Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, President, Centre for Change has called for a healthy reunion of erstwhile June 12 activists for a new Nigeria to emerge.
Okei-Odumakin, in a statement on Monday in Lagos to commemorate the 2023 Nigeria’s Democracy Day celebration, said the reunion had become imperative now that an erstwhile activist, Bola Tinubu had emerged Nigerian President.
She said: “Yes, June 12 is unity day and national holiday. Where is the value in all these receding faces and figures? Receding with cogent argument and just moral pressure.
“Would it be now a moment of emerging when erstwhile comrades could be forthcoming ? Returnees on righteousness. To finish the project. Standardise elections.
“Not especially toward any juicy appointments but to rise in duty and in dignity to make offerings of the mind which can also be virtual. Will they be heard and realised?
“Will erstwhile comrades have a dutiful communion in a salute to the June 12 epic.
“And a Nigerian president at such a table, designed not to feast or chop as such but to bless the struggle for a new Nigeria from the recesses of the same Aso Rock where orders once issued forth to crush NADECO and all June 12 comrades.”
According to her, President Bola Tinubu was a NADECO member and what NADECO did was to ask late Gen. Sani Abacha some uncomfortable questions about June 12, 1993 presidential election.
Okei-Odumakin recounted that Tinubu had to escape through the NADECO route when he was being asked his life as answer while others were served the same compliments.
“Yet, the story today is not what Tinubu did or failed to do. I just reflect on the “others”. Where are we?
“Where are the others who have not rested and not turned political moguls? Why has Tinubu attained the heights alone?
“Did he walk right and the other chieftains walked wrong? Or they walked right and he changed path? That one cannot follow the other. A detachment of the falcon and the falconer at the risk of the query on which is which.
“This question is not academic. It raises a poser on the fold of activists of different hues and activisms of different shades.
“Broadly, an activism which holds for a lifetime and the other which leads to affluence and political influence,” she said.
Okei-Odumakin challenged June 12 activists to submit an electoral code to their erstwhile comrade, Tinubu, which “will forever erase election rigging and transform the leadership processing system in our country.”
According to her, the portrait of MKO should look down from their pantheon at the present time as other presidents from the past.
Okei-Odumakin added: “It shouldn’t be hard from where Gen. Muhammadu Buhari pushed things.
“On June 12, there should be a healthy reunion of erstwhile June 12 activists. The one in Aso Rock and those in other rocks.
“This must be germane, since the annulment of June 12 election results was the worst kind of rigging to ever occur in Nigeria.
“And such commemoration must not be misconstrued as an application. The erstwhile gentlemen and ladies have been gainfully engaged for 30 years.”
Former President Muhammadu Buhari on June 6, 2018, declared June 12 as Nigeria’s democracy day instead of May 29 in honour of late Chief M.K.O Abiola.
Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election died in detention for an alleged treason.
The declaration followed many years of agitations by civil society groups that Abiola must be immortalized.
According to Buhari, the change was to remind all Nigerians of one free election after which the presumed winner along with Nigerians were denied their rights and their choices.