…recalls why his dad insisted on DNA test for all his children
Alhaji Olalekan Abiola is one of the children of the late business mogul and politician, Alhaji Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. In this interview with select journalists during the 32nd anniversary of the election in Lagos, he spoke about the essence of the election and what the nation has benefitted from it. He also shared his views on the best methods to immortalise his father. OLAOLU OLADIPO was there. Excerpts:
It’s 32 years since the annulment of June 12th and over 27 years since the demise of your parents.
It must have been very traumatic journey. How has the family been able to navigate through these trying times considering the fact that many of you were much younger when you lost your parents?
It’s been extremely traumatic, espe-cially with my mother’s assassination. I am saying this because she was with us at home when my father was in detention at that time. She was not arrested, she was not detained by the military junta and she was not under house arrest. One minute my mum was at home, in good health, and the next minute she had been shot. So that was more painful, more traumatic than the fate my father suffered. In my dad’s case, he had been locked up for like four years before he died, so we had been used to not see-ing him anymore. Four years before he (MKO Abiola) died, he was already in detention but my late mum was the one that we could talk to all the time, we were on the phone with her a couple of days before she died. We were expecting her to come and see us in the U.S. when she was killed. That was more traumatic than my father’s own, but equally they were both painful, definitely. But after my mother had been killed, we were hoping that my daddy would come back to us, so that we would be able to try to rebuild our lives but that never happened. So it happened that, basically, due to June 12 agitation we lost both parents. So it is painful.
How has the family been able to navigate through all these?
Well, we’re quite fortunate that our parents educated us. So we’re all edu-cated. So we all can work and engage in some form of business activities. Both parents were equally well-off. Even though my father’s companies had been hijacked by my older brother, my mum still left quite enough for us to be able to survive with. I won’t say, I cannot com-plain, because I know that I’m doing way better off.
What about support from your late parents’ friends, and family members?
It (support) has been here and there. Initially, when this current democratic journey began in 1999, we got some level of support but a lot of failed promises from officials of government who would promise to help rebuild my late father’s business concerns. They even promised to repay the debt that they are owing my father to the family. They never did it.
How much does the Federal Government owe your late father?
I’m not sure what the figure is but suc-cessive governments have promised to pay the debts. They will always promise to set up a committee to pay back the debts but none of them ever did. My father has many outstanding debts accruing to him in several ministries. Ministry of Commu-nications; there is one that I know of in the Ministry for Education because his companies supplied books and the Ministry of Defence. So, these are the three ministries where the funds were meant to be paid from. The government said they had to set up a committee to go and do an audit but they never did before they left office. When (former President Goodluck) Jonathan be-came president, the first two years, it was almost impossible to get to him and by the time we were able to meet him, it was like election time was approaching.
So he said, I shouldn’t worry that once the election wa over and he got a second term, it was one of the first things that he would do but he never came back. Then, (Muhammadu) Bahari came, he too didn’t act but he gave us June 12 Democracy Day. And maybe he thought that since he’d done that he felt he didn’t have to pay us. Now that (President Bola) Tinubu is there, hopefully he is going to do the audit and to pay off the money.
Has he promised you that?
He has not said anything yet.
Considering the fact that your father was very close to the military then, do you feel somewhat betrayed by his travails in the hands of his military friends?
I think that the main issue with my fa-ther is that he was ahead of his time in so many ways. I am saying so because, today, anybody wins the election in Nigeria, no matter the tribe, and that person is going to be sworn in. The worst thing they will tell you is to go to court. Once you get to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court declares you the winner, nobody can stop your swearing in. So my father was ahead of his time, you know.
You see him more as a pathfinder?
Yeah! He was a pathfinder of some sorts because he was the first Yoruba man to win an election to be annulled in Nigeria. In the past, they didn’t need to annul our elec-tions. Southerners that contested before did not win but MKO won and he presented some sort of challenge to the status quo, they never believed that he was going to break all the barriers that had been placed before him. This was a Yoruba man who though was a Muslim with a Muslim run-ning mate was still voted for massively by Christians. He was a Yoruba man who defeated a Hausa-Fulani man in his home state of Kano. This happened because, MKO had spent so much time cultivating relationships across the country. And when he came out to run, he had support from everywhere. So, I think that he was a victim of his own success. I remember one time we went to Benue State for an event. The event took place at the stadium in Makur-di, the state capital. I remember that former military President (Ibrahim) Babangida was the leader. He was already addressing the crowd but the crowd began to chant MKO and the people began to boo IBB. I remember looking at IBB’s face when the crowd was booing him and I looked into his face and I could see anger and jealousy. It was a very painful thing to experience as the president and commander in chief. He wasn’t happy.
