Jamiu Abiola, son of late Chief MKO Abiola, has said Nigeria would have been far better economically if his father had been allowed to assume office as president in 1993.
He made the comment on Thursday during Channels Television’s June 12 Special Forum marking 26 years of unbroken democratic rule in Nigeria.
He said, “Nigeria would have been better because, at that time, it was a very special time in global times; that 1993 period was a time when the world itself was having an international economic boom.
“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.”
Jamiu, who serves as Senior Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Linguistics and Foreign Affairs, said three decades after the annulled election and 25 years after MKO’s death, attempts persist to erase his father’s legacy from Nigeria’s history.
“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.
“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.
“So, I now wrote a book in 2015, ‘The President Who Never Ruled’, so that his name cannot be forgotten,” he said.
In 2018, MKO Abiola was posthumously awarded the Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR) by then President Muhammadu Buhari, who also declared June 12 as Democracy Day, a move widely considered long overdue.
