First son of late Kudirat Abiola, wife of late Chief M.K.O Abiola, acclaimed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993, presidential election, Olalekan Yushua Abiola spoke to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY’s CHIKA OTUCHIKERE on the deaths of his parents and the controversy surrounding the trial of the suspected mastermind of his mother’s assassination. ? ?
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How did you know of your mother’s death?
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On June 4, 1996, I was in Washington DC, America. Then it was summer and I had was not in school, so I had just returned from the mosque, where I gone for morning prayers.?
I slept off, and at about 6 a.m, the phone rang. It kept ringing, but I ignored it. At a point, I had to pick it, and when I did, the caller directed me to call home, that someone in my family had been involved in a shooting. Immediately I hung up, I called home but the call wasn’t going through. ?I called my younger brother, Jamiu, in New York, to find out if he had heard anything. He said he had not, so I urged him to call home. He called back and said though he was unable to connect or get anyone in the house, he was called by someone who claimed he saw a report on the Internet that my mum had been shot. That was how I heard. The most painful and difficult thing was getting to break the news to my younger ones, Kasita and Mariam.?
I invited them to my house in Washington, and when they came, they wanted to know why I called, because they were living faraway; one in Boston, another in Connecticut and another in Pennsylvania. I ?was quiet, ?unable to tell them that mother had been shot. It was very difficult for me to say, but they found out eventually.
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How did you receive the news; did you have any premonitions?
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Well, people told me that my mother’s stance against the Abacha government could have her killed, and that I should go home to Nigeria and bring her back to America.
Then I would call home and plead with my mother to return to America. She would say “Okay, I will come”. She would give me a date but would later postpone it by a week.?
At a point, my brother suggested we go drag her out of the country. He kept saying, “Lekan, you have to go home and get mummy out, because Abacha is going to kill her”. I kept trying to re-assure him that I don’t think that Abacha would kill our mother, that I was aware that he (Abacha) was a wicked man, but I didn’t think he was callous. I said the most he could do was arrest her or send her on exile. I could not imagine that he would actually kill her. I said “okay, but she is also your mother. If you are so concerned why don’t you go home and bring her out?” That was how we kept going, until the day she got shot. I never believed that Abacha and someone like Al-Mustapha, could be so wicked as to do that. It was unbelievable, especially since my father and Abacha knew each other. My mother, Kudirat, knew Maryam Abacha very well. My sister and Abacha’s daughter, Gumsu, were in the same class. though we had political differences, because of the June 12 thing, we were like a family. But it is unimaginably wicked for you to shoot your friend’s wife, the mother of your daughter.
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What was your first reaction?
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The first thing I did was to bring the last two children, Abdulmumuni and Mohammed Alhaji, out of Nigeria to come and live with us in America, making sure that all of my mother’s children were out of Nigeria and safe. After we got the two younger ones out of the country, my brother and I returned ?to do the prayers for our mother, secure the properties she left behind, as well as meet other family members.?
When we arrived the country in 1996, we tried to see my father who was then in detention. We saw the chief of General Staff, Diya, who said, “look, I cannot get involved in getting you to see your father”, then he gave us the phone number of Hamza Al Mustapha, who he said was the only one who could get us to see our father. We spent almost a month in Abuja, and when we called Al-Mustapha on the phone, he would say “Tomorrow”, “Maybe, next week” or “You will see your father next tomorrow”. We pestered him, until one day he said, “look, you cannot see Moshood Abiola, get back to America and get lost!” That was the last thing he told us. We said, “Look, our mother has been shot and you know you are one of the idiots who did it. Now we want to see our dad to tell him that our mother is dead. What should we now do?” The only one who could have allowed us to see our father refused to let us see him, and the last thing he told us was, “look, you cannot see Moshood Abiola,” before he slammed the phone on us. Now this is the man who is telling the world that he is friend to the Abiola family and that the Abiola family was one family. If he knows the family was one, why was it that after my mother was killed he refused to let my brother and I to see my father? Is this man who slammed the phone on us then the same one claiming to be a friend of the Abiola family??
