The Shadow of June 12

Political parties in Nigeria are already gearing up for the next general election, coming up in the first quarter of 2023. The 2023 election will be the seventh election in succession since civil rule was reinstated in 1999, after 16 years of military rule. The last six years of that military interregnum was politically defined by what has entered the history books as the ‘June 12 Struggle’. ‘June 12’ was a defining moment in Nigeria’s history and yet it has not received as much critical attention as it deserves. While the current government has declared June 12 ‘Democracy Day’, the underlying forces that worked to keep the June 12 struggle alive remain under-discussed.