Nigeria, June 16 -- Thank you, Mr President. If any seer had predicted in 1993 that a day would come when the heroes of the June 12 struggle would be honoured, such a crystal gazer would have been labelled a fraud. Everything was loaded against the pro-democracy groups. Many of those operating under the radar lived in trepidation. The fear of Colonel Omenka, the dread of every editor and reporter, was the beginning of wisdom. I remember that on one occasion when he sent his boys to scatter Academy Press on the suspicion that the next edition of MONTHLY LIFE was going to carry a story not favourable to the Abacha government, I was simply whisked to Apapa. Some people taken away like that never returned.

The Abacha season was the era the v...