Ladipo Oye-Somefun

The scoring system I am using will be around four areas:

1. Does the piece educate the reader: ie inform with evidence (Score: 3/10)
2.  How knowledgeable about the topic is the writer and does he share that knowledge (Score:2/10)
3. What are the key points (Score: 4/10)
4. Is there any follow through on points raised or does the writer use the scatter gun approach (Score: 1/10)

Total Score on an average calculation: 2.5/10 

Does the piece educate the reader: ie inform with evidence

Mr Kolawole moves in and has access to the most elite parts of Nigerian society.  These include people at the height of business, politics and media. Therefore when I picked up the piece to read it I was looking forward to being educated by someone knowledgeable and also to know the key points about the whole fuel subsidy issue.

I understand that journalism has to be populist in order to be commercial, however I think a duty to educate remains.

The piece is fairly comprehensive and touches on a broad range of topical issues affecting Nigeria. However I am disappointed that I have not learnt anything new.  The article is riddled with anecdotal comments about 1) private jets on a terminal; 2) over-invoicing; 3) fuel subsidy as an incentive for rent seekers.

I would have expected to be “schooled” on these issues with comments backed by evidence.  Nigeria has experienced tremendous economic growth over the last decade and therefore it is quite possible for people at the top of multi-billion naira enterprises to lease jets.  The comment about over-invoicing is left dangling without any further explanation.  People who have not run businesses or sat in a business studies class may not understand what over-invoicing actually means.  In addition Mr Kolawole accepts the fuel subsidy as incentive for rent seekers without discussing the intricacies involved nor using examples from other Nigerian administrations or overseas.

I feel rather than be educated, this piece may infuriate the casual reader who may be angry at the GEJ regime without actually knowing the reasons why he should be angry.  If we must debate fuel subsidy then it would be better to have a more knowledgeable readership.

Score: 3/10

How knowledgeable about the topic is the writer and does he share that knowledge

The piece does not appear to display or demonstrate the writer’s knowledge on the issues at hand nor does it show whether any comprehensive research was conducted or carried out.  The use of the royal “we” and lack of mentioning or describing specific sources further weakens any claims to knowledge. There is a plethora of populist terms which further alienates the reader: “government” ; “buccaneers”; and “fuel importers” amongst others.  Specifics would have strengthened the case being made.

Score: 2/10

What are the key points

The piece is strong with regards to the key points.  It quickly identifies these within the first two paragraphs.  I believe these to be 1) social contract between the ruled and the rulers; and 2) behavioural economics.

These two key points are highlighted and interrelated.  The ruled as sovereign provide the rulers with space and resources to carry out their duties, while the rulers have a duty to create an environment where the welfare of the ruled can be improved upon.  Whether this means the rulers allocating resources on the behalf of the ruled or providing a framework for the ruled to provide these for themselves.

The rulers having campaigned and won elections have made a case of their credibility and credentials to the ruled.  They have claimed competence and understanding of the social contract.

In respect to behavioural economics, the piece touches upon this when it mentions the opportunistic pricing behaviour of transporters as well as the ability of rent seekers to put pressure on the social contract through allegedly corrupt practices.

The piece does lose marks though because it does not explicitly set these key points out.

Score: 4/10

Is there any follow through on points raised or does the writer use the scatter gun approach

At this point it is instructive to recall the title of the piece was : “How not to remove fuel subsidy”; the piece could have been much improved if it focused on one or two points and followed through.  I do not believe there was consistent follow through.

The reader is left to run a gauntlet of different threads.  These threads vary from a feeling of being cheated by political elites, comments about the inefficiency of the fuel subsidy regime all the way to government officials reportedly flying first class.  Once the reader’s mind has settled down he is then met with four narrations which are provided as a conclusion.  These narrations on their own could stand and form four separate articles, each with sub-topics.

The lack of any serious follow through on the various points raised has, in my opinion, weakened what could have been a good article.

Score: 1/10

Ladipo is a qualified accountant and MBA holder. He works in Corporate Finance in London.

