Real Reason June 12 1993 Elections in Nigeria Were Annulled.

June 12 has been touted as a grand elite conspiracy. It is not: it was a conspiracy between two, and only two persons alone; General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sanni Abacha. The twosome had to draft in the greedy, thieving elite when it became clear the situation was getting more intractable than envisaged.
In the heat of the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections, Gen Muhammadu Buhari,  now Nigerian president, granted Tell magazine (or The News) an interview in which he categorically stated that the elections were not meant to work in the first place. It was a revelation that should have been obvious to everyone in the first place, the storied elections being a culmination of a macabre political transition process in which two political parties were registered by fiat by the military junta headed by Gen Ibrahim Babangida who loved to style himself the evil genius. It might sound a bit funny that political institutions in Africa were being modeled after the Republican and Democratic parties of the US but the joke turned a bit flat when Babangida started banning, unbanning and then banning again political aspirants and election dates got mired in endless postponements. It was a process meant to have one logical end but Nigerians, being the passionate and passive people they are, had to wait for Buhari to reveal it to them. When it was too late.
Yet, the interview, revealing as it was, was only a tip of the iceberg. A huge chunk of horror and distress lay underneath. Being a measured man, flames were already high and he was reluctant to pour in more petrol. Otherwise he would have revealed that when Babangida was plotting to overthrow him as military head of state, he swore to Gen Sanni Abacha, whose support was vital to the success of the coup, on the Koran, that he would hand over power to Abacha, nobody else but Abacha, anytime he relinquished power. Not that Abacha believed him, he knew Babangida liked swearing falsely, taking the name of Allah in vain. In fact, Buhari got wind of the plot against him and promptly invited Babangida, his Chief of Army Staff. 'Ibro, I heard that you were plotting a coup against me'. Babangida denied it outright and had a Koran brought in, on which he swore. So merely swearing on the Holy Book wasn't going to fool Abacha
Nobody can say with certainty how this power-transfer oath between these two men would have unraveled but two events were to later play hugely to Abacha's favor. The first was the first plot against Babangida, otherwise known as the Vatsa coup. The rebels had tried to draw in Col Alalade, an Abacha acolyte, into the plot. He refused but kept silent. Not until the conspirators set after him, fearing he would let the cat out of the bag. He was fatally wounded but did not succumb to his injuries immediately and it was on his death bed that he sent for Abacha and revealed everything to him. Abacha did not hesitate to save Babangida's skin.
Again in 1990, in a far more violent insurrection led by a young major, Gideon Orkar. As the gunfire of the mutiny died down, quelled by Abacha's troops, it dawned on Babangida that whether he was sincere in his oath to hand power over to Abacha or not, he had no choice now. Hence, the whole transition program was no more than a contraption, a rigmarole, to bring to fruition the fulfillment of a pact he swore to in 1984.
So by the time the presidential elections were held on June 12, 1993 and the results started tricking in, giving Chief M.K.O.Abiola an overwhelming lead against his rival, Alhaji Bashir Tofa, Babangida was practically a prisoner in Aso Rock, cornered like a rat in his own seat of power, held hostage by Abacha. He has made so much noise about officers and prominent northerners being against Abiola's presidency. It was all bunkum. Only one prominent northerner was against Abiola. That was Abacha. And he was the person that mattered, control of the army being completely in his hands. Babangida himself was finished militarily in the aftermath of the Orkar coup, having escaped from the mutineers in an old Peugeot 504 station wagon through a secret path out of Dodan Barracks, the then seat of power, dressed as a cook. It was the worst humiliation he would face in his life and in the wake of that, Abacha was the de facto military strongman, planting his boys and buddies in the strategic military formations. Therefore as the controversy over the polls raged, Babangida was a commander-in-chief unable to give orders to his own bodyguards. When Professor Omo Omoruyi, head of the Center for Democratic Studies visited him in Aso Rock during the crisis, Babangida intimated him of people watching all his movements and would not hesitate to kill him. He was right. Those invisible eyes were Abacha's men stationed everywhere in the seat of power, armed with the order to move against him if there was slightest inclination to do so. A move to announce the results and declare Abiola as president would have sent him instantly into his grave. In fact, Abacha would have finished him off instantly if not for the fact that it was Abacha who insisted in the first place the polls should go ahead, believing Tofa, a fellow northerner who hailed from the same Kano state as himself would win the election. It would then be easy for him to move against a fellow northerner. The average northerner does not really care about who governs them, civilian or military, as long as he is from the north. Spurious sample polls had fooled Abacha into believing that the voting patterns that brought Shehu Shagari's NPN into power in the defunct 2nd Republic would be reenacted. Northern votes would be delivered for Tofa en bloc and votes from the fractious south would be shared between the two candidates. The more discerning Babangida wasn't so sure and was for the postponement of the polls, favoring interim political arrangements, schemes in which he was well-versed. As he feared, Abiola won hands down, fair and square, taking the vital northern city of Kano, home of his opponent. There was no way Abacha was going to seize power from Abiola, northerners had been in power for a hefty 14 years, besides Abiola would have moved against him the moment he assumed power, Abacha being a famed coup plotter. Annulling the elections became the only option. An alternative was to announce the results of the elections and declare Abiola as president. And die. At the hands of Abacha. Sad Babangida lacked the courage to lay down his life for honor.

Abiola

Babangida

Abacha

General Babangida and General Abacha: A 'Friendship' that Ruined Nigeria 1.