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Shortly before Abiola was released, there were ?rumours that he was going to be released. Not long after, his demise was reported. How did you recieve that??
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You know Abacha died a month after my father did? Abdulsalami Abubakar had a month to release my dad. He released prisoners like Obasanjo, who once stood convicted, while my father who had not been convicted was still remanded in prison, until the man died. It is very funny to remand somebody who had not been convicted of anything to be kept in detention; he was not allowed to see his doctor, and his family. Worse, you did not release him, but went ahead to pardon people who had already been convicted.?
Honestly, the way my father died is very suspicious. In fact, I agreed with my siblings and we took Abdulsalami to court in America, to answer for the wrongful death of my father. The issue was finally settled out of court. At a point, he was running away from America; he could not go there, because of the court case against him. The truth, however, remains that my father is gone; all we can do is to pray to Allah to forgive him and give him jamna. ?No amount of crying or noise-making will bring my father back to life, but I hope that Allah would punish those who actually had a hand in his death, because, definitely, Abdulsalami was involved in my father’s death directly or indirectly. Either he had him poisoned or kept him there for a month.
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Does that give credence to what Al-Mustapha is alleging in court?
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?What Al-Mustapha is being charged with has nothing to do with Moshood Abiola’s death or that of Abacha. It also has nothing to do with what happened to the Yoruba leaders. Rather, he’s being charged with what happened two years before that time; the killing of my mother. The man who shot my mother, Barnabas ‘Sgt. Rogers’ Mshelia, said in court that though he shot my mother, he was sent by Al-Mustapha.?
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The man who drove the car, one Mohammed Abdul, said he ?was a driver for Ibrahim Abacha but went driving for Mohammed Abacha. Are they trying to say ‘Sgt. Rogers’ and Mohammed Abdul decided on their own?
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In fact, he even said that Al-mustapha ?got a private plane for them to go to Lagos, because according to them, the kind of guns they used could not be loaded into a regular plane. All these people who were part of the evil deed were those who were charged, and they all confessed to it. When Abacha died, Mohammed Abacha gave his driver and somebody else $20,0000 ?to leave the country, because he did not want them to be arrested or interrogated.
So, it is as clear as day that Mohammed Abacha, Al-mustapha and others were part of the plot to kill my mother. That is definite, but we will get justice. You know the Nigerian justice system is really terrible? The fact that the case has lasted this long is an indictment on our justice system. I want to say that apart from this particular case, all the other cases involving very important people in Nigeria (former governors and all others) have also been delayed. In other words, Al-mustapha’s case is not the only one that has been delayed; almost every other case has been delayed. As long as you have money to pay lawyers, they will keep applying technicalities to delay. It has been twelve years since. The case has spent 12 years in court, because they take advantage of any loophole to cause a delay. They will say, “Oh, the judge is biased. We want him to remove himself”. If the judge does not remove himself then we say we want to appeal and keep appealing. They use every trick in the books to keep delaying. Then they use the delay as an excuse for victimisation.?
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What do you expect from government??
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All I want is justice. This man delayed his own case, nobody else did. He and his lawyers cynically plotted to delay their case in the hopes that they will get either a pardon or a political solution to the problem. I do not want a political solution to this problem. My mother was shot in the head. Her driver, Mr. Dauda (a father of three ?who drove me to school, both when I was in primary and secondary school for over 20 years) also died after he was shot three times. No one talks about Mr. Dauda.?
Everyone is talking about ?Kudirat. No one is talking about Mr. Dauda, who also died in that attack. This is not a political issue; somebody was killed.?
We all have mothers. How would you feel if your mother was shot in the head and the person suspected to have shot her is now charged to court, but starts doing all he can to delay and frustrate the case, and later claim victimisation? Look I want justice to be done. I want the judge to look at the case and look at the fact that my mother was shot: the person who shot her has admitted to it, the person who drove the car has admitted to it and both of them said Al-Mustapha, Abacha’s chief security officer, sent them. Everyone knows the role he played in that government, so no one can attempt to shy away from the truth. I want to get justice and I know that I will get justice, either in this world or wallahi, from Allah.