Sometime in March this year, I gave a young woman a ride in my car. The radio was beaming out King Sunny Ade’s track where he elegantly eulogised the late Moshood Abiola. The young woman’s eyes opened in recognition as she listened to the song. “MKO Abiola! I heard so much about the man that I went to read about him on Wikipedia. I read they killed him and all that.” I was taken aback. This young woman was probably in her late 20s or early 30s, but she had only learned about MKO through Wikipedia? That much time had passed that an entire generation of children born around June 12, 1993, has grown into adults who now read the history that some of us lived through. She glistened with the innocence of a generation untainted by the messiness of history. Reading about the events of history from behind the sanitised screen of electronic devices affords the luxury of detachment.

It is another June 12, and even those who witnessed those years have been remembering differently for reasons ranging from sheer nostalgia to disillusionment with the present. Some of the editorials marking the death of Sani Abacha, the brutal dictator whose death paved the way for the return of civil rule, try too hard to posture objectivity by speaking of his “good” sides. To supposedly balance their report, they first come up with a list of what he achieved before highlighting the abuses he inflicted on the country. They end up painting a picture of a benevolent dictator, a man who broke some eggs because he needed to make an omelette of national development. Painting such a sympathetic image tempts me to question if they, too, read up on the history informing their perspectives on Wikipedia. Whatever is wrong with the present cannot justify the past. This was a man who unleashed darkness upon the nation. Nothing redeems Abacha’s history.

It is fine to talk about the increased foreign exchange reserves under his watch and how he reduced the external debt, but how about sparing a thought for the Nigerians whose lives remained impoverished throughout the Abacha years? We tend to look wistfully at the past and convince ourselves that the world was better, but those were never part of “the good old days”. The post-June 12 years during which Abacha ruled the nation with an iron fist were really hard times, and it was not for nothing that we burst into the streets when nature took care of his nuisance. He was not a man who cared about the collective welfare that he governed to alleviate poverty and suffering. Whatever economic progress was recorded under his watch was, at best, merely incidental. Nigerians suffered, and we have probably never fully recovered from those years of economic crunch.

The economic deprivation was one, and the atmosphere of fear he created was another. Under Sani Abacha’s watch, the Nigerian press faced a severe crackdown. Some of the journalists who drew his ire are still alive to tell their stories. Those were also the days of political assassination. We still have no closure on the deaths of Kudirat Abiola, Suliat Adedeji, Alfred Rewane, Toyin Onagoruwa, Sola Omatsola, Tunde Oladepo, Admiral Olu Omotehinwa, Rear Admiral Babatunde Elegbede, and many others whose assassinations were attributed to the infamous “strike force” run by Major Hamza Al-Mustapha. Then, there was Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine, who were brutally killed by the Abacha regime. These are outstanding moral debts. Knowing Nigeria for what it is, all these will likely fade away when the generation that witnessed this history dies out entirely.

Then, there are hundreds or possibly thousands of unnamed Nigerians killed by the trigger-happy soldiers. Yet, our media archivists go on and on about how Abacha established PTF as if that cancels out the evil he did. Watching a TVC journalist’s recent interview with Abacha’s widow, Maryam, I was put off by the overly deferential attitude he maintained towards her. This was a woman who could not have been entirely oblivious to the sins her husband committed; she must have averted her eyes while her husband trampled on the soul of the nation. Yet the journalist kept asking her solicitous questions. Why does this woman’s opinion on anything even matter?  Other than asking for forgiveness for the sins of her late husband, why does she deserve any attention?

But it is not only ordinary citizens who have been demonstrating poor memory where the history of June 12 is concerned. Even our leaders have twisted history, all in the bid to deodorise the maniac. In 2014, it was Goodluck Jonathan who first used one hand to swipe off history when he conferred Abacha with an award for “Outstanding Promoter of Unity, Patriotism and National Development”. Jonathan, ever-apologetic for even his own existence, must have thought he could appease the all-powerful North by erasing a fraction of Nigeria’s odious history. If Jonathan’s pandering could be understood as a shameless solicitation of Abacha’s followers because he was desperate to win an election, how does one explain the reverential attitude the present administration maintains towards the Abacha family?

A mere few months after they got into office, Oluremi Tinubu, the first lady, renamed the main auditorium of the Maryam Babangida National Centre for Women Development after Maryam Abacha. For her to have been in such a hurry to endow an Abacha with honour, there must have been a favour somewhere she could not wait to repay. Then, just last December, Mrs Tinubu also called for the renaming of the radiotherapy centre at the National Hospital, Abuja, in honour of Maryam Abacha. It makes you wonder what exactly Mrs Tinubu (and her husband) owes either this woman (or her late husband) that makes her eschew optics just to celebrate her? It gets even funnier when you recall that President Tinubu earned his activist clout for his supposed role in confronting the Abacha regime. As soon as they got into power, they could not wait to confer honorary awards on the same set of people whose high-handedness supposedly pursued them into exile. Looking back on June 12, some 32 years later, I wonder if the whole NADECO story deserves a re-examination to separate the genuine fighters from the double agents who merely played both sides of history.

But then, it is also unsurprising that Tinubu does not maintain a principled stand against Abacha. Doing that would require the husband and wife to stand on the sure ground of social righteousness, and we all know why that is impossible for them. Much of the abuse of power and corruption that we witnessed under Abacha’s draconian rule has become a staple of their own government. Tinubu’s administration feels a lot like the Abacha leadership, except that we now have social media. And of course, there are far fewer political assassinations. It is no longer necessary to assassinate dissidents these days. Just invite them to Aso Rock or Bourdillon Road for “quality time” with the President, stage a photo-op with them, and you will effectively turn them into lickspittles. Some days, I wonder what the MKO Abiola family thinks about all these.

Punch