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The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on Tuesday, said the ill-fated Interim National Government of Chief Ernest Shonekan was designed to fail from the outset.
Tinubu said this at the public presentation of a book titled, “Nigeria’s Aborted 3rd Republic and the June 12 Debacle: Reporters’ Account” in Abuja.
Shonekan was brought into power on August 27, 1993 after Babangida announced that he was “stepping aside” following the annulment of June 12 presidential election.
The ING, however, was short-lived as it was toppled by late General Sani Abacha on November 17, 1993.
Tinubu, who was represented by the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, believed the transition programme was designed to crumble by the powers that be.
He said, “The Third Republic was not expected to last long. Indeed of all our nation’s republics, it was the shortest: it began in January 1992 following the election of state governors in December 1991. It ended on November 17, 1993 with the Abacha coup against the Interim Government of Ernest Shonekan. This happened some five months after the annulment of the 12 June, 1993 election, won clearly by Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.
“The entire transition programme of the military administration of the time, according to discerning critics, was designed to fail. It was, they said, meant to make then military president Ibrahim Babangida succeed himself as a civilian president.”
A statement by the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Association of Political Correspondents, Dr. Emeka Nwosu, said the book offers a deep historical insight into the character and content of the transition process and the web of conspiracies that were deployed by key political actors in the military and their civilian collaborators to scuttle the June 12 election.
