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Senator Shehu Sani has described the Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, as somebody with "patented venom and perfidy, claiming that all the attempts by El-Rufai to emerge as the chairman of the Nigerian Governors' Forums failed.

He added that the governor was unfit to run the state.

He said this in a statement issued while reacting to a comment credited to El-Rufai, who reportedly claimed he had retired Sani and Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi from politics.

In reaction, Sani told the governor that he could not claim to have ‘retired’ anyone in politics when all his life was about hanging behind President Muhammadu Buhari. 

The senator said: "My attention has been drawn to the post by Nasir El-Rufai where he made mention of my name and that of distinguished Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi. Even though I’m in court with the governor in the last year where he sued me and I sued him for libel, it’s still necessary to respond to him thus: You can’t claim to have ‘retired’ anyone in politics when all your life is about hanging behind President Buhari and name-dropping him to achieve your goals. 

"You are yet to prove your ‘power of retirement’ by standing on your feet, though the recent one you did was trying to be the chairman of governor's forum and you woefully failed." 

He added: "It's well known to all Nigerians and I have always believed that it’s a matter of time before President Muhammadu Buhari will have a taste of your patented venom and perfidy once you reach a point that he is of no further importance to you. 

"You are neither the first to ‘win re-election’ nor will you be the last in our state. The difference is that even Makarfi who served eight years never claimed to have retired anyone. And their victories were never challenged as a fraud."
 

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The country's culture minister wrote a letter to Carolina Herrera demanding an explanation.

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Hidden Figures Way is named after the African-American women featured in the Oscar-nominated film.

The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) has asked the Nigerian government to rename June 12 as the MKO Abiola Day in the national calendar.

Debo Adeniran, Executive Chairman, CACOL, said this while commemorating the inaugural celebration of the June 12 as the country’s Democracy Day.

Commending President Muhammadu Buhari for honouring MKO Abiola by naming the National Stadium, Abuja, after him, Adeniran asked the President to order the electoral commission body to officially release the result of the June 1993 Presidential election.

“This inform why we advise that the Government should declare the day (June 12) MKO Abiola Day, never to be forgotten and reiterate the lesson and occasion when we all chorus and say, NEVER AGAIN.

“It is gratifying that the NATIONAL STADIUM Abuja has been named after this patriotic Nigerian who laid down his life for the emergence of a new Nigeria with so much éclat, we implore the government to compel Prof Humphrey Nwosu the then National Electoral Commission of Nigeria, NECON, to officially declare the final results of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections, which Prof Nwosu have confirm Chief MKO Abiola won fair and square, so that he would be officially recognized as the 2nd democratically elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN) and accorded all benefits and recognition derivable therefrom.”

Adeniran condemned politicians in Nigeria for misusing the democracy Abiola fought for adding that the struggle has been betrayed.

He said, “Today, this same day, ironically, has been used by certain elements that were either originally responsible for the unfortunate annulment and destruction of a rare chance of rooting democracy in the country or those people that later ethicized or betrayed the struggle, one way or the other. 

“One of the key figures in that epoch was Alhaji Bababgana Kingibe, a Vice Presidential candidate of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, believed to have abandoned the ship when it mattered most and currently a member of the kitchen cabinet to President Muhammadu Buhari’s federal government. 

This is why the JUNE 12 has become different things to the classes of the ruled and the rulers. 

“To those in government, it represents a day their class survived a major political tsunami, meant to galvanize and mobilize the mass against their rudderless system and supplants their reign, while majority Nigerians view it as a day the masses had an opportunity to free themselves from the shackles of social enslavement and economic miasma.”

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June 12 is symbolic in Nigeria’s history, not because it was recently christened Democracy Day. It is because represents the strength of determined Nigerians and the weakness of the Nigerian system. The imbroglio that ensued after June 12, 1993, presidential elections divided Nigerians into two blocs: the 'powerful' with the military might and the 'weak' with the doggedness of their heart. The wager was the judiciary, the eminent systemic organ that tended to the strength of the powerful and crushed the collective resolve of the people.

There were several lawsuits that pitched influential figures against one another, or as it frequently was, the powerful against the weak. The courtrooms were the battlefield, the lawyers came with their weaponry and the judge up in his chairs handed victory to those with the strongest weaponry. Many of the time, the victors were those who could manipulate the wig better.

