₦airaland Forum

One major atrocity credited to Arthur Nzeribe who died Sunday was the formation of the Association for Better Nigeria, used to annul Nigeria’s best election held June 1993.
Nzeribe, born in Oguta Imo State was the mastermind of the group, which was not in anyway a mass movement.

It was set up by the military intelligence to perpetuate General Ibrahim Babangida’s rule till 1997.

Nzeribe’s ABN came in handy in 1993, when it was used to scuttle the June 12, 1993 election won overwhelmingly by Chief MKO Abiola’s.

P.M. News found an essay by Michael Orodare of Neusroom in June 2021 a fair account of the somewhat treasonable role of the ABN, with Nzeribe as the mastermind.

Classified in many reports as a shadowy group and a willing tool in the hands of Nigeria’s former military head of state General Ibrahim Babangida, the role played by the Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) in the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election remains indelible.

Although the personality of Babangida may have dwarfed the many atrocities of ABN and its promoters, the group prepared the ground for the declaration that scuttled what has been described as the most credible election in Nigeria’s history: The presidential contest between MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC).


How ABN was formed

ABN was formed after the Babangida regime abolished all political parties and created two national parties – NRC and SDP in 1991.

The New York Times described ABN as “a lobbying group of wealthy businessmen, politicians and military officers who had led a highly visible campaign urging General Babangida to remain in office at least four more years”.

Although it claimed it had millions of members, ABN’s only known leaders were Arthur Nzeribe, Brigadier Haliru Akilu and Abimbola Davies.

“The primary objective of the ABN was to keep Ibrahim Babangida in power and maintain the military administration that has governed Nigeria for so long,” a report by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada says.

To achieve its objective, the ABN put up billboards in Abuja with the message ‘Four More Years’, implying that Babangida should stay in power for another four year term.

“The intensity of the ABN’s pro-government campaigns led many observers to conclude that the federal military government was behind the activities of the association,” another report says.


ABN and the 1993 Election.

After years of military rule, Babangida promised to hand over power to a civilian president on August 27, 1993. He set up the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and appointed a Professor, Humphrey Nwosu as Chairman..

The Presidential election between Abiola and Tofa was billed for June 12, 1993. Two days before the election, members of the ABN filed a suit before the Abuja High Court asking NEC not to hold the election.

On the eve of the election (June 11) Justice Bassey Ikpeme ordered the suspension of the election but NEC ignored the order and went ahead citing Decree 13 of 1993 which ousted the courts’ jurisdiction with regard to creating impediments to the transition to civil rule programme.

Maverick politician Arthur Nzeribe is dead
While the results were trickling in, ABN members approached an Abuja High Court again asking it to stop the announcement of results.

“Justice Dahiru Saleh was around to handle it, he didn’t assign it to any other judge. He decided to hear the matter himself,” journalist Richard Akinnola wrote in his book ‘A Mandate Buried Alive’. “Though the suit filed was Motion on Notice, where the other party, that is, NEC would be heard, Saleh decided to hear the matter ex parte in Chambers, stopping further announcements of the results.”

Saleh ordered NEC to halt the release of the election results on the grounds that the election ought not to have been held in the first place. NEC complied with the ruling but headed for the Court of Appeal to challenge the order.

“In that appeal, we attached all the results of the election…showing that Abiola overwhelmingly won the election,” Nwosu wrote in his book “Laying the Foundation for Nigeria’s Democracy: My Account of June 12, 1993, Presidential Election and Its Annulment”.

On June 23, 1993, a day after NEC filed its appeal, Babangida nullified the election, and suspended NEC.

“These steps were taken to save our judiciary from being ridiculed and politicized locally and internationally,” Babangida said.
The ABN suit was the foundation upon which Babangida’s annulment of the election was based.


The promoters of ABN.
Arthur Nzeribe, a former Senator from Imo state, was the leader of ABN. He was Senator from October 1983 to December 1983. After the transition to democracy in 1999, Nzeribe contested as Senator again and spent eight years at the Senate from 1999-2007.

“I am proud that we cancelled the election. I wanted the election cancelled and it was cancelled,” Nzeribe, 82, told the New Telegraph newspaper in 2014 when asked about his role in the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election.

