June 12: Activists Want Tinubu to Give National Honours to Walter Carrington, Others

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja 

Some activists under the aegis of Quintessential Professionals yesterday urged President Bola Tinubu to include a former United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Walter Carrington, in the list of pro-democracy crusaders honoured for their roles in the June 12, struggle. 

Carrington, who served as the US Ambassador to Nigeria from 1993 to 1997, was actively involved in the pro-democracy activism that eventually birthed democracy in Nigeria in 1999.

The group in a statement by its coordinator, Stanley Dunia, and made available to journalists in Abuja, recalled how Carrington actively collaborated with Nigerian pro-democracy activists for the revalidation of the June 12 presidential election, despite being on a diplomatic mission.  

While in Nigeria, the US diplomat, the statement explained, got married to a Nigerian woman, Arese, a medical doctor from Edo State.  

The activists argued that Carrington, who died in August 2020, deserved a posthumous award. 

Similarly, the group made separate cases for other Nigerians who were part of the struggle but whose names were omitted on the list unveiled by President Tinubu on Thursday. 

Prominent among those omitted were some of Tinubu’s allies in the Afenifere and the NADECO movement who were also in the trenches during the struggle.  

They were Chief Ayo Opadokun, Pa Olanihun Ajayi, Chief Cornelius Adebayo, Chief Olabiyi Durojaiye, Senator Adedayo Adeyeye and Senator Jonathan Zwingina. 

Others similarly omitted are Kofo Akerele-Bucknor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, Reverend Adebiyi, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, Chief Olisa Agbakoba, Innocent Chukwuma, Mike Ozekhome, Yinka Odumakin, Joe Okei-Odumakin among many others. 

The statement read: “The Presidency should review this list and many others deserving of honour, with a view to addressing the oversight and picking out the dead among them for posthumous honour.”

The group noted that the omissions have led to insinuations in certain quarters that the President might have deliberately omitted names of certain individuals who were part of the struggle, but who are now critics of his administration. 

But a Presidency source, who craved anonymity, attributed the omissions to human error, saying that even some of the President’s close associates who are still in his team, were inadvertently omitted. 

“It has been brought to our attention that even the man who coordinated the President’s support group, SWAGA ’23, and who was actively involved in the June 12 struggle, was also omitted. It’s human error and another list is being compiled to address it,” the source said yesterday.