IBB blames Abacha for annulling 1993 presidential election

Nigeria’s former military president, Ibrahim Babangida (IBB), says he regretted the annulment of the 12 June 12 1993 presidential election, 32 years after the event.

Mr Babangida also blamed Sani Abacha and other military officers for annulling the election.

Mr Babangida stated this in his autobiography – “A Journey in Service”, which was presented to the public on Thursday. The book chronicles Mr Babangida’s experiences, decisions, and challenges in national service.

In the 420-page memoir, the former military ruler acknowledged that the 1993 election was “credible, free and fair” and was won by the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Moshood Abiola.

The retired army general took responsibility for cancelling the exercise in which Mr Abiola defeated the late Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). Mr Babangida, who officially announced the annulment of the election in a national broadcast on 24 June 1993, said he is now convinced that Mr Abiola won the election.

“Although I’m on record to have admitted after the election that Abiola may have not won the election, upon deeper reflections, and a close examination of all available facts, particularly the detailed election results which I published as an appendix to this book, there was no doubt that MKO Abiola won the June 12 election.”

“Upon closer examination of the original collated figures from the 110 polling booths in the country, it was clear that he satisfied the two main constitutional requirements for winning the presidential election; mainly the majority votes and the geographical spread, having obtained 8,128,720 votes against Tofa’s 5,84,8247 votes and securing the mandatory one-third of the vote cast in 28 states of the federation, including Abuja,” Mr Babangida said.

However, in other parts of the memoir, Mr Babangida said military officers led by Sani Abacha, his chief of defence staff who later became military head of state, annulled the June 12 election “without his permission”.

Nevertheless, the retired army general took responsibility for cancelling the exercise.

“I regret June 12. I accept full responsibility for the decisions taken and June 12 happened under my watch. Mistakes, missteps happened in quick successions,” he said.

Two months after the June 12 annulment, Mr Babangida stepped down as military president in August 1993 and installed an interim government led by Ernest Shonekan. Mr Abacha toppled the government in November 1993.

Events that led to annulment

In the memoir, Mr Babangida said Mr Abacha had become a major force in a “factionalised” military and it was difficult to remove him when the military president stepped down from power.

Mr Babangida said the journey to the June 12 annulment began two days before D-Day, when a judge granted an injunction stopping the electoral commission from proceeding with the election. A group, the Association to Better Nigeria (ABN), led by Arthur Nzeribe, had filed the lawsuit.

According to TheCable newspaper, which has seen the memoir, Mr Babangida admitted that Mr Nzeribe was close to him but denied supporting ABN’s activities.

“From out of nowhere, on June 10, two days before the presidential election, the same shadowy group, ABN, which had been campaigning for an extension of military rule, approached the Abuja High Court of Justice Bassey Ikpeme for an injunction to stop NEC (National Electoral Commission) from conducting the elections,” TheCable quoted the former military leader to have said in the book.

“Unknown to me at the time, Justice Ikpeme, who was relatively young at the Bench, had worked in the chambers of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Clement Akpamgbo. Strangely, Justice Ikpeme, in the dead of night, in clear violation of Decree 13, which barred any court from interfering with INEC’s conduct or scheduling of the elections, granted the ABN an injunction stopping NEC from conducting the June 12 elections. There was confusion everywhere.”

Mr Babangida said he quickly convened an emergency meeting of the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC), the country’s highest governing body, to discuss the way forward.

“On Friday, June 11, as the NDSC meeting was going on, I learned that a Lagos High Court had ruled that NEC should go ahead with the elections. The NDSC meeting on Friday, June 11, only hours before the scheduled elections, was one of the stormiest meetings I ever conducted as President. Strangely, the Attorney General and Justice Minister, Akpamgbo, who was the nation’s chief law officer and who ought to know that the Justice Ikpeme court order violated an extant law (and was tacitly supported, it turned out by some of my topmost military officers), advised that the elections be postponed in compliance with the Abuja court order. Professor (Humphrey) Nwosu (NEC chairman) insisted, to the dismay of my top military colleagues, that he had enough powers under the law to proceed with the elections,” the former military leader wrote.

“The arguments went on for hours in a tense atmosphere, peopled by some who wanted the elections postponed, among them the Chief of Defence Staff, General Sani Abacha, Lt-General Joshua Dogonyaro and a few Service Chiefs. But I had my views bottled inside me! Even before Professor Nwosu presented his compelling argument, I decided that the elections should proceed, backed firmly by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Salihu Ibrahim.”

Mr Babangida recalled looking across the room and saying to Mr Nwosu, “Go ahead with the elections. Go to your office, hold a world press conference, and tell everyone the elections will be held tomorrow as planned.”

He said on 16 June, 1993, Mr Nwosu suddenly stopped announcing the election results even though the voting was peaceful and orderly.

“And then, on June 16, without my knowledge or prior approval, NEC Chairman, Professor Nwosu, announced the suspension of the June 12 election results ‘until further notice’. I knew instantly that certain fifth columnists were at work and that there was a need for extra care! And even after that suspension of the announcements of results, ABN obtained another ‘strange’ court order from Justice Saleh’s court in Abuja, stopping the release of the results of the elections,” he wrote.

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On 23 June 1993, Mr Babangida said he left Abuja for Katsina to commiserate with the Yar’Adua family over the death of their patriarch, Musa Yar’Adua, former minister of Lagos affairs and father of Umaru, the late Nigerian president who died in office in 2007.

In his words: “The funeral had taken place, and as I got ready to leave, a report filtered to me that the June 12 elections had been annulled. Even more bizarre was the extent of the annulment because it terminated all court proceedings regarding the June 12 elections, repealed all the decrees governing the Transition and even suspended NEC! Equally weird was the shabby way the statement was couched and made. Admiral (Augustus) Aikhomu’s press secretary, Nduka Irabor, had read out a terse, poorly worded statement from a scrap of paper, which bore neither the presidential seal nor the official letterhead of the government, annulling the June 12 presidential elections. I was alarmed and horrified.

“Yes, during the stalemate that followed the termination of the results announcement, the possibility of annulment that could lead to fresh elections was loosely broached in passing. But annulment was only a component of a series of other options. But to suddenly have an announcement made without my authority was, to put it mildly, alarming. I remember saying: ‘These nefarious ‘inside’ forces opposed to the elections have outflanked me!’ I would later find out that the ‘forces’ led by General Sani Abacha annulled the elections. There and then, I knew I was caught between ‘a devil and the deep blue sea’!!! From then on, the June 12 elections took on a painful twist for which, as I will show later, I regrettably take responsibility.”