——

Abimbola Agboluaje

Total Score: 1/10

Mr. Kolawole is guiltier of obfuscation than economic illiteracy. One was very glad about a year ago, when Mr. Kolawole, who used to be fully in support of the fuel subsidy, changed his mind and turned against it. In this article, he is guiltier of obfuscation than economic illiteracy. He has succumbed to what Lucy Kellaway of FT once described as WET – Weak Excuse Syndrome. Let’s go through the detours and diversions in Simon Kolawole’s article:

1. Mr. Kolawole writes “….I am pro-subsidy (it may be fuel or something else).” He justifies this on the grounds that 90 % of Nigerians live on less than $2 a day and because we “would be courting trouble to declare that every single thing should be left to market forces”. He adds, even in “extremely capitalist countries”, they don’t leave everything to market forces, they provide a “bundle of safety nets for the vulnerable”.

Almost every word is misleading or untrue in some way. Many people live on $2 per day not because they need more subsidies but because resources, which could be spent on stuff that will “tempt” businesses to invest and create productive employment, are being frittered on subsidies. Likewise, Nigeria is so poor because the state meddles in everything (steel mills, paper mills, palm oil mills, banking, aviation, telecommunications, lands, construction etc), sucking up and wasting resources. Nigeria didn’t become poor because things were abandoned to “market forces”. In “extremely capitalist countries”, they target subsidies towards the poorest e.g. people riding to work in decent comfortable buses rather than those riding in personal cars, consuming fuel which could be sold abroad for higher prices and used to obtain foreign exchange and develop infrastructure.

So when Mr. Kolawole writes “The closest thing to social security that people enjoy here is the fuel subsidy”, it makes one wonder what sort of “social security” is consumed by the better-off (probably less than 10 % of Nigerians living in a few cities consume 85 % of the fuel subsidy.)

2. Mr. Kolawole writes “In Nigeria, there is virtually nothing for the people. The rich and the powerful gather like vultures and tear into the national treasury at will, leaving the people high and dry. They ride all the cars, own all the houses and eat all the food. At our expense, of course! ”

Again, the implication here is that market forces are to blame. When people become extremely rich without creating jobs, they are not “exploiting” the masses in the classical sense, i.e. extracting labour in factories or plantations and keeping too much of the surplus value created. They are simply stealing and this plunder is much better facilitated by opaque policies that place billions of dollars in the drawers of bureaucrats and politicians.

3. Mr. Kolawola also has a problem with those who argue that the best way to eliminate the corruption associated with the administration of the subsidy is to remove the incentive for it i.e. the subsidy. In his thinking, the “removing the incentive for corruption” argument is invalid because, amongst other reasons, “…if we have to follow it through, we may soon privatise our rotten police force”. This is the best of Nigerian “economic journalism” which feeds public thinking about policy i.e. “arguments” that are perplexing because they are superficially logical but which you know to be complete baloney immediately they leave someone’s mouth or pen. To extend Mr. Kolawole’s logic, a big and/or over-extended state with deep and diverse economic powers is not a problem conceptually or in reality – all its managers need to do is suddenly summon the reserves of discipline they have kept unused since 1960. For him, whittling down the economic roles of the state is a cowardly and unworthy shortcut.

4. And it gets worse. In his January 22 piece, Mr. Kolawole takes issue with Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s distinction between subsidizing consumption versus production subsidy. He argues that when he rides his car to work, he is involved in “production”, so he is entitled to the fuel subsidy just as the barber and pepper grinder. This is just something you expect pepper grinders to say in their own defence. Why on earth should the Government subsidise The Editor of ThisDay to get to work to “produce” this sort of article! Well, here’s the injustice of it: 30 people (artisans, market women, unemployed etc) on a bus to Apapa = 3 litres of subsidized fuel. I person (well-paid Editor blowing air conditioner) riding in his car to Apapa = 2.5 litres of subsidized fuel. And those pepper grinders? These are just human shields used by well-off Nigerians to defend the fuel subsidy-the poor have the most to gain when the funds (even if 50% of it is stolen) are redeployed to schools, hospitals, mass transit schemes which middle classes will not use.

5. Then Mr. Kolawole throws the final howler “Agriculture is heavily subsidized in Europe. Every farmer gets financial incentives to keep farming…When agriculture is subsidized, the produce is cheaper. Everybody who goes to the market to buy carrots or milk enjoys the same low prices”. What agriculture subsidies does for everyone in Europe is raise prices by paying a guaranteed income to farmers, that is why cheaper imports have to be kept out through high tariffs. And this is sustained by politics, with the the farm lobby pocketing politicians to do their bidding (nearly half of the European Union’s budget is spent on the Common Agriculture Policy through which farm subsidies are administered). What the state does is to help the poor buy the food through subsidies, food stamps, tax credits etc. And better-off citizens who are hit with income tax of between 30-40 % pay both for the farm subsidy and welfare (Nigerian equivalent pay only tithes). There is always someone somewhere paying for a free lunch!

