June 12 second most significant national crisis after civil war, says Fayemi

…Olujimi, Bamidele Preach Unity
Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has said that the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election was the second most significant national crisis after the civil war of 1967-1970 because of the reverberating effect it had on the polity.

The governor said President Muhammadu Buhari would be respected for recognising the June 12 election and instituting the date as the country’s rightful Democracy Day.

Fayemi said Buhari’s acknowledgment of Chief MKO Abiola as the undisputable winner of the election was even more rewarding.

In his Democracy Day broadcast yesterday, Fayemi said: “He (Buhari) did not stop there, he also awarded, posthumously, the highest honour in the land, generally conferred on presidents, the award of the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR), on him.

“This symbolic gesture has provided a psycho-social healing for the people who sacrificed, including their lives, for the enthronement of democracy.

“The declaration of June 12 as our National Democracy Day therefore, means for me, a significant and courageous move to further enculturate accountability even about knotty and unresolved historical issues of national importance. One therefore has to commend the president for this historical righting of a wrong past.”

Meanwhile, the former Senate Minority leader, Chief Biodun Olujimi, has called on Nigerians to use the significance of June 12 to pursue and promote issues that foster national cohesion.

Olujimi, in a statement she personally signed yesterday in Ado-Ekiti, said Nigerians needed a united front as exemplified by June 12, 1993, election when Nigerians shunned ethnicity and religion to vote for Abiola.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, said the lingering crisis that trailed the annulment of Nigeria’s freest and fairest presidential election was devoid of religious and tribal sentiments, noting that it signposted that Nigerians were united in thought and spirit.

Bamidele described Abiola and other pro-democracy Nigerians who lost their lives during the struggle to validate the June 12 mandate as the real pillars of the country’s democracy.

He cautioned against tribal and ethnic politics in the country, saying: “An average Nigerian cares less about tribe. All they quest for is improved standard of living from any leader, wherever he may have come from.

“The task now for our leader is to devise ways of healing the wound inflicted on our nation by politicians, who looked for ethnic and religious faultiness to rip the country apart.”