By late morning on February 13, 1976, Col. Buka Dimkah and his co-conspirators had succeeded in assassinating the head of state, General Ramat Mohammed, and in capturing the national radio station where he made his infamous broadcast of imposing a dawn to dusk curfew. It was as far as he got. Loyal troops rallied quickly and it was left to Col. Ibrahim Babangida to persuade him the game was up. And at the same time, carry out a bit of reconnaissance. Considering the heat of the moment, it was a task that would require tremendous bravery, even foolhardiness. Babangida went and instantly catapulted himself into national fame. And power. Overnight, a mid-level officer started dining and wining with the head of state himself, and other powers that be. Pictures would later emerge of Babangida playing checkers with General Olusegun Obasanjo and General Theophilus Danjuma, head of state and chief of army staff respectively, the two most powerful men in Nigeria at that time.
The taste of power would never leave his mouth and as early as 1981, was himself already plotting the overthrow of President Shehu Shagari, the civilian regime that supplanted the military regime of General Obasanjo in 1979. He had enjoyed the trappings of power and had evidently seen that those who were his superiors in the military regime he helped sustain were not better than him intellectually and morally. Which was a grave indictment of the superiors because Babangida's moral quotient was abysmally low and the intelligence he often prided himself on bordered mostly on the charms of a confidence trickster. As he himself unwittingly confessed, comparing himself to Diego Maradona, the great footballer whose celebrated dribbling skills must have inspired the general in weaving intricate and outlandish political, economic and social twists and turns around hapless Nigerians while he held sway as president. The goodwill, if there was any, that Shagari enjoyed on coming to power barely lasted three months. His administration was horribly effete, dominated by incredibly venal subordinates who were far more powerful than he was. But corruption wasn't the only evil of his regime. In 1982, he orchestrated the massacre of hundreds of his own kinsmen in Bakolori, Sokoto State, poor folks protesting the confiscation of their farming lands for a dam project without being paid adequate compensation. The army moved in and mowed down hundreds in what would later become known as the Bakolori Massacre. The 1983 national elections, the only one his regime would superintend easily became the last straw that broke his back. These were so rigged that ballot boxes and papers were being hawked in the open streets and the outrage and violence that greeted the polls was the coup de grace Babangida needed to stage his own coup. Helped ironically by the sheer cowardice Shagari himself displayed in refusing to disengage him from the army, having been warned several times, by all and sundry, that if his regime was to last, Babangida held the key to that longevity. Babangida had acquired tremendous wealth in the defunct military regime and in the intervening years had bribed and corrupted many a military officer: buying for them luxurious vacations, building houses for them, sponsoring children's education abroad. He stuck out as a dangerous sore thumb to the civilian regime and the fact that nobody deemed it expedient to move against him was a sordid testament to Shagari's overall weakness.
Nobody was going to shed tears, sincere or crocodile, if Shagari was removed but then Babangida would still have to need troops and several other officers and the officer that mattered most was Brigadier Sanni Abacha, General Officer Commanding 2nd Mechanized Division, Ibadan, a formation that had under its command all the army formations in Lagos, the seat of power. Apart from being a fearless army officer, Abacha himself had a large following in the army. A lifestyle dominated by women and beer had ensured he was not without a plethora of buddies that he could count on at any time. Abacha himself was to announce the overthrow of Shagari's regime in 1983.
Babangida later claimed in an interview that in a meeting of senior officers convened to choose a successor to Shagari, most of those present tried to prevail on him to accept the post but that he declined out of altruism, or whatever he attributed to his decision. He had his own loyalists, no doubt, but General Muhammadu Buhari was the obvious choice. Like Shagari, he was a Fulani and it would be of less consternation to the Hausa-Fulani power base if a Fulani man overthrew another Fulani. Babangida was not even technically Hausa, his origins being farther south in Bida, Niger State. Then there was the resolute stance of General Mamman Vatsa who was Babangida's friend and knew him very well. Mamman stood up, he was a poet, and in trenchant eloquence, harangued his fellow officers that if they were removing Shagari as a result of corruption and inefficiency, it made sense that the efficient, spartan and incorrigible Buhari should supplant him. Mamman was to be later executed by Babangida for plotting against him when he would eventually become head of state. That would be about four years later and General Domkat Bali, a top member of the Armed Forces Ruling Council that confirmed Vatsa's death sentence, had admitted that the evidence they relied upon to nail him was weak, in reality, the seeds of his death was sowed in that meeting that chose a successor to Shagari. Babangida was not happy about his snub. He had plotted, organized and financed the coup and it must have necessarily riled him to be denied his just rewards but there was little he could really do. He quietly swallowed his bile and decided to wait for another chance.
Which he knew would certainly present itself. And he was emboldened in his expectations by his intimate knowledge of Buhari. He knew that Buhari would never succeed in a country gone to dogs like Nigeria. He knew Buhari was disciplined and incorrigible, traits that made him the archetypal army officer, but he also knew him to be a poor administrator. Buhari was a 'civil service' army officer. In administration, he could be counted upon to leave tasks, even important one that demanded personal attention, to subordinates. He would leave tasks and instructions to subordinates and expect them to carry out their performance to the letter. With the civil service Nigeria has, that was going to be a recipe for disaster. In many instances would he be unaware of what was going on in his own administration. The qualities that made Buhari a splendid officer were going to be grossly inadequate as the head of state. Babangida started plotting against Buhari the very day Buhari became head of state.