6. Simon Kolawole is a very fine and insightful writer when he writes about what he knows very well – politics and history. His view on the fuel subsidy has reverted to the populist fare of Nigerian journalism. His second piece contained the usual critique of the imperial remuneration of Nigerian politicians, yet he states in the same article that he is “thoroughly impressed” by David Mark, the Senate President who is rumoured to enjoy a remuneration package of about N600 million per annum, because he “acted as a good mediator and seasoned crisis manager…” in retaining the fuel subsidy (though at a reduced level). Shouldn’t the number 3 citizen of the country have a view on his party’s critical economic policies? Mr. Kolawole can celebrate the messy and appalling end to the fuel subsidy saga because he has no clear view of the cost to the Nigerian economy, or the role subsidies and other forms of economic interventions play in promoting corruption.

Never rely on a WET!

Abimbola writes from Lagos, Nigeria.

Megaphone

Perspectives
In June, 2011, we started Perspectives, a monthly column featuring guest posts from non-Nigerians who follow political and cultural happenings in Nigeria. We hope this will liven up the site by giving you an outside-the-country point-of-view on Nigeria, and hopefully make you see issues in a different light. To contribute to the column, send an email to the Politics Editor, Saratu Abiola, at saratu.abiola@nigerianstalk.org

Life and Style
Do you write short, fictional stories, poetry? Are you a philosophical thinker? Or a fashion-blogger, stylist? We are looking for contributors for our new section – the Life and Style section.

Why have we started this? Because we believe tht Nigerians have a diverse range of interests and while we are a platform for hardtalk on topics relating to politics and the economy, Nigerians across the globe are also interested in fiction, poetry, fashion, image and style and philosophy. These different interests are inter-woven.

You only have to think of how the work of philosophers has influenced the way we think, the world of style influencing the way we live, dress, how we design our homes, our cities, and fashion – influences what we wear, and how we relate to the cultural influences around us (think how powerful a statement it would be if Barack Obama wore an agbada or a jalabia to a press conference, and you can understand the power of fashion and fashion choices, and how the social influences the political and the economic.)

Here at NigeriansTalk, we aim to work together to create a more intelligent and more informed group of people. So if you are interested in contributing to any of the above, please contact the Life and Style Editor, Adun Okupe, at adun.okupe@nigerianstalk.org

This month, Krystal Strong, PhD candidate at University of California, Berkley, writes about an election of the National Association of Nigerian Students that she witnessed.

NANS Logo

The Godfather is what I am:
7:30 am. Sunday. Expressway.
His phone rang.  Another update from the field.  After a few moments of listening, he truncated the audibly frantic report. “Ma worry,” he pleaded, with the impatient assurance of a father trying to convince his child that there’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark.  “Within two hours of my landing, every equation will change by God’s grace.”

It was obvious that the caller was First Timer, a student who’d campaigned for him during the general elections, and whose ambitions he was now supporting at the National Convention of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).  First Timer had been in Yenagoa for three days and, so far, it was unclear when or if the election would hold.  When I spoke to First Timer the previous night, he described the Convention ground as tense and disorderly.  Violence seemed imminent and there were reports of three cultists being killed.

He cut the phone and turned towards me.  Then, after a pause, he stated, “This will be good for your report.”   As if pondering how I would write about him, he asked, “The Godfather….is that what I am?”  Without waiting for a response, he added, “Well, it’s a progressive role,” in acknowledgement (and defense) of the niche he’d created for himself within the movement.

I’d interviewed The Godfather weeks prior.  His name was well-known among student leaders and with good reason: he was a former union and National NANS president, he won a state office in the 2011 elections, and he was credited with delivering the student vote to the new Governor.  It was then that he invited me to the Convention.  It’d be good for my work, he promised, because NANS illustrates how debased student politics has become.  This was a familiar critique.  The prevailing opinion about NANS was that “comrades” were often cultists, non-students, and money-seekers.

