One historic tragedy. One victim. Two utterances. Lost ironies.
That was the situation on April 11, at an Abeokuta Club function referencing June 12: that watershed crisis of 1993, which marked the beginning of the end for Nigeria’s political soldiers; and which, after six years of unimaginable tension, in 1999 birthed Nigeria’s current democracy.
But first thing first: The Nation report claimed MKO Abiola “presumably won” the June 12 election, which Gen. Ibrahim Babangida annulled. Absolutely no presumption. MKO won. “Presumed to have won” was the shifty media apologia smuggled into the fray, to explain away that high crime.
But it’s good MKO has received a posthumous honour on the matter, with June 12 becoming Nigeria’s Democracy Day, instead of May 29 that former President Olusegun Obasanjo actively pushed, throughout his eight-year presidency, and among his partisan power successors, before President Muhammadu Buhari got MKO justice.
But back to the Abeokuta Club event, at which Obasanjo was named a club trustee; and MKO, posthumous vice-patron.
The Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo dismissed, as “bad blood”, the high conspiracies that robbed MKO the presidency, despite his epochal win at the polls. That was spot on.
It was bad blood that penetrated the top brass of Nigeria’s politically ravaged military, which eventually destroyed all of those political soldiers; and left the military itself a mere shell. The Egba monarch should know, though he retired as a colonel in 1985, well before the high-stake power conspiracies of 1993.
But the irony of the “bad blood” comment appeared totally lost on Obasanjo, made doubly ironical by trying to say nice things about MKO and his June 12 bona fides, after his orchestrated attempts to rubbish the MKO ideals, thinking only that would give his own May 29 emergence historical life.
That plot fell flat, though after being floated for no less than one-and-a-half decades, under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Obasanjo old order.
Which brings the discourse to the ringing, multi-dimensional ironies of Obasanjo’s
own “bad belle” comment, at the occasion. Though Obasanjo tried to be nice to MKO’s memory, the Ebora Owu was an active and baleful spirit in the anti-MKO June 12 manoeuvres, even when MKO was alive and fighting for his mandate.
Obasanjo’s Pauline morphing, from nastiness to niceness, is appreciated. But that can’t be at the expense of ghosting history. He was part and parcel of the “bad belle” he spoke of; and it was really rich trying to push it as the sole fault of IBB and other deluded hot heads.
Then, the costly Freudain slip: Obasanjo’s basic take, in all of the June 12 catastrophe, appears a regret over the non-actualisation of power vanity, personal and collective, concerning Abeokuta and its sons.
His top regret was that “bad belle” robbed the Egba trio, of himself, Ernest Shonekan and MKO, a power hat trick (to borrow that football lingo), to the glory of Egbaland.
Nice — but bad — joke! In truth, it was two Egba sons (Obasanjo and Shonekan) that actively plotted against another Egba son (MKO) and his historic June 12 pan-Nigeria mandate.
Nigerian history would perhaps have been better off without that plot. So, let the Ebora Owu not glibly falsify history, and make light of that treachery, after making merry at the Abeokuta Club.
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