Abimbola Davies – ABN’s National Director of Organisation, was 36 years old in 1993 when he played an active role in the annulment of the election.

In a 2018 article, Dele Momodu who is regarded as one of Abiola’s confidants revealed that Davies later dumped the group and fled the country after addressing a press conference renouncing his membership of ABN and exposing some of its activities.

“Nigerians, we are guilty, but forgive us! Pride will not allow some of us to come out, but this I am doing on behalf of myself and other States,” Davies, now 63, reportedly said at a press conference.

bionixs:
what does SW have that you think Igbos want to have or become? Just mention one .

I am waiting….

blowjohn:
Abi she's licking her wounds.
Even joe Biden no send her.

e be like say i go practise the act with you too sha No vex, kudos

Emir01:
Igbos are Open enemy to SW when it comes to power, they beef SW in all ramifications and even trying to plant divisions among us so that they can take advantage. Their forefathers Zik first made attempt to take over Lagos and he was repelled by great Awo.

Halo22:
It's not about Obi winning or losing, but about INEC uploading the results on their server as it promised.

brutal1:
Can you get your dad here maybe he will understand my response to you. Listen kid, a business is a business Okay? You travel abroad came back and Started selling spare part na still business, you start church gather people brainwash them into believing it is your prayer that maketh them rich and secured is business , a drug baron is a business man, oh yaba left the yaba left in your place is not fenced… you people walk around freely in your entire region no fence, that’s the bigger yaba. You are one of the stray madmen from your regions yaba left Your dad will understand me better, bring the idiot that gave birth to you here

GorillaApp:
Naturally, ignoring you would have been the best but it won't be right to leave you in your ignorance. most sane Nigerians resisted tinubu because he is too old and senile. Also there is a drug case on his head period. Igbos voted for Abiola and also supported Obasanjo but I guess your hatred won't make you see that.
Why not leave the Igbos who have never carried arms against you and face the fulanis who are killing, maiming are ransacking Ur villages and sending some of your to Benin Republic

i too love this reply Infact OP i love u come and take two bottles brother

HIGHESTPOPORI:
Chimanda Adichie, the world knows, who know this Dele?

muhammaduyusufu:
Part 2

If you feel you are in a safe sanctuary in the USA and can throw or dart some dangerous goblin on Nigeria to breed hate, division, anarchy with fatal and cataclysmic consequences, remember, your people will also be affected too.

That election defied many odds. Many governors lost their states to the opposition. Even the President-elect lost his firm grip on Lagos. Mr Buhari lost his Katsina base while El Rufai's political wizardry could not win him Kaduna, yet you are busy pooh-poohing and sacrilegiously puncturing and discrediting the whole process as a sham or charade! How dare you! That election may not have been the best but in few places where there was violence, the people stood solidly to exercise their franchise. Did you have an inkling of what transpired in Obi's immediate enclave in the east? Many APC apologists were either killed or prevented from voting. Were you cerebrally on sabbatical break when the election that produced President Biden plunged America into a never-seen-before orgy of violence with fatalities recorded? With a whiff of hindsight, was the election annulled on that premise? Ironically, it is the product of that election that you are obsequiously kowtowing and genuflecting for with the sole aim of consigning Nigeria into a pariah state again.

Where Obi won in his precincts with some APC voters disenfranchised and some paid the supreme sacrifice, you never rationalized it as a heinous crime but in other places where he lost glaringly, you wanted the whole exercise cancelled. This is nothing but sheer ambivalence. Late Prof ( Eze) Chukwuemeka Ike wrote that only a foolish fly follows the dead into the grave. The ealier you extricate yourself from those inanities, jejune irrationalities and incongruous permutations and come to reality, the better for you.

No amount of writing will reverse the collective will of the people. As a fellow who wrote the account of the civil war that claimed millions of lives, built valleys on their cheeks, made them pot-bellied and a caricature of anything human, you should know better that writing effusively to cause chaos is a height of unpatriotism. If in the events you cause another civil unrest, it would be too late to plead self-exculpation and self-abnegation your ill-thought out writings would have caused. Obi lost that election glaringly and there is no way you can dress a vassal---festooning his ambience, adorning him with costly ornaments and apparel--- through malcontent depositions, he will remain a vassal and never a prince.

