JUNE 12, NIGERIA AND THE IMPERATIVE NEED FOR RESTRUCTURING

JUNE 12 COALITION OF DEMOCRATIC FORMATIONS (J12CODEF)
C/o CCG, 10 Afolabi Lesi Street, Ilupeju, Lagos.
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 08023172694, 08033352188

11/06/2015
PRESS STATEMENT

JUNE 12, NIGERIA AND THE IMPERATIVE NEED FOR RESTRUCTURING

Compatriots, we are at another phase in the series of celebrations of the June 12 1993 Presidential election which has been adjudged till date as the freest and fairest election conducted in our political history, won by late Bashorun MKO Abiola but which was treasonably annulled by the General Ibrahim Babangida military junta and the aftermath of which the country has continued to grope in the dark.

The June 12, 1993 Presidential elections marked a watershed in the political history of Nigeria because it was a divine day in which Nigerians from different ethnic nations, religious, and other divide put aside their primordial sentiments of division which has been a bane of national unity to exercise their franchise in a manner unprecedented for national unity, but the rest, like they say, is history.

The essence of the June 12, 1993 Presidential election is very much entrenched in our political consciousness as a people who performed their civic duty in a civilized and non acrimonious manner for democracy and federalism to take root, unfortunately, while the lessons of June 12 remains very germane, our political class are yet to appreciate the import of the election to do the needful towards restructuring the polity for a peaceful and prosperous Federal Republic of Nigeria.

If anybody is in doubt that Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gun powder, the circumstances of hate, violence, destruction, division of people along ethnic, religion and other primordial lines surrounding the conduct of the 2015 general elections and the results are a pointer that Nigeria remains a very fractured country comprised of ethnic nationalities living in mutual fear, distrust and suspicion of domination over one another.

The traumatizing circumstances of the 2015 general election remains indelible in our memory as one in which the fear of the violent eruption of the Nigerian state as a result of the unresolved National Question stared us all in the face, but for divine intervention. The question now is, how long shall we continue on this path of self destruct as a disunited people?

The myriad of problems bedeviling the Nigerian state such as the do or die mentality for political power, electoral violence, corruption, insecurity, lack of basic infrastructures, ethnic wars, fuel subsidy fraud, oil theft, kidnapping, political indiscipline, disloyalty and religious intolerance, cultism, breakdown of societal ethos and values, etc, are all issues embedded in the National question which is in urgent need of attention for a truly united and Federal Republic of Nigeria to make progress and take its rightful place in the comity of nations.

Therefore, it is the candid submission of the coalition that the President Muhammadu Buhari administration must begin to take urgent steps to address the National Question which has been the bane of the unity of the Nigerian people and the Achilles heel of the state, which the June 12 1993 President election sought to address, but was treasonably truncated.

We are not unaware of the calls in certain quarters for President Muhammadu Buhari to implement the recommendations of the Goodluck Jonathan conference which is deceitful and self serving because the conference was conceived in perfidy to achieve a determined end and it ended in perfidy. We call on Mr. President to allow that document remain in the dustbin of history because its sole agenda was a ploy to hoodwink the people to perpetuate the former government in office till 2019 which the people saw through and rejected outrightly at the polls.

The June 12 Coalition of democratic formations hereby calls on President Muhammadu Buhari to put in place mechanism for the PRONACO draft constitution of the Nigerian people to be subjected to a referendum in order to address the National Question and enable the ethnic nationalities to take charge of their destiny for the collective interest and progress of the Nigerian people.

The PRONACO draft constitution remains a viable and legitimate panacea for the resolution of the National Question for a Nigeria of our dreams as envisaged by our founding fathers.

Thanks.

Signed.

Yours Faithfully,
Nelson Ekujumi.
General Secretary.