Buhari has deepened Nigeria’s history by declaring June 12 Democracy Day-Douglas

Barrister Tayo Douglas has about 30 years of legal experience and was an active participant in the June 12, 1993, struggle. After many years of agitation, especially from June 12 activists, the Federal Government recognised the day as Democracy Day and honoured Abiola posthumously with the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR); an honour […]

Barrister Tayo Douglas has about 30 years of legal experience and was an active participant in the June 12, 1993, struggle.

After many years of agitation, especially from June 12 activists, the Federal Government recognised the day as Democracy Day and honoured Abiola posthumously with the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR); an honour reserved for former presidents. In this interview, Douglas reminisces on the events of June 12 and the significance of its declaration as Democracy Day.

 

As an active participant in the June 12, 1993, saga, what memory does the election evoke in you?

I will say going back to the events is very sad. It was a sad moment in the life of a nation. Since that time we have not been able to find our feet politically because it was an annulment that set Nigeria backwards by 100 years politically. Up till this moment, Nigeria has not been able to wipe out the toga of ethnicity, tribalism, sectarianism and religious bigotry.

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Again, majority of us will always come out to say because the North didn’t want Abiola to become president was why the election was annulled.

Let me say this abundantly clear, that whoever reasons that way has not helped himself or the polity.

If the North did not want Abiola to be president, why did they vote for him? His election transcended ethnic boundaries. Everybody, including the Hausa and other northerners voted for him.

So based on this, you will realise that the election was not about the South vs the North or the northern oligarchy vs southern lords.

General Ibrahim Babangida must have been misguided by some few individuals who always love to profit from any wrong in the country.

If you know how much the regime of Babangida spent on building political structures, we are talking of N1bn, and then the man would just come out and say what he has built should be thrown into the abyss. No; he couldn’t have done that. Some individuals must have misguided IBB.

One of the reasons for the failure of IBB that led to his disastrous end was that he always wanted to please individuals. How many people can you please? How many people can you satisfy, even in your house you can’t satisfy everybody let alone the larger society.

So who are these disgruntled individuals that misguided Babangida to annul that election?

I will confess to you that they are not all northerners. They cut across all the frontiers. We have the Yoruba among them, we have the Igbo among them and we have the northerners among them. It was a case of some personalities did not want this man there.

So it shouldn’t be seen from an ethnic background. Some personalities did not just want Abiola to become president and they had their way, otherwise we wouldn’t be here saying that, “Northerners annulled the election”, “Hausa people did not want a Yoruba man to become president”. No; that was not what happened.

What was your experience fighting the annulment?

I will say everything within me goes to Chief Mike Ozekhome. He is the man after my heart. He is a man that has done more for democracy that people do not know. We had seen this rubbish (the annulment) coming up then; that this country was in the hands of some selected few, not northerners alone, the southerners too were inclusive, the country was within their ambit, they wanted the status quo to remain. We had seen the handwriting as far back as 1992. So I and Chief Ozekhome were there in the trenches before even June 12, 1993.

Chief Ozekhome founded an organisation which we called Universal Defenders of Democracy (UDD). He was the president and I was the staff attorney. We had been coming out to test the ground for democracy to survive because we knew something would happen that would want to truncate it. So there was no manner of action that we did not file in court. Ozekhome championed those courses.

So when June 12, 1993, came, we were hunted by security agencies. We would go underground and make press releases in the name of UDD.

We would say this, we would say that just to make sure that the nascent democracy was allowed to grow in this country. It wasn’t a good time. We had several bruises.

We were in the courts to either fight one decree or the other, because sequel to that time, Babangida had been passing all manners of decrees that would cause confusion and put the country into problem.

There was a particular decree where while challenging it in court, Chief Ozekhome submitted that it was against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which Nigeria is a signatory to, and on that basis, Justice Onalaja of the Lagos State High Court ruled in our favour.

Can you recollect a particular bruise you had with security agencies?

There were a lot of things that snowballed then. There was a time we assembled at Maryland, we wanted to advance to the Third Mainland Bridge, that was the time they started shooting everybody and many people died.

We were involved in all the protests, we escaped by the whiskers. It was a gory sight. We were not given much publicity then.

Many people did not know what we were doing at UDD. It was like a two-man lion squad – myself and Chief Ozekhome.

Most of our activities were taken to the court against the government.

Sometimes we would disguise; Chief Ozekhome would not use the same tie he used yesterday, and everything. Before you knew it, we would find ourselves in the court. People would give us information that security people were after us. We had to run for cover.

Chief Mike was arrested several times; I was lucky. They would come to our office at Ogunlana Drive in Surulere because we used Chief Mike’s office as our headquarters. We worked day and night on many things.

There was a day they threw teargas at us to smoke us out of the place. There are a lot of things that one cannot readily remember.

Why do you think previous governments failed to recognise June 12 despite many years of agitation, even when a Yoruba, Obasanjo, was president?

Talking about Obasanjo being the president for eight years and couldn’t do anything for June 12 is a different ball game.

The working of government largely depends on personal interest. Obasanjo and Abiola were sworn enemies, everybody knows that. They had been enemies from the beginning; it was very unfortunate.

Obasanjo may not even want to hear anything about Abiola being the symbol of June 12, let alone give him an honour, let alone recognising June 12 as Democracy Day.

Then I now ask, is May 29 the Democracy Day? Because he was sworn in as president on May 29? May 29 was the beginning of your term, it has no significance. It is only related to your term of office.

Somebody won an election on June 12, all Nigerians gathered together to fight with their voice and votes by saying, “This is what we want to happen,” and it happened.

What day could have been more auspicious for Democracy Day than June 12? It’s not that it has taken the government so long to recognise June 12, it depends on who is in the saddle.

Don’t forget too that President Muhammadu Buhari who recognised June 12 may have his own ulterior motive; he may have sincerity of purpose too, we cannot say, because you don’t know the mind of an average Nigerian.

What crossed your mind when President Buhari pronounced June 12 as Democracy Day?

I personally will continue to respect him for having the courage to say it out. We should not look at it as if he has done it for the West; he has done it for deepening democracy in Nigeria, deepening our history, deepening our records, giving us a sense to reason that there was a watershed that nearly destroyed the country, if not destroyed.

Everything was at a standstill then, nothing was working. It was now worsened by the overthrow of government by General Sani Abacha. So June 12 was a watershed, it is not different from Freedom Day being celebrated in America.

It’s not different from Human Rights Day being celebrated elsewhere. To that extent, we would thank him for doing that.

What more can be done to further deepen democracy now that we have June 12 as Democracy Day?

A lot of water has passed under the bridge. Democracy then is quite different from what we have now. What we have now is “moneycrazy”. How on earth would a man go out of his way to be gambling with N500m because he wants to contest election?

How on earth will a man be gambling with N2bn because he wants to contest the governorship of a state? N500m and N2bn in any currency all over the world is huge money. Must you spend money to contest an election?

How best do you think we can celebrate June 12?

When we were in primary schools, we used to celebrate Independence Day, the memory was so sweet then that a pupil would be entitled to free food in the afternoon; rice with stew and a bottle of Pepsi Cola. We always looked forward to it.

Nothing stops the Federal Government of today from putting it down too. Government should decree that apart from being a public holiday, pupils of primary and secondary schools must celebrate it.