Nwosu, June 12, Two Party System 
 

The essence of the Nigerian experience on June 12, 1993 and the subsequent annulment of the election by a cabal of military autocrats on 23 June same year, some fifteen years ago lies today essentially in whatever any group of our countrymen can do to instill the features of democratic practices and processes into the polity. Acceptably, the Nigerian peoples continue to expose the deceit that is inherent in the imposition of May 29 as the annual Democracy Day in the national programme. The same cabal and their likes that killed the expressed will of the people on June 12 are the creators of May 29 as the so-called Democracy Day. They had the temerity to deceive the people and the world because rather than committing them to the dustbin of history as destroyers of the national will and decimators of the constitution that they really are, news media and their owners continue to append them as leaders and former leaders. They were never leaders. They are military dictators who imposed themselves on the nation, desecrated the national constitution, destroyed the political process and derailed the programme of economic development. They may wear all the highest honours that the dented nation has to offer and which they have distributed among their cohorts, but the wig certainly does not make the monk. 

The purpose of this paper is to review the much publicised annual rituals and pose the correct answer to the dictatorial annulment of the election that is truly the fairest and freest, indeed the only fair and free national elections in 57 years of Nigerian political history. The conduct of that election is one of only two elements that are worthy of celebration in the entire Babangida deceit. The re-emergence of Humphrey Nwosu after 15 years in hibernation following the June 12 disaster and the clean slate he awarded to Babangida make this discourse imperative.  

What actually should we celebrate on June 12? I will answer this question by reminding Nigerians that the entire process of the Babangida pseudo transition programme in itself as conceived and presented by Babangida, his boys, and the academicians who helped him to design the deceitful process was not originally meant to give Nigeria any democratic polity. That process of which June 12 was a part was a process of deceit that boomeranged and exploded in the face of its perpetrators. Remember that

• The two political parties that were the engines of the elections were autocratic impositions on the people. They were not creations of any democratic process and they did not belong to the people of Nigeria. Babangida and his academicians including Nwosu, Omoruyi and others disallowed the free formation of political parties, banned the freely formed parties including the Labour Party and manufactured these two caricatures, NRC and SDP whose constitutions and manifestoes they prepared and imposed, whose organisational structures they prefabricated and whose leadership and candidates they fashioned to their own tastes and will and programmes.
• The original presidential candidates of the original parties were arrested and put in detention to enable Babangida create these two caricatures.
• Abiola, an earlier political creature of the ruling feudalist right wing politicians became the candidate of the Social Democratic Party only with the expressed approval of the dictator, Babangida. His running   mate Babagana Kingibe as well as the opposing contestants was similarly approved by the dictator to be on the ballot. We must also recall that Babangida earlier on, in the unfolding but nationally disgraceful drama, like all the other military dictators before him including Obasanjo had told Nigerians that he already knew the people who would not succeed him.
• We are of the opinion that the entire process was predetermined and preplanned by the dictators in power with their accomplices part of whom are Humphrey Nwosu and Omo Omoruyi certainly playing different roles for different purposes. The eventual outcome of the June 12 elections, the peace and orderliness that came with it, the credibility of the process took them all by surprise and hence the annulment. The Association for Better Nigeria ABN was a part of the Plan B of the entire process.  Justice Bassey Ikpeme delivered that judgment to stop the elections in the night. Eventually, their foreign masters had to plan the assassination of Abacha and Abiola exactly within a month of each other to enable a restart programme of political exploitation and the attendant economic deprivation of Nigerians in the midst of increasing national plenty, the process of which is still being played out in the dispensation of the 1999 Abdul salaam Constitution.

In essence, the point is that June 12 cannot be taken in isolation if we are really serious about instituting a sustainable process for national development. It must be taken within the relevant context of its occurrence and the consequences that have been afflicted on the national psyche, particularly when the criminal perpetrators are riding high and free as leaders rather than as evil doers who rightly should be in jail.

What are the values of the annual demonstrations?

