A former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and Plateau State governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party  in this year’s elections, Gen. Jeremiah Useni (rtd) has said that the annulled June 12 presidential election of 1993 was more credible that the 2019 presidential polls.

Useni, who stated this on Friday after the hearing on his governorship petition at the tribunal sitting in Jos noted that the adoption of June 12 as Nigeria’s Democratic Day was long overdue.

“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,” he said.

Gen. Useni disclosed that he was one of the close associates of Chief MKO Abiola whom he defended in several quarters when the argument arose on whether he would pay himself the debt the Federal Government was owing him if he became president.

“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 was owing 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,” Useni querried.

While describing democracy as a good system of government, Useni noted that civilian administrators should take the courage of creating states and local government areas in the country to take the dividends of democracy closer to the grassroots.