By Abdulquadir Abdulwahid
Every year, June 12 comes around wrapped in grand speeches and newspaper adverts. We remember Chief M.K.O. Abiola, we talk about the courage of Nigerians who stood up to military tyranny, and we pat ourselves on the back for how far we have come. But honestly, if we pause and look around, what do we really have to celebrate? We got the vote, yes, but somewhere along the line, the promise of that vote was stolen. We built a democracy where elections happen, but justice remains a stranger to the common person. This is the uncomfortable truth I want to sit with today.
The real question for me is: who is still fighting the actual fight of June 12? Not the political class; that much is clear. The fight has moved. It has moved to unexpected places—mosques, communities, and quiet corners where faith is being used as a tool for a different kind of liberation. And in that space, I have watched the Al-Habibiyyah Islamic Society do something rare and powerful.
A FAITH THAT SAYS NO
Here is what strikes me about Al-Habibiyyah. They have taken this fight somewhere most of us are too polite or too afraid to go: the human heart. Imam Fuad Adeyemi and his team have done something disarmingly simple yet deeply radical. They have told their congregation, plainly, that corruption is not just a legal problem. It is a spiritual crisis. It is a betrayal of Amanah—a sacred trust placed on you by God and by the people.
Think about what that does to a man who steals public money and then turns around to fund a religious event, seeking legitimacy. Al-Habibiyyah pulls that rug from under his feet. They make it impossible for him to sleep well at night, telling him that his Hajj or charity cannot cleanse hands stained with the stolen future of a hungry child. This is not theology for comfort. This is theology as a weapon, and it takes the kind of courage that reminds me of those who stood at the barricades in 1993.
WHEN FAITH GROWS FEET
But here is where my admiration deepens. They didn’t stop at sermons. Because honestly, talk is cheap, and we have heard enough sermons to last a lifetime. Al-Habibiyyah understood that faith that doesn’t grow feet is just noise.
So, they started teaching ordinary people—the woman selling tomatoes, the young man looking for work, the retired civil servant—to do something revolutionary: check the projects. Simple. If the government says it built a primary healthcare centre in your ward, go there. Look at it. Count the beds. Ask how much it cost. Compare what is on the ground with what is on paper. They turned community members into auditors.
This is accountability you can touch. It’s not a workshop in a fancy hotel in Abuja. It is a grandmother standing in front of a half-built, abandoned classroom block and saying, “This is not what we were told, and this is not what we will accept.” That, to me, is the spirit of June 12 alive and breathing—the power of the people, not once every four years, but every single day.
THE RIPPLE YOU CANNOT SEE
The part of their work that often gets missed, but which I find most compelling, is how it all connects to peace. We talk about insecurity as if it fell from the sky. Al-Habibiyyah traces the line. The young man who takes up arms in the forest—how did he get there? He got there because the money meant for his education, his community’s water supply, or a farming grant that would have kept him productively engaged was stolen by someone who now lives in a mansion in the city.
Al-Habibiyyah understands that you cannot build peace on a foundation of looted hope. Their fight for financial integrity, their demand that public money works for the public, is among the most profound peace-building efforts I have seen. They are starving the grievance pipeline. One recovered fund, one completed project, and one transparently run community programme at a time, they are closing the door through which banditry and extremism enter. It’s quiet, unglamorous work. And it is saving lives.
So, as another June 12 passes, I find myself less interested in the wreath-laying ceremonies. The real heirs of that struggle are those rebuilding the moral contract between the leader and the led. Al-Habibiyyah is doing that—not by waiting for a messiah, but by awakening the citizen who understands that demanding justice is an act of worship.
The democracy Abiola died for was not just about casting a ballot. It was about a country where a poor man’s child and a rich man’s child can both access opportunity because the system has not been rigged. That democracy does not exist yet. But in the work of people like these, we catch a glimpse of what it might one day become. And that is a June 12 worth believing in.
