Jamiu Abiola, son of the late MKO Abiola, has said Nigeria would have been in a much stronger economic position had his father been allowed to assume office as president in 1993.
He made this statement yesterday during Channels Television’s ‘June 12 Special Forum’, held to mark 26 years of uninterrupted democratic rule in Nigeria.
“Nigeria would have been better because, at that time, it was a very special time in global terms. That 1993 period was a time when the world itself was having an international economic boom,” he said.
“So, we could have tapped into that. But what did we get in return? We got a kleptomaniac as head of state. I am not going to talk about Sani Abacha because he has his problems wherever he has found himself.”
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Jamiu, who currently serves as Senior Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Linguistics and Foreign Affairs, lamented what he described as ongoing efforts to erase his father’s legacy from Nigeria’s democratic history, even three decades after the annulled June 12 election and 25 years after MKO’s death.
“I wrote a book in 2015 because I came to realise that my father’s name was becoming like a memory that was becoming distant and people were hellbent on rewriting the history of Nigeria without him,” he said.
“People would come from abroad, foreign presidents, they would mention Yar’Adua and others, and they would not mention Chief MKO Abiola. Some people wanted to bury his name. Like my father would say: they wanted to shave his head in his absence.”
Jamiu said he authored ‘The President Who Never Ruled’ to preserve his father’s name in Nigerian history and ensure that future generations understood his place in the nation’s struggle for democracy.
In 2018, then President Muhammadu Buhari posthumously awarded MKO Abiola the Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR) and declared June 12 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day— a move many described as a long-overdue recognition of Abiola’s sacrifice.
