President Bola Tinubu has said Nigeria got her second independence in 1999.
Tinubu spoke during his first nationwide broadcast to mark this year’s Democracy Day.
He compared the unrelenting pro-democracy onslaught unleashed against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election to “battle against colonial rule by our founding fathers that resulted in the gaining of Nigeria’s independence in 1960.”
The President described the 24-year-old return of democratic governance in 1999 as Nigeria’s “second independence” after resistance by a resurgent civil society against unjust annulment of widely acknowledged free and fair Presidential election held on June 12, 1993 which was presumably won by late Moshood Abiola.
According to Tinubu: “Just like the anti-colonial movement, the pro-June 12 vanguard demonstrated, once again, the enduring validity of the 19th-century historian, Arnold Toynbee’s eternal postulation, that civilization and societies experience progress as they are forced to respond to challenges posed by the environment.
“The unjust annulment of a widely acknowledged free and fair election was a challenge that elicited resistance by a resurgent civil society, leading ultimately to the attainment of our ‘second independence’ as exemplified by the return of democratic governance in 1999.”
