SAN FRANCISCO, June 11, (THEWILL) – The pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere Renewal Group, ARG has requested the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government to release the official result of the June 12, 1993, Presidential Election, widely believed to have been won by the late M.K.O Abiola.
Stressing that “June 12 is no longer a struggle but now an obligation,” it contended that releasing the result would “reverse the stigma occasioned by the foolish act of canceling that election, adjudged to be the most peaceful in the history of Nigeria.”
The ARG chairman, Hon. Olawale Oshun, in a statement issued on Saturday to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of June 12, argued that as the beneficiary of a ballot revolution that mostly mirrored that of 1993, Buhari owed Nigerians the duty of declassifying the result, especially now that 23 years had elapsed and the Official Secret Act could no longer be binding on the document.
The group further argued that if the result is released, it would open up the “hypocrisy” of military rule and help project democracy as a better form of governance.
According to the statement, “The people have played their own part. It is now the obligation of the beneficiaries of that struggle to set the country on a truly democratic path by deliberately replacing every stamp of military rule on Nigeria’s nationhood, including the imposed governance structure and constitution, through democratic rights and tenets. There is no alternative way to deepen democracy in Nigeria.
“Let nobody be deceived. Until the federal government takes conscious steps to restructure Nigeria, the country will continue to wobble from one crisis of nationhood.”
ARG went on to warn that continuing to ignore calls to publish the result would amount to a tacit support by elected officials for everything that transpired during the military era, a reason that, it said, military rule had transited to ‘do or die’ politics and citizens believed they had a right to take up arms against their country.
The group “therefore called on President Buhari, as a former military ruler and now a self-confessed democrat, to see himself as best poised to help Nigeria make this transition. This can be his best legacy and the starting point, we dare say, is to release the June 12 presidential election result and its winner appropriately recognised and honoured.”