Dr Dele Afelumo is a practising physician.

https://twitter.com/KemPatriot/status/1644326256714850304?t=FijjSyiqPima0IQN9Lt0Ag&s=19[/quote]See her igbotic teeth

brutal1:
See mad man, iyalaya baba n la e are nobody. Name your useless blood relations make we go verify asiwin. You are still proud of those group of lunatics you came to the world with? You and your siblings are bunch of foolish being in a team bound by adulterated 🩸 you are a pedigree fool.

Ayisatojo:
Bola Ahmed Tinubu - a true and thorough breed enigma of destiny!
When you take a mental journey backwards to review the entire life of BAT, you will not agree less that his entire being has something to do with destiny.
I used to be one of those people that will always call for his head due to the bad narratives that have been spread from time to time, that now seemingly look as if they were true.
One day I asked myself a question that forced me to change my orientation about BAT. I asked myself “What exactly has BAT done to me that I hate him that much?”
Honestly, I couldn’t get an answer for the question. Tinubu did nothing to justify my hate for him and since then, I have been “batified”.
I had an argument with a friend over the same subject few months before election, when the argument that he was using Alpha Beta to syphon Lagos State IGR, I asked him how much he paid to agent that only took him to see a property and he confirmed he paid 10% of the rent as agency fee. We all at one point in our lives paid this fee without blinking our eyes, these guys never add any value other than showing us or connecting us with the property we rent, yet they collect 10% and sometimes they even extend to 2 years to make it 20%. Some of these guys don’t even have an office, they don’t have staff or pay salary. Alpha Beta is helping Lagos to handle their IGR and they have been able to consistently increase the IGR year on year. Why are we then killing BAT over hat could have best been described as a smart move that is propelling Lagos to be one of the biggest economies in Africa?
Hate him or like him, BAT is truly a paragon of destiny.

If you want to understand how much people charge for professional consultancy fee, please engage PWC or KPMG to supervise a project for you, come and compare their charges with what Alpha Beta is charging. I rest my case here!

ukaface:
PLEASE SOMEONE SHOULD ANSWER ME

SHEBI NA FOR HERE WE SEE HOW NUMBERS WERE MANIPULATED IN FAVOUR OF BAT? THE VIDEOS AND PICTURES THAT WERE CIRCULATING NKOR, THE. THREATS FROM THE CHIEF TOUT NKOR.


ABI NA FOR MY DREAM I SEE ALL THOSE THINGS?
SO HOW COME PEOPLE ARE SUPPORTING WHAT IS SO OBVIOUS AND BELIEVING A FREE AND FAIR ELECTION WAS CONDUCTED?

THIS IS NOT A QUESTION BORNE OUT OF POLITICS RATHER ITS A QUESTION BORNE OUT OF WHAT WAS SEEN.

NB: IF YOU QUOTE ME TO TERM ME UNCALLED NAMES( talking to the tout supporters ) THEN YOU HAVE NO REASONING OR SENSE.

muhammaduyusufu:
Part 1:

Dear Chimamanda, what beautiful nonsense you just penned!

It was a portrayal of angst by an unrepentant tribal bigot trying assiduously to whip up sentiments by appealing to the American public!

As much as you try to discredit the electoral victory won by Tinubu, you and your co-travellers will not succeed. Lobbying for cancellation of the election or howling jeremiads on the streets of Washington D.C by attempting to be a back-alley abortionist of people's will and currying international support will all amount to an exercise in futility.

You and your ilk have caused so many problems in Nigeria that you should be ashamed of what you just wrote. In 1993, it was one hellish scoundrel called Arthur Nzeribe who quickly formed ABN to brazenly scuttle and torpedo the freest election conducted in Nigeria then. This time around, your are in the fray to do the same, treading the famished, inglorious, perfidious, labyrinthine, serpentine, deathful and dastardly pathways that Arthur Nzeribe once trod with a mission to set Nigeria ablaze again. You will not succeed in your devious enterprise.

Your tribal and fillial appendage with Gregory Peter Obi is well understood as blood will ever be thicker than water, but for you to pen a nonsensical gibberish with the sole aim of overriding the victory of Mr Tinubu, it is too pedestrian, disingenuous, malevolent, irresponsible and condescending. Your overrated candidate came a distant third in that contest and the earlier you realize that, the better for you. Your Obiscopic lenses through which you narrowly, myopically and parochially viewed the election would soon break into minute useless shards with banal hues. If you know so much about politics, why not put your hat into the ring? You just have whittled down whatever miniscule respect some people may have had for you thus far and many would start seeing an inveterate ethnic champion in you, henceforth.