Yes, of course, those demonstrations have some values. But those values have their own timeline which is a definite entity. The demonstrations that were held throughout the country immediately after the dastardly and wicked cessation of announcing the results with its culmination in the anti history annulment by Babangida and the Babangida boys some of whom are today in high and otherwise political posts in this battered country are of historic value. Those prompt responses should have set true patriots on the road for a sustainable political mobilisation of the people towards power and a prevention of the same people who ruined the country from retaking power in Nigeria. But what happened? There was a gang up to sustain the perpetrators of the June 12 debacle in power with

• the emergence of Abacha, Sonekan as dictators;
• the attempted unification and emasculation of political thoughts and practice by the five parties run by these same politicians who are still in power today in the brazen and open attempt to anointing Abacha as a permanent ruler,
• the eventual restoration of the porously world acclaimed best military dictator in modern African history by the imperialists, Obasanjo as the elected President of Nigeria on the platform of the PDP a political organisation without membership but only leadership that is truly a gang of self seeking military apologists whose end point of interests is their personal pockets into which the national resources are corporately channeled.
• NADECO, the anti military organisation that was acclaimed world wide itself degenerated into a regional political party the Alliance for Democracy, AD after a serial attempt that failed to give the NADECO leaders a wanted foothold in the national gang ups of PDP, then ANPP. Bola Ige was the author of the constitutions of the three parties. 

Nigerians must always remember that the players in these political parties are the same people who ganged up with military political upstarts and desecrated our nation, looting our national wealth in a crescendo fashion over a period of 39 years. The UN has shown that Abacha alone stole 3 billion dollars in the period. How much did the rest steal? They are in groups, Babangida, the Babangida boys, the academicians who constituted their think tank, the civilian collaborators of the autocrats who eventually constituted the cores of PDP and ANPP? Even the few who initially joined the AD but have escaped as expected into the PDP and APP for better results in their self seeking ventures.

In his well publicised pre-launching press appearances, the Professor of Political Science promised the entire world that he has named in his delayed account all those who were responsible for the annulment of the June 12 election. The book came out only to emphasise the internal and external forces that lack personal identities. He further told us that Babangida the Maradonna was not a part of these internal and external forces. Nwosu was an essential participant among the pro military academicians that fashioned and implemented the Babangida programme.  He replaced Professor Eme Awa who would not want to be a part of the pseudo programme of disengagement from power. Babangida built his regime on four pillars

• The Babangida boys who were middle ranking officers in search of a taste in power and wealth, just like their older colleagues
• High ranking military officers who enjoyed the pecks of power that he eventually constituted into an Armed Forces Assembly
• Academicians who were eager to experiment with the Nigerian polity. Nwosu and Omoruyi belong to this group
• A high alert intelligence outfit with which he maintained a mutual balance with ready financial backing. This outfit attained its pinnacle with the formation of a National Guard outside the structure of the legal and constitutional armed forces by Babangida. Nigerian military officers agreed to serve in this illegal outfit.

It is on this premise that we discuss the next bit of this paper, the call for a two party constitutional state for Nigeria. Professor Nwosu has joined the band wagon of those flying the kite for this anti democratic proposition. Bolaji Akinyemi and the new Judge of the Supreme Court, Ogebe had flown similar kites recently. It is the same concept of two parties only and no more that was a cardinal component of the Babangida programme. They found it easier to manipulate the process. The dominant elements in Nigerian politics for five decades are used to crossing from party to party. A two party system is easier for them to manipulate the political process and terminate any election by forming the so called government of national unity.

