Lanre Ogundipe, former President of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), has dismissed claims that President Bola Tinubu was complicit in the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, describing them as unfounded and misinformed.
Speaking on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande on Channels Television on Friday, Ogundipe insisted that Tinubu was in fact the backbone of the struggle against the annulment, providing critical financial and moral support to protesters and activists seeking to restore the late MKO Abiola’s mandate.
In his own words, Ogundipe stated:
“When I first heard it [what Sule Lamido, former SDP secretary said], I said this man must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Because, he was the Secretary of the SDP. Tony Anineh was the chairman of the party. The two of them buckled when it mattered. I remember a press conference held by the late [Abubakar] Rimi which Lamido was in attendance. They claimed they were not in the party because of Abiola. It’s the same Tinubu they’re accusing now that put up the Epetedo Declaration. All of us that were in the barricade can attest to the fact that President Tinubu played a noble role all through. He was the one bankrolling all the protests in the West.”
Ogundipe went on to highlight the contradictions in how some individuals were rewarded with political appointments despite their lack of participation in the pro-democracy campaign:
“You know, some of us in the West, we were working with all these bits and pieces of this information. And you will recall that Ebenezer Babatope, Olu Onagoruwa, were thrown up as ministers touting them that they were one of the campaigners for Abiola, whereas they never showed up in any of our campaigns. So when they got the ministerial position, we were wondering how? How did they come about? They said they were campaigners for Abiola and they need to bring them to the government side. But we cannot be fighting on that because we don’t know how they got in there.”
He further explained how the resistance movement in the West solidified behind human rights groups and the media:
“That was how Gbenga Owosode became the arrowhead in the West for the actualisation of June 12th. He was the chairman of the CDHR. He’s a lawyer. So we all lined up behind Benga Owosode. When we now discovered that, okay, even those of us who are in the media had already noticed the cracks in the flanks, that was when I now came up with the League of Democratic Journalists in order to sustain the struggle. All of us now ran to League of Democratic for cover. And it did work. Dayo Omotosho of the then Tell magazine was the Secretary. My cousin, my late cousin then, Lamide Adedibu, called me and said, ‘Lanre, what is the matter with you?'”
Ogundipe’s remarks, coming at a time of renewed debate about Tinubu’s role in the June 12 saga, seek to clarify the president’s record as a key supporter of the pro-democracy movement and defender of Abiola’s mandate.
