Jamiu Abiola, a son of the late Chief MKO Abiola and Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, who was assassinated on June 4, 1996 during the military regime of the late Gen Sani Abacha, relives the beautiful and trying moments shared with his parents in this interview with OLUWAFEMI MORGAN
it’s been 26 years since your mum, Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, died in the struggle for the actualisation of your father’s June 12, 1993 presidential electoral mandate. What fond memories of her remain with you?
There are many fond memories but the most beautiful ones were when she would take us (her children) around town in cities we had never visited before.
In those days, she had the option of hiring foreigners to do that, which she did once in a while, but in most cases she took us around by herself. Along the way, in the car, she would teach us songs and joke around as though she was our age mate. At that point there was no barrier between mother and children.
Did she or your father tell you the story of how they met? 
She told us how they met. He had come to see someone in a company where she was employed and saw her coincidentally. The rest, as they say, is history.
What exactly did it mean to you losing the two of them in the same period – they died two years apart?
It means that our God is an honest God, a truthful God because He fulfilled His pledge when He said in a Quranic verse that: “God does not place a burden on anyone if such burden exceeds what that person can bear.”
Losing both parents at the same time was bound to have caused monumental pain for all seven of her children but miraculously all of us have been able to survive. This is something I would not have imagined back then when these things happened.
Did she have a daily routine that you remember?
Yes and her daily routine never changed: waking up for prayers before sunrise, waking us up and preparing us for school by herself even when there were housemaids and going to her company before 10am to return latest by 4pm. She wanted to keep an eye on us after we returned from school.
Who among your siblings reminds you of her the most?
My sister, Moriam, reminds me of her the most. She is the only one of us who has her light-skinned complexion. Both of them look like twins. Moriam also has her business acumen. In her early 30s, my mother was importing over 50 containers of pharmaceutical a month and was about to build a pharmaceutical industry in 1993. Apart from being a pharmaceutical importer, she was also a contractor for various levels of government. She specialised in construction and drainage. However, she diverted all her attention, financial and emotional, into the June 12, 1993 struggle, doubling and tripling her efforts after my father was detained.
Moriam might not be into pharmaceuticals but in the US, she is a top real estate executive in one of America’s largest real estate companies. Just like my mother, she looks forward to confronting business challenges and overcoming them.
What were some of your mother’s plans for herself and her family?
Her biggest plan, as mentioned earlier, was to build a pharmaceutical industry. This was so dear to her after a while importing raw materials used by industrialists here in Nigeria, a large number of who were not even Nigerians – something she was not pleased about.
But on the family level, she wanted to set up a business in the US too, so that she could be spending more time there with us after we began moving there in 1989 to complete our studies. She was so attached to us.
Your mother was a stylish person. What elements defined her style?
Her style was unique because of her unique background. She was a Yoruba woman from Ogun State but had spent the bulk of her childhood and adolescent years in Zaria (Kaduna State) where she was born. As a result, her dressing and actions reflected her culturally-mixed background, combining northern and southern Nigeria.
Did she support your father’s political ambition right from the onset or did she express concerns about it?
At first she was not enthusiastic about it. She was worried because she knew how others had contested months before and witnessed how the process was suddenly terminated after the politicians had put in so much time and effort.
At what point did she agree to support your father’s presidential bid?
The turning point was when my father took her along with him to the Jos presidential primaries. He needed her support there primarily because she could speak Hausa and knew much more about northern culture. This was not something that many of his fake supporters in his own party knew, so, whenever they mocked him on the plane and even called him names, she would later interpret what they said to him.
By the time he won the primaries there was no going back, so she threw away her doubts, embraced courage and gave the project her full support.
How come she was at the forefront of the struggle when your father had other wives?
Everyone has a different way of doing things. She was in the forefront of the struggle in the public domain, but other wives, like Alhaja Adebisi and Alhaja Doyin, were working hard too from behind the scenes to get him (my father) released.
How did she and the entire family cope and what was done to bring your father out of political detention?
She wanted to keep his memory alive in the public domain. People are right when they say Nigerians have a short memory. They can even forget that they have a president in detention and most of them did. As a result, she would grant interviews particularly to a Hausa-speaking audience in order to bolster support within the ranks of the North’s grassroots for my father’s struggle.
Where was she shot?
She was shot near the 7up tollgate in Lagos on her way to drum up support for my father in the American and Canadian embassies. Her driver had been shot, so her late personal assistant made frantic efforts to stop a vehicle that would convey her to the closest hospital.
Which hospital was she taken to?
She was taken to Eko Hospital. It was not far from the scene of the incident but the specialists that could have saved her life got to the hospital 30 minutes after she had died.
What part of her body did the bullet hit?
She was hit on the head.
When was your last conversation with your mother and what were
the things that you both talked about?
During our last conversation after I had read in the New York Times that she had been detained, we had a strong argument. She was not happy that I was telling her to be careful and felt that I was treating her like a child.
How old were you at the time?
At that time I was 20 years old.
