BREAKING: June 12: Tinubu Has Special Gift for Nigerians At NASS' Joint Session To Celebrate Holiday (Politics)

Chief MKO Abiola, casting his vote, fateful June 12, 1993

 Today, June 12 has been celebrated as Nigeria's Democracy Day for some years now. It use to be May 29, before the Buhari administration changed it to the current day. 

     President Bola Tinubu 

This satisfies the yearnings if several pro democracy activists who firmly believe that the bedrock of migeria's unbroken Democratic rule for 26 years and counting, was laid by the election adjudged as the freest and fairest in Nigeria which held on this date in 1993. 

Judging by revelations by Ibrahim Babanguda who suspended poll announcements, Henry Nwosu who shepherded the electoral commission that  organized the elections and several credible sources, MKO Abiola won the election, later cancelled by Gen. Sani Abacha after sacking the interim national government which Babangida set up in a palace coup.

Abiola vociferously contested his "mandate" ashe called it which Nigerians entrusted him with at the polls, June 12, 1993.  He first went on exile to do this but later returned to Nigeria. Following the Epetedo declaration where Abiola announced himself as president of Nigeria, he was declared wanted. He went underground.  In 1994, he was later arrested in his home and whisked away. He was never to return home alive again. 

Abiola died four years later, June 8, 1998, to widespread wailings, lamentation and violence. It precipitated a chain of events that quickly birthed democracy rule and the emergency if Olusegun Ibadanjo as elected president in 1999. 

The June 12 holiday is to commemorate this epoch event in the nation's history. 

The National Assembly would hold a joint session which President Tinubu will attend. In poignant commemoration, he would append his signature to the established or the South West Development Commission.