Adoption of June 12, not an all APC affair – Jeremiah Useni

Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Gen. Jeremiah Useni (Rtd.) has berated the All Progressives Congress for gloating over the recent adoption of June 12 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day.

Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari had June 5, 2019 proclaimed June 12 as the country’s Democracy Day to be celebrated as a public day in commemoration of the momentous June 12, 1993 Presidential elections won by Chief Moshood Abiola.

The new law accommodates June 12 as a public holiday in Nigeria, replacing May 29 which henceforth will be marked as a handover/inauguration of new governments in the country.

Useni, who was the Peoples’ Democratic Party governorship candidate in the 2019 election in Plateau state stated this after hearing on his governorship petition at the tribunal suiting in Jos on Friday.

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Useni, who insisted that the adoption of June 12 as Democracy Day was long overdue, stressed that it wasn’t an All Progressives Congress, APC, affair.

He said: “To me, the June 12 election was more credible than the 2019 presidential election. We should have been celebrating June 12 long time ago as our democracy day.

“I am in PDP and I don’t want people to take June 12 as an APC affair, everybody knows what happened.”

“Abiola was my good friend; I defended him in one of our meetings when some people said if they gave him the presidency, he would first take all the money the Federal government owed him, and I said why not? It was government that gave him the contracts and why was he not paid? If he paid himself, there would be nothing wrong with that.

“Some of us were not happy when the election was cancelled. Why did they allow him to contest the election if he was not eligible? Why was he allowed to contest in the first place if proper screening was not done?” he asked.