This is how you do politics:
1:30 pm.  Sunday.  Port Harcourt.
As soon as the flight landed, The Godfather phoned the Governor to inform him that he was en route to Bayelsa.  When he called Barracks Man next to know his location, I was shocked that they were even on speaking terms.  Days before, the respective allies of Barracks Man and The Godfather almost came to blows in the Governor’s presence, in an embarrassing spectacle, in which one side carried canes to beat the other, and the Governor had to literally beg both camps to behave decorously.  The episode was the most public expression of the fractionalization of the state NANS, which had engendered two students claiming to be state Chairman.

Noting my confusion, The Godfather clarified that the factions had reconciled, by necessity, to deliver four positions to their zone.  “This is how you do politics: bringing enemies to your side. Also, money,” he explained.  Still, The Godfather seemed all too aware of how the state fractionalization might subvert his national objectives.  On the phone again, he outlined his plan for consolidation: he would call a zonal meeting to coordinate the scattered interests and sentiments.  “There’s no money, but with my little money, I will empower them quietly so that we all work together.”

I asked him, then, why he was going through such pains on First Timer’s behalf.  “I don’t need him for anything,” he pronounced emphatically.  “He worked for me, he believed in my vision, and he added value to it, so I want to support his ambitions.  He will learn leadership and get exposure.”  As if to assure me that his role was not imposed, he added, “People need me around.  You will see how people come around me.  I used to be at the helm of most of these affairs, organizing things, getting money for them: 5, even 10 million. But, I had to move up.”

Enjoying the network:
5:00pm.  Sunday.  Yenagoa.
Upon entering Yenagoa, we rendezvoused with a former NANS president from The Godfather’s zone at a local eatery.  They discussed making arrangements for “stakeholders meetings” with the various zones.  The Godfather called a former NANS executive, one of his “products,” to fly down from Abuja to ensure that the Southeast region voted in his favor.  He said we’d soon meet with his “political son,” who would help him ally with the Northern bloc to produce the Presidential candidate from their zone and First Timer as the National VP.  Another veteran was traveling from Delta State to deliver the South-South vote and to double as his personal security.  Personal Security, let’s call him, was The Godfather’s most trusted companion during conventions ever since he saved his life some years back when an assassination was attempted.

As I listened to the permutations at work in the electioneering process, I was astonished by the disproportionate power “the stakeholder” wields.  Before entering the convention ground, The Godfather had already engineered the outcome of the process to the point of being able to stall and fast-track the pace at his discretion.  Without having to present First Timer to defend his qualifications, The Godfather’s influence was all that was required and expected.  The Godfather appeared publicly among students, only after the bulk of this strategy was put into motion.  First Timer visibly exhaled when he saw The Godfather, who took him aside to explain the plans on ground.  “Don’t worry,” The Godfather repeated to him.  “You are now enjoying the network.”

The Winning Ticket: First Timer (2nd from left), Krystal, The President, and The Godfather, flanked by the Northern Senators

 
NANS elections can’t go smoothly:
11 am.  Monday.  Yenagoa.
Throughout the early morning, I heard muffled chatter from The Godfather’s room next door.  Wearing the same clothes from the previous evening, he summoned me to join him in a meeting of the Northern Senators, most of whom looked entirely too old to be students.  Among them were First Timer and the candidate The Godfather was supporting for the presidency.  He nonchalantly explained that I was doing research on student politics, and returned to convincing them to work with him to deliver the Presidency and Vice Presidency.  “Come, I will be leaving this place soon, and you can’t all have what you want,” he insisted.  “My zone is going for 4 posts and that is what I’m expecting you to do.  If you have the Presidency, you can’t also have the Senate Presidency.  Take Ex-Officio, take Financial Secretary, take one other.”   Their negotiation finished, The Godfather instructed me to take a picture of us all together.  “The winning Presidential and Vice Presidential ticket,” he prophesied.

For security purposes, The Godfather and Personal Security were adamant about us quickly rounding up the meetings then “getting the fuck out of Bayelsa” long before the elections started.  They knew The Godfather was a target and, if their plan worked, violence would break out.  The night before, two union buses were sprayed with bullets and, elsewhere, The Godfather narrowly missed being struck by gunfire.  The Godfather and Personal Security agreed that “the election can never go smoothly.”  As soon as the President emerged, a gun battle would ensue among rivals.  Normally, The Godfather, a self-proclaimed “warrior,” said he could handle a battle, but he hadn’t prepared and given his current office, it wouldn’t speak well of him to shoot at students.