Ever heard of force majeur? Why didn't you read the account of why INEC jettisoned the initial plan of real-time transmission of the results? Why are you more catholic than the Pope? Why are you belittling, insulting, assailing and assaulting our intelligence, sensitivities and sensibilities through your invective-riddled submission to President Biden unconscionably? By trying to pen repetitive allegory and obfuscate the whole process, you are nothing but a dangerous, uncharitable, over-venerated specie giving a tacit support to an unruly chauvinist brigade hellbent on pulling down the country just because one trading fellow with unscholarly English and dirty past did not win. You hobnobbed with like minds given to depravity to concoct lies as gallop polls in the run-up to that exercise so as to browbeat some undiscerning minds into a transparent subterfuge ---believing that your candidate would win.

It was in the public domain that your kith and kin tried all manners of dirty tricks through hacking to rig in your candidate so that you would later shout hurrah, the election result followed the pattern of your doctored gallop polls which you had bored us with ab initio. Online activism does not win elections. Somebody failed woefully to appeal to a huge segment of the population in the entire north and won only within his enclave, and rather than see this as a true reflection of the people's will, you busied yourself throwing incendiary adjectives all over America to carpet everybody in Nigeria so as to throw away the baby with the bath water as if we were still a colony of the West. The earlier you borrow yourself some sense the better.

You and your people want to emasculate everybody and plunge this nation into another blitzkrieg of unimaginable proportion, you will not succeeed this time around. Working in cahoots with some strange bedfellows or with those of same toxic and cacophonous cerebral to, yet again, annul that election is an invitation to anarchy.

https://twitter.com/KemPatriot/status/1644312820450828289?t=YQ7e8vP07FmEc879GCAGzw&s=19[/quote]all these apc peeps all have one thing in common bringing up tribal politics even when is nt neccessary.they doing such to distract frm d real issue .insecurity nd natiinal debt .non of them nt even one during d campaign could tell us hw they addesss paying off d hugh debt.

Gabriel004:
Hahaha,

Faceless forum is giving you power. Talking trash to a man your own father dares not stand in his back and talk. Just cos he doesn't know you exist.

Common getat.

N3TRAL:
The bulk of what were spread are misinformation. The few real cases are not substantial to make the result declared by INEC invalid.

muhammaduyusufu:
A medical doctor wrote all these grammar. The southwest indeed owns the media. If the real writers start coming out of their enclaves, people will run.

Jax1:
Keep grinning like a roasted hegoat. You are naturally useless and you think everyone is like your family members from worthless lineage. Homeless swine.

Halo22:
It's not about Obi winning or losing, but about INEC uploading the results on their server as it promised.

IVORY2009:
Obidents Attack time.......

brutal1:
Guy when you go d$e make I come weep for you? I'll like to come see your worthless cadaver with your worthless siblings in attendance

casualobserver:
Kai!!!!! He finished this charlatan of an IPOB masquerading as a literary pillar. She is the type of educated Nigerian I despise...educated and supposedly exposed but still fundamentally tribal, Educated and supposedly well lettered but using her talents for her tribal pararochial or woke views. Chiamanda is the type of educated easterner that no matter the education and exposure will never get over the civil war...the irony is she wasn't around and all her views are based on lies and propaganda.

She is pretender, I figured her out years ago when she wrote her book and I knew the bigotry in her will consume her and one day she will expose herself and in the process rubbish all her accomplishments.

the problem with bigotry and tribalism is that eventually you make a fool of yourself even amongst your professional peers and those who once respected you. Just like the respected former NBA president who for tribal reasons has now taken leave of the intellect that earned him a SAN and the position of NBA president a assert in a public media such a ridiculous assertion that you need 25% of FCT to become president. The bigotry and tribal sentiment will eat up the best of the Ibos if they are not careful.

bionixs:
what does SW have that you think Igbos want to have or become? Just mention one .

I am waiting….

sapele914:
Ok, so Bola Tinubu should be punished for INEC shortcomings?