She came across as a very courageous woman. Was she really courageous and what experiences best defined her as such?
She was indeed courageous. An example of that was the night my father was arrested. As you would recall, he (my father) said during a BBC interview on his way to detention that he was in a police vehicle with his senior wife.
She had insisted on going along with him despite threats by some police officers. Along the way though, she was forced out of the vehicle and was lucky that her own vehicle (being driven by the same driver who was later killed with her) had been trailing them. That was how she ended up not being stranded in the night without a vehicle after she had been separated from my dad.
Another incident was during one of my heated conversations with her. She was tired of my warnings and said: ‘Only one bullet will solve this problem.’ What she meant by that was that her struggle was worth her life.
Does that mean she somewhat had a premonition that she could be shot or were there prior events that suggested that possibility?
Later on, some close relatives told me that she knew she was going to die. I believe them.
Do you think your mother has been given her due to recognition in national life so far?
She has not been given her due recognition. I am grateful though, that this government put her portrait in the Women Hall of Fame as the Martyr of Democracy. By the grace of God more will be done to immortalise her by subsequent governments.
How exactly do you feel she would have been adequately immortalised?
She would be adequately immortalised with a Federal Government monument named after her as well as a federal title like the one given to the late Chief Gani Fawhemmi.
What she did was historic. How many 44-year-old harmless women with seven children would take on a brutal military government?
There is the Kudirat Abiola Memorial Cenotaph beside 7-Up Plant in Oregon, Ikeja and the MKO Abiola’s larger-than-life statue at Ojota. Do you have any special kind of feeling whenever you pass by these monuments?
I feel grateful to former Governor Bola Tinubu for these monuments and hope that the Federal Government would do something similar for my mother.
At the same time, I appreciate the fact that her name and portrait have been put in the Women Hall of Fame as a Martyr of Nigeria’s democracy.
One more thing I would like is for her killers to be brought to book. For clues on who they are, the government needs not look further than Roger’s Oputa Panel confession that’s on YouTube.
It’s been so many years, don’t you think the matter is no longer a priority to government?
There seems to be no intention to pursue the matter. It is sad, it is tragic. But I am not surprised.
You started the Kudirat Abiola Sabon Gari Foundation years after your mother’s death, what activities have the organisation embarked upon so far?
We have entered into a strategic partnership with the Kaduna State Peace Commission, the aim of which is to promote peace where such promotion is badly needed. As a result, we sponsored a peace workshop in Kaduna last year in which stakeholders from all local governments were invited. We are now about to sponsor a monthly publication for university students across Nigeria with the aim of promoting moral uprightness and a drug-free attitude among our youths in tertiary institutions. Within two months we would launch this journal by the grace of God.
What are the indelible imprints of your father as a family man?
As a family man, he was caring, one of a kind.
I say one of a kind not because he was perfect but because as a man with such gigantic responsibilities he found time to reach out to his children one-on-one.
What fond memories of him do you have?
I remember his jokes. Though we lived in the same house, days might pass without seeing him because he stayed in his own wing. But whenever I saw him he was mostly jovial because those were mostly times he was free. Then he would be cracking jokes, one after the other, with his usual parables.
How old were you when MKO Abiola died and how did you feel when it became clear that you had lost your father?
When he died I was 23. It was devastating, particularly because it was so unexpected. From being days away from his freedom I had became an eternity away from seeing him alive on earth again. This was a tragic ending that, as far as I am concerned, could only have featured in a Shakespeare story in a more normal setting.
Has your family come to a closure on Chief MKO Abiola’s death?
There can never be a closure on something so complicated. If you say that he did not die as a result of poison, that does not mean that you can say that he had not been put in a mental and emotional condition that would have caused his heart attack. He had been a victim of winning a presidential election which is something that has probably not happened more than five times in the entire world’s history
Do you think that the country would have been better off than this if MKO had become the President in 1993?
You see, leaders do not only fail because of incompetence, many of them fail because of not being lucky enough to rule at the right time. That 1993 period was a time of prosperity, globally speaking, so much less would have been required from him then than any president need now to make Nigeria a success. I do not only think so, I know.
Do you think that the family would have avoided the tragedy that befell it if your father avoided politics?
Yes, we would have avoided this calamity. However, that is not possible. Destiny is the alpha and omega; so, in this case, some people have to play the role of sacrificial lamb, as is done all around the world at certain periods in a nation’s history. Sadly, my parents played that role but as earlier stated, God will not place upon a man a burden that is heavier than what he can bear.
Your brother is contesting for President on the platform of the Peoples Redemption Party. Do you think he has all it takes to achieve what your father could not?
To become President of Nigeria is a big task dependent not only on the candidate but also on his or her party structure.
In order to answer your question, I would need to ask myself two questions: Does his party have widespread visibility nationwide? Does his own character reflect attributes that Nigerian voters’ hold dearly as was the case with my father when he won the elections? I do not know the answers to those questions but as a brother, I wish him the best.
Copyright PUNCH
All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH.
Contact: [email protected]
