It is two years and two weeks since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over power from former President Muhammadu Buhari. His four year tenure started 29 May 2023. Until Buhari declared 12 June Democracy Day in June 2018, as part of his strategy to win a second term, ahead of the 2019 elections, 29 May used to declared Democracy Day …

Around this period in 1993, precisely on 12 June 1993, the day of that historic election, this writer operated in two different but mutually reinforcing capacities. While I was the Political Correspondent of the old Daily Times, covering the then-unfolding electoral process in Abuja, I was also an officer in the Nigerian Election Monitoring Group monitoring the poll in the …

Antjie Krog is a South African writer, academic and broadcaster. As a radio journalist with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, (SABC) Krog reported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proceedings under the chairmanship of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Thereafter, she chronicled South Africa’s Apartheid regime’s human rights abuses and assassinations in a 1998 book entitled Country of My Skull. In that …

The Lagos State Police Command has reached an agreement with 15 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on the conduct of planned protests taking place on Thursday, 12 June. It was gathered that they all agreed that Gani Fawehinmi Park in Ojota will serve as the only approved protest venue for citizens participating in the protest in Lagos. This was disclosed in …

On Thursday this week, it will be 32 years of that 12 June phenomenon. On 9 July 1998, the lifeless body of a young man adorned the front page of the Nigerian Tribune. The tear-jerking, bloodied body decorated the front pages of many other Nigerian newspapers like manacles in the hands of a convict. He had been shot dead by …

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has explained how he was able to survive what he described as evil plan of former Head of State, General Sani Abacha, to kill him, after his arrest, alongside General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua and business mogul and winner of the 12 June 1993 elections, Chief Mko Abiola, attributing his survival to the special grace of God. …

Some broken hearts never mend Some memories never end Some tears will never dry Our pains over 12 June will never die! Adapted from Don Williams’ Some Broken Hearts Never Mend On the day former self-styled military President Ibrahim Babangida celebrated his 70th birthday, I was in Minna, the Niger State capital where the self-styled ‘evil genius’ has his palatial …

There is still a long way to go before beating the chests that the course has been steadied. And Tinubu knows it, despite the claims in his Democracy Day speech. The attempts by President Bola Tinubu to whitewash Nigeria’s democracy in his address on Wednesday, 12 June 2024, were vigorous and obvious. It was such that an outsider could fall …

This month, almost to the week, three years ago, we revisited our lamentations on the epochal fallouts, and consequent upheavals that dogged the incidents that culminated into what we have called the new-old “Democracy Day”. It was titled “Once Upon A 12 June”. Three days ago, we marked the 2024 version of our Democracy Day with some stumbling drama, high-octane …

Yesterday, 8 June 2024, General Sani Abacha clocked 28 years in the grave. Abacha’s sudden expiration at the thick of his maximal and maniacal rule reminds Nigerians, especially those who were old enough in 1998 when he died, of how human beings should never play god. Abacha ruled with iron fist, after his seizure of power. He summarily executed dissidents …