President Adama Barrow will leave Banjul for the Federal Republic of Nigeria on Tuesday, 11 June, 2019, to attend Nigeria’s Democracy Day celebration in Abuja, a statement received by The Voice said on Monday.
Nigeria’s Democracy Day is June 12, a national public in Nigeria. Until June 6, 2018, it was held annually on May 29, the day the military handed over power to an elected civilian government in 1999, marking the beginning of the longest continuous civilian rule since Nigeria’s independence from colonial rule in 1960.
It is a tradition that has been held annually, beginning in year 2000.
According to the statement, Nigeria is a strategic regional ally of The Gambia, and under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, was amongst the key stakeholders that negotiated a peaceful end to the political impasse that followed the 2016 Presidential Elections in which President Barrow was democratically elected into office.
Nigeria’s Democracy Day is a public holiday to commemorate the restoration of democracy in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
May 29 was initially the official democracy day in Nigeria, marking when the newly-elected Olusegun Obasanjo took office as the President of Nigeria in 1999, ending multiple decades of military rule that began in 1966 and had been interrupted only by a brief period of democracy from 1979 to 1983.
Meanwhile, on June 6, 2018, eight days after May 29, 2018, had been celebrated as Democracy Day, the President Buhari-led Federal Government of Nigeria declared June 12 to be the new Democracy Day.
This was done to commemorate the democratic election of MKO Abiola on June 12, 1993, in what has been adjudged to be Nigeria’s freest and fairest elections. It was, however, cancelled by the Ibrahim Babangida Junta.
