Legal luminary, Afe Babalola (SAN) has expressed that true democracy remains elusive in Nigeria 28 years after the June 12, 1993, election, believed to have been won by Chief Moshood Abiola, was annulled by the military.
Babalola who recalled the day the issue of June 12 was finally put to rest in the court, in view of a one-sheet gazette presented by the government’s lawyer, described it as “the saddest day for the Judiciary in our country” and “the beginning of a journey the end of which nobody knows.”
The elder statesman, who was Abiola’s lawyer in the case, stated this on Friday in a statement titled, ‘June 12, whether Abiola died in vain or not: Time will tell.’
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He expressed that the ghost of the annulment of the election had continued to haunt Nigeria as he questioned whether the declaration of June 12 as Democracy Day by President Muhammadu Buhari had achieved any result or not.
He said, “The man (Abiola) went through an election and to get a judgment, he was sent out of the court with a gazette that the election has been annulled. But I added a prophetic statement then that “this is the beginning of a journey the end of which nobody knows.
“Today, many years after that prophetic statement, Nigeria is still on the search for true democracy which began on June 12, 1993. Nigeria had been denied true democracy and until we have democracy properly, the journey which began with the annulment of late Abiola’s election of June 12, 1993, will remain uncompleted,” the statement read in part.