Nigeria’s Whitewashed Heads Of State — MKO Abiola

What do MKO Abiola and Sani Abacha have in common?

1. They both actively supported coups that removed Nigerian leaders;
2. They were both disappointed by a close friend who promised they would become Nigeria’s President/Head of State.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. If you have been following the #WWHOS series, you are familiar with Abacha’s stories and his eventual demise — but not Abiola, or why Abiola, who never became a President, is featuring in the series.

A grinning Alhaji Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola GCFR, Aare Ona Kankafo XIV of Yorubaland, surrounded by supporters.

Abacha and Abiola — throughout their adult lives — were like a train station and a train; they always found a way to return to each other. And this is that story.

Meet MKO Abiola GCFR, Rags to Riches

Born on August 24, 1937, in Abeokuta, Southwest Nigeria, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola is his father’s 23rd child.

His name, Kashimawo, means let us wait and see [if he will survive]; an allusion to his parents’ uncertainty that he would survive infancy like the 22 children before him. He did. Unfortunately, Abiola’s unique status as the long-awaited child to make it through infancy did not protect him from the calloused hands of poverty that his parents met him with. Luckily, unlike most people around him, MKO was brilliant…