The Textile Workers Union on Thursday commended President Muhammadu Buhari for declaring June 12 as Democracy Day and for conferring a posthumous award on Moshood Abiola.
The presidency made the announcement Wednesday night in honour of Mr Abiola, who won the annulled presidential election of June 12, 1993.
Mr Abiola was arrested in 1994 while struggling to claim his mandate from military dictators at the time. He died in custody in July 1998.
Also to be honoured are Abiola’s running mate, Babagana Kingibe, and late human rights activist, Gani Fawehinmi SAN. Both would receive the second highest national honour, Grand Commander of the Niger (GCON).
In a statement signed by its spokesperson, Issa Aremu, the union saluted Mr Buhari on what it called “the courage and sensitivity” to confer the honour of GCFR on Mr Abiola.
The union also said President “gave the correct signal that never again would any group of people violate the mandate of Nigerian people through mandate annulment” .
According to the union, the president had restored the people’s confidence in his administration and in sustaining the country’s integrity and democracy.
”President Buhari had commendably rekindled faith in sustainability of democracy in Africa’s largest democracy. The President gave the correct signal that never again would any group of people violate the mandate of Nigerian people through mandate annulment,” the union said.
The statement said President Buhari had brought integrity to governance by “shunning the hypocrisy and shameless denials” of past leaders of Nigeria that June 12 was truly a watershed in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria.”
“June 12, 1993 was far more symbolic of democracy in the Nigerian context than May 29 as it was “June 12, 1993 that Nigerians in millions expressed their democratic will in what was undisputedly the freest, fairest and most peaceful elections since our Independence,” the statement said.
According to the statement, the union had earlier urged President Buhari in 2015 to to offer leadership and build a groundswell of national consensus to posthumously accord acceptable deserved national and global honour to the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Mr Abiola, “with other victims of that era of military impunity.”
It said the “June 12 spectre” had “repeatedly hunted Nigeria’s democratic process, the president has now “exorcised the spectre”.
The statement observed that given the free and fair election that led to the emergence President Buhari in 2015, he was best positioned to rightly “name, shame and damn the criminal annulment of the 1993 presidential election results adjudged to be the most free and fair”.
According to the statement, the distortion and corruption of Nigeria’s democratic aspiration started with the singular annulment of 1993 June 12 free and fair elections.
“Since the shameful events of 1993, election riggers had perfected the art of violations of peoples’ mandates through varying subterfuges that included ballot snatching, alteration of electoral rules, falsifications of election results as we witnessed in particular in 2003 and 2007 elections.”
It said the honor for Mr Abiola and others is honor for the nation, adding that by dignifying the victims of June 12, Nigeria has invariably damned those behind the decades of impunity in Nigeria. (Premium Times)
