President Bola Tinubu on Monday paid tribute to the late Moshood Kashimawo, Mko Abiola, his wife, Kudirat, and others who sacrificed their lives in defence of Nigeria’s democracy.

The President who spoke in his first Democracy Day noted that the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, led to a prolonged struggle that ultimately led to the democracy Nigeria has enjoyed since 1999.

Tinubu said the sacrifices made by the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, the late Chief Moshood Abiola, and others, must not be in vain.

President Tinubu said: “The abortion, by military fiat, of the decisive victory of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola of the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the June 12, 1993, presidential election, up to that time, the fairest and freest election in the country’s political evolution, turned out, ironically, to be the seed that germinated into the prolonged struggle that gave birth to the democracy we currently enjoy since 1999.

“In rising to strongly oppose the arbitrary annulment of the will of the majority of Nigerians as expressed in that historic election, the substantial number of our people who participated in the struggle to de-annul the election signified their fierce commitment to enthroning democracy as a form of government that best ennobles the liberty, the dignity of the individual and the integrity as well as the stability of the polity.

“The fierce opposition to the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and the unrelenting pro-democracy onslaught it unleashed were the equivalent of the battle against colonial rule by our founding fathers that resulted in the gaining of Nigeria’s independence in 1960.”

“Every day, on this day, down the ages, we will recall the several other heroes of democracy such as Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief Abiola, who was brutally murdered while in the trenches fighting on the side of the people.

“We remember Pa Alfred Rewane, one of the heroes of our independence struggle and Maj.- Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua who were silenced by the military junta while in pursuit of democracy. They gave their yesterday for the liberty that is ours today.

“The point is that we must never take this democracy for granted. We must forever jealously guard and protect it like a precious jewel. For, a people can never truly appreciate the freedoms and rights democracy guarantees them until they lose it.

“We have traversed the dark, thorny path of dictatorship before and those who experienced it can readily testify to the unbridgeable gap between the dignity of freedom and the humiliation and degradation of tyranny.