VANGUARD
JIDE AJANI
Conspiracy they wrote! National security chiefs, politicians and officials of the Ministry of Justice as well as key officials of the Ibrahim Babangida administration were involved.
General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida was President and Commander-in-Chief under whose watch this act against Nigerians was committed. The foundation for the annulment of the June 12 presidential election of 1993 was laid less than 36 hours earlier. But the building blocks were assembled over several months by one Association for Better Nigeria, ABN, led by the late Francis Arthur Nzeribe and one Abimbola Davis.
Dateline: Abuja, 9:35 pm, Thursday, July 10, 1993. Justice Bassey Ikpeme chose that hour to launch her voyage into infamy. Though it was an interlocutory application, filed by the ABN, Ikpeme, apparently over-mobilised and over-induced, made a “final” pronouncement. And this was in flagrant disregard of the provisions of Section 19(1) of Decree 13 of 1993.
In a 2018 report published in Vanguard and written by Richard Akinola, a veteran law and human rights reporter, “the Plaintiff in the case, Davis, on behalf of the ABN, had alleged electoral corruption on the part of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, candidate, Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola, (Abiola was contesting against Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention, NRC) at the SDP primaries in Jos, between March 27 and 29, 1993.
Before her ruling ex-parte at 9:35 that night, there were flurries of activities between Justice Ikpeme’s court chambers and the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation occupied by Clement Akpamgbo, leading to the postponement of the ruling from morning to night. In the ruling, Justice Ikpeme not only stopped the election but also got carried away by the interests she wanted to serve by making a “final” pronouncement on the case even at an Interlocutory level.
The allegations ABN levelled against some of the state governments at the primaries, Justice Ikpeme held, were “the greatest shame in the history of Nigeria’s politics”! For a judge to make this outlandish statement at the ex-parte stage of the case when the other party, the National Electoral Commission, NEC, had not been heard, exposed the judicial conspiracy in the whole saga. Confusion cradled the nation in its hands.
The NEC promptly issued a statement, disregarding the court order, stating that the election would go on as scheduled. Meanwhile, NEC filed a counter-affidavit that the jurisdiction of the court had been ousted by Section 19(1) of Decree 13 of 1993″.
Now, Vanguard has been made aware of some otherwise confidential happenings which signposted what was to happen that June 10, 1993 night.
According to one of the senior officials of NEC, the commission’s leadership had paid a visit to Aso Rock presidential Villa earlier that fateful day to brief the government on its preparedness to hold the election.
Upon arriving at the Villa, according to the very senior NEC official, “a member of the National Defense Security Council, NDSC, the nation’s highest ruling body at that time, asked us what we came to do at the Villa and we told him we were there to brief government about our preparations. He simply asked, ‘Oh is there going to be an election’?.’ It was not until 9:35 that night that the accidental event of the morning resonated in the consciousness of NEC officials.”
The ABN was suspected to have the backing of a section of the NDSC. Indeed, it had. And had Bashorun Abiola paid more than passing attention to the activities of ABN, perhaps, Davis may not have appeared in court that Thursday morning.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN VANGUARD
