• Says, ‘Dad spent another fortune to de-annul result’
Alhaji Jamiu Abiola is Senior Special Assistant to the President on Linguistic and Foreign Matters. He is also Shettima Rasheed of Borno. He spoke on June 12, 1993, presidential election won by his father, the late Bashorun MKO Abiola and related issuesHe was on Citizen FM 93.7’s radio programme, Insights, in Abuja. Excerpts:
How has it been for the Abiola family in the last 32 years?
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It had been like a rollercoaster ride. What happened to us was like a hurricane. We thank God that we are able to survive it. It is not easy to carry a whole country on your shoulders. You win an election that you now become from the victor or from the winning party to the one being prosecuted by a powerful military government and a very wicked ruling elite, as in the military ruling elite.
It was very brutal, especially the five, the years of Abacha’s government, from November 1993 to 1998, June 8, when he passed away. General Abdulsalami Abubakar came on board and that this is going to be a beginning of emancipation, freedom, like our breadwinner, Chief MKO Abiola, coming out of jail. By then, my mother had been killed a year and a half before Abacha died.
But, Abdulsalami released all the notable political prisoners, but left my father, where he was, in detention. And he actually even made it impossible for any family member to see my dad till a day before he died. Abacha died on June 8, and the family members were only allowed to see my dad July 7. Almost 29 days. Just as he was about to be killed or… That is when they were allowed to see him.
But before that, they allowed Kofi Annan, who was the Secretary-General of the United Nations and Emeka Anyaokuwu, who was the Commonwealth Secretary-General. They allowed people like that to see him, as if those people were more important to my dad than his own family.
It was from there the struggle continued, even after he died. To date, there has been a very, very terrible three decades. But we thank God, we survived and we are still surviving.
Were you part of that delegation or, do you know what happened? What did they say? How was the last 24 hours with the family before he died?
Immediately after Abacha died the family reached out to Abdulsalami that they wanted to see Abiola again. When I say the family here, I’m talking about the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Adebisi Abiola, and Tuni Abiola. They finally got approval on July 6 (1998). By that time, I was still in the United States. The family members that saw him were Chief (Mrs.) Adebisi Abiola, Chief Tuni Abiola and Lola Abiola, my father’s eldest child.
They saw him from 8:00pm till around 10:00, 11:00pm on July 6. It was the following morning that he now died from a supposed heart attack. For 29 days, he wasn’t allowed to see the family. What I concluded was that they were only allowed to see him so that it’s on record that they saw him before he died. Because if they didn’t see him and he died, they would have said the family did not see him and he died. It would have made the government look very bad.
I assumed that the approval was only given for them to see him because it was known that he was going to die. When they saw him, he was in very bad condition healthwise. He said he had fever, he said he wasn’t feeling well. He even said he had been dreaming about my late mother, Olajoke Kudirat and my late stepmother, Alhaja Simbiat, that he saw them. He was more or less hinting that he believed he was going to die. His health was not good at all and he complained bitterly about that. He should have been released for medical checkup, but they just kept him and he finally died.
You were about 18 years when the June 12 election was annulled and 23 or thereabout when he died. What was your personal relationship like with your dad, even though you were mostly in the United States?
I was very close to him because I used to come home for every holiday. I was his only child that could speak more than two languages. Whenever he had guests that from northern Nigeria or, the Arab world, or a Francophone Africa, he would call me.
I speak Arabic, French, Hausa, German, and Italian. He would call me to translate for him. Through those, I was able to get very close to him. It’s difficult to be close to a father that has so many wives. We grew up in the same house and he had four wives in that house. He also had a lot of women in his life outside the house.
So he was more or less everywhere. He had people, relations, children here and there. He was also a philanthropist and a politician. Like his life was 70 per cent dedicated to outside the family. But then through helping him with language interpretation. We had a special bond through that.
We were able to talk more and more. And because I could speak Arabic, he just felt like I was an angel. He felt like somebody that can speak Arabic, knows the Quran, cannot do anything wrong. So if I told him anything, he would say: “Yes, it’s true, because he speaks Arabic.”
