Mr. Lekan Abiola, the first son of the late Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, yesterday said his parents sacrificed a lot for the development and stability of Nigeria. Based on this, he asked the Federal Government to accord his family the kind of emoluments and recognition due to families of other former presidents.
Lekan spoke yesterday during a press parley spearheaded by the June 12 democratic Movement at Abiola Crescent, Opebi Ikeja, for the celebration of his mother who was killed on June 4, 1996 during the struggle to reclaim his late father’s mandate.
The scion of Kudirat said the Federal Government should pay his father N45 billion that is accrued to him as a president. According to him, over the struggle his father’s business was crumbled, his oil licence withdrawn, and the farm and everything that be longed to his father destroyed by the government of late General Sanni Abacha.
He said: “We need security at his house, a security that befit a president, hilltop and presidential democracy library. “My father and my mother have sacrificed a lot for Nigeria yet didn’t benefit anything. “Many Nigerians who also lost their lives during the struggle too should be compensated by the government.
“The same president Tinubu who was with my father during the struggle is now the president but he abandoned us and didn’t recognise us as the children of his benefactor.
“The best president to the family is former President Goodluck Jonathan. “We have two Yoruba’s who have been presidents, former president Olusegun Onabanjo and now Tinubu and yet we didn’t receive anything from either of them.
“The Yoruba’s have not done what President Jonathan has done for us, I also want to thank President Buhari for his efforts, Tinubu should do his own part because he has not done anything for us as the Abiola family.
Like I said earlier, security is important in the late Abiola house.” He recalled that there was a time when armed robbers invaded his house and carted away so many things from the apartment.
In a similar development, veterans of Nigeria’s pro-democracy struggle, under the aegis of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) during the event issued a powerful call to action to President Bola Tinubu, to as matter of urgency and necessity, recognise and institutionalise the sacrifice of the family of declared winner of the June 12th, 1993 presidential election, late Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.
Specifically, the group demanded that President Bola Tinubu should see to the renovation of the late business mogul’s house into a democracy monument that will contain a museum, a library and serve as Centre for Democracy Nigeria.
Speaking at the historic Abiola family residence, which was once the nerve centre of Nigeria’s democratic resistance against military rule, Wale Okunniyi, who spoke for the group, lamented the continued neglect of the very family that gave everything for Nigeria’s freedom.
Okunniyi said: “MKO Abiola housed all of us. Meetings were held here — the Zwinginas of this world, Yar’Adua, Kingibe — and today, he is abandoned. “Even Buhari has a presidential villa ready in Daura. Why should this house, the birthplace of modern Nigerian democracy, be left in ruins?”
The gathering, which also served as a memorial for Kudirat Abiola, who was assassinated on this day (June 4) by agents of the military regime, was steeped in emotion and calls for justice. “She left from this same house. She was killed by Sergeant Rogers on the orders of General Sani Abacha.
