June 12 and Our Democratic Quest: A Popular Perspective

Intervention by Comrade Femi Obayori at the June 12 Lecture, June 12 Perspective, Held on June
12, 2010 at the Oranmiyan Hall, Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos
femiobayori@yahoo.com

June 12 election as such: the truth must be told

Beyond romanticism, June 12 election was not the freest and fairest in the history of Nigeria. The
parties that contested, Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC),
were imposed by the ex-dictator General Ibrahim Babangida. Only 14 million out of over 50 million
eligible Nigerians voted. The winner of June 12 elections did not bargain for the challenges of
annulment. The majority of those who revolutionized the process did not vote.

June 12 Struggle: setting the stage

June 12 Struggle did not just come from the blues, neither was it born out of the desire of one man
to reclaim his mandate. It was a popular struggle founded on the realities of our people and their
desire to fight against these disagreeable realities under the direction of their popular and
ideological leaders. There was a social movement built around the need to put an end to military
rule, there was an ideological movement entrenched in the studentry and labour, and there was a
bourgeoning organisation - the Campaign for Democracy (CD). The June 12 Struggle was built on
the lessons of the Ango-Must-Go protest (1986), the Anti- oil subsidy removal struggle (1988), the
Anti-SAP (1989), ACAREF (1991) and the Anti-Deregulation Struggle (1992). These were
struggles championed by Nigerian students under the leadership of the National Association of
Nigerian Students (NANS). They were the battles in which the future ideological leaders and
political officers of June 12 Struggle cut their political teeth. In the course of these struggles, the
unsung youths of June 12 became accustomed to the whistling of the tyrant’s bullets, the thuds of
falling bodies, the groans of the wounded and agonizing wails of the bereaved.
There were also remarkable developments in the human rights community. The first human
rights group of note, Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) was established in 1987, followed by
Human Rights Africa (HRA) in 1988. Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) emerged
in 1989 as an offshoot of the Anti-SAP movement, just as was the Gani Fawehinmi Solidarity
Association (GFSA). Constitutional Rights Project (CRP) emerged in 1990 and in 1992 the
Universal Defenders of Democracy (UDD) launched. Also in the early 1990s, there were other
groups such as the Pan-African Youth Congress (PAYCO), Pan-African Movement of Nigeria
(PAMON), and Africa Democratic League (ADL), which were committed to organizing masses and
moulding the minds of the youths.
In the legal profession, the likes of Alao Aka-Basorun, Gani Fawehinmi, Osagie
Obayuwana, Femi Falana, Mike Ezekome, Ayo Obe, Olisa Agbakoba and others were freeing the
wigs of moral and intellectual shackles, putting judges in the dock, turning accused into accusers
and accusers into accused and literarily standing the law on its feet stripped of her halo of mystery
and obscurantism and teaching our people to claim their rights to be treated as human beings.
In the Fourth Estate of the Realm, the future guerilla journalists had gone through the
brimstones if not the fire of the profession with the letter bombing of Dele Giwa in 1986 and
blossoming of new tabloids, particularly weekly magazines like the Tell, The News, P.M. News,
TNT etc. In the wake of the clamp-down on the media following the annulment of the June 12
elections the Media Rights Agenda (MRA) was born.
Thus when the CD, which at its convention held on May 2, 1992 was merely an amalgam of
25 affiliates and was 42 affiliates-strong in 1993 came to the fore to seized the gauntlets, our people

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were not unprepared for the battle. CD had emerged in November 1991 with twin objectives clearly
spelt out:
 To end military rule
 To return to democracy via Sovereign National Conference (SNC).

