Buhari, Abiola, Obasanjo and June 12.

In the heat of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, with nationwide protests the most visible affairs on Nigerian streets and the nation on the brink of collapse, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo formed an organisation that had as its immediate and express mandate, the re-validation of the election results. It was almost a national coalition, credible too, with the present head of state, President Muhammadu Buhari, a prominent member. In its inaugural meeting in Otta Farms, home of Obasanjo, the group issued a communique which expressly condemned the cancellation of the polls and called for their re-validation and attendant declaration of Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president-elect of the country. Gen Buhari was to give fillip to this quest by granting an interview to Tell magazine in which he categorically stated, told all and sundry, that the elections were meant to fail right from the beginning. 'The elections were meant not meant to work, right from their inception' were his words. A copy of the interview should still be available in the relevant archives. In the same interview, Buhari debunked the insinuation that the north was against the candidature of Abiola, reminding everyone that Abiola won in Kano, the home state of his opponent, Alhaji Tofa, and challenging Gen. Babangida, the grim strongman who conducted and then annulled the elections to name just a couple of those in north opposed to Abiola. With the tension in the national air so thick and Babangida cornered in his Aso Rock Villa, government headquarters, like a rat that had overplayed its hands, Buhari's bold interview was a very dangerous thing to do. It was just like laying his life on the line and in no small measure did he alarm the powers that be.
By the time the meeting would reconvene in the same venue, Buhari got the rudest shock shock of his life. In the interval, Babangida had sold the idea of the Interim National Government to Obasanjo, a stop-gap arrangement to be headed by the industry titan, Chief Ernest Shonekan, A fellow Yoruba like Abiola and even from the same city of Abeokuta. Shonekan had little compunction in playing Judas and so was Obasanjo. In fact it dawned on everyone that Obasanjo's earlier moves to side with Abiola were nothing more than a mischief to harvest some of the national outpourings of anger and put himself a bit in the spotlight. He was a guy who liked swimming with the tide but not for long. A new current and he was away with a fresh shoal. Buhari was dumbfounded when Obasanjo started to digress from the commonly-stated objective of poll re-validation and realized he had been fooled into being drafted into a fool's errand.  In fact, Buhari stormed out of the meeting halfway and was never to attend it again. In fact, the meeting was never to hold again.
Hence it is on record that Buhari was the only leader to have taken a consistent stand on the whole June 12 saga, even endangering his life in his vociferous insistence, and his decision to honor Abiola should be seen only in this light. When he became the president of the country again and the clamor to honor Abiola got strident, Obasanjo told not a few aides that doing such was going to anger the north. He simply lacked the gravitas for boldness. Now a northerner has done it and everyone is happy, north and south. 

Buhari

Abiola

Babangida