How was MKO as a family man from your perspective?
He was a very generous man. In 2015, I wrote a book called “The President that never ruled.” It is on Amazon. I wrote the book in Arabic and in English. I also wrote another book in 2016 called “The stolen presidency.” Those two books about him are in-depth. The books are not just talking about him as a father, but talking about him as a child, when he was a child, as a son to his own father.
Talking about him as a student, businessman, politician and in his final role as a democratic crusader. “The stolen presidency” covers everything about the life of MKO. I wrote it like a novel to make it more interesting so that people that read the book can see the intrigues. Not just like a history book where they’ll say, “2004, this happened. 2007, this happened.”
He was a very generous man. He gave us the best education. But there was always a distance and it wasn’t his fault. Sometimes he would tell us: “I’m gonna change, I’m gonna be more accessible. Every Sunday, we’re gonna only spend the time, we’re gonna spend it with only the kids.” And we knew if Sunday would come, we would all go to his room, we would spend the whole Sunday with him.
The following Sunday, he had gone again and he had forgotten about it. Then he would now come again and say: “Oh, sorry, oh, you know, but this time around, I’m going to try… Give me a couple of weeks.” From there, he would forget about it.
MKO Abiola was such a formidable and political figure. What do you think made this possible, especially cutting across ethnic and religious divides?
What actually helped him is that he was sincere. My father was generous to Nigerians. Some of them, he couldn’t even remember he helped them. That’s why Nigerians were able to love him. That’s why he became so powerful, because he did the right things for the right reasons.
Briefly, let’s talk about your mother, Alhaja Kudirat Abiola. This was one woman who stood in the gap when your father was in detention, such a strong woman. Could you let us into what made her so formidable?
She wasn’t really somebody who would have done what she did. But it happened by accident when she saw the injustice unfolding. What she did was a natural reaction. She was the kind of person that worked on impulse. Once she moved in a direction, she could not hold herself back.
As far as she was concerned, what did this man do wrong? When he declared himself as president, he went into hiding for two weeks. By the time he came out of hiding and came back home, the Abacha regime sent almost 800 policemen to arrest him. She was right there, and she saw them taking him away. She knew just like other Nigerians, that this man was actually the president of Nigeria.
And he was not supposed to be a prisoner of Nigeria. She stood with him and she entered the car with him. They stopped the car and forced her out. She entered her own car, which had been trailing them. But they blocked her car from following him.
She had wanted to follow him to where he was going, but they did not allow her. At that point, something happened in her and that thing made her say to herself: “No, I’m not going to let this happen. Even if it’s going to happen, it’s not going to happen without me fighting against it.” That’s when her own struggle for him began.
And that’s when he became incommunicado and she had to carry the whole struggle on her shoulders. And that’s when she got involved in mobilising, working with all kinds of activists to make sure that she paralyzed the Abacha government.
That was when the government realised that they took a decision that they wanted to kill her. They felt as long as she was alive, government would not be able to get away with what they were trying to do.
It was something she felt she had to do because she was a witness to the injustice right there. She couldn’t just sit down and act as if she didn’t see what she saw. She acted based on what she saw and she was going to go all the way and going all the way meant being killed.
Were there times that you were afraid of her life? I mean, your mother, she could be killed anytime.
Yes. We used to always argue with her, especially me. That time, the biggest shock was when Chief Alfred Rewane was killed. Then Ken Saro Wiwa was also killed. We now realised that a government that could act like that could do something worse. I used to talk to her that if she wanted to keep doing what she was doing, she would be better off doing it out of the country. But she didn’t listen to me.
I was reading the New York Times one day when I saw her picture. I was wondering what she was doing in New York Times. I read that she was arrested. She had actually told some to put posters around Lagos; asking the people to fight against the military government. They arrested her overnight. I knew that it was getting out of hand, that she would have been arrested because they said if she was found guilty, she would be jailed for seven years.