June 12 Struggle: strength of the people is in the streets

Those who led the June 12 Struggle were very clear as to what they wanted if not the exact way to
achieve this. It was a struggle meant to turn things around fundamentally. The protests of July 5-7,
1993 and the street fights and sit-at-home protests of subsequent months were carried out under the
leadership of CD bearing this in mind. It was this protest that transformed June 12 from a mere cry
over spilled milk to a real popular struggle. The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO)
involvement from 1994 onwards was a true-to-type political elite contribution. We must commend
them so much for the great effort, but this must not blind us from the popular, basic people-inspired
and ideology-driven essence of the struggle. And we must be bold enough to place on higher
pedestal the sacrifices of the over 200 unarmed civilians who were killed in the streets of Lagos on
July 7, 1993, the role of labour, particularly oil worker under the leadership of Comrade Ovie
Kokrori, the role of the studentry, the role of the market women and the role of the area boys. We
must not also fail to recall Kongi’s “walk with his friends” on July 24, 1994 and his subsequent
“portrait hunting expedition” later in the year.
In the June 12 Struggle some elite were inspired as in all revolutionary processes to commit
class suicide. Thus Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu (The Jagaban himself) and his colleagues, in a not
unrevolutionary manner, tried to reconvene in 1994 the Senate earlier dispersed by Abacha
following the November 17, 1993 coup and equally walked the streets in the bloody July and
August days like ordinary folks. Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, then member of House of
Representatives, was treated like a common felon by brutish Nigerian police (alongside late Chima
Ubani and late Dr. Beko) on October 1, 1993. Dr. Fredrick Fasehun, who was a former Presidential
aspirant, became a staunch member of CD and NADECO, founded OPC and was part of the
Enahoro Escape Committee in 1996. Not a few bigwigs shuttled between Cotonou and Lagos by
way of footpaths. A couple of guys even hitch hiked their way across the Sahara in search of the
revolutionary fleece, before finally ending up behind the lines in war-torn Eastern Europe. The
ultimate suicide missionary, we must admit, was BASORUN M.K.O. ABIOLA himself. He simply
chose to make the supreme sacrifice for a cause he believed in.
Like all serious struggles, there were dare consequences. Pa Alfred Rewane was shot in his
bed in September 1995; Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni compatriots were hanged in
November the same year; and our own Kudirat Abiola was shot down in the street on June 4 1996.
More deaths followed in the wake, albeit more mysteriously wrought - Bagauda Kaltho, Sola
Omatshola etc.
The lull in 1997 following the unrelenting hounding of activists into exile, fire-bombing of
residences, assassinations and disappearances was only broken when the mass-based groups,
including CD, came together under an umbrella, the United Action for Democracy (UAD), which
proceeded to enact the mass actions of March 3, April 15, and May1, 1998. The role of JACON
cannot also be easily forgotten. And in all this, the position was very clear - end to military rule and
restoration of democracy via SNC. Whether Abacha died after eating poisoned apple or from eating
the proverbial apple, or was simply smothered by God Himself, the fact remains that the people
spoke first - ENOUGHT IS ENOUGH. Vox Dei, Vox Populi!

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June 12 Struggle and self-determination of peoples
Before June 12 most questions about Nigeria were being posed wrongly. Thus most solutions
proposed were far off the mark. But with June 12 on the front burner, it became clear that Nigerian
nation, after all, does not exist as such. We have Yoruba nation, Igbo nation, Hausa nation, Tiv
nation, Ijaw nation. Nigerian society that exists is where we all go to loot and when we fail to
succeed fight those who loot and either return to our various societies to enjoy the loot or lick our
wounds. The images of the so-called founding fathers are cast in moulds defined by the opposing
interests of the ethnicities.
Although the Ogoni had launched their bill of rights in 1990 and Late Comrade Tony
Ngurube and his colleagues were already stirring up some Ijaw youths very early in the 1990s, and
the Movement for National Reformation (MNR), which was launched in December 1992, had
proposed a restructuring of the skewed Federation, self-determination only became a serious matter
with June 12. The Oodua Youth Movement (OYM) which met in Ile-Ife on September 14, 1994
finally published the Yoruba Charter on December 18, 1994, thus inspiring other efforts.
Everywhere the sparks were caught and translated into roaring flames: SNC, self-determination,
right to secede!

This Democracy: not what we fought for

We have succeeded in sending the military back to the barracks, no doubt, but this country-wide
caricature (karika-chop) cannot be the democracy we fought for. This democracy has not
guaranteed and cannot guarantee the liberty of our people. Rather, it has produced overnight moguls
and monarchs. We must equally admit that beautiful cities and landscapes and security are not just
an end in themselves. As the political philosopher A.C. Graylings points out “the security of the
public is certainly a high duty of government, but it is not the highest one. Its highest duty is the
protection of individual liberties.” Democracy is possible without the July 2009 genocide
perpetrated in Bauchi and Borno in the name of quelling Boko Haram uprising. Be it in Abuja,
Lagos, Edo, Delta, Rivers, Ogun or Akwa Ibom, urban renewal is possible without desecrating our
ancestral burial places, without defiling sacred sites, without incurring the wraths of the gods,
without fencing up our villages and hamlets, without overtaxing the poor to fulfill the
Americanising dreams of the rich. Elected representatives at all levels are largely unaccountable,
not transparent and lack respect for the rule of law.

