•Babangida Photo: Sun News Publishing

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Second Republic Minister of Internal Affairs, Dr. Ibrahim Tahir, says unless former President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida opens up on the annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election, which results were announced recently by Prof. Humphrey Nwosu the truth will remain elusive.

Nwosu had said, at the launch of his book in Abuja recently, that Chief MKO Abiola scored over eight million votes to win the election which was later annulled. He, however, failed to say who voided the election and his comments had attracted widespread criticism.

Tahir told Daily Sun, in Bauchi, that he was not surprised that Nwosu exonerated Babangida, describing revelation in the controversial book as “wayward”.

According to him, Nwosu’s exposition remains an exercise in futility until Babangida opens up on who annulled the poll.
“It is apposite to say that we are in Nigeria becoming a little bit too wayward in presenting, or unearthing, or exposing, or dilating matters, which, in many political cultures, would have been subject to what we might call the 50th year rule, whereby certain epochal events are closed to public view until after 50 years,” he said.

Tahir, who is the Talban Bauchi, added: “We shall have to wait to know the truth and the full facts.”
He pointed out that June 12 annulment, “was a complicated situation of power play in which all sort of currents were playing. There was one current, which was floated by a lot of people saying after this vote, there should have been a continuation of the Babangida administration with a French type system of government and the winner of the election simply styled prime minister, in the French way, to work as a kind of staff for the president.

“There was another current, which said no, there should have been a more interim period controlled by civilians headed by Abiola himself as head of government business. Quite a lot happened after the ouster of Shonekan.It would not be easy to get to the bottom of this information until IBB himself speaks.”
The former minister observed that it does not do anybody any harm for Nwosu to have gone the way he did in his book.

He said: “A lot of people have reacted that IBB could not be absolved, that he was part of the military machinery. But that is the problem with leadership and which is what Africa has somehow not learnt to accept, which is that it doesn’t matter what happens, so to that extent you could not exonerate IBB, but in the details of what happened, different scenario might have been. But it would not be easy to get to the bottom of this information until IBB himself speaks.

“Key characters have gone, Abacha is gone; some of the key movers in the top echelon of the military have also died, so maybe we have to wait a little to know the full facts. In the meantime, anybody’s interpretation is as good as anybody’s.”