“He who knows not where the rain first began to beat him will never recognise the fire that dries his skin.”
This ancestral truth rings with haunting precision as we stand in the indigo twilight of 2026, still shivering from the damp chill of a promise aborted in its prime.
It has been 33 years since the firmament fractured on June 12, 1993, and the deluge of that original sin continues to saturate our national soul.
As Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola used to say with his characteristic, stuttering wit: “You cannot clap with one hand.” Yet, for three decades, Nigeria has attempted a one-handed applause, wondering why the sound of progress remains a hollow thud.
For Nigeria, the rain did not merely fall; it plummeted. On that Saturday morning in 1993, a rare serenity descended upon our fractured geography. From the salt-sprayed docks of Lagos to the dust-choked plains of Maiduguri, millions performed a revolutionary act of defiance: they trusted one another. As a young reporter walking the beat during those tectonic upheavals, I inhaled the raw, unvarnished beauty of that trust.
Yet, even in the warmth of that sun, shadows lingered. The irony of the struggle often lay closest to home.
In the Ajaa’gbo area of Abeokuta, I witnessed the bitter theatre of internal dissent. Among M.K.O.’s own kinsmen were those who exercised their sacred right to vote for Bashir Tofa.
It was a profound, if painful, sight – democracy in its purest, most stubborn form, proving that the mandate was not a tribal inheritance but a national choice. These were the kinsmen who forgot that “anybody afraid of death cannot claim his father’s title.” M.K.O. claimed his, but the daggers were often drawn by those who shared his dialect.
The most stinging irony, however, was reserved for the aftermath. When the military needed a civilian mask for their betrayal, they did not look far. They chose Chief Ernest Shonekan, another Egba son from Abeokuta, to head the illegitimate Interim National Government. Abiola, ever ready with a parable, warned: “He who allows the coconut to be broken on his head will not live to eat part of it.”
Shonekan became the man upon whose head the military cracked the coconut of our collective future, a “head” in a room where the real barber was elsewhere.
The architect of the administrative miracle that preceded this mess was Professor Humphrey Nwosu. He fashioned Option A4, a system of transparent simplicity that felt like honest alchemy in a room full of poison. But the harvest was annulled in the judiciary of the night.
We must name the villains, for a people who forget their murderers will soon find them in power again. We remember Justice Bassey Ikpeme, who sat in the eerie silence of a midnight session to murder the law with the law.
We remember the “merchant of chaos,” Francis Arthur Nzeribe, and the civilian janissaries of the Association for Better Nigeria.
And then there were the men in khaki. If Ibrahim Babangida was the “Maradona” who dribbled the nation into a ditch, General Sani Abacha was the cold-blooded executioner who ensured we stayed there.
His reign was a dark carnival of tyranny, a theatre of blood where the state became predator and the “Giant of Africa” a pariah.
As a journalist on the front lines, I tasted the metallic tang of tear gas and watched the state attempt to jail the very conscience of the nation. It was a season that forced many into the bitter bread of exile, including the man who now occupies the seat of power today, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Having dodged Al-Mustapha’s killer squads as a pro-June 12 agitator, the President’s recent address serves as a complex, perhaps distorted, mirror to our history. He spoke of twenty-seven years of uninterrupted rule, honouring the fallen; yet, for those who bore witness to 1993, the logic demands interrogation. Is democracy merely the absence of a khaki uniform, or is it the fulfilment of the covenant we signed in the sun thirty-three years ago?
We must speak the names of the martyrs with the reverence of a litany. We recall Abiola, the street philosopher who refused to trade his mandate for his life, proving that you cannot shave a man’s head in his absence. We remember Kudirat, assassinated for her audacity; Alfred Rewane; Suliat Adedeji, among several unsung hundreds. We remember the “guerrilla journalists”—ink-stained warriors like Onanuga, Olorunyomi, Ojudu, Anyanwu, Ajibade, Igiebor, and Bagauda Kaltho, silenced for the crime of seeing and saying.
Alongside them stood Gani Fawehinmi, who wielded the law like a bayonet. But history also demands that we name the villains: the military despots and their civilian heirs in the Fourth Republic.
We remember the third-term ambitions of Obasanjo and the kleptocratic godfathers who turned elections into blood-soaked carnivals.
In August 1994, the iron fist descended. I remember the day the state’s jackboots marched into the premises of The PUNCH, where I worked.
We were proscribed, our voices silenced, our livelihoods extinguished. Our editor, Bola Bolawole, was held captive in his office for close to a week, a hostage to a regime that feared the ink more than the sword.
The newsroom, once a cacophony of ringing phones and clattering typewriters, became a tomb. We were the “unemployed” of the revolution. During those lean, desperate months, the late Ladi Lawal, a prince of the profession, led the Lagos NUJ in a frantic effort to keep us from the abyss. I recall the quiet dignity of those stipends and linkages to the new radio stations the military thought would fight their cause, a humble buffer against the starvation Abacha intended for the “troublesome” press.
Then came the “Duke of Possibilities,” Nduka Obaigbena. A complex figure, often seen as a benign actor or even a collaborator in the crises, he nevertheless launched the avant-garde ThisDay. It was a daring disruption.
ThisDay became a life raft, absorbing a generation of first-class reporters from the ruins of The PUNCH, The Guardian, National Concord, and Daily Sketch.
It gave the media a new lease of life, proving Abiola’s adage: “If you want something from a dwarf, you must stoop to his level. It does not reduce your height; when you rise, you will still be taller.”
But while the press survived, the villains prospered. It is a nauseating irony of the Fourth Republic that men like David Mark, who reportedly threatened to shoot Abiola if he were ever enthroned as President, now gallivant through the corridors of power as “symbols of democracy.”
They have swapped their service caps for flowing agbadas, but the stench of 1993 remains. They are the ones who proved that “you cannot shave a man’s head in his absence,” yet they continue to hold the razor over a nation still fast asleep.
Today, the “One Million Man March” of sycophancy has been upscaled into the “social media influencer” for hire. The “Farewell to Poverty” has been mocked by a “Welcome to Insecurity,” where the farmer in Zamfara pays a life tax to bandits.
We have replaced military decrees with a “judiciary of technicalities,” where the people’s will is erased by the stroke of a velvet-gloved pen.
Now, the wheel of history has groaned back to a familiar crossroads. As 2027 looms, the current stewards of our democratic machinery stand at a precipice. They must decide: will they be heirs of Nwosu’s integrity or successors of Ikpeme’s infamy?
Nigerians are tired of “resilience.” To honour martyrs is not only to declare a public holiday; it is to ensure the ballot box is no longer a coffin for the people’s will.
“Bi a ba fi owo otun ba omo wi, a fi owo osi fa a mora”, when we chastise with the right hand, we must draw close with the left. The betrayal of 1993 was our national chastisement; let the genuine unity of the coming years be our embrace.
June 12 remains Nigeria’s eternal parable. The barber is still absent, and our democracy is still being shaved by strangers. As M.K.O. used to say: “You don’t need a telescope to see the sun.” The truth of our condition is blindingly clear.
Next week, I will tell you when we will start to stand, and, more importantly, upon whose mandate we should truly be standing. Happy Democracy, or is it “Democrazy”?, weekend.
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