This democracy: why get carried away?

There is no doubt that the lessons of June 12 have been brought to bear in addressing contemporary
problems. The ingenuity that brought to birth Radio Kudirat in 1996 and the doggedness
demonstrated in the streets between 1993 and 1999 have been brought to bear in the battles to
reclaim mandates in Ekiti and Osun states. But then, we seem to have allowed ourselves to get
carried away in critical moments. The Judiciary has been unduly praised to the extent that when it
miscarries justice or perpetrates open, daylight, robbery or what I’ll call ‘judicial rigging,” we are
simply too tongue-tied or ashamed to speak out.
Some of us have repeatedly pointed out that the present National Assembly is politically,
morally and psychologically not moulded for the changes required in our polity (Theses on SNC: a
Critique of Unreason). Constitutional amendments cannot work. The 1999 constitution which we
now operate is a bundle of lies. Passage of well-garnished bills cannot work. No single governor
can do it; the rotten system will make nonsense of his good intention and good work. Good
intention is not enough; the political climate must be made conducive for people-centred
development. None of the parties that exist today can fundamentally turn things around. They can
only maneuver within the constrained and constraining limits of the Nigerian contraption. As things

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are, we are like a people living on Superstitions Mountains and drinking from the River of Illusions.
We indeed must stop to think and ask ourselves some questions and again think.
Is it not possible that those who bled this country white at gun-point when they were
younger could come back with their loot in their years of decline to again parodize the tragedies of
their youthful days? Is it not possible to find ourselves again in a quagmire, more so now that they
are already tinkering with the idea of two-party state, which ended in the June 23, 1993 debacle? Is
it not possible for us to arrive at a point where we would be forced to “ride the tiger” a la Bracking?
Is it not possible in a globalized world, and under localized megacity euphoria, where
expansion of the market and personal income has become the focus of man, that the consciousness
of collective struggle becomes lost and June 12 itself forgotten? As Friedrich Nietzsche aptly points
out in Human, All-Too-Human, “in all institutions that do not feel the sharp wind of public criticism
(as for, example, in scholarly organisations and senates), an innocent corruption grows up like
mushroom.” The road to fascism, after all, is painted in bright colours and studded with golden
illusions.

What is to be done: organize, don’t agonize

Electoral reforms alone cannot take us to El Dorado. It is for the ruling class a mere stop-gap for
entrenching their own order of opulence and distinction a la John Dunn. We need to infuse into it
some popular contents. If we fail to do this, definitely some other people will effect change in their
own way and we will have no moral justification to cry foul, be they military or anarchists. To use
the words of Karl Marx, “Rather an end with terror than terror without end!” (The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte).
We must continue to fight for electoral reforms. We must continue to fight for the passage of
freedom of information bill. We must continue to agitate for reforms in the education sector. But
then we must never allow ourselves to be carried away. We must never forget that we owe
generations unborn the duty to fundamentally turn things around. This can only be achieved through
a revolution, whether pink, orange or red, but definitely neither white nor black, for the one
signifies deceit and docility and the other anarchy. Our call for reforms and the platforms on which
they are carried out can only make meaning if we see them as platforms of struggle, fields for the
battle of ideas and training grounds for generating cadres.
What I am saying is simply this: that alongside those “nocturnal meetings” where we
scheme to win power under the present political regime, and massage the ego of the Leader, must be
those “nocturnal schools” where we bring up cadres who will eventually be the engine room of the
revolutionary overthrow of the present rot.
Finally, we must admit that the country has to be restructured. We must go back to
Sovereign National Conference (SNC). The PROCACO effort (2005- till date) has shown us how
not to call a peoples’ conference; we must be bold enough to build on the lessons and forge ahead.
This exactly is how things stand.

References
1. Bracking, Sarah, “Democratization through power-sharing: is riding the Tiger a necessary evil or
unfortunate distraction?” The Constitution, Vol. 10 (1) 2010, pp. 1-13,
2. Dunn, John, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy, Atlantic Books, London, 2005
3. Grayling, A.C., Towards the Light: The Story of the Struggles for Liberty and Rights that Made the
Modern West, Bloomsbury, London, 2007
4. Obayori, Femi, Theses on SNC: A Critique of Unreason, Obabooks, Lagos, 2008