The Presidency said those united by the annulment of the 1993 presidential election are angry with President Muahmmadu Buhari for righting the wrong that nourished them.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said this yesterday in an article titled “June 12 Tsunami and the Ones Who Won’t Forgive Buhari.”
He said among those people were men and women in the temple of justice, who used one subterfuge or the other to keep June 12 buried and its biggest symbol, the presumed winner of the election, MKO Abiola, in detention until his end was induced.
Shehu said those people were after what would happen to them since Buhari declared June 12 a national public holiday and honoured the heroes of the 1993 presidential election.
He said it was pretty obvious that the “unjust” annulment was a huge elite conspiracy, well beyond the schemes and machinations, for which the then Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, had established a formidable reputation.
The presidential spokesman said June 12 annulment was inspired and supported in spirit, cash and in kind by high-level citizens who saw an opportunity for themselves and cashed in upon it.
“Beyond the coterie of two dozen or so military officials whose names have been documented as literally having had a gun to the head of their Commander-in-Chief in trying to induce the annulment, there were tens, possibly hundreds of co-conspirators who either forced the annulment in one way or the other, or joined the sustenance of the injustice done to Abiola and Nigerian voters which, from then evolved into an industry of a kind, supplying incomes and conferring privileges of state upon those in the plot.
“Many have forgotten by now that an interim government was contemplated at that time and a number of retired army generals were on queue, having been invited to get ready to head it. There was the foremost social scientist of the Yoruba stock who prophesied to the then rulers, on the day the announcement of election results was suspended that “the Yoruba will not be angry with the Head of State if he will go ahead to annul the election,” Shehu said.
He said only Buhari could say whether or not there would be a probe of the annulment of the presidential election considered the fairest and freest in the nation’s history.
Daily Trust