Inherently, the two-party system is a denial of political thoughts and freedom to millions of Nigerians who can and will never want to express their political preferences in the context of two establishment parties. There is a very wide arena of unexplored political concepts that may be of use to an undeveloped economy like Nigeria. Babangida struck off fourteen political parties to create his caricatures of the NRC and SDP, the so called ideological contents of which even the members never bothered to define. A good look at the political history of Nigeria from 1950 when the present polity came into being till date shows that the dominant political organisations in 58 years of bickering and stealing have not been able to fashion an indigenous Nigerian political creed. Their politics have been for self and pocket through region, tribe and religion. The politics has been to patch the Nigerian composite pieces, tear it apart and repatch the pieces. There has not evolved any national essence, image and originality for national development. There is no definable national interest. Since 1966, except for the four years of the Unity Party of Nigeria UPN, and till today, there is no serious public discussion of development programmes. The public discourse is centred on party carpet crossing by politicians, looting of public funds, corruption, and quarrelsome distribution of national assets among the politicians and their cronies and electoral frauds. Restrictions of the number of political parties, even from our historical experience have never solved any of the problems of national development. In 1979, Obasanjo limited the political parties to the five pre-military ruling groups, though with new names. That constitution lasted only one term between two consecutive elections. Babangida created two caricatures of political parties. He easily manipulated them out of existence. Abacha manufactured five political parties only to use them in an undeclared coalition to perpetuate the tyrant as an eternal ruler of Nigeria. The new call for a two party state is an old intrigue by the ruling politicians and like all the previous intrigues against the people and their interests, it is bound to fail. All the previous intrigues that have failed to advance the political development of Nigeria include

• Regionalism and tribalism
• Military dictatorship
• Presidential system
• Obasanjo’s five party constitution
• Babangida’s two party system
• Abacha’s five party coalition trick
• Annulment of the election of June 12, 1993
• Repeated electoral frauds from 1951 to 2007
• The repeatedly expressed refusal of the right wing ruling politicians to operate the polity on the foundation of ideological contests.

The American party system example that the right wing politicians and military autocrats are always so eager to copy is not constitutionally a two party state. The American constitution provides for the existence of other political parties, no matter how fringe in size or influence. Indeed, there is in existence an American national frame. There is a concept of American existence and interest. The State actually exists. We are yet to build a true Nigerian state.

In order to truly build that required Nigerian State and values and interests and image, we need new political thinking and new political values. We need a new type of politician who is fully dedicated to the rapid economic development of Nigeria, irrespective of foreign investors. We can do it. No country has ever been developed by foreigners except for their own benefits: Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, Turkey, Brazil, etc. Only new political parties that have no historical linkages with the politicians and military dictators who have decimated our country in the past 58 years can do it. Such parties are already in formation: Democratic Alternative DA, National Conscience Party NCP, National Advance Party NAP, and Peoples’ Redemption Party PRP. These are peopled by those who are not riggers of elections. The members of these still small but historically desired parties are working hard to create the new politician and concepts for the rapid economic development of Nigeria. The work will take some time. Do not emasculate them. We cannot do without these new parties that are being built on new ideas and new approaches to politics and governance. 

Dr Abayomi Ferreira

abayomiferreira@yahoo.co.uk

Lagos

Robot  # 1 | 19.06.2008 10:33

Nwosu, June 12, Two Party System ...Read the full article.

ocnus  # 2 | 20.06.2008 05:44

At the risk of annoying people I shall point out again that while it is no doubt true that IBB voided the June 12 election and precipitated a national emergency the truth behind that has never been fully understood by the Nigerian populace. The Nigerian military were adamant that the Babangida government should never allow Abiola to run for office. The basis for this was the information being circulated in Washington, London and Lagos of Abioloa's alleged ties to the drugs business. The US, in particular, had expressed its strong opposition to Abiola as President; not because of his politics or allegations of corruption, but rather for the evidence they felt was correct about Abiola's alleged drugs connections. This was raised in the Military Council on three occasions and Babangida was warned. He refused to take a decision until it was almost too late. When he did he precipitated the crisis of June 12. His friends in the military supported him but were let down by IBB's lack of decisiven. US Ambassador Walker and others visited IBB and told him but he dithered which made the impact worse.

denker  # 3 | 20.06.2008 05:59

The basis for this was the information being circulated in Washington, London and Lagos of Abioloa's alleged ties to the drugs business. ...similar story was also in circulation in germany...until Abiola's Death we were unable to verify/validate it...maybe, one day the truth will emerge..the answer, my friend, is blowing in the WIND!