M.K.O.Abiola:Buhari Rights a Wrong.

Righting a wrong is not, often, the same as righting a situation. In most instances, the wrong outlives the situation so long that rectifying it can only be symbolic. Of recent, President Trump issued a pardon to Jack Johnson, the first American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson happened to be a black but had a white wife and was jailed under the notorious Mann Act forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for 'immoral' purposes: charges as racially motivated as they can be in that Jim Crow era. That can only happen now in a distressing comedy but over a hundred years ago, such offenses, even though hideously unfair, were serious violations under laws extant then. Now, such pardon cannot undo the term Johnson served in prison but such gestures help put events in the correct perspective and could help prevent a future recurrence.
It is in light of this that we must appreciate and understand the decision of President Muhannadu Buhari to declare June 12 of every year the appropriate time to celebrate democracy in Nigeria. It was on that day in 1993 that Nigerians rose en masse to elect Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president of the country on the platform of the Social Democratic Party in an election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the country up to date. Thereafter, the polls were strangely annulled by the then head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose tutelage the elections were organized and conducted in the first place: a heinous cancellation that sparked a quickfire series of crises such as the formation of the Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, soon declared illegal by the courts and in no time toppled by General Sanni Abacha, the de facto military strongman;  the death of Abiola in Abacha's prison as a result of insisting on reclaiming his stolen presidency; the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo for coup plotting; the death of Abacha himself and the restoration of democracy on May 29, 1999.
Officially recognizing Abiola's role in the evolution of democracy and freedom of choice that we now enjoy will not bring him back to life and neither will it even begin to repair the ruin visited on his businesses and large family. The posthumous medal awarded him, Nigeria's highest, will do him little good and will certainly fit poorly on his neck skeleton. Symbolic things do no such things.
But this recognition will help etch vividly on our mind that his struggles helped call time on military misadventures in Africa and went a long way in cementing democracies now entrenching solidly all over the continent. It will also give some joy to those splendid supporters who stood by him till the end. Once again, Buhari makes the right choice.