June 12 annulment unjustified, painful — Akume, Onanuga

By Soni Daniel, Editor, Northern Region

ABUJA — The annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by businessman Moshood Abiola was unjustified and remains a painful episode in Nigeria’s political history, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, has said.

Akume stated this at a world press conference in Abuja on Tuesday to mark Democracy Day, insisting there was no basis for cancelling what is widely regarded as Nigeria’s freest and fairest election.

He argued that the annulment disrupted Nigeria’s political development and complicated the process of power rotation between the North and South.

“It is sad that the June 12, 1993 election was annulled for unjustified reasons. The annulment has complicated power shift between North and South and set back the hand of political development in a way,” Akume said.

He added that Nigerians have since drawn lessons from the incident and are committed to ensuring that such an occurrence never repeats itself.

“If we were to take a vote, no fewer than two-thirds of Nigerians would have condemned the annulment. But we have learnt our lessons as Nigerians and have now accepted that never again should any election be annulled in Nigeria,” he said.

Akume further stressed that the voice of the people must remain sacrosanct, noting that democracy remains the most acceptable system of leadership selection in the country.

“The lesson is that the voice of the people must be sacrosanct. That is the beauty of democracy because we prefer the ballot to bullets,” he added.

Also speaking, Presidential Spokesman Bayo Onanuga described the annulment as painful, saying the military authorities never gave a clear explanation for the action.

He noted that Abiola was the clear winner of the election, adding that the results had already been collated nationwide and were only awaiting formal announcement.

“Abiola was the clear winner of June 12 and there is no need to refer to him as the ‘presumed winner’ because the results had already been collated from all the states and were only awaiting announcement,” Onanuga said.