Things were getting heated up, I kept warning her, warning her. And at one point she got upset with me that I was disturbing her too much: “Look, the worst thing that can happen with me is to receive a bullet.”
That’s what she told me. She knew that this thing was getting to the point. Abacha government was not gonna step down and she wasn’t gonna step down. These people were heartless and they went all the way. happen? It wasn’t a surprise to me.
When it did eventually happen, how did you take it?
It was very painful. I got a phone call. The person just told me. And that was it!
Who called you?
My father had an American personal assistant called Mr. Eko, it was his wife. Oh, by the way, Mr. Eko died a couple of weeks ago and he’s being buried today on June 12. He wanted to be buried on June 12 if he ever died.
I came back to Nigeria for our 48th day prayer. I tried to see my dad as well. I went to Abuja and I was in Abuja for a month and a half. The Abacha government would not allow me to see him. So I had to go back to the United States. It was a tragedy upon a tragedy upon a tragedy.
This is the price you pay if you want a country that’s big and that’s complicated as Nigeria to become democratic. There’re heroes, I hope the country is able to finally get its act together and really benefit from democracy once and for all.
Your dad was reported to have been very close to the military elite, IBB for example. During this period were you able to reach out to some of the powerful people in government?
No, we couldn’t reach out. When my mother was killed, we saw them as the cause of the problem. The only person we went to talk to was (late General Oladipo) Diya. He told us he could not get involved because the Abacha government was really looking at him like he was a sellout. He said by the time he tells General Abacha that he wants us also to see my dad, he will say, “Oh yeah, we always think you’re a sellout.”
He said we should just go and meet the Commissioner of Police on our own. At that point, everybody was staying away, we were seen as the enemy of the government, nobody would want to come close to you. It was a tragedy but nonetheless, it has passed and we were able to survive it.
Your father built one of the largest indigenous business empires in Africa. I know you were pretty young that time, but what do you think was his philosophy when it came to business and entrepreneurship?
His philosophy was hard work and good marketing skill. My father was more or less a good marketer. He believed that marketing was the key. And the kind of business he did, you know, he represented ITT )International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation) in Nigeria.
The company was a big company and its equipment was the best at that time. All he had to do was to reach out to the customers, which is Nigerian government. He was more or less a salesman. It’s not like he was an industrialist or anything like that.
And once he was able to do that, he was investing in other areas so that he could diversify his income. He believed in being a good salesman, he also believed in diversification. He got involved in farms, airlines and oil. He did it as much as possible to make sure that if one industry was falling behind, another one would move ahead. He was a good businessman.
He was also generous to the point that the kind of person he was, he could end up even giving out his whole profit. The older he became, the whole issue of business became secondary. The primary aim in his life was philanthropy. He wanted to give and give and give. He was actually making money to give it away.
My father was giving out while he was alive and he kept doing it. And that, probably, is why he won the election so well. Nigerians really needed somebody like that at that time. That’s his idea of business, salesman and diversification.
Flipping back now, what is the fate of a lot of those businesses now after his, demise?
Once he got involved in politics, he spent a fortune, like almost $250 million on the election itself. After election was annulled, he also spent another fortune trying to de-annul the election.
Those two stages in his life had a very dramatic negative impact on his businesses. Then to make matters worse, after he died, some of his family members went to put themselves into two companies in which he had made sure that nobody was a director or nobody was a shareholder. He wanted his will to be established, that all the kids should have equal shares in his company.
There’s a lot of litigations in those companies now. While that is happening, the companies are not able to grow, get out of the cycle of the bad state they were at as a result of the military, the hostile military environment during the incarceration of my dad. Everything is now hanging in the court.
Very soon, we’re gonna get judgments and we will be able to move the companies forward. But, things are not, like, looking too good, because of all the series of things that happened in the last couple of years.
This is has also disunited the family. Is this a bother to you? I’ve read several interviews of you and some of your siblings concerning happenings in the immediate family.
