MKO, June 12 and Historical Duty

Postscript by Waziri Adio

On October 1st, the national premiere of a documentary titled “MKO” was held at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts in Lagos with President Bola Tinubu in attendance. The documentary is built around the historic electoral victory, the surprising defiance, and the sudden death of its eponymous character, Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, fondly known as MKO. But it is much more than that.

It is a commanding retelling of the story of the June 12, 1993 presidential election which held so much hope for many reasons and whose befuddling annulment set in motion a chain of events that plunged the country into a compounding crisis for five years. The documentary is written, directed and narrated by Ose Oyamendan, journalist and filmmaker, who is eminently positioned to tell this story and who has discharged a historical duty worthy of special commendation.

June 12 has been duly recognised as Nigeria’s Democracy Day and as a national public holiday since 2019. In 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari officially acknowledged Bashorun Abiola as the winner of the historic election and posthumously conferred the two highest national honours on Abiola and his running mate in that election, Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe. Despite all these and the passage of time, the story of June 12 was still not properly documented. Yes, there were a few personal accounts. Yet, June 12 remained a contested part of our history and many questions still cried for answers for even those who lived through the era not to talk of the majority of our population either too young then or born after the historic election.

Oyamendan’s “MKO” addresses this critical gap. Through rare footage, deft recreations, and revealing interviews, he revisits the tortuous odyssey of the precursor of the current democratic dispensation in the country, yielding critical insights and vital lessons. He interviewed more than 50 subjects on camera, virtually everyone who was alive and had anything to do with or had meaningful things to say about the June 12 saga during the more than 10 years it took to make the documentary. The rich cast of the documentary includes former heads of state, military generals, leading politicians, pro-democracy activists, foreign diplomats, national and foreign journalists, and aides and children of Abiola.

Some of the notable interviewees are: General Ibrahim Babangida (whose administration annulled the election but who said that he had looked forward to Abiola’s presidency), General Abdulsalami Abubakar (the Head of State when Abiola died in custody), President Olusegun Obasanjo (who stoutly defended his statement that Abiola was not the messiah), President Bola Tinubu, Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor Humphrey Nwosu (who was head of the electoral commission that conducted the 1993 election), Ambassador Walter Carrington (the US ambassador to Nigeria at the time), Ambassador Thomas Pickering (who led the American delegation that was meeting with Abiola when he had the medical emergency that led to his death), Ambassador Kingibe, Alhaji Bashir Tofa (Abiola’s opponent in the 1993 election), General Jeremiah Useni (General Sani Abacha’s confidant who was with him a few hours before his death) and Dr. Doyin Abiola (publisher of *National Concord *and one of Abiola’s wives). Oyamendan’s ability to get all these personalities on camera and ask the right questions spoke to his tenacity and talent.

The documentary opens with a clip of Abiola’s interview with BBC after his arrest and closes with accounts of his last days and moments. In between, portraits of the man Abiola and the history of his country serve as background to the 1993 transition, the plots to prevent the election from holding, the actual election, the emerging results, the annulment, the crisis that ensued, the interim government arrangement, Abacha’s takeover, Abiola’s naivete in his dealings with Abacha and some foreign powers, his Epetedo declaration and arrest, the daylight assassination of his wife, Kudirat Abiola, and Abacha’s full-blown dictatorship which resulted in the detention, the exile and the killings of those who stood in his way, a poignant reminder of how nasty military dictatorship can be especially to those who lately have been romanticising the return of military rule.

The documentary does not answer all the questions of that epoch, as clearly no single account can. But the viewers can fill in the gap on whether Babangida actually had no choice but to annul the election, the reason why he allowed Abacha to stay behind despite the promise that he would leave with all the service chiefs on 27th August 1993, and whether Abacha and Abiola were taken out or not in 1998. However, the MKO documentary illuminates many things for even some of us who, as journalists, covered the dark aftermath of the infamous annulment of the election regarded as a watershed moment when Nigerians put their real and imagined differences aside to vote across ethnic and religious lines. The documentary also reinforces duality of that special moment in Nigeria’s history: how a rare of show of unity became a source of division and how sacrifice and opportunism easily commingled.

The first time Oyamendan told me about the documentary was in early 2009. He shared the treatment document with me, complete with proposed budget and a list of 27 people he was planning to interview. His plan then was to commence production in August 2009 and release the documentary in the first quarter of 2011. The working title was “A Crack in the Rainbow.” That was not to be but he stayed the course. He got a start in 2012 and changed the title to “Hope Betrayed.” The production stalled for many years, mostly because some of those involved in the story would rather not want it told. But he persisted, eventually interviewing almost everyone involved (except two Americans who declined to be interviewed), ending up with more than 50 exclusive interviews. The final documentary, titled “MKO”, is almost two hours and is now showing in major theatres in Nigeria.

We need to properly document and interrogate our history so that we can understand what transpired, put events and personalities in proper perspective and learn the right lessons. A graduate of Mass Communication from the University of Lagos and of Film from the University of Southern California, a journalist of many years in Nigeria, an exile from military dictatorship and now a Hollywood filmmaker, Oyamendan has performed a great duty which should inspire many others to probe and document other important parts of our national history.