Thread by @Sig_Moment

How Abacha almost became a civilian president.

The late Nigerian military president and strongman, General Sanni Abacha is remembered as a military dictator who unleashed terror on political dissenters. He died on Sunday, June 8, 1998.

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However, if he had lived a few months more, do you know he would have become a civilian president? Military leaders transforming into civilian presidents were quite common during the period. People like Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Muhammad Gaddafi of Libya, Museveni of Uganda,

Omar Bashir of Sudan and many others. So Abacha’s transformation would not have been strange.
In 1996, Abacha announced his intention to leave power and initiated a transition process. Even though the winner of the 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola had been kept in

detention by General Abacha since 1994, Abacha claimed that since MKO’s election would have given him a 4 year mandate which would end in 1997, he can no longer recognize the election as its tenure is ending. He therefore spoke of a fresh start for the nation’s politics.

The National Electoral Commision of Nigeria (NECON) was constituted. NECON registered 5 parties namely, Committee for National Census (CNC), United Nigerian People’s Convention (UNPC), National Centre Party of Nigeria (NCPN), Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN) and

Grassroots Democratic Movement (GDM).
According to the transition timeline, elections into the local government were to hold in 1997 while the governorship, national assembly and presidential elections were to hold in 1998. Shortly after the announcement, there were rumors that

General Abacha had no intention of leaving power and that the 5 parties were working in disguise for him. The local government election was held on march 17th, 1997. As the presidential election scheduled for August 1998 drew nearer, it became clear that Abacha was never

interested in leaving power. Although, Abacha continued to deny wanting to become a civilian president, several rallies were organized which had support of the military government. One of them was the 2 million man march organized by a body called

Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA) led by Daniel Kanu who threatened to go on hunger strike and make Nigeria ungovernable unless Abacha contests. Curiously, the 500 million naira budgeted for the 48 hours event was fully raised and the government gave civil servants a work

free day to enable them attend the rally.During the nomination process of a presidential candidate, all of the political parties except the GDM did not allow nomination for the post of the president, rather, they adopted General Abacha as the consensus presidential candidate

even though he was not a member of any party (the parties amended their constitutions to allow a non-member contest under their party). The GDM held its own convention in Jos where 2 individuals, Tunji Braithwaite and Yusuf Muhammed Dikko were expected to battle for the ticket.

There was however a twist of events as the GDM chairman flew to the convention venue with the CSO to General Abacha, Hamza Al-mustapha. The convention ended in the nomination of General Abacha. With this, the August presidential election was set to be a coronation of Abacha.

On June 8th however, General Abacha died of “cardiac arrest” in an event termed as a coup from heaven. General Abdulsalam Abubakar took power, cancelled the transition process and instituted a fresh process which led to a civilian government being sworn in on May 29th, 1999.

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