Nigeria, April 22 -- It happened some 35 odd years ago but the debate has not ended. The public presentation of the autobiography of one of its chief protagonists and dramatis personae, this year, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (alias IBB) has not reduced the controversy, even with the belated acknowledgement that the late Moshood K. Abiola was the winner of an election that has been acclaimed as the freest and most transparent ever held in Nigeria. The consequences of the ill-advised and unilateral annulment of that election left negative scars on our political landscape ever since then. The wound is still festering.

June 12 did not only reveal the in-built corruption, abuse of power and violence in Nigeria's political system; it st...