He opted, instead, to “empower” his way to victory.  As we alighted from the car at the Convention ground, The Godfather held out a black nylon with wads of crisp Naira notes for me to put in my purse.  (Just as there’s no way to refuse “transport fare,” there’s no real diplomatic way to refuse carrying it).  The Godfather was immediately recognized by person after person and, in no time, a crowd of 50 men surrounded the car.  Though The Godfather appeared calm in the midst of the multitude, I clutched my bag compulsively and prepared for the worst.  Personal Security explained that they were fighting over N200,000 from The Godfather, as he ushered me into the back seat.  The Godfather joined us and instructed the driver to move up the road away from the crowd so the money could be shared securely.  “Count out 20,000,” he instructed me, then asked for one of the bundles of N50,000.  He gave another N100,000 to Personal Security, which he stuffed in his pants, to share to the Southeast and South-South stakeholders.  And just like that, with the money shared, we were off.

The Godfather laid his head back on the headrest and sighed.  “We have tidied up quietly.  We have tried our best.  Can you imagine I spent almost N700,000 on that ground?  He will win,” he assured himself.

The Calm Before the Storm: Inside the Convention Venue

That is politics for you:
6 am.  Tuesday. Expressway.
I woke up suddenly, to the sound of lamentations.  “He won’t win.  There’s no way.  I’m so annoyed.  I wanted the Presidency. I wanted the Vice Presidency. The two are important to me,” The Godfather ranted.  I gathered that First Timer had lost.  Just minutes before, we left Lagos by road before dawn.  The election started late the previous night and by the time I dozed off, the only progress was that his candidate had emerged as President.  His grief metamorphosing into revenge, The Godfather threatened all parties involved, known and unknown, “Let them come to my state and say they want to see my Governor. They will know me.  All my plans for them?  The executive accounts, the NGOs, the international connections?  Cancelled.”

The zonal reconciliation had failed.  Beyond that, the candidate he’d helped emerge as President sacrificed his alliance with The Godfather, having already secured his victory, in favor of one of his competitors for the Presidency.  Apparently, the new President’s desire to avoid a factional government forming was stronger than his loyalty to The Godfather.  “My traditional friends abandoned me because I’m not there.  They’re not good people,” he explained.  “If I believed in factions, I would just misinform my governor, they would give First Timer a car, announce it to the press, and he would be acting as National VP.  But that is what’s dividing NANS presently.”

I considered the money, time, and energy invested in the expected outcome and asked The Godfather what was next.  Before he could respond, the phone rang.  “They stopped the election because they know I’m aggrieved,” he later explained.  “It looks like in the by-election, they will arrange for First Timer to have a post.  Maybe the External Vice President.”  “So, what does that mean,” I asked him?  With a smirk, he said “I will forgive them, of course.  That is politics for you.”

Krystal Strong blogs here. You can also follow her on Twitter.

In response to this, ‘The 419Positive Project’was initiated, with an ambitious objective of generating four hundred and nineteen positive

attributes about Nigeria and Nigerians. “If you could tell the world one remarkable thing about Nigeria and Nigerians, what would it be?”

419 Reasons

Furthermore, in Peter Reilly’s Forbes blog post (Aug 28, 2011), he suggested a similar intervention to his Nigerian audience – “Make lists of 419 reasons to like Nigeria and Nigerians…” His suggestion came as one remedial to his previous post (Nigerians Switching From Greed to Fear), after some Nigerians took exceptions to his views. Other online posts by Chika Uwazie, Nmachi Jidenma and Akin Akintayo, have further lent a voice in this regard.

Pulling these ideas and suggestions together, an online rebranding campaign is being furthered. The aim is clear – to consistently inundate the internet with positive Nigerian attributes, such that when anyone types in ‘419’ in a search engine, it yields positive commentary about Nigeria, irrespective of the pre-existing negativity. This drive is labelled 419 Reasons to Like Nigeria. Awareness is currently being ramped up online, with the topic having trended on Twitter in the early hours of 2^nd of September. There will be the big bang launch on October 1, 2011 (Independence Day), of at least 100 Nigerian blogs and sites listing four hundred and nineteen remarkable reasons to like Nigeria, with subsequent monthly blog publishing till the end of 2011.