Yes, it’s a bother to us, but it’s something to be expected. Whenever these kind of tragedies happen and something like bad like this happens, definitely everything goes to scatter. It’s really normal. The family was united before, everything was going well before. Then all of a sudden everything breaks apart and the whole family becomes completely disunited. It’s, the house is like subject to earthquake, you don’t expect the house to be standing the way it was before.
Would you say there are regrets that your father went into politics?
There will always be those regrets, but it doesn’t make any sense to regret what you cannot change. My principle in life is accept what is going on in your life and move on. Make the best out of it. I’m not the kind of person that even if I want to regret, I will not allow myself to regret. If he didn’t go into politics, perhaps we would not be celebrating him today. He would just have been like any other president that lived and died. And they will even say he was a businessman and what, it’s a big deal.
But now at least, you know, everywhere, even if you go to New York, you go to Manhattan, 44th Street, they named the street after my mother in New York. Nobody in Nigeria actually have that kind of honor. And like, this would not have happened without the struggle. There’s always a good thing that will come out of something so bad.
There are some people who have also argued that perhaps not because MKO went into politics, that’s why the family is disunited. They believe it because it is such a big family, that’s why you have this conflicting interests.
Yeah, some people will say that. If they are conversant with what’s happening all over the country, they will know some smaller families in bigger problems than ours. Some with just three or four children from the father and mother. When there’s going to be trouble, there’s going to be trouble.
It’s not a question of like, some people might only have two children, they might not decide to get along. The most important thing is, by the grace of God. We’ll get out of the woods, a lot of meetings and discussions have been held. I’m sure it’s going to be a good resolution to all this problem by the grace of God.
Are there interventions from prominent Nigerians to ensure the family gets its bearing back?
Yes, a lot of people have intervened. Traditional rulers from South West, some people are actually currently trying to even come up with another committee. They are trying their best. Whatever will be will be.
I also read in the media that you said you don’t believe in the probe of your father’s death. Why did you say this?
I told the person that even if they were to set up a probe, I mean, someone like Abacha now, we’re going to go to his grave and wake him up! Someone like General Babangida, I don’t know how old he is, but I’m gonna tell him to come and testify. I want us to look at June 12 as a positive thing.
I don’t want us to keep looking at this person did this, that person did that. We’ll keep making it negative and the bitterness continues. I want us to move away from that bitterness and say: “Okay, on June 12, we all came together as Nigerians and we all voted for the man of our choice.” And let’s build up on that positive angle of June 12. That’s what I meant from what I said.
Talking about positive angles, June 12 has also been declared Democracy Day. But on a personal level, do you have any personal aspiration when it comes to preserving your father’s legacy?
We’ve started from somewhere, it’s now Democracy Day. The next thing is for us as a people to start imbibing what June 12 stood for in terms of like, I don’t really care if you’re from the South of North. If you represent something good, I’ll vote for you. I want Nigerians to reach the stage in which when people are talking about who they’re gonna vote for, the last thing on their mind is where the person comes from.
Last thing on their mind is what religion the person is actually having. The last thing on their mind are these minor issues that have nothing to do with the person’s ability to perform. If we can actually achieve that, which is what we achieved on June 12, then I will believe that June 12 is actually the cause of that. I will believe something good came out of June 12.
But so long as we keep talking: “Oh, this person from Akwa Ibom. I don’t really like him. I don’t trust people from Cross River,” or, “I don’t trust people from Benue.” This is going to defeat the whole purpose of June 12. This is not what June 12 stands for.
Would you consider following your father’s political footstep at any level, I mean, going into full-time politics?
I’m already working in the government. I’m a political appointee.
What about elective?
Even he (MKO) himself, it’s not like he just woke up and said he wanted to be president. But General Babangida told him that he wanted him to run. So, I could be invited to contest or something, but I would want to always test the waters first. I don’t want to jump and do something I’m not supposed to do. Everything in this world starts and ends with timing. I would like to do the right thing at the right time.
For now, I’ll keep looking out. If the time is right, then I’ll try to do the right thing. So far, I haven’t seen any indication that I’m supposed to do something like that. For now, the answer is no.
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