Why Buhari cannot declare MKO Abiola winner of June 12 presidential election - Olutayo Adesina

macfranc007 June 16, 2018 Nigeria News today & Breaking news ▷ Read Naija news 24/7 Kess Ewubare

- Professor Olutayo Adesina says President Buhari might be opening his flanks if he recognises MKO Abiola as the winner of the June 12, 1993 election

- He says he sees nothing wrong with the timing of Buhari’s recognition given the late democrat

- Professor Bolaji Akinyemi believes that the award on Abiola has helped to heal a wound inflicted on Nigerians

Professor Olutayo Adesina of the department of history at the University of Ibadan has said President Muhammadu Buhari cannot declare MKO Abiola as the winner of the June 12, 1993 election because the process was not completed.

Adesina an interview with the Tribune published on Saturday, June 16, said the president would be opening his flanks if he says Abiola is the winner of the annulled election.

The scholar said: "The president would be opening his flanks if he says Abiola is the winner because the process was not completed and there was nobody that had been declared officially as the winner. So, the president can still be pardoned if he uses the word ‘presumed’. But if he now reconstitutes the National Electoral Commission (NEC), because I don’t think that even the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can do it."

He also stated that he saw nothing wrong with the timing the recognition given the late Chief MKO Abiola.

“What is wrong with the timing? I am not interested in the timing but in the message. And the message is that if evil has gone on for years, one day, the truth will catch up with it and that is what has happened. Don’t believe that this is the end of the matter; it is just the beginning because, like I said earlier, there are certain unintended consequences that are likely to arise from all this. So, the first stage is recognising that June 12 was valid; MKO was elected and the government has recognised that," Adesina stated.

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Meanwhile, a former external affairs minister and member of the defunct National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, has thanked President Muhammadu Buhari for awarding late Moshod Kashimawo Abiola.

Abiola is acclaimed to have won the June 12, 1993 presidential election seen as the freest and fairest in the country but which was annulled by a military junta.

Akinyemi, however, urged Buhari to also honour other prominent Nigerians involved in the struggle to actualise the June 12 mandate while arguing that the award to Abiola was one of the major steps towards healing a national wound.

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