Every Nigerian with a blog, website, and online presence of any sort (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, account etc.) is encouraged to volunteer and be a part of this campaign. With sincerity and candour, it is true that some, in times past, have contributed unfortunately to the prevailing negative association of ‘419’ with Nigeria, however, the time is NOW for us to counter-strategise by providing alternative content via an online rebranding initiative.

To register your interest, simply send an email to volunteer@419Positive.org, with the subject –CAMPAIGN VOLUNTEER, and be sure to provide contact details (email address) so you can be reached subsequently. Volunteers will be contacted latest by the 9^th of September, 2011.

Be a part of this drive…the time is now! Let’s tell the world 419 Reasons to Like Nigeria.

By D.O.A Coker

June 12, 2011 marked the 18th Anniversary of the 1993 presidential elections in Nigeria. Those elections have been adjudged by many Nigerians as one of the best in the country’s history.

In his own special way of marking the event, and probably for dramatic effect, Mr. Akin Akintayo chose this occasion to publish an essay titled: Time to give June 12 a decent burial.

In it, Mr Akintayo began with praise for some aspects of the electoral process that culminated in the vote on June 12, 1993 by stating that: “What made the elections of 1993 a benchmark for freeness, fairness and credibility was the voting method adopted that prevented the usual electoral criminality that we had gotten used to in the Nigerian landscape.”

Even the enemies of June 12 accept this obvious fact. But the main thrust of his article was soon centred on the need to consign that milestone event and all it stood for to history’s dustbin.

While I respect his right to his opinion and do sometimes share his viewpoints on other issues, there was a compelling need to take a different view on this occasion.

Under the heading – Annulment versus result, he wrote that “despite its failings, it (April 16, 2011) delivered a result that many will find difficult to dispute even though there are many that are disaffected as much as there was voter apathy in many regions too but on average a higher turnout (the lowest was in Ogun State with 28%) than in 1993 (which Professor Okon Uya said was just 13% on average.).

Wasn’t it rather hasty to comment on the difficulty or otherwise of this ‘dispute’ while the jury is still out on the April polls as evidenced by the cases currently making their way through the elections tribunal? Should we not at least await the determination of those cases before deciding on that? I probably wouldn’t have found a need to respond if Akintayo left matters here, but his other claim in that paragraph certainly deserves a closer look.

In an attempt to reinforce his point on June 12’s diminished status, Akintayo allowed himself to be taken in by Prof. Okon Uya’s claim of voter apathy in many regions as prop for his thesis. The good professor said that this apathy led to a poor turnout of 13% of the electorate. This claim not only stands on shaky legs, it is untrue. But this did not stop the otherwise meticulous Mr. Akintayo from going on to use this 13% figure in making a comparison with a 28% voter turnout in Ogun State (on April 16) as justification for April 16’s supremacy. As will become clear with a review of the events of that troubling period in 1993, both Uya and Akintayo who believes him, are well and truly off the mark.

Here is why I say this. Within hours of the polls closing, the results were being collated (and announced in some states) by NEC, the 2 political parties and civil society groups amongst others. From one those announcements reported in The New York Times, we learnt that “final results were widely circulated among politicians and activist groups, despite a government ban on their publication. Campaign for Democracy chairman Beko Ransome-Kuti said Abiola also exceeded by eight states the requirement that the winner get at least one-third of the vote in at least 20 states.

The Times continued by making reference to what we now know to be incomplete results, which in the words of the report, were “released by Abiola’s Social Democrats and showed him winning 8,128,720 votes nationwide compared with 5,848,247 for Tofa. The party announced the results on national television.” We will come back to this point in the assessment of the third claim in Akintayo’s article under review here.

Mr. Akintayo, then went on to announce that “June 12, 1993 was dead on arrival, a stillborn, a sad narrative, the low point of our democratic yearnings because that (sic) the expectations we had were completely snuffed out and it produced no result…there is no legally recognisable data to extrapolate the assumptions thrown around like the truth.

This assertion might stick if we inteprete it with a strictly legal yardstick. But from a broader moral and patriotic standpoint it holds no water. Even the legal measure is highly questionable if we regard the spirit of the law as well as the letter. The election results – what Akintayo calls legally recognizable data – were being collated and announced on Radio, TV and Newspapers by NEC within hours of the polls closing and after being passed up a “chain of custody.” But as it became obvious that the electorate had failed to read their fraudulent memo and follow the script, an order came from the military hierachy to halt the announcements. This culminated in Gen. Babangida’s annulment speech of June 23, 1993 in tandem with Justice Dahiru Saleh’s Abuja High Court injunction on the same day.

