalist, who saw what we were doing and was passionate about it.
When he was being prevented from publishing the interview, he had with us in London, he reached out to MKO and MKO overruled his sons. Why? As you know, Kola Abiola was very close to Babangida’s family. He was close to one of IBabangida’s daughters.
So, after all that happened with the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and MKO was going through the problems in Nigeria, Chief Alao Aka-Bashorun, who was the president of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), came to London.
We met and we started working together on the June 12 issue from the London end. When MKO saw my contributions during that period, he made a remark. He said: ‘Ah, Tony, I wish you can meet Bola Tinubu.’ I asked him:
Who is Bola Tinubu? He said: ‘Ah, he’s a very resourceful person.’ Not long after, Tinubu escaped from Nigeria to London. So, by virtue of MKO’s introduction of Tinubu to me, Tinubu and I started working together. Meanwhile, to show you the network, AkaBashorun’s wife was working with Kudirat Abiola in Lagos.
But Lamido claimed that Tinubu was pro-annulment until General Sani Abacha seized power and sacked the National Assembly. Do you mean that is not true?
It can’t be true. I was in a position to know because MKO himself was the one who introduced Tinubu to me in a phone chat. Later, MKO himself escaped to join us in London.
On arrival in London, he still told me that ‘you need to meet Tinubu.’ In fact, when MKO went back to Nigeria and ran into more trouble, Tinubu was in London and was part of the struggle to set him free and revalidate the June 12 election.
There is nothing to show that Tinubu and MKO Abiola weren’t together or that he was a threat to MKO Abiola throughout the struggle. Secondly, I can say this, most of the work we did in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) from the London end, the main person that funded it was Tinubu.
It will be to Tinubu’s legacy… to ensure that we have a true federal democracy, not the joke we have now
Even when emissaries were sent to Tinubu, for example, when General Sani Abacha died and General Abdulsalami Abubakar took over, he sent an emissary to Tinubu to persuade him to return to Nigeria. When the emissary came to meet Tinubu in London, he (Tinubu) invited me to the meeting.
The person sent was called Olowu, one of Abdulsalami’s friends. They have wanted Tinubu to return to Nigeria but when Tinubu tabled the invitation at the meeting and asked our opinion, we said it was too early. So, we advised against it. Tinubu even rejected it initially.
It was later, when Abdulsalami was about to go and there was a political transition programme for the return to democracy that Tinubu decided he would go even though it was contrary to what Chief Anthony Enahoro, Chief Ralph Uwaechue and the rest members of NADECO wanted at that time. So, this is why I do not agree with the position of Alhaji Sule Lamido on the role of Tinubu in that struggle.
Don’t you think that some people like Lamido may be relying on an allegation linked to Kola Abiola that portrayed Tinubu as a double-faced personality?
Kola was not in a position to know everything and everyone who participated in that struggle. He was too young to know certain things that happened during that period. MKO was a very broadminded personality and it is not everything a father does that the son knows.
So, I’m trying to show you that Tinubu was introduced to my humble self by Abiola himself. Like I said earlier, when Tinubu came to London, he really proved his resourcefulness in the struggle. When it comes to operations, he is very good. I mean, you can see the way he ran his campaigns for the 2023 presidential election.
So, what Lamido is saying is not true at all. But if you doubt me, you can ask Prof. Wole Soyinka. You can ask General Alani Akirinade and you can also ask Kayode Fayemi who was a key figure in the operations of NADECO and that is why I’m also surprised that his name was left out of the national honours list.
What about your own name that was also left out and how do you feel about it?
My brother, if you go by the Bible, I don’t bother about the reward of man. If you read through the book of Matthew where the Lord Jesus taught us how to pray, he made it clear what we should ask for and how. So, I’m not bothered at all. First of all, we’ve not achieved democracy yet, so why the awards? Have we achieved democracy? No.
We have not and we are far from it. What kind of democracy are we celebrating, when glaringly, we don’t have an independent electoral commission.
What we have is an Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) that is appointed by the president. Secondly, we have an electoral commission that is centralised. You don’t see such things in real democracies. In the UK, it is the people in each community that conduct the election for themselves. They vote and their votes are counted and declared right there.
In the United States, it is the same thing, while that of Electoral College is the vote of a state. So, if we are a democracy, the people in Kano should conduct their election by themselves and all we should be waiting for is their verdict.
What are the people of Kano saying? Is Kano for the president? Is Anambra for the president? Is Sokoto for the president? All the states in the United States have their own electoral commission. If we are a democracy, all the states should have their own electoral commissions manned by their people.
But we do have the State Independent Electoral Commissions that conduct local government elections. Is that not what you meant?
I’m not talking about the type we have here. An independent electoral commission is not government dependent but people dependent.
In those democracies I’m talking about, electoral commissions are made up of people who are from the civil societies, non-governmental organisations, the Church or other faith-based organisations.
There is no presence or interference of the government. But look at us here, we want the Independent National Electoral Commission in Abuja to conduct even our local government elections. So, what am I saying? We don’t have democracy yet. We are only paying lip service to it.
Do you see Nigeria achieving those democratic ideals under President Tinubu’s administration?
It’s too early for me to say because he has only done two years. But I think, it will be to Tinubu’s legacy, and going by what we knew of him, to ensure that we have a true federal democracy, not the joke we have now.
