Good morning, Mr President. I speak to the issue of the heroes of democracy in Nigeria from the vantage position of being the former General Secretary of the Campaign for Democracy in Nigeria. My first submission is that your speech could not have naturally carried the names of all who partook in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria.
Those who blamed you for not doing so got it wrong. Even a brochure detailing pro-democracy activists in Nigeria would still have been controversial. How would you accommodate the foot soldiers who trouped out and received the bullets while protesting the annulment of the June 12, 1993, Presidential Election? What about the quiet protest of the rank-and-file elements in the military who abhorred the prevalent autocracy of the time, and perversity of an ‘army of anything goes’?
Of course, in the social sciences, we are often acculturated to base our analysis on the dominant current. In this way, the president’s…
Read More