TINUBU’S STRUGGLES FOR JUNE 12 AND DEMOCRACY

 SHEYI MONEY reckons that President Bola Tinubu has paid his dues

In an interview with TheNEWS magazine over a decade ago, Senator Bola Tinubu, the current president, disclosed how he got into politics: “The MD of Mobil, Bob Parker, thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted to join politics. I also told the Finance Director, Akinyelure, that I wanted to join politics and use my brain for my country and that I couldn’t continue to be an armchair critic. The two of them could not believe what I said. They said, given my career path in Mobil, if there was any chance of anybody becoming something there, then I would be the one. I stood my ground and said, I would give it a try. I told them people do it in America and Bob Parker agreed. They said they would give me a leave of absence for four years, during which they would not fill my position. They later said they would not stop me because it would rub off positively on them if I became successful in politics. They told me to come back and take my position if I found it uninteresting and unchallenging. So I contested the Lagos West Senatorial District election.

The political leaders in the Social Democratic Party just assigned Lagos West, which was the most challenging district, to me and said I had the money, personality and the wherewithal.” It is no longer news that Tinubu won the July 4, 1992 election into the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The 30 state governors, who had won the December 1991 elections, had been sworn in on January 2, 1992. Despite the several postponements in what appeared to be an unwarranted endless transition programme of the military junta, there were high hopes that a civilian president would emerge to climax Nigeria’s transition to the Third Republic. Nigerians were fed up with the oppression and tyrannical rule of the military and were in thirst of democracy. Tinubu, speaking on the floor of the Senate on behalf of Social Democratic Party (SDP), implored Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida to write his name in gold by handing over the reins of power to a democratically-elected president. As the military junta began to shift the goal-post of the presidential election, banning, unbanning politicians amidst rumours of diarchy, Tinubu and other democracy icons mobilised for a joint session, across party lines, of the Senate and House of Representatives. The National Assembly, in the historic resolution against elongation of military rule, buried the idea of diarchy in any form. Through his struggles to ensure the inauguration of a democratically-elected president, Tinubu became a persona non grata in the IBB regime.

The military junta reluctantly committed itself to holding the presidential election on June 12, 1993. It turned out to be the freest and fairest poll in the annals of Nigeria. Following the unwarranted annulment of the election by Babangida on June 23, 1993, Tinubu pressed every button, used every connection to ensure MKO Abiola reaped the fruits of his mandate. It was widely reported then in the media how Alhaja Abibat Mogaji, the mother of Tinubu, with her grey hair, earnestly begged Babangida to de-annul June 12 and allow Abiola to be sworn in as president. The Interim National Government installed by IBB offered Tinubu a ministerial appointment, which he rejected, insisting on the restoration of the June 12 mandate of MKO. Suddenly, Generals Abacha and Diya came into the mix, promising to remove Shonekan and install Abiola as president. It turned out be a stratagem. Tinubu mobilised his fellow senators to openly pronounce Abacha’s government as illegal. They were accused of treason. He, along with his pro-democracy colleagues, was incarcerated for weeks in a cell at Alagbon police station in Lagos. The military men later broke into his home and carted away his property; they equally ransacked his mother’s house. Tinubu was hounded into exile by the Abacha goons; he only escaped death by the thin of his skin; a few others were not so lucky. For two years, he did not set his eyes on his family on account of the struggle against military rule. The Abacha agents were everywhere, both in Nigeria and abroad, and ready to strike the democracy activists. In one or two incidents, Tinubu was nearly arrested in Benin Republic, from where he sneaked into Nigeria regularly to hold meetings against the junta.

Even while in the thick of the struggle in the United Kingdom and America, life was not exactly safe for Tinubu and other democracy icons. In his memoirs, You Must Set Forth At Dawn, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka referred to the role of Tinubu in the NADECO/NALICON struggles against the fascism of Gen. Sani Abacha: “Our allied financial wizards prepared plates for Liberation Bonds in readiness for D-Day. Others set up small ventures, specifically for the cause – one, Bola Tinubu, who had escaped from Abacha’s dragnet through a hospital window, and would later become the elected governor of Lagos State – set up a trade in rice with Taiwan!” On page 163 of his seminal work, Out of the Shadows: Exile and the Struggle for Freedom & Democracy in Nigeria, Dr Kayode Fayemi, former Governor of Ekiti State, observed: “General Akinrinade had been largely saddled with the expenditure of NADECO in exile, as well as all the expenses incurred on the radio till then, and the strain was beginning to show, hence the need for alternative sources of funding, some of which often came from Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.” On page 262 of his book, Frank Kokori: The Struggle For June 12, the author, now late, submits: “What I told Pa Enahoro in America has today come to pass.

Revolutionaries must have a base. We don’t just boycott and boycott the political process. If Tinubu does not reign (as governor) in Lagos today, we would not have been able to give Pa Enahoro this kind of rousing welcome.…” Democracy lovers should not continue to be armchair critics. Just like Tinubu, they should be prepared to abandon their comfort zone in the corporate world and get involved in politics. Tinubu’s involvement as Lagos governor changed the story of the megacity through innovative security architecture, transportation, judicial reforms and friendly business environment, which led to massive leap in the Internally Generated Revenue of the state and better life for its citizens. Successive governors of Lagos have continued to build on the strong foundation laid by Tinubu. And today, Lagos remains a good example of progressive governance and development. It is not surprising that Tinubu played a key role in the recognition of June 12 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day as against May 29 and that MKO Abiola received a deserved recognition as a martyr for democracy. Nigeria must now end the aberration of having the progressives fight for its liberation while the reactionaries emerge to reap the fruits of the struggles. Imagine if the progressives like Tinubu had assumed power at the centre in 1999 following the retreat of the military to the barracks! The reactionaries, who did not labour for the civil rule in Nigeria, cumulatively messed up the country nearly beyond redemption.

Tinubu literally inherited a scorched earth of a country, such that he has to start the onerous task of rebuilding from the scratch. But for his tough policy choices, Nigeria would have ended as Venezuela. There is no magic wand to turn a scorched earth into an overnight Riviera. However, the process of rebuilding has been begun in earnest and going at pace. With patience and cooperation of compatriots, Nigeria will reclaim its lost glory.

Money, a social enterprise development consultant, writes from Ughelli, Delta State