The history of June 12 is rarely told through this lens. There is hardly a mention of the roles the judiciary played during and after the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election. In this installment of June 12 Special, SaharaReporters takes a look at how the ministers in the temple of justice made the temple complicit in the annulment of June 12 presidential election.

Afe Babalola vs Philip Umeadi

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria had fought legal battles for MKO Abiola even before 1993. He was the lawyer who thwarted late Oba Okunade Sijuade, Ooni of Ife’s attempt to hinder the enthronement of MKO Abiola as the Are Ona Kakanfo of the Yoruba land.

Ooni of Ife had approached the Oyo High Court to challenge the powers of Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, the Alaafin Oyo, in installing a Kakanfo. The Alaafin got a whiff of this action and instruct his lawyer, Afe Babalola, to nip it in the bud. Babalola, who was then a young but astute lawyer, swung to action and ensure Ooni’s ex-parte motion did now see the light of the day. The case was sentimental but it was a battle between two equals: two first-class kings.

But the power dynamic changed when Babalola represented Abiola against the ruling Justice Bassey Ikpeme, cancelling the scheduled 1993 election.

Two days to the election, Justice Ikpeme of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered ruling to the effect that the election could no longer continue. This was the weapon used by Ibrahim Babangida, a former military head of state, to annul the election.

On the day the appeal came up in Kaduna, Babalola, led 30 other lawyers, with the convictions that he would once again coast to victory as he had done with the Kakanfo saga. However, this time, he was contending with the military might embodied in the person of Philip Umeadi (SAN).

Umeadi taunted Babalola and his team of lawyers knowing that he has his joker well-tucked in his pocket. Umeadi told the court there was no suit before the court as the election had been annulled.

Babalola disputed this, arguing that only a government `gazette can prove that indeed the election had been annulled. Umeadi then asked for a brief adjournment. Minutes later he put before the court a gazette.

“It is important to note that up to this point in time, there was no Gazette. I instantly became disturbed when I saw the Gazette because I was alarmed that a Gazette could be procured in a matter of minutes. I had no choice than to admit to the fact that there was no lis before the court. In my reply, with tears in my eyes, I said, rather courageously that “this is the saddest day for the judiciary in this country and the beginning of a journey the end of which no one knows,” Babalola recalled

Twenty-three years later, when Babalola retold the incident that happened at the Court of Appeal in Kaduna, he concluded that Nigeria is yet to recover from the dastardly stunt pulled by Umeadi and his employer, the federal government.

Clement Akpamgbo

Clement Akpamgbo was the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, during the 1993 presidential election. 

According to the interviews published in Ibrahim Babangida: The Military, Politics and Power in Nigeria”, a book written by Dan Agbese, founding members of Newswatch magazine, Akpamgbo was in support of the kangaroo judgment of Justice Ikpeme, annulling the 1993 election.

According to the book, even the chairman of National Electoral Commission, Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, had seen the conduct of the presidential election as critical to the entire transition programme and was on ground to see that it ended on a sound note.

But the storm was gathering, some people in the military were intimidated by MKO Abiola's clout and did everything to stop the election. When the court ruled in favour of the cancellation two days to the election, the NEC chairman tried to salvage it.

“Nwosu tried to salvage it. He appeared before the NDSC on June 11 and put a strong argument in favour of going ahead with the election. He argued, quite passionately, that if the election was postponed, the election materials already on site would be compromised,” IBB was quoted to have said in the book.

“NEC had enough protection under the decree to ignore Ikpeme’s ruling. But the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Clement Akpamgbo, had a different take on the issue. He did not support Nwosu’s position. Instead, he advised that the election be postponed in obedience to the order, NEC could then appeal and have the order set aside by a superior court.”

The election went on but the bedrock for its failure had been laid by the expert manipulations of the judicial system. Maybe, the actions of these few powerful men, who connived to upturn the decision of millions of Nigerians on June 12, would have amounted to naught had there not been lawyers and judges who gave themselves up as instruments of operation.

Indeed, according to Omoyele Sowore, the founder of SaharaReporters and an active participant in the June 12 struggle, the monumental conspiracy perpetrated by many influential personalities include judges, during the June 12 struggle “was the greatest gang up against a people aspiring for true democracy”.

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The government releases dozens of activists arrested during anti-government protests.