Could that have been the beginning of the fallout between the two of them?
Like I said, MKO was a victim of his own success. He was the first Yoruba man to win an election and he was liked by everybody. Yoruba only win an election in a free and fair contest in the country. They didn’t believe that. So he broke all the jinxes.
What are the lessons you have learnt from your late father?
I think the most important thing I learnt from him is to hold on to our religion, Is-lam. I say this because this was what my father did that made people love him. All he did was based on Islam, which teach-es us Muslims to be charitable. My father never drank alcohol. He never went party-ing. He was not a party freak neither was he a gambler. The only thing you could say about my father that was kind of negative was that he had a lot of women but a lot of these women were those that came to him to give themselves to him. Some of them came with children and said their husbands had abandoned them. They usu-ally begged him for shelter, school fees and even with food. They used to come and line up in front of this house every month to collect their allowances. My father would get some of them apartments or a house. Then they would begin to call themselves Mrs. Abiola, even though many of them were not. They would change their chil-dren’s names to Abiola and that was why my father wrote in his will that DNA test had to be done for all those who claimed to be his children. About 120 children came forward to say they were MKO’s children but only 54 of them passed the DNA test at the end of the day. So it was these women who were the ones coming to him and not him going around looking for them. They were the ones. When, my father was alive back then, we saw women outside the house. About 10 to 15 different women, different shapes and colour, all came to see him for one thing or the other. I think the main lesson I got from my dad was the religion.
Was he very religious while alive?
He was very religious. And he raised us to be very religious. He raised us to pray five times a day and a lot of what he used to do came from the charity which we call Sadaka in Islam. It came from Islam. He used to say ‘I am not carrying this money anywhere. I am not taking this money, so let me just help people’. He believed that the more he helped people, the moreAllah helped him. Look at how he won the June 12 election, Allah helped him and even now. The man has been dead for 27 years, yet Nigerians are still bringing his memory back to life as if he died two weeks ago.
Does that really give you any kind of joy?
Of course! I am really happy for him. Because how many Nigerians do some-thing or how many people did something meaningful in life and after they died, people still remember what they did? It is incredible. So I am happy for him.
A lot of things had been done to immortalise him. As a son, are you satisfied with efforts by governments at the federal and Ogun
State to immortalise him Or what way do you think it should be done?
It means that every year Nigerians will have to remember the struggles that brought about the current democracy that everyone in the country is enjoy-ing, for which my father and my mother paid the supreme price. So that is really important for me as their son who is per-sonally feeling the impact of their strug-gle which had helped us collectively. Another thing I want them to do is that they should acknowledge that he was actually an elected president that the people of Nigeria freely and fairly voted for to lead them. To properly immortal-ise him, I am calling on the government to consider giving him the honour of putting his picture in the Presidential Villa among the pictures of past Nigeri-an presidents who served the country in the past. This is even more so if people like former Head of State Sani Abacha or General Babangida who were nev-er elected by the people but came into power through military coups have their pictures there as former heads of state. When you even consider the fact that Chief (Ernest) Shonekan who was even an interim head of state is enjoying the same privilege, then the question would now be, why not M.K.O. who was elected by Nigerians? Why should he not have his picture displayed? So M.K.O. who was elected should also have his picture there. Another appeal that I am making to the government is that all the allowances and benefits that should have accrued to him as the president of the country be paid to the family in full, like the entitlements that are being paid to former leaders should also be awarded to his family as a form of compensation. And any debt the fed-eral government owes him should also be paid to the family. That is I think the least that the family can ask the gov-ernment to do.
What is the plan being worked on to bring everybody together?
Brother Kola ordinarily ought to be the leader for all the children of late MKO. He should be the leader of all the children. But what is he doing right now? He is the leader of his mother’s children. You see. So, Kola has not been able to bring us all together, he has been unable to do so for whatever reason to step into the role. He seems to only care about his own mother’s kids. The is-sue is that Brother Kola has not shown proper leadership. The other children are coming together.
The government should do some-thing to make sure that M.K.O.’s legacy is carried out in accordance with Ni-gerian law. The Nigerian government should help make sure his will is im-plemented according to Nigerian law.
In concrete terms, what do you think are benefits of June 12 struggle to the country?
I am happy that this has been the longest span in terms of our democratic attempts. As a country, we have cele-brated 26 years of unbroken democratic rule, which had never happened be-fore. In the past, the longest span had been five years. Again, unlike what had obtained in the past, nobody is going to dominate the others like we used to have. No tribe is dominating any other tribe. Next time it comes to the South, it should go to the South East because they have not got it yet. So, the next one we are going to support hopefully should be somebody from the South East. There is more equity in the system now than what it used to be.
