“This inform why we advise that the Government should declare the day (June 12) MKO Abiola Day, never to be forgotten and reiterate the lesson and occasion when we all chorus and say, NEVER AGAIN.
The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has asked the Nigerian government to rename June 12 as the MKO Abiola Day in the national calendar.
Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman, CACOL, said this while commemorating the inaugural celebration of the June 12 as the country’s Democracy Day.
Commending President Muhammadu Buhari for honouring MKO Abiola by naming the National Stadium, Abuja, after him, Adeniran asked the President to order the electoral commission body to officially release the result of the June 1993 Presidential election.
“This inform why we advise that the Government should declare the day (June 12) MKO Abiola Day, never to be forgotten and reiterate the lesson and occasion when we all chorus and say, NEVER AGAIN.
“It is gratifying that the NATIONAL STADIUM Abuja has been named after this patriotic Nigerian who laid down his life for the emergence of a new Nigeria with so much éclat, we implore the government to compel Prof Humphrey Nwosu the then National Electoral Commission of Nigeria, NECON, to officially declare the final results of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections, which Prof Nwosu have confirm Chief MKO Abiola won fair and square, so that he would be officially recognized as the 2nd democratically elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN) and accorded all benefits and recognition derivable therefrom.”
Adeniran condemned politicians in Nigeria for misusing the democracy Abiola fought for adding that the struggle has been betrayed.
He said, “Today, this same day, ironically, has been used by certain elements that were either originally responsible for the unfortunate annulment and destruction of a rare chance of rooting democracy in the country or those people that later ethicized or betrayed the struggle, one way or the other.
“One of the key figures in that epoch was Alhaji Bababgana Kingibe, a Vice Presidential candidate of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, believed to have abandoned the ship when it mattered most and currently a member of the kitchen cabinet to President Muhammadu Buhari’s federal government.
This is why the JUNE 12 has become different things to the classes of the ruled and the rulers.
“To those in government, it represents a day their class survived a major political tsunami, meant to galvanize and mobilize the mass against their rudderless system and supplants their reign, while majority Nigerians view it as a day the masses had an opportunity to free themselves from the shackles of social enslavement and economic miasma.”
