June 12, ’93:  I’m still in pain 27 years after –Rights activist

Although, the event of June 12, 1993 has come and gone, its agony still remains fresh in the memories of those who were directly on the fire line of the security agents.One of the lucky survivors of the horrific events of the era, FunsoMojuba recounted his experience during the ‘war,’ lamenting that 27 years after the struggle to actualise the June 12, 1993 annulled presidential election, he is still in pain.

Mojuba spoke with INIOBONG IWOK at a press conference organised by the June 12 Vanguard recently. Excerpts:

As an activist, who took part in the struggle to actualise the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, what was the experience like?

The experience is better imagined. It was terrible and horrible. Can you believe that 27 good years after, I am still in pain? The experience is still bitter even in nearly three decades after the criminal annulment of that popularly won election. We have just lost a Comrade, BabalolaMedayedupin this month. He was under 20 years in 1993 when  M.K.OAbiola, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), presidential flag bearer launched his ‘HOPE and Bye -Bye to poverty’ campaign slogan.

We have lost many like Medayedupin who did not and will never witness a truly Democratic Nigeria they fought for because they are already gone. I am still in pain now about the unpatriotic annulment of that historic election because so many of Nigerians’ lives were and are still being sacrificed to sustain the evil interests of the reactionary southern elite and the ruinous conservative northern oligarchy.

The casualties are so many: apart from those who have lost their lives during and after the military regimes, there are those who lost their limbs, sights, careers and livelihoods to the annulment till today. Pity!

But how come you are still in pain after all those years?

I have not fully recovered from the damage done to my sight, career and some dangerous health issues like high blood pressure and memory loss induced by the brutal incarceration I was put through during the June 12 de-annulment struggle.

And that’s the story of many of our comrades and people who ventured to participate in the patriotic struggle to promote participatory democracy in Nigeria.

Did you just say brutal incarceration?

Yes. The State Security Service (SSS) operatives finally caught up with me and two of my comrades, Akin Abosanyin and Tunde Solomon Ayegboka on the 28th of January 1998, after a five-year manoeuvrings in a sort of cat and mouse game.

Obviously, someone close to us gave out nearly precise information about us to the authorities. The person who betrayed us must have for a while distanced himself from us because from the side comments of the operatives, they nearly missed our house. They thanked God for that because they would have embarrassed another person in the neighbourhood.

This was the first weakness I noticed about the Nigerian state apparatus; that, they most often don’t exercise enough patience to conduct diligent investigations before swooping on their targets. They use conjectures (which they call theory) and torture to extract information. The SSS call everybody they arrest ‘subject’ which make you less than human in their consideration for you. You are a ‘thing’! And so shall you be treated- a parasite endangering government. Thus, from the moment and manners of arrest we were treated like dangerous species that must be summarily destroyed.

How was your arrest effected?

They charged at us at 2:00am when the night was darkest at our apartment in Ilorin, like a commando force detailed to burst a band of coup plotters ready to strike in minutes.

They operated till 6:20am before we were herded into a waiting Peugeot saloon car. They came in two vehicles. All of the eight operatives were specially armed. After finding their way in, they shouted and announced to us that, ‘We are Special Presidential Task Force- (SPTF) with licence to kill.’ And they truly attempted to kill us to prove that their intelligence work was properly done and that we actually resisted arrest.

This much we later realised before we were thrown into the underground cell when a man we later knew to be their Director of Operations asked with a ‘clenched teeth’, ‘how did it went?’ The answer the team leader of the arrest gave him using body and sign language confirmed the murderous intention they planned against us.

During the arrest, Comrade Akin Abosanyin was the most brutalised. His tough appearance made him their number one subject to deal with. They at first underrated me but later they discovered that we were intact like a piece of fabric. One of them, name withheld, wanted to shoot me on the left knee. He accused me of psyche-influencing Comrade Akin. That he suspected I was using cult signals to communicate.

As things are now in the country, are you hopeful that democracy you fought for would germinate and grow to be fruitful?

Yes, I am hopeful going by the activities of Lagos State Governor, BabajideOlusolaSanwo-Olu in office within just a year. His performance has shown that our struggle for June 12 would not be in vain. Sanwo-Olu, just like Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) convinced us that the dividends of democracy are obtainable for the people. I believe with time, things would get better as democracy’s tap root sinks deeper and deeper in our soil.

And with this development, I pray we never sink into the valley of dictatorship in the country. In fact, our experience 27years ago cannot be described even with all the superlative adjectives in the dictionary. Never again must we allow our country to slip back into a situation that dragged the country into such an agonising period 27 years ago.

And by your own estimation, are you saying Sanwo-Olu is a beacon of democratic…?

(Cuts in)Yes, of course. He has been following the footsteps of Tinubu and Fashola in sustaining the June 12 memory and its ideals by making the dividends of democracy available to the people. His first year performance is a testimony to that.

Governor Sanwo-Olu has vindicated the good people of Lagos that they did not make a mistake by voting for him to be their governor.He stole the hearts of the people with his commitment to pay N35, 000 as minimum wage, commitment to a secured state and administration of justice and empowerment schemes.

He thereafter, capped his first year in office with a superlative performance in the way he handled the matter of COVID-19 that brought out the best out of him.

Against this background, I will advise the governor to improve on his first year performance just as I will enjoin the people to double their support for the governor so he can be encouraged to do more and take the state to the next level of economic Eldorado.