It was those same incomplete results that the SDP and Campaign for Democracy – under the leadership of Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti – had earlier released on June 18 in defiance of the regime and following the expiration of a Lagos High Court ruling on June 17 compelling NEC to release them within 24 hours. It was a bizarre season of injunctions and counter-injunctions from the courts, but everyone knew that the ultimate body responsible for electoral decisions was the Orwellian sounding National Security and Defense Council headed by Babangida.

Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, NEC Chairman and Chief Returning Officer for the June 12 presidential elections eventually complied with this ruling 15 years afterwards on June 12, 2008 during his book presentation in Abuja. He declared as follows: “Social Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Chief Moshood Abiola won by 8,323,305 votes against National Republican Convention’s Alhaji Ottman Bashir Tofa 6,073,612 votes.” (emphasis mine) Prof. Nwosu went further to say that : “Tofa scored at least one-third of the votes cast in each of 23 states of the federation. While Abiola scored at least one-third of the total votes cast in each of the 28 states.” Thus Nwosu belatedly declared Abiola the winner of the June 12, 1993 elections.

There is no doubt Nwosu flinched and chose a form of cowardice over courage when it mattered most, but with his June 2008 declaration of the election results in his custody for those 15 years, he had done his part in shedding light where his masters preferred darkness. If people like Mr. Akintayo still question the legality of those results, the next best thing to do is to head for the courts and challenge Nwosu’s publication with superior facts or otherwise, forever hold their peace.

Humphrey Nwosu was the NEC Chairman in charge of the elections which had almost 40 million registered voters and not Okon Uya who seems to have plucked his figures from thin air. If however, Prof Uya’s 13% voter turnout were to be believed, the results given by Nwosu will have required the registered voters to be over 100 million. Nigeria’s official population from the 1991 census was 88.5million.

Many Nigerians saw Nwosu’s declaration as coming rather late in the day, but I hold the belief that it was better late than never, even though the man himself appeared to have other reasons for publishing those results when he did. The fact however remains, 18 years on, and with some of the actors receding from the public space, that many truths about who said or did what during the events of that time remain shrouded. But thankfully, a significant amount of this truth is coming into the public domain.

In building a case for the burial of June 12, Mr. Akintayo was also quick to point out the imperfections of that seminal election. But in “leaving the verdict” to former NEC chair, Prof. Okon Uya that all elections since 1922 (including, June 12, 1993) were manipulated, one would have expected Akintayo to make a convincing case for the exemption of his exemplary April 16 polls from the roll call of manipulated polls. But he did not, probably because he couldn’t. And I wonder on what valid basis he came to the outlandish conclusion that “April 16 represents the best progress we have made on the democratic experiment in Nigeria so far.”

Mr Akintayo is wrong when he calls for June 12 to be forgotten and buried “because the expectations we had were completely snuffed out and it produced no result” What an unkind cut! It’s like saying to the survivors of a murdered crime victim to forget about seeking justice to its conclusive end just because a detective botched initial investigations resulting in the mistrial of the killer.

I find it hard to believe that Akin Akintayo will intentionally give comfort to a discredited cabal – peopled by the likes of Ibrahm Babangida and a revisionist David Mark – who from the get go set out to undermine and downplay the role and importance of the June 12 elections to Nigerian democracy. He should not give any impression that he is doing just that.

June 12 and the supreme sacrifice of its chief protagonist, MKO Abiola, represents the very best of the democratic spirit embedded in the Nigerian DNA. And as Ebere Onwudiwe aptly put it “Abiola’s struggle and death, symbolically shot the first bullet for Nigeria’s second struggle for independence and self determination from internal colonialism…Abiola’s position ultimately benefitted Nigeria’s political development.”

George Santayana it was who said: “those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” That famous quote has often been paraphrased as “those who fail to learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat it.” Feel free to pick your choice. But if a younger generation of Nigerians fail to learn the lessons of June 12, backed by factual accounts of the events that have led to its legendary status, I’m afraid that a repeat might just be down the road.

- D. Oluwatosin Coker is a student of African History, with an obvious Nigerian bias. He lives a few miles north of Dundee in the Northeast of Scotland